Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (211 page)

It was not until the next day that he reported on “the other thing.”

“Believe me, Father,” he said gently, “after nursing you there’s little I don’t know about who you are and why you’re here. Now there are some Christians here I know, and they know me. We trust each other. Jews may still be hated; but no longer, God be praised, by worshipers of the same Lord. So I explained about you. One of them,” he added with a smile, “turned very red.”

“God has forgiven him,” said Thomas. “There were people near— the same people who attacked me. Could he be expected to risk his life for mine?”

“I seem to recall that that is precisely what your Messiah did expect. But who’s being particular? Now that they know who you are, they want to help you. See: they gave me this map for you. The trail is steep and tricky; it’s good you have the robass. They ask just one favor of you: When you come back will you hear their confession and say Mass? There’s a cave near here where it’s safe.”

“Of course. These friends of yours, they’ve told you about Aquin?”

* * * *

The Jew hesitated a long time before he said slowly, “Yes…”

“And… ?”

“Believe me, my friend, I don’t know. So it seems a miracle. It helps to keep their faith alive. My own faith…
nu
, it’s lived for a long time on miracles three thousand years old and more. Perhaps if I had heard Aquin himself…”

“You don’t mind,” Thomas asked, “if I pray for you, in my faith?”

Abraham grinned. “Pray in good health, Father.”

The not-quite-healed ribs ached agonizingly as he climbed into the foam saddle. The robass stood patiently while he fed in the coordinates from the map. Not until they were well away from the village did it speak.

“Anyway,” it said, “now you’re safe for good.”

“What do you mean?”

“As soon as we get down from the mountain you deliberately look up a Checker. You turn in the Jew. From then on you are down in the books as a faithful servant of the Technarchy and you have not harmed a hair of the head of one of your own flock.”

Thomas snorted. “You’re slipping, Satan. That one doesn’t even remotely tempt me. It’s inconceivable.”

“I did best did not I with the breasts. Your God has said it the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.”

“And right now,” said Thomas, “the flesh is too weak for even fleshly temptations. Save your breath…or whatever it is you use.”

They climbed the mountain in silence. The trail indicated by the co ordinates was a winding and confused one, obviously designed deliberately to baffle any possible Checkers.

Suddenly Thomas roused himself from his button-rosary (on a coat lent by the Christian who had passed by) with a startled “Hey!” as the robass plunged directly into a heavy thicket of bushes.

“Coordinates say so,” the robass stated tersely.

For a moment Thomas felt like the man in the nursery rhyme who fell into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes. Then the bushes were gone, and they were plodding along a damp narrow passageway through solid stone, in which even the robass seemed to have some difficulty with his footing.

Then they were in a rocky chamber some four meters high and ten in diameter, and there on a sort of crude stone catafalque lay the uncorrupted body of a man.

Thomas slipped from the foam saddle, groaning as his ribs stabbed him, sank to his knees, and offered up a wordless hymn of gratitude. He smiled at the robass and hoped the psi factor could detect the elements of pity and triumph in that smile.

Then a frown of doubt crossed his face as he approached the body. “In canonization proceedings in the old time,” he said, as much to himself as to the robass, “they used to have what they called a devil’s advocate, whose duty it was to throw every possible doubt on the evidence.”

“You would be well cast in such a role Thomas,” said the robass.

“If I were,” Thomas muttered, “I’d wonder about caves. Some of them have peculiar properties of preserving bodies by a sort of mummification…”

The robass had clumped close to the catafalque. “This body is not mummified,” he said. “Do not worry.”

“Can the psi factor tell you that much?” Thomas smiled.

“No,” said the robass. “But I will show you why Aquin could never be mummified.”

He raised his articulated foreleg and brought its hoof down hard on the hand of the body. Thomas cried out with horror at the sacrilege—then stared hard at the crushed hand.

There was no blood, no ichor of embalming, no bruised flesh. Nothing but a shredded skin and beneath it an intricate mass of plastic tubes and metal wires.

The silence was long. Finally the robass said, “It was well that you should know. Only you of course.”

“And all the time,” Thomas gasped, “my sought-for saint was only your dream…the one perfect robot in man’s form.”

“His maker died and his secrets were lost,” the robass said. “No matter we will find them again.”

“All for nothing. For less than nothing. The ‘miracle’ was wrought by the Technarchy.”

