Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (326 page)

“Very sorry, sir.”

Henry Belt looked about the room. “Pay no heed to Mr. Culpepper. He is wrong. Even if I could repair this disaster, I would not raise a hand. For I expect to die in space.”

7

The sail was canted vectorless, edgewise to the sun. Jupiter was a smudge astern. There were five cadets in the wardroom. Culpepper, Verona, and von Gluck sat talking in low voices. Ostrander and Lynch lay crouched, arms to knees, faces to the wall. Sutton had gone two days before. Quietly donning his spacesuit, be had stepped into the exit chamber and thrust himself headlong into space. A propulsion unit gave him added speed, and before any of the cadets could intervene he was gone.

He had left a short note: “I fear the void because of the terrible attraction of its glory. I briefly felt the exaltation when we went out on sail inspection, and I fought it back. Now, since we must die, I will die this way, by embracing this black radiance, by giving myself wholly. Do not be sorry for me. I will die mad, but the madness will be ecstasy.”

Henry Belt, when shown the note, merely shrugged. “Mr. Sutton was perhaps too imaginative and emotional to make a sound spaceman. He could not have been relied upon in any emergency.” And his sardonic glance seemed to include the rest of them.

Shortly thereafter Lynch and Ostrander succumbed to inanition, a kind of despondent helplessness: manic-depression in its most stupefying phase. Culpepper the suave, Verona the pragmatic, and von Gluck the sensitive remained.

They spoke quietly to themselves, out of earshot of Henry Belt’s room. “I still believe,” said Culpepper, “that somehow there is a means to get ourselves out of this mess, and that Henry Belt knows it.”

Verona said, “I wish I could think so.…We’ve been over it a hundred times. If we set sail for Saturn or Neptune or Uranus, the outward vector of thrust plus the outward vector of our momentum will take us far beyond Pluto before we’re anywhere near. The plasma jets could stop us if we had enough energy, but the shield can’t supply it, and we don’t have another power source.”

Von Gluck hit his fist into his hand. “Gentlemen,” he said in a soft delighted voice.

Culpepper and Verona stared at him, absorbing warmth from the light in his face.

“Gentlemen,” said von Gluck, “I believe we have sufficient energy at hand. We will use the sail. Remember? It is bellied. It can function as a mirror. It spreads five square miles of surface. Sunlight out here is thin—but so long as we collect enough of it—”

“I understand!” said Culpepper. “We back off the hull till the reactor is at the focus of the sail, and turn on the jets!”

Verona said dubiously, “We’ll still be receiving radiation pressure. And what’s worse, the jets will impinge back on the sail. Effect—cancellation. We’ll be nowhere.”

“If we cut the center out of the sail—just enough to allow the plasma through—we’d beat that objection. And as for the radiation pressure—we’ll surely do better with the plasma drive.”

“What do we use to make plasma? We don’t have the stock.”

“Anything that can be ionized. The radio, the computer, your shoes, my shirt, Culpepper’s camera, Henry Belt’s whiskey…”

8

The angel-wagon came up to meet Sail 25, in orbit beside Sail 40, which was just making ready to take out a new crew.

Henry Belt said, “Gentlemen, I beg that you leave no trash, rubbish, old clothing aboard. There is nothing more troublesome than coming aboard an untidy ship. While we wait for the lighter to discharge, I suggest that you give the ship a final thorough policing.”

The cargo carrier drifted near and eased into position. Three men sprang across space to Sail 40, a few hundred yards behind 25. Three men tossed lines back to the carrier and pulled bales of cargo and equipment across the gap.

The five cadets and Henry Belt, clad in spacesuits, stepped out into the sunlight. Earth spread below, green and blue, white and brown, the contours so precious and dear as to bring tears to the eyes. The cadets transferring cargo to Sail 40 gazed at them curiously as they worked. At last they were finished, and the six men of Sail 25 boarded the carrier.

“Back safe and sound, eh, Henry?” said the pilot. “Well, I’m always surprised.”

Henry Belt made no answer. The cadets stowed their cargo and, standing by the port, took a final look at Sail 25. The carrier retro-jetted; the two sails seemed to rise above them.

The lighter nosed in and out of the atmosphere, braking, then extended its wings and glided to an easy landing in the Mojave Desert.

The cadets, their legs suddenly loose and weak to the unaccustomed gravity, limped after Henry Belt to the carryall, seated themselves, and were conveyed to the administration complex. They alighted from the carryall, and now Henry Belt motioned the five to the side.

“Here, gentlemen, is where I leave you. I go my way, you go yours. Tonight I will check my red book, and after various adjustments I will prepare my official report. But I believe I can present you an unofficial resume of my impressions.

“First of all, this is neither my best nor my worst class. Mr. Lynch and Mr. Ostrander, I feel that you are ill suited either for command or for any situation which might inflict prolonged emotional pressure upon you. I cannot recommend you for space duty.

