There is a constant war being waged within the sun. On the one hand there is the powerful force of gravitational attraction which pulls everything toward the center. On the other hand there is the fierce particle energy which tends to blow outward. The two forces maintain an uneasy balance which is why the sun is a slightly variable star; it sort of teeters between them.
But as the element transformations continue, the original hydrogen fuel will be used up, the energy levels will drop, and gravity will overcome. In a final convulsion the sun will contract once more, the compression will again generate heat and an almost hysteric energy excitement, but this time in a space too small to contain it. Our sun will explode, turning into a brilliant nova which will be seen countless galaxies distant. Naturally, the entire solar system of planets will go up in that final burst. After that, nothing will remain but a cinder, just a few miles in diameter, with the ashes packed so densely together that the gravity at the surface will be billions of tons per square inch.
However, all this is so far in the future that by that time we probably will have emigrated to other planets of younger suns, perhaps very odd ones where rainbows are black and the skies green, where twelve moons revolve in a spectacular carrousel, where the sun rises in the north and sets in the south, and the seasons march around the planet from west to east. Everything will be changed except the sun-worshippers of that far future. They will appear on the beaches as ever, arrange their blankets as ever, and carefully rotisserate, giving equal time to their front, their back, their four arms and their two heads.
Holiday, June 1969
Introduction to the Essays
Bester's love-hate relationship with science fiction is no more apparent than in these essays, written over a twenty-year period.
The first piece, "Science Fiction and the Renaissance Man," was originally delivered as a lecture at the University of Chicago in 1957 (the other lecturers were Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Bloch). In it, Bester is already showing signs of being dissatisfied with the field.
The next series of essays were written for the Books Department of Fantasy and Science Fiction, circa 1961-62. As the Books Reviewer for Fantasy and Science Fiction, Bester had a hard time reconciling his feelings about science fiction, and would occasionally turn his entire column into a forum for his views.
"A Diatribe Against Science Fiction" is Bester's bitter rant against the "empty" SF of the times. "The Perfect Composite Science Fiction Author" is an illuminating rejoinder to the previous column. The chilling "Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man" is a revealing follow-up piece to Bester's critical essays. In it, he takes himself to task (in the third person, no less) for failing to write any fiction in the previous two years (and showing no inclination to write any more), and yet still feeling able to pontificate against SF.
After Bester returned to the SF field in the early 1970s, he wrote an essay on his lifelong love affair with SF, "My Affair With Science Fiction," which provides a good look at his writing life and history up to that time.
Science Fiction and the Renaissance Man
Based on a lecture delivered February 22, 1957, University College, The University of Chicago.
It's always been a policy of mine to measure a man's opinions against his background, and if I don't know what he does for a living, I ask him. This, by the way, is a heinous crime on the continent. A Parisian or a Roman will discuss his intimate sex life with you, his religion, politics, prejudices and sins—but he is offended if you ask questions about his business. Here in the States, it's the other way around; which places me in an awkward position because I intend to discuss both the religion and the business of science fiction. I wish I could discuss the sex, too, but there isn't any sex in science fiction . . . a deplorable state of affairs.
First, a little about myself so that you can have a yardstick with which to measure my opinions. I'm forty-three years old, married, no children. I was born and raised in New York City. . . on The Rock, as we say . . . meaning on Manhattan Island itself. We have an informal and make-believe snob club of real native New Yorkers. You ought to hear us sneer at the lesser breeds: "My dear! She was born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx. She's positively a tourist!"
I was educated in New York public schools; was a science student at the University of Pennsylvania; then a law student at Columbia University. But I was obsessed with the ideal of the Renaissance Man, and spent half my time electing courses in music and art, and slipping my disc winning varsity letters. Naturally I bit off more than I could chew, and never made high enough marks to go on with science and law. . . for which the doctors and lawyers of America have never stopped thanking me. Those were the grim specialist days of the early thirties, before the University of Chicago and St. John's at Annapolis taught our educators to respect and encourage versatility.
I remember I used to rush from the comparative anatomy lab to the art studio, and stink out the life class with a stench of formaldehyde and cadaver. And when I left qualitative analysis for my class in composition and orchestration, bringing with me the sweet scent of sulphur dioxide—! Oh, I tell you, those were miserable days for an amateur Charles van Doren . . . and for his friends, too.
After finishing school, I drifted into writing. Drift is the only word. Put any man at loose ends and he invariably starts to write a book. As a matter of fact if you put a man in jail he also starts to write a book. I don't know if this parallel is significant, but I do know that there are many authors I'd like to see in jail.