“When Aquin died,” the robass went on, “and put died in quotation marks it was because he suffered some mechanical defects and did not dare have himself repaired because that would reveal his nature. This is for you only to know. Your report of course will be that you found the body of Aquin it was unimpaired and indeed incorruptible. That is the truth and nothing but the truth if it is not the whole truth who is to care. Let your infallible friend use the report and you will not find him ungrateful I assure you.”

“Holy Spirit, give me grace and wisdom,” Thomas muttered.

“Your mission has been successful. We will return now the Church will grow and your God will gain many more worshipers to hymn His praise into His nonexistent ears.”

“Damn you!” Thomas exclaimed. “And that would be indeed a curse if you had a soul to damn.”

“You are certain that I have not,” said the robass. “Question mark.”

“I know what you are. You are in very truth the devil, prowling about the world seeking the destruction of men. You are the business that prowls in the dark. You are a purely functional robot constructed and fed to tempt me, and the tape of your data is the tape of Screwtape.”

“Not to tempt you,” said the robass. “Not to destroy you. To guide and save you. Our best calculators indicate a probability of 51.5 per cent that within twenty years you will be the next Pope. If I can teach you wisdom and practicality in your actions the probability can rise as high as 97.2 or very nearly to certainty. Do not you wish to see the Church governed as you know you can govern it. If you report failure on this mission you will be out of favor with your friend who is as even you admit fallible at most times. You will lose the advantages of position and contact that can lead you to the cardinal’s red hat even though you may never wear it under the Technarchy and from there to—”

“Stop!” Thomas’ face was alight and his eyes aglow with something the psi factor had never detected there before. “It’s all the other way round, don’t you see?
This
is the triumph!
This
is the perfect ending to the quest!”

The articulated foreleg brushed the injured hand. “This question mark.”

“This is
your
dream. This is
your
perfection. And what came of this perfection? This perfect logical brain—this all-purpose brain, not functionally specialized like yours—knew that it was made by man, and its reason forced it to believe that man was made by God. And it saw that its duty lay to man its maker, and beyond him to his Maker, God. Its duty was to convict man, to augment the glory of God. And it converted by the pure force of its perfect brain!

“Now I understand the name Aquin,” he went on to himself. “We’ve known of Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, the perfect reasoner of the church. His writings are lost, but surely somewhere in the world we can find a copy. We can train our young men to develop his reasoning still further. We have trusted too long in faith alone; this is not an age of faith. We must call reason into our service—and Aquin has shown us that perfect reason can lead only to God!”

“Then it is all the more necessary that you increase the probabilities of becoming Pope to carry out this program. Get in the foam saddle we will go back and on the way I will teach you little things that will be useful in making certain—”

“No,” said Thomas. “I am not so strong as St. Paul, who could glory in his imperfections and rejoice that he had been given an imp of Satan to buffet him. No; I will rather pray with the Saviour, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ I know myself a little. I am weak and full of uncertainties and you are very clever. Go. I’ll find my way back alone.”

“You are a sick man. Your ribs are broken and they ache. You can never make the trip by yourself you need my help. If you wish you can order me to be silent. It is most necessary to the Church that you get back safely to the Pope with your report you cannot put yourself before the Church.”

“Go!” Thomas cried. “Go back to Nicodemus…or Judas! That is an order. Obey!”

“You do not think do you that I was really conditioned to obey your orders. I will wait in the village. If you get that far you will rejoice at the sight of me.”

The legs of the robass clumped off down the stone passageway. As their sound died away, Thomas fell to his knees beside the body of that which he could hardly help thinking of as St. Aquin the Robot.

* * * *

His ribs hurt more excruciatingly than ever. The trip alone would be a terrible one…

His prayers arose, as the text has it, like clouds of incense, and as shapeless as those clouds. But through all his thoughts ran the cry of the father of the epileptic in Caesarea Philippi:

I believe, O Lord; help thou mine unbelief!

* * * *

Copyright © 1951 by Henry Holt & Co.

There is a saying that those who can, do. Those who can’t do, teach. And those who can neither do nor teach, criticize.

