Facing A New Audience

BUCK ROGERS belongs to the past Science fiction the United States has finally struggled to a state of respectability, shedding the dime-store pulp magazine image it acquired in the 20s and '30s. Gone are the lurid magazine covers of space ships, ray guns and over-endowed Galactic princesses; the romantic, swashbuckling days of Depression science fiction have passed, replaced by serious literary efforts--carefully written and structured novels and short stories.

The first science fiction literature course was probably offered at Colgate in 1962. Since then, colleges and universities have kept pace with the growing popularity, that over 300 college level science fiction courses are being taught in this country today. With the numerous high school and junior high school courses being offered that figure is even higher. As science fiction has lost its "subliterary" categorization recognition has followed for several science fiction novelists: the masterful Robert Heinlein for Stranger in a Strange Land Frank Herbert and Dune, published in 1965, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards: Isaac Asimov's brilliant, futuristic Foundation trilogy: and Ray Bradbury and Arthu C. Clarke for Fahrenheit 451 and Childhood's End, respectively. On television, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits have won tremendous followings and the box office success of 2001: A Space Odyssey is representative of the drawing power of current science fiction films.

WHY THE SUDDEN interest? Why has science fiction, after the long "ghetto years, suddenly been embraced by academics and publishing companies alike? Why are the young especially fascinated with the alternative worlds portrayed in the pages of Asimov. Herbert and Heinlein? Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow is a collection of fifteen essays that focuses on some of these questions and tries to provide answers. The authors of the short pieces are drawn from the top ranks of science fiction writing: Frank Herbert, Frederik Pohl, Alan E. Nourse, Poul Anderson and Jack Williamson. They bring their considerable talents to bear on the issues confronting science fiction, but the end result, while absorbing, tends to be choppy. The essays run the gamut from a discussion of science fiction in the visual media to a detailed description of the way a writer creates an imaginary solar system, complete with charts and graphs. At their worst the essays are self-consciously strident and border, at times, on the obscure. Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow only becomes of effective when the writers each in his or her own way, attempt to deal with the reasons mainstream culture; the role science fiction plays in society now, and the future of the art.

Robert Graves, the English poet, observed in 1972. "Technology is now warring openly against the crafts, and science covertly against poetry," Ben Bova, in the opening essay of the book, "The Role of Science Fiction," attacks Graves head-on-. It is Bova's contention that the gap between science and literature is artificial. He feels Graves errs in his view of science and scientists for the layman; he feels science fiction, at its best, should function as a modern mythology:

Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity. Never has such a bridge been more desperately needed.

Science fiction should serve as an interpreter of science for humanity. Bova feels, preparing people for change and warning of the dangers of an unrestrained and ruthless use of technology.

MODERN MAN'S adaptation to science is the theme Theodore Sturgeon writes about, and his assumptions and conclusions differ radically from Bova's Sturgeon feels that 20th century man worships science, a good who is "omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, master of that terrible trinity of hope, fear and power." He examines what he considers a mysterious phenomenon. The reading public fails, or refuses, to discriminate between good and bad science fiction, and condemns all. There is an answer for the lack of judgement.

I know of no other explanation for this stranger lack than to submit that there to one target with science in its tide which is as safe to lob bricks as at the home of only low on town science fiction. Put it down and the lightning does not strike. To sneer at it is perhaps to express a suspicion that perhaps science has become too much the master, that perhaps science will become aware that dissent exists.

The blanket criticism of science fiction is to Sturgeon an "obverted obeisance," a childish act of disobedience that serves to confirm the authority science has gained. While Bova sees science fiction as the new mythology--the emotional crutch to soften the impact of science--Sturgeon finds it to be the scapegoat.

Will success spoil science fiction? Two of the writers in Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow discuss what could happen to science Fiction in the future. James Gunn, in his well-documented essay, traces the development of modern science fiction and its recent public acceptance. Gunn sees a danger for pure science fiction as mainstream writers like Anthony Burgess. Herman work and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. turn to the themes and concepts" of science fiction. To Gunn, such writers represent a literary culture that is hostile to science fiction with its rational, pragmatic view of the universe. The New Wave of science fiction writers, led by Judith Merril and J.G. Ballard, have adopted some of the romantic and subjective strains of the mainstream. At issue, Gunn writes, is the continued existence of the national nature and technological slant of science fiction. He believes that while elements of mainstream literature should be adapted to science fiction, the core should be left untouched:

Science fiction will bring nothing to the mainstream if it surrenders to mainstream philosophies and mainstream valued. Both science fiction and the mainstream will be stronger if science fiction retains its unique concepts, narrative strengths, idea orientation, detached viewpoints, and commitments that it developed over the long years of isolation.

REGINALD BRETNOR, the editor of the book, is suspicious of the involvement of the universities and colleges with science fiction. He is disdainful of formal literary criticism, claiming it has led to a strain of obscurity in fiction in the United States. The critics, academic mandarins in Bretnor's terms, have advanced the concepts of obscurity so that they alone could interpret fiction and poetry, and in turn fatten their paychecks with their reviews. Through the critics, Bretnor contends. American poetry became "formless, unreadable and unintelligible," and the short story was "devitalized into the non-story." With science fiction reaching the college campuses, Bretnor writes:

...the academic mandarins can contribute little or nothing to the field. However, what they can do to it, and especially to our younger writers is quite another matter. One can only hope that among them there will be enough men with the prudence and good taste to walk carefully and considerately over the ground they have not tilled and crops they have not cultivated.

The writing in the fifteen essays contained in Science Fiction. Today and Tomorrow, varies from contributor to contributor; from the short, contained prose of Frank Herbert to the philosophic ramblings to Theodore Sturgeon. The book is labelled "A Discursive Symposium" and indeed, it is a comprehensive survey of the field. Frederik Phol and George Zebrowski analyze science fiction in publishing and the visual media Poul Anderson and Hal Clement, in back-to-back essays, explain how writers create imaginary worlds and creatures, drawing on scientific data. And one of the few female science fiction novelists. Anne McCaffrey, examines the lack of glamour and romance in science fiction.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in God Bless You. Mr Rosewater has his hero tell a convention of science fiction writers:

I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the only one who'll talk about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one either, but one that'll last for billions of years. You're the only ones with guts to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us. What cities do to us, what tremendous misunderstandings, mistakes, accidents and catastrophes do to us.

From H.G. Wells to George Orwell, and from Isaac Asimov to Harlan Ellison, science fiction writers have cared about the future. Whether science fiction can retain its present form remains a question. Ironically, the major drawback of many of the writers in Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow is their almost paranoid concern with the purity of science fiction in the future. Like cold War Warriors faced with detente, the once isolated science fiction writer must confront a vast new audience that contains many of his old enemies.