The writing that I did was, of course, science fiction. Like every other chess-playing, telescope-loving, microscope-happy teenager of the twenties, I was racked up by the appearance of Amazing Stories magazine, Mr. Gernsback's lurid publication. The ideas of fourth dimension, time travel, outer space, microcosm and macrocosm, were fascinating, and I read and loved science fiction until its dissolution into pulp fiction in the thirties disgusted me. It was not until John Campbell rescued it from the abyss of space pirates, mad scientists, their lovely daughters wearing just enough clothes to satisfy the postal authorities, and alien fiends, that I was able to go back to it. Loving science fiction, steeped in it, and imagining that it was easy to write . . . isn't it astonishing how many people are deceived in this . . . it was only natural that I should attempt to write it. I sold half a dozen miserable stories by the grace of two kindly editors at Standard Magazines who enjoyed discussing James Joyce with me and bought my stories out of pity. When they went over to Superman comics, they took me with them. We hadn't finished Ulysses yet. Those were the early days of comic books and they needed stories desperately. I had to forget James Joyce, buckle down and learn to write while they trained me, hammered me, bullied me unmercifully.
But I became a writer, by God! They trained me so well that they lost me. I went over to radio and spent seven years writing and directing clambakes like "Charlie Chan," "Nick Carter," "The Shadow" and so on. When the switch to TV came, I went over to television for another three years, and wrote scripts until I began to dream in camera shots. During all these years I never read science fiction. I had neither the time nor the inclination for it. Make a note of this point. It's important. I'll get back to it later.
The rest of my background is short and hectic. I was contract writer on the Paul Winchell show when Horace Gold phoned me. I had known him casually in the Squinka days. . . Squinka is the name Manly Wade Wellman invented for the scenarios we used to write for comic books . . . Horace had just started editing Galaxy and asked me to write for him. I laughed hysterically. I knew only too well what a dreadful science fiction writer I'd been; and anyway I was putting in a ten day week on my comedy show . . . they're always a bitch to write . . . and hardly knew what science fiction meant.
Horace kept calling every week or so, just to chat and gossip, I thought; but before I realized what that fiend was up to, he'd maneuvered me into the position that somehow I was obligated to write something for him. Have you noticed that there
's a kind of Machiavelli who can always put you behind the eight-ball? You're minding your own business, and the next thing you know you're busting a gut to do something for the fiend while your common sense is screaming: "What am I doing here? How'd I get into this?"
The upshot was, I got fired off the Winchell show, went out to our house on Fire Island, and spent the summer surf-fishing and writing The Demolished Man. I'd read no science fiction in ten years; I'd written no respectable science fiction in my entire life; I was convinced I was writing a dog. The reception of the book surprised and flattered me. But I felt it was unfair to the professional science fiction authors. I was (I still am) a science fiction amateur.
After that I wrote a dozen stories for Tony Boucher and then another novel for Horace Gold: The Stars My Destination.
That brings me up to date. I should add that I've tired of TV now and am making another transition to contemporary novels and plays. I earn my bread and butter as a columnist for Holiday magazine and McCall's, and writing an occasional Spectacular. Other available data: I'm six-one; weigh two hundred pounds; am a manic-depressive; a powerful surf-fisherman; collect 19th century scientific instruments, am always a sucker for a pretty girl, especially if she wears glasses, am emotionally left of center in my politics—and am still trying to live up to my ideal of the Renaissance Man.
One of the most difficult things to teach people outside the arts . . . and in the arts as well. . . is that the important ingredient in the artist is not talent, technique, genius or luck—the important ingredient is himself. What you are must color everything you do. If what you are appeals to your public, you'll be successful. If what you are communicates with all publics through all time, you'll become an immortal. But, if your personality attracts no one, then despite all crafts and cleverness, you'll fail. Perry Lafferty, who directs the Montgomery Show, sums it up bitterly. Perry says: "I'm in the Me business, is all."
Actually this isn't limited to the arts. It extends all through life, and one of the milestones in the maturation of a man is his discovery that technique with women is a waste of time. No matter how he dresses, performs and displays himself, it's only what he really is that attracts.
Hamlet, speaking to the player king, suggests that the goal of the actor should be to hold the mirror up to nature. Actually, no matter what any man does, he holds a mirror up to himself. He continually reveals himself, especially when he tries hardest to conceal himself. All literature reveals authors and readers alike . . . and especially science fiction.
The history of science fiction reflects this. The early Amazing Stories magazine was padded with reprints of the work of mature men like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. This, in part, accounted for the early success of the magazine. Gernsback broke in a half dozen writers who were maladroits as fiction writers but mature experts in one aspect of popular science or another. The maturity of these stone-age science fiction writers was another source of the early success of science fiction. Still another source was the maturity of their themes which were in no way original. Most of their ideas had been waiting around for years for exploitation. Does any reader know the publication date of Flatland, by A. Square? Certainly it was centuries before the expression "a square" took on a more sinister meaning.
Within five years science fiction exhausted the reprint field and the prefabricated concepts, and, alas, fell into the hands of the pulp writers. It was then that the great decline set in because science fiction began to reflect the inwardness of the hack writer, and the essence of the hack writer is that he has no inwardness. He has no contact with reality, no sense of dramatic proportion, no principles of human behavior, no eye for truth . . . and a wooden ear for dialogue. He is all compromise and clever-shabby tricks.
