Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (268 page)

Strange New (and Old) Worlds

But what of alien worlds? How do they function both within the allegorical paradigm as well as outside of it? To start, let us consider Earth as an alien world. Early science fiction, such as Jules Vernes’s
Journey to the Center of the Earth
and H. G. Wells’s
Time Machine
, locate the alien on Earth. For Vernes, the “alien” is a remnant of humanity’s prehistoric past, a massive twelve-foot tall half-human, half ape man living far beneath the Earth’s surface. In
The Time Machine
, the “alien” is mankind’s far-distant future: after millennia of evolution, humanity has separated into two races—the Eloi, physically smaller and intellectually inferior to their ancestors, and the subterranean Morlocks, covered in gray fur and built along the lines of apes. As Wells’s story progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that rather than evolve, humanity has degenerated. What both stories do, though, is situate the “alien within” far away, whether in the past or a future so far away it is almost impossible to contemplate, let alone be truly afraid of what is to come.

One of the most famous alien worlds has to be Mars, which occupies a special place in the science fiction imagination, serving as both setting to stories of, for example, intergalactic imperialism (
War of the Worlds
), swashbuckling adventure (the planetary romance series by Edgar Rice Burroughs about Barsoom, or Mars), or corporate greed (the 1990 film
Total Recall
), and the planet itself offering humanity a new home (as in
The Martian Chronicles
, Kim Stanley Robinson’s
Mars Trilogy
, and the 2000 film
Red Planet
). The 2000 film
Mission to Mars
goes even further: the explorers discover that the ancient inhabitants of Mars long ago seeded the Earth, thus making possible the development of organic life on the planet. In essence, humans are the “children” of Mars. No other alien world in the science fiction pantheon offers so much hope, such tantalizing possibility. Indeed, science fiction depictions of Mars have long since moved away from the “Mars as threat” focus to more nuanced treatments that revolve around considerations of what Mars may mean for Earth’s future, a focus echoed and supported by scientific research on the planet itself.

Let us turn, then, to one such example of Mars as Earth’s future. In the haunting last story of The Martian Chronicles, “The Million-Year Picnic,” a young family, refugees from Earth’s last atomic war, explore their new home. The year is 2026, and Mars has known close to thirty years of Terran exploration, which has rendered the Martian population and culture extinct. The family visits several cities as they seek out a place to call home, quickly rejecting the second city because it was a human settlement, and choosing the sixth, a beautiful Martian city still largely intact. Having already blown up the rocket they used to reach Mars, the father then proceeds to burn Earth documents—government bonds, legal documents, scientific periodicals—and lastly, a map of the Earth, forever severing their bonds to Earth, whose “way of life proved wrong and [which] strangled itself with its own hands” (180). Instead, the father tells his sons, they will, along with the other refugees on Mars, “turn away from all that on Earth and strike out a new line” (180). Having promised his children that he would show them the Martians they so eagerly wish to meet, he takes his family to a silent Martian canal, and bids them look down, where they see their own reflections looking back at them.

This poignant end to the
Chronicles
, a collection of short stories in which Bradbury not only delves into anxieties about atomic annihilation, but America’s history of racial tension, as well as the consequences of unthinking colonization, all reflect the deeply allegorical function of the text itself and the planet Mars. At once a setting for ruminations about the high costs of imperialism for both the colonizer and the colonized, Mars is also that second chance, perhaps last chance for humanity to get it right.

Other worlds, of course, have captured the science fiction imagination. Most tend to represent some topographical and/or meteorological extreme of Earth itself, from the frozen planet aptly named “Winter” in Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1969 novel
The Left Hand of Darkness
to the desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s 1965 masterpiece
Dune
. Even the planet Solaris is modeled after Earth—an ocean planet—but its difference resides not only in the material of the ocean (rather than water, the liquid covering, indeed, comprising the planet itself, is a colloidal substance), but the fact that the planet itself is the alien: It is sapient. By literally presenting a planet as the alien, Stanislaw Lem further intensifies the stakes of the alien encounter: There is no way to productively communicate with the alien planet, perhaps because the planet is not interested in communication, or mankind lacks the necessary development to communicate with such a vast and strange intelligence. Instead, mankind must guess at the planet’s motives (indeed, if Solaris even has motives), and like the ever shifting surface of the planet itself, attempts to categorize the planet remain hollow shows, neither advancing knowledge of the planet nor fully dispelling previous theories.