What then are we to make of the science fiction field? From the beginning in the pulps of the 1920s and 1930s, readers commented in the Letters to the Editors columns about the stories that appeared in the magazines. Some readers took the next step and published their own fanzines. One of the most famous of those who followed this path was Damon Knight, who published a scathing fanzine review of A. E. Van Vogt’s
The World of Null-A
and soon became a very well respected book reviewer and critic; unlike most of his predecessors, he insisted that science fiction could and should attain the highest literary standards. In due time, he published a collection of his reviews,
In Search of Wonder
(1956; rev. 1967). He is still regarded as the founder of criticism in science fiction, and because of his work (and that of his successors), today’s reviewers can no longer get by with a recap of the cover copy and a dash of heavy breathing.

And to keep that do-teach-criticize saying in perspective, Damon Knight also earned renown as an editor, writer, and teacher (in 1956, he, James Blish, and Judith Merril founded the Clarion Writer’s Conference, later known as the Clarion Writer’s Workshop). Blish and Merril were themselves renowned science fiction writers, and though Merril reviewed for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Blish’s reputation as a critic is on a par with Knight’s. He reviewed under the name of William Atheling Jr., and his work was collected in The Issue at Hand (1964) and More Issues at Hand (1970). Later, Blish founded the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference, another workshop well known for turning out professional writers.

Another writer and reviewer important to the history of this activity in the science fiction world is Algis (A. J.) Budrys, who reviewed for the magazines
Galaxy
(see
Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf
; 1985) and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
. He was an incisive and sometimes cruel critic whose essays did not always maintain their focus. He is thus perhaps not the foremost reviewer to hold up as an example to students of the craft.

A book review is not just a book report. Yes, it should summarize the book, but it should not reveal crucial details (known as providing “spoilers”). It should also provide some analysis of what the author did right (or wrong) and comment on whether readers would consider their money well spent. Unfortunately, reviews in magazines tend to come out months after the book has vanished from bookstores. Many reviewers thus shift their efforts toward lengthier analyses of a work’s strengths and weaknesses, and even to discussions of the background, philosophy, place in the history of the field and of the author’s previous work, and even place in the context of what is going on in the world. That is, they try to explicate the author’s thinking and the various influences acting upon the author. They may even attack the author for real or imagined psychological, ideological, or other flaws. Such essays are more on the “criticism” end of the reviewing-criticism spectrum.

I came on the scene in 1978. I had done some occasional reviewing before that, but that was when I started writing
Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact
’s book review column, “The Reference Library.” Like some of my predecessors, I too write and teach (mostly in the sciences).

“The Reference Library”’s original “librarian” was Lester Del Rey, who tended to write very brief reviews that did not address a work’s position in the history of the field or its literary status. That is, he was definitely a reviewer, not a critic. When I came in, I shared the column with Spider Robinson, who was a bit more of a critic but could get so excited at times that he could hardly be considered a dispassionate evaluator of the work at hand. My own work was also more on the reviewing side, but I tried to be more dispassionate and to consider—some of the time—a work’s place in the history of the field as well as in relation to contemporary currents in the culture at large. And I kept it up for 30 years.

Why? I sometimes wondered. The job really doesn’t pay enough to justify its frustrations. With many magazines (not
Analog
), you’ve got editors telling you what to say or not say and how to say it (or not) as well. With all magazines (even Analog), you’ve got deadlines, and they come a lot more frequently than they do for novelists. You’ve also got authors, who sometimes take exception to what you said (or didn’t). My favorite is the one who said his fans would provide the tar and feathers and he would provide the rail to run both me and my editor out of town. I saved the letter and eventually turned it over (with some other less malign signed missives) to be auctioned for the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) medical fund. I hear it is now treasured by a collector. There are also publishers. One, who shall remain nameless, conveniently forgot all the nice things I had said about his titles and accused me of waging a vendetta against him because I dared to wax critical a few times. He demanded that my editor fire me, or else he would yank his ads.

But…Those of us who work as reviewers don’t see it as just a job. It’s a service to readers, writers, and publishers. It’s even a mission (though it does feel rather egotistical to write that line!). In my years with “The Reference Library,” I was able to pay attention to portions of the science fiction realm usually ignored by reviewers. This included poetry, and in fact I was once told that when a book of Tom Disch’s poems came out, my review was the only one it received in the entire country. It also included small press fiction, art books, SF criticism and history, biography and autobiography, books on writing SF, and—practically from its beginning—electronic publishing, first on floppy disk and later on CDs and online. Once or twice, I think, I even mentioned calendars by SF artists. Given the nature of the Analog audience, I also did not hesitate to cover popular and even fairly academic science. And once in awhile, I would even review a mystery, a romance, or something for the kids.

