Had I heeded a wise man on 2 out of 19 I could today, by sheer brass, claim to be batting a thousand.
* * *
I have made some successful predictions. One is "The Crazy Years." (Take a look out your window. Or at your morning paper.) Another is the water bed. Some joker tried to patent the water bed to shut out competition, and discovered that he could not because it was in the public domain, having been described in detail in Stranger in a Strange Land. It had been mentioned in stories of mine as far back as 1941 and several times after that, but not until Stranger did the mechanics of a scene require describing how it worked.
It was not the first man to build water beds who tried to patent it. The first man in the field knew where it came from; he sent me one, free and freight prepaid, with a telegram naming his firm as the "Share-Water Bed Company." Q.E.D.
Our house has no place to set up a water bed. None. So that bed is still in storage a couple of hundred yards from our main house. I've owned a water bed from the time they first came on market—but have never slept in one.
I designed the water bed during years as a bed patient in the middle thirties: a pump to control water-level, side supports to permit one to float rather than simply lying on a not-very-soft water-filled mattress, thermostatic control of temperature, safety interfaces to avoid all possibility of electrical shock, waterproof box to make a leak no more important than a leaky hot water bottle rather than a domestic disaster, calculation of floor loads (important!), internal rubber mattress, and lighting, reading, and eating arrangements—an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too damned much time in hospital beds.
Nothing about it was eligible for patent—nothing new—unless a sharp patent lawyer could persuade the examiners that a working assemblage enabling a person to sleep on water involved that—how does the law describe it?—"flash of inspiration" transcending former art. But I never thought of trying; I simply wanted to build one—but at that time I could not have afforded a custom-made soapbox.
But I know exactly where I got the idea. In 1931, a few days after the radio-compass incident described in the afterword to "Searchlight," I was ordered to Fort Clayton, Canal Zone, to fire in Fleet Rifle & Pistol Matches. During that vacation-with-pay I often returned from Panama City after taps, when all was quiet. There was a large swimming pool near the post gate used by the Navy and our camp was well separated from the Army regiment barracked there.
I would stop, strip naked, and have a swim—nonreg (no life guards) but no one around, and regulations are made to be broken.
Full moon occurred about the middle of Fleet Matches—and I am one of those oddies who cannot sink, even in fresh water (which this was). The water was blood warm, there was no noise louder than night jungle sounds, the Moon blazed overhead, and I would lie back with every muscle relaxed and stare at it—fall into it—wonder whether we would get there in my lifetime. Sometimes I dozed off.
Eventually I would climb out, wipe my feet dry with a hanky, pull on shoes, hang clothes over my arm, and walk to my tent in the dark. I don't recall ever meeting anyone but it couldn't matter—dark, all male, surrounded by armed sentries, and responsible myself only to a Marine Corps officer junior to me but my TDY boss as team captain—and he did not give a hoot what I did as long as I racked a high score on the range (and I did, largely because my coach was a small wiry Marine sergeant nicknamed "Deacon"—who reappears as survival teacher in Tunnel in the Sky).
Some years later, bothered by bed sores and with every joint aching no matter what position I twisted into, I thought often of the Sybaritic comfort of floating in blood-warm water at night in Panama—and wished that it could be done for bed patients . . . and eventually figured out how to do it, all details, long before I was well enough to make working drawings.
But 1) I never expected one to be built; 2) never thought of them (except for myself) other than as hospital beds; 3) never expected them to be widely used by a fair percentage of the public; 4) and never dreamed that they would someday be advertised by motels for romantic-exotic-erotic weekends along with X-rated films on closed-circuit TV.
By stacking the cards, I'm about to follow the advice of both Bill Gresham and Sprague de Camp. First, I will paint a gloomy picture of what our future may be. Second, I'll offer a cheerful scenario of how wonderful it could be. I can afford to be specific as each scenario will deny everything said in the other one (de Camp), and I can risk great gloom in the first because I'll play you out with music at the end (Gresham).
GLOOM, WOE, AND DISASTER—There are increasing pathological trends in our culture that show us headed down the chute to self-destruction. These trends do not require that we be conquered—wait a bit and we will fall into the lap of whichever power cares to occupy us. I'll list some of these trends and illustrate (rather than prove) what I mean. But it would be tediously depressing to pile up convincing proof—I'm not running for office. I do have proof, on file right in this room. I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
A few years ago I was visited by an astronomer, young and quite brilliant. He claimed to be a longtime reader of my fiction and his conversation proved it. I was telling him about a time I needed a synergistic orbit from Earth to a 24-hour station; I told him what story it was in, he was familiar with the scene, mentioned having read the book in grammar school.