As stages for mankind’s economic, ecological, racial, and ideological dramas, the alien world, like the alien itself, is as much a reflection of humanity’s imagination and desires as it is a reflection of its failings, both to imagine beyond those desires, and to see the alien and his/her world as more than just mere extensions of ourselves. It is, finally, the possibilities that both represent, that there is more “out there”—new worlds, new species, new ideas—that the endeavor to know ourselves is always a worthy one, if flawed at times in its methods, which continue to draw us into the crowded multiplexes and to crack open that book. Somehow, as we always knew, they are us, and we are them.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “The Million-Year Picnic.”
The Martian Chronicles
. The Grand Master Editions. New York: Bantam, 1979. 172–81.

Butler, Octavia. “Bloodchild.”
Bloodchild and Other Stories
. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 1996.

Jones, Gwyneth. “The Icons of Science Fiction.”
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
. Eds. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 163–173.

Knight, Damon. “To Serve Man.”
The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Ed. Garyn G. Roberts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 140-45.

Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
. New York: Ace Books, 1969.

Lem, Stanislaw.
Solaris
. Trans. Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1970.

Lipschultz, Ronnie D. “Aliens, Alien Nations, and Alienation in American Political Economy and Popular Culture.”
To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links Between Science Fiction and World Politics.
Ed. Jutta Weldes. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 79–98.

Stone, Leslie. “The Conquest of Gola.”
The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Ed. Garyn G. Roberts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 515–24.

Wells, H.G.
The War of the Worlds
. London: J.M. Dent/Everyman, 1993.

* * * *

Ericka Hoagland
is an assistant professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University where she teaches classes on world literature, travel writing, science fiction, and postcolonial literature and theory. She co-edited, with Reema Sarwal, the 2010 anthology of critical essays
Science Fiction, Imperialism, and the Third World
published by McFarland, and has contributed pieces to Greenwood’s
Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy
(2008), and
Gender and Sexuality in African Literature and Film
(Africa World Press 2007).

(1926– )

While his horror-edged science fiction has been overshadowed by his enormous success in writing for television and films, Richard Matheson’s fiction has had a significant influence on the field as well. And it continues to have an influence today: his most recent novel,
Other Kingdoms
(2011), was written more than sixty years after this “Born of Man and Woman,” which was Matheson’s first published story.

Matheson was born in New Jersey and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Norwegian immigrants. His father installed floors for a living, but Matheson showed early signs of a writing career, including stories and poems published in the
Brooklyn Eagle
. After serving as an infantryman in World War II, Matheson earned a BA in journalism from the University of Missouri. The next year, “Born of Man and Woman” appeared in
F&SF
, followed by dozens of stories over the next two decades. His first novel,
Someone Is Bleeding
, was published in 1953.

In 1951, Matheson moved to California, where he has lived and worked ever since, and found astonishing success both as a screenwriter and as the author of books and stories that were readily adapted to film. His 1954 novel
I Am Legend
was filmed as
The Last Man on Earth
(1964),
The Omega Man
(1971), and
I Am Legend
(2007).
The Shrinking Man
(1956) was filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man, winning Matheson a Hugo Award. Other Matheson novels turned into notable films include Stir of Echoes (1958), Hell House (1971, as The Legend of Hell House), Bid Time Return (1975, as Somewhere in Time), and What Dreams May Come (1978). Three of his short stories were filmed together as Trilogy of Terror (1975), and short story “Button, Button” was filmed as The Box in 2009 (after being previously adapted for a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone).

Matheson wrote fourteen episodes of
The Twilight Zone
, including the classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” He wrote the 1966
Star Trek
episode “The Enemy Within.” He wrote scripts for the western series
Lawman
; for Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe film adaptations and other classic 1960s horror films; and wrote television films including
The Night Stalker
(1972), for which he received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He’s won the World Fantasy Award twice, as well as a host of other awards spanning the multiple genres he writes in.

Matheson has been married to Ruth Ann Woodson for almost sixty years. They have four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.

First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, Summer 1950

X——— This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.

This day it had water falling from upstairs. It fell all around. I saw that. The ground of the back I watched from the little window. The ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown. I didn’t like it.