For nearly ten years science fiction wallowed in this pigsty while the faithful complained pathetically. The fans pleaded with the editors. They also berated the editors, never once realizing that the inwardness of the writers was to blame . . . not their stories, which were sometimes well-made, with every clever-shabby trick known to the craft. . . but their empty inwardness. Many empty men wrote clever, gimmicky stories that still left the readers feeling dissatisfied. They had nothing within themselves to communicate.
Now you mustn't confuse inwardness with purpose or a message. When I say a man has nothing to communicate, I don't mean he has no message to preach, no. I'm referring to a quality we sometimes call character or charm . . . a point of view, an attitude toward life that is interesting or attractive. And remember that everybody has character, in varying degrees. Also remember that only the unique individuals have charm for everybody else. How often does an Audrey Hepburn come along? Or, if you prefer, a Rosemary Clooney? Or, for the ladies, a Rex Harrison? No, most of us must be content with a Charm Quotient. . . a CQ . . . of less than one hundred.
Back in the thirties we used to wonder why we enjoyed Doc Smith's space-operas so much. We usually felt guilty about it. Now I realize that Doc Smith had charm for us then. There was something inside him, reflected in his stereotype blood and thunder, that appealed. How many times, writing and directing my own shows, have I seen the same miracle transform actors . . . miserable technicians with no acting talent at all, and yet exuding a charm that was worth all the deficiencies. Fellow-sufferers, if you ever have the choice between a high IQ or a high CQ, I urge you to settle for charm.
John W. Campbell, Jr. was the man who rescued science fiction from the emptiness. Now Campbell is a strange man . . . from all reports. I only met him once, when he was embarking on his Dianetics kick, and my experience with him was laughable and embarrassing. But strange though Campbell may be, he's a man with a forceful inwardness which immediately shone through the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. I think in Campbell's case, the inwardness was character rather than charm.
Later came Horace Gold of Galaxy and Tony Boucher of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Like Campbell, Gold and Boucher are strange men; also like Campbell, both have a forceful inwardness which is reflected in their magazines. And remember, there aren't so many men who have forceful inwardness, strange or otherwise.
Campbell gave science fiction character; Gold and Boucher broadened its horizons. The hack writers began to disappear; the honest craftsmen who had been forced to hack in order to conform were able to do honest work again; new writers emerged. Science fiction began to create new concepts because new minds, minds in depth, so to speak, were attracted to it. It began to appeal again because new personalities, personalities in depth, were communicating through the stories . . . Heinlein, Kuttner, van Vogt, Sturgeon, Asimov, Kornbluth. These men fascinated us. . . but how much, really? Now I come to the heretical part of this essay. All traditionalists and royalists should be cautioned before reading further.
Do you remember my telling you that during the ten year period when I was writing and directing shows, I lost all interest in science fiction? Let me describe how and why.
Picture to yourself a Monday in the life of Me. I'm writing a show called . . . oh, say, "Secret Service." Monday morning at 9:00 o'clock I finish a 48 hour drive without letup to complete my script for the show three weeks from today. The network has been badgering me for the script which was due last Friday, and threatening to hire another writer. I call a messenger service to rush it down to the network and suffer because it's the only copy. I was too rushed to type a carbon.
The client on "Secret Service" calls to tell me that the script for the show two weeks from today has been unconditionally rejected by his wife. I fight desperately to salvage something out of the disaster. The advertising agency calls to tell me that next week's show must be postponed because of an advertising promotion they've dreamed up, and I have to get a new script written in three days. Also it must integrate with the promotion. The casting director of "Secret Service" calls to announce that one of the bit-players for tonight's show is out with a virus and they can't recast and rehearse on short notice. Can I write the part out?
I go down
to the network and rewrite, fighting haggardly with the director, a compulsive man who can't feel comfortable unless he's dominating all situations, but who can't respect a colleague unless the colleague fights him to a standstill. I walk a neurotic tightrope with him while I try to make sense out of a script minus a character.
In the studio during rehearsal I discover that a dramatic turning point in the story can't be done because of a jurisdictional fight between the stagehands' union and the carpenters' union. I'm a strong union man myself, but at this moment I would cheerfully set fire to the A. F. of L. But after losing a fight with the shop stewards, I restrain my fury and try to come up with something valid and dramatic to replace the device that only took me two weeks to figure out.
At dress rehearsal, the director and cast begin screaming at each other and at me. "You let us down!" they wail. If a show stinks, it's the writer's fault. If it's a success, it was despite the script. When in doubt, persecute the writer. I'm too weary to defend myself, and besides, the client's wife, a bright woman who knows she could write brilliantly if she only had the time, is busy discussing Kafka with me. I loathe Kafka, but I have to be polite. I even have to listen.
I drink too much after the show, out of relief and hysteria. I hear rumors that we're going to be cancelled, and I suffer. I go home and find a letter from my accountant. I owe more money to the government. I'm too overwrought to sleep. I take two sleeping pills and settle down with a science fiction magazine . . . And make the strange discovery that I'm not a damned bit interested in a make-believe story about an inventor who tries to ride a rocket to the moon and only succeeds in destroying the Earth, and worries that now he's Adam but there's no Eve to help him repopulate the world, only he does it all by himself anyway.