This orbit is similar in appearance to cometary interplanet transfer but is in fact a series of compromises in order to arrive in step with the space station; elapsed time is an unsmooth integral not to be found in Hudson's Manual but it can be solved by the methods used on Siacci empiricals for atmosphere ballistics: numerical integration.
I'm married to a woman who knows more math, history, and languages than I do. This should teach me humility (and sometimes does, for a few minutes). Her brain is a great help to me professionally. I was telling this young scientist how we obtained yards of butcher paper, then each of us worked three days, independently, solved the problem and checked each other—then the answer disappeared into one line of one paragraph (Space Cadet) but the effort had been worthwhile as it controlled what I could do dramatically in that sequence.
Doctor Whoosis said, "But why didn't you just shove it through a computer?"
I blinked at him. Then said slowly, gently, "My dear boy—" (I don't usually call Ph.D.'s in hardcore sciences "My dear boy"—they impress me. But this was a special case.)
"My dear boy . . . this was 1947."
It took him some seconds to get it, then he blushed.
Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin. This young man was (is) brilliant, skilled in mathematics, had picked German and Russian for his doctorate. At the time I met him he seemed to lack feeling for historical span . . . but, if true, I suspect that it began to itch him and he made up that lack either formally or by reading. Come to think of it, much of my own knowledge of history derives not from history courses but from history of astronomy, of war and military art, and of mathematics, as my formal history study stopped with Alexander and resumed with Prince Henry the Navigator. But to understand the history of those three subjects, you must branch out into general history.
Span of Time—the Decline of Education
My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2-year academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it was very small—had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.
Here are some of the subjects he studied in back-country 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeepin
g, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.
Twenty-eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one-year 5-hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American history—and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each.
I've had to repair what I missed with a combination of travel and private study . . . and must admit that I did not tackle Chinese history in depth until this year. My training in history was so spotty that it was not until I went to the Naval Academy and saw captured battle flags that I learned that we fought Korea some eighty years earlier than the mess we are still trying to clean up.
From my father's textbook I know that the world history course he studied was not detailed (how could it be?) but at least it treated the world as round; it did not ignore three fourths of our planet.
Now, let me report what I've seen, heard, looked up, clipped out of newspapers and elsewhere, and read in books such as Why Johnny Can't Read, The Blackboard Jungle, etc.
Colorado Springs, our home until 1965, in 1960 offered first-year Latin—but that was all. Caesar, Cicero, Virgil—Who dat?
Latin is not taught in the high schools of Santa Cruz County. From oral reports and clippings I note that it is not taught in most high schools across the country.
"Why this emphasis on Latin? It's a dead language!" Brother, as with jazz, in the words of a great artist, "If you have to ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." A person who knows only his own language does not even know his own language; epistemology necessitates knowing more than one human language. Besides that sharp edge, Latin is a giant help in all the sciences—and so is Greek, so I studied it on my own.
A friend of mine, now a dean in a state university, was a tenured professor of history—but got riffed when history was eliminated from the required subjects for a bachelor's degree. His courses (American history) are still offered but the one or two who sign up, he tutors; the overhead of a classroom cannot be justified.
A recent Wall Street Journal story described the bloodthirsty job hunting that goes on at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association; modern languages—even English—are being deemphasized right across the country; there are more professors in MLA than there are jobs.
I mentioned elsewhere the straight-A student on a scholarship who did not know the relations between weeks, months, and years. This is not uncommon; high school and college students in this country usually can't do simple arithmetic without using a pocket calculator. (I mean with pencil on paper; to ask one to do mental arithmetic causes jaws to drop—say 17 x 34, done mentally. How? Answer: Chuck away the 34 but remember it. (10 + 7)2 is 289, obviously. Double it: 2(300 – 11), or 578.
But my father would have given the answer at once, as his country grammar school a century ago required perfect memorizing of multiplication tables through 20 x 20 = 400 . . . so his ciphering the above would have been merely the doubling of a number already known (289)—or 578. He might have done it again by another route to check it: (68 + 510)—but his hesitation would not have been noticeable.
Was my father a mathematician? Not at all. Am I? Hell, no! This is the simplest sort of kitchen arithmetic, the sort that high school students can no longer do—at least in Santa Cruz.
If they don't study math and languages and history, what do they study? (Nota Bene! Any student can learn the truly tough subjects on almost any campus if he/she wishes—the professors and books and labs are there. But the student must want to.)
But if that student does not want to learn anything requiring brain sweat, most U.S. campuses will babysit him 4 years, then hand him a baccalaureate for not burning down the library. That girl in Colorado Springs who studied Latin—but no classic Latin—got a "general" bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in 1964. I attended her graduation, asked what she had majored in. No major. What had she studied? Nothing, really, it turned out—and, sure enough, she's as ignorant today as she was in high school.