After I retired from the column, I was urged by several people to share what I had learned about the reviewing craft for the benefit of future reviewers. The result was the first version of this essay, which appeared in the Summer 2008
SFWA Bulletin
.

I myself did not have an instruction manual. I had to learn on the job, and anyone who recalls the early columns can surely remember times when I blew it. I was fortunate to have an editor who bore with me while I learned. Now some of what I learned can be written down. Bear in mind that the following baker’s dozen of items come from a columnist’s experience. Some of them apply to writing isolated, single reviews (as in
Publisher’s Weekly
). Some pertain only to columns with their continuing existence.

To begin, you must be able to write clean, direct prose.

Meet your deadlines (I don’t think I ever missed one).

Read the books you review. All the way through. If you can’t, say so—and make that your review.

Mix it up. If it’s a science fiction column, include some fantasy, popular science, art, the occasional mystery, poetry, and related criticism and biography. My readers have said they appreciate it.

Don’t insult authors just because you didn’t like their book. In fact, don’t insult them at all. You’re writing about the book, not the author.

Pay attention to what the writer’s saying (including between the lines). Writers appreciate readers (including reviewers) who “get it.” Some writers have moaned to me about positive, even glowing, reviews (in other magazines, of course) whose authors showed no sign of truly understanding what the book was about. I’ve also had recipients of bad reviews (from me) say, “At least you got it—and you’re the only one who did. You just didn’t like it.”

Don’t spend too much time grinding your own axe, and when you do, admit it up front. One of the things I liked to do, when a book—fiction or nonfiction—was on something I knew a bit about, was to write a brief essay on the topic before getting to what the book being reviewed said and how well it said it. I tried to make clear where my thoughts ended and the author’s began. Sometimes a book struck me as terribly wrong-headed; I said so, and then tried to evaluate the book on how well it made its case.

Don’t be afraid to say why a book is relevant or important. This may mean an introductory mini-essay on current issues (political, economic, environmental…) or social trends. I’m not sure, but I suspect the mini-essays with which I long peppered my columns had something to do with why people liked them.

Don’t be afraid to crack wise, pun, make bad jokes, and so on. It’s called being entertaining. Just don’t do it at an author’s expense.

Don’t be afraid to show your personality (axe-grinding, mini-essays and jokes are part of that). Just don’t overdo it.

Be willing to learn from your errors, whether it is the editor, the writer, or a reader (or yourself) who calls them to your attention. Sometimes it is even appropriate to admit in the column that you messed up and what you learned.

Be willing to change your mind on rethinking or rereading. I generally had an overall opinion of a book as soon as I finished it. There were times when, once I sat down to organize my thoughts and write the review, initial dislike turned around, even to the point of a rave review. Sometimes negative turned positive on reading further books in a series or career. George Zebrowski delights in reminding me that even though I once downrated his work, later I called him a star of the field.

If a friend blows it (in your humble opinion) or a foe doesn’t, say so. If you actually say “Joe is a friend of mine, but…” or “I hate Jane’s guts, but…” you gain a reputation for objectivity that extends to other reviews. If you don’t dare to do that because it might cost you a friendship, remember that the good friends, you won’t lose. As Dr. Seuss once said, “Those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.”

If you take these recommendations to heart, I cannot guarantee that you too will enjoy thirty years of columnizing. There are other, less tangible factors as well. For instance, I was already known to Analog’s readers for fiction and nonfiction. I was part of the community. I also had both a technical and a generalist turn of mind, which has always been part of the magazine’s appeal to its readers. So I fit.

If there’s anything else, I must refrain from mentioning it on the grounds that it would open me to charges of egotism.

And that’s a joke, folks. Or half of one, anyway.

* * * *

Tom Easton
is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a well-known science fiction critic (he wrote the SF magazine
Analog
‘s book review column for 30 years).  He holds a doctorate in theoretical biology from the University of Chicago,  teaches at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, and writes textbooks for McGraw-Hill on Science, Technology, & Society, Environmental Science, and Energy & Society.  Over the years he has published about fifty science fiction and fantasy short stories and ten SF novels, of which his favorites are
Sparrowhawk
(Ace, 1990),
Silicon Karma(
White Wolf, 1997), and
The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy
(Wildside, 2002). His most recent SF title, coedited with Judith K. Dial, is the anthology of predictive SF stories,
Visions of Tomorrow
(Skyhorse, 2010).