Mother is a pretty I know. In my bed place with cold walls around I have a paper things that was behind the furnace. It says on it SCREENSTARS. I see in the pictures faces like of mother and father. Father says they are pretty. Once he said it.

And also mother he said. Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didn’t have the nice face. I touched his arm and said it is alright father. He shook and pulled away where I couldn’t reach.

Today mother let me off the chain a little so I could look out the little window. That’s how I saw the water falling from upstairs.

XX———This day it had goldness in the upstairs. As I know, when I looked at it my eyes hurt. After I look at it the cellar is red.

I think this was church. They leave the upstairs. The big machine swallows them and rolls out past and is gone. In the back part is the
little
mother. She is much small than me. I am big. It is a secret but I have pulled the chain out of the wall. I can see out the little window all I like.

In this day when it got dark I had eat my food and some bugs. I hear laughs upstairs. I like to know why there are laughs for. I took the chain from the wall and wrapped it around me. I walked squish to the stairs. They creak when I walk on them. My legs slip on them because I don’t walk on stairs. My feet stick to the wood.

I went up and opened a door. It was a white place. White as white jewels that come from upstairs sometime. I went in and stood quiet. I hear the laughing some more. I walk to the sound and look through to the people. More people than I thought was. I thought I should laugh with them.

Mother came out and pushed the door in. It hit me and hurt. I fell back on the smooth floor and the chain made noise. I cried. She made a hissing noise into her and put her hand on her mouth. Her eyes got big.

She looked at me. I heard father call. What fell he called. She said
a
iron board. Come help pick it up she said. He came and said now is
that so
heavy you need. He saw me and grew big. The anger came in his eyes. He hit me. I spilled some of the drip on the floor from one arm. It was not nice. It made ugly green on the floor.

Father told me to go to the cellar. I had to go. The light it hurt some now in my eyes. It is not so like that in the cellar.

Father tied my legs and arms up. He put me on my bed. Upstairs I heard laughing while I was quiet there looking on a black spider that was swinging down to me. I thought what father said. Ohgod he said. And only eight.

XXX———This day father hit in the chain again before it had light. I have to try pull it out again. He said I was bad to come upstairs. He said never do that again or he would beat me hard. That hurts.

I hurt. I slept the day and rested my head against the cold wall. I thought of the white place upstairs.

XXXX———I got the chain from the wall out. Mother was upstairs. I heard little laughs very high. I looked out the window. I saw all little people like the little mother and little fathers too. They are pretty.

They were making nice noise and jumping around the ground. Their legs was moving hard. They are like mother and father. Mother says all right people look like they do.

One of the little fathers saw me. He pointed at the window. I let go and slid down the wall in the dark. I curled up as they would not see. I heard their talks by the window and foots running. Upstairs there was a door hitting. I heard the little mother call upstairs. I heard heavy steps and I rushed to my bed place. I hit the chain in the wall and lay down on my front.

I heard mother come down. Have you been at the window she said. I heard the anger.
Stay
away from the window. You have pulled the chain out again.

She took the stick and hit me with it. I didn’t cry. I can’t do that. But the drip ran all over the bed. She saw it and twisted away and made a noise. Oh mygod mygod she said why have you
done
this to me? I heard the stick go bounce on the stone floor. She ran upstairs. I slept the day.

XXXXX——— This day it had water again. When mother was upstairs I heard the little one come slow down the steps. I hidded myself in the coal bin for mother would have anger if the little mother saw me.

She had a little live thing with her. It walked on the arms and had pointy ears. She said things to it.

It was all right except the live thing smelled me. It ran up the coal and looked down at me. The hairs stood up. In the throat it made an angry noise. I hissed but it jumped on me.

I didn’t want to hurt it. I got fear because it bit me harder than the rat does. I hurt and the little mother screamed. I grabbed the live thing tight. It made sounds I never heard. I pushed it all together. It was lumpy and red on the black coal.

I hid there when mother called. I was afraid of the stick. She left. I crept over the coal with the thing. I hid it under my pillow and rested on it. I put the chain in the wall again.

X——— This is another times. Father chained me tight. I hurt because he beat me. This time I hit the stick out of his hands and made noise. He went away and his face was white. He ran out of my bed place and locked the door.

I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall. And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once.

I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn’t be nice to me.

If they try to beat me again I’ll hurt them. I will.

* * * *

Copyright © 1950 by Fantasy House, Inc.