Santa Cruz has an enormous, lavish 2-year college and also a campus of the University of California, degree granting through Ph.D. level. But, since math and languages and history are not required, let's see how they fill the other classrooms.
* * *
The University of California (all campuses) is classed as a "tough school." It is paralleled by a State University system with lower entrance requirements, and this is paralleled by local junior colleges (never called "junior") that accept any warm body.
UCSC was planned as an elite school ("The Oxford of the West") but falling enrollment made it necessary to accept any applicant who can qualify for the University of California as a whole; therefore UCSC now typifies the "statewide campus." Entrance can be by examination (usually College Entrance Examination Boards) or by high school certificate. Either way, admission requires a certain spread—2 years of math, 2 of a modern language, 1 of a natural science, 1 of American history, 3 years of English—and a level of performance that translates as B+. There are two additional requirements: English composition, and American History and Institutions. The second requirement acknowledges that some high schools do not require American history; UCSC permits an otherwise acceptable applicant to make up this deficiency (with credit) after admission.
The first additional requirement, English composition, can be met by written examination such as CEEB, or by transferring college credits considered equivalent, or, lacking either of these, by passing an examination given at UCSC at the start of each quarter.
The above looks middlin' good on the surface. College requirements from high school have been watered down somewhat (or more than somewhat) but that B+ average as a requirement looks good . . . if high schools are teaching what they taught two and three generations ago. The rules limit admission to the upper 8% of California high school graduates (out-of-state applicants must meet slightly higher requirements).
8%— So 92% fall by the wayside. These 8% are the intellectual elite of young adults of the biggest, richest, and most lavishly educated state in the Union.
Those examinations for the English-composition requirement: How can anyone fail who has had 3 years of high school English and averages B+ across the board?
If he fails to qualify, he may enter but must take at once (no credit) "Subject A"—better known as "Bonehead English."
"Bonehead English" must be repeated, if necessary, until passed. To be forced to take this no-credit course does not mean that the victim splits an occasional infinitive, sometimes has a dangling modifier, or a failure in agreement or case—he can even get away with such atrocities as "—like I say—."
It means that he has reached the Groves of Academe unable to express himself by writing in the English language.
It means that his command of his native language does not equal that of a 12-year-old country grammar school graduate of ninety years ago. It means that he verges on subliterate but that his record is such in other ways that the University will tutor him (no credit and for a fee) rather than turn him away.
But, since these students are the upper 8% and each has had not less than three years of high school English, it follows that only the exceptionally unfortunate student needs "Bonehead English." That's right, isn't it? Each one is eighteen years old, old enough to vote, old enough to contract or to marry without consulting parents, old enough to hang for murder, old enough to have children (and some do); all have had 12 years of schooling including 11 years of English, 3 of them in high school.
(Stipulated: California has special cases to whom English is not native language. But such a person w
ho winds up in that upper 8% is usually—I'm tempted to say "always"—fully literate in English.)
So here we have the cream of California's young adults; each has learned to read and write and spell and has been taught the basics of English during eight years in grammar school, and has polished this by not less than three years of English in high school—and also has had at least two years of a second language, a drill that vastly illuminates the subject of grammar even though grasp of the second language may be imperfect.
It stands to reason that very few applicants need "Bonehead English." Yes?
No!
I have just checked. The new class at UCSC is "about 50%" in Bonehead English—and this is normal—normal right across California—and California is no worse than most of the states.
8% off the top—
Half of this elite 8% must take "Bonehead English."
The prosecution rests.
* * *
This scandal must be charged to grammar and high school teachers . . . many of whom are not themselves literate (I know!)—but are not personally to blame, as we are now in the second generation of illiteracy. The blind lead the blind.
But what happens after this child (sorry—young adult citizen) enters UCSC?
I TELL YOU THREE TIMES I TELL YOU THREE TIMES I TELL YOU THREE TIMES: A student who wants an education can get one at UCSC in a number of very difficult subjects, plus a broad general education.
I ask you never to forget this while we see how one can slide through, never do any real work, never learn anything solid, and still receive a bachelor of arts degree from the prestigious University of California. Although I offer examples from the campus I know best, I assume conclusively that this can be done throughout the state, as it is one statewide university operating under one set of rules.
Some guidelines apply to any campus: Don't pick a medical school or an engineering school. Don't pick a natural science that requires difficult mathematics. (A subject called "science" that does not require difficult mathematics usually is "science" in the sense that "Christian Science" is science—in its widest sense "science" simply means "knowledge" and anyone may use the word for any subject . . . but shun the subjects that can't be understood without mind-stretching math.)