“Mr. von Gluck, Mr. Culpepper, and Mr. Verona, all of you meet my minimum requirements for a recommendation, although I shall write the words ‘Especially Recommended’ only beside the names ‘Clyde von Gluck’ and ‘Marcus Verona.’ You brought the sail back to Earth by essentially faultless navigation. It means that if I am to fulfill my destiny I must make at least one more voyage into space.

“So now our association ends. I trust you have profited by it.” Henry Belt nodded briefly to each of the five and limped off around the building.

The cadets looked after him. Culpepper reached in his pocket and brought forth a pair of small metal objects which he displayed in his palm. “Recognize these?”

“Hmmf,” said Lynch in a flat voice. “Bearings for the computer disks. The original ones.”

“I found them in the little spare-parts tray. They weren’t there before.”

von Gluck nodded. “The machinery always seemed to fail immediately after sail check, as I recall.”

Lynch drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. He turned and strode away. Ostrander followed him. Culpepper shrugged. To Verona he gave one of the bearings, to Von Gluck, the other. “For souvenirs—or medals. You fellows deserve them.”

“Thanks, Ed,” said von Gluck.

“Thanks,” muttered Verona. “I’ll make a stickpin of this thing.”

The three, not able to look at each other, glanced up into the sky where the first stars of twilight were appearing, then continued on into the building where family and friends and sweethearts awaited them.

* * * *

Copyright © 1964 by Jack Vance.

(1960–1975)

The rebellions and questioning of old norms that characterized the 1960s and early 1970s affected science fiction dramatically, but in very different ways than mainstream society. While SF already had a deep tradition of questioning authority, new authors questioned basic social assumptions and many of the tropes of the field. Different characters and viewpoints became common—fewer bachelor scientists and loner starship pilots, more women, more sexuality, more questioning of taboos. One of the new writers, Harlan Ellison, edited a hugely successful anthology called
Dangerous Visions
where writers were explicitly asked to write about subjects that had been off-limits even for science fiction.

Led by a group of British SF writers including John Brunner and Brian Aldiss, the New Wave movement in the early 1960s focused more on language, emotion, and affect than on traditional science fictional storylines. Among North American writers a new generation emphasized writing skill (generally secondary to ideas and adventure up to this point) without sacrificing intensity of ideas. Writers like Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Joe Haldeman, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Robert Silverberg, James Tiptree Jr., John Varley, and Roger Zelazny pushed the writing level in the field to its highest point ever. Many were poets as well as prose stylists; poetry became prevalent enough in the field that by the late 1970s the SF Poetry Association began giving its Rhysling award for the year’s best SF poetry.

At the same time, writers like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, and Joanna Russ were reworking traditional SF adventure stories in ways that kept the adventure but questioned old assumptions about gender and social structures. And a wave of satirical and humorous SF was led by Keith Laumer, R. A. Lafferty, and others.

As with the rest of American society, the Vietnam War led to divisions in the SF community, both among writers and among fans. In mainstream society that led to protests and counter-protests; in genre fiction the debate was largely carried out in stories. The 1970s brought a surge of military science fiction ranging from jingoistic to searingly antiwar—but mostly a lot more nuanced.

Science fiction book publishing was coming of age. Ace Books was followed by DAW Books, Del Rey, and others as major genre publishers. More bookstores were opening, and more books were becoming available. Until this point, a knowledgeable fan could still read nearly all of the science fiction published every month; by the middle of the 1970s that was no longer the case.

(1925– )

In one of those oddly fortuitous coincidences, I had just finished editing an annotated edition of
Frankenstein
the summer British author and critic Brian Aldiss was guest of honor at Readercon. Since one of Aldiss’s most famous arguments as a critic is that
Frankenstein
is the first SF novel it meant that we were placed on panels together and got to know each other, which led to a delightful weekend arguing about science fiction. That weekend (and others since) pretty much sum up who Brian Aldiss is as a writer and critic: the sort of person you have a delightful argument with. Whether you agree with his arguments or not, love his writing or feel frustrated by it (and all of those things have been true for me), you come away from an encounter with Aldiss or his work feeling like you’ve learned something or looked at something familiar in a different way.

After serving in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1943 to 1947, Aldiss spent the next decade as a bookseller in Oxford. His experiences in the book trade led to his first novel,
The Brightfount Diaries
(1955), but by that time he was already writing SF with some success: “Criminal Record” was published in
Science Fantasy
in 1954, and “Not For an Age” won a contest sponsored by
The Observer
the following year. His short story collection
Space, Time, and Nathaniel (1957) and brilliant novel Non-Stop (1958) were enough to earn an award for Most Promising New Writer at the 1959 WorldCon.

Aldiss was already an established writer and editor at the beginning of the New Wave in the early 1960s (he was literary editor for the Oxford Mail from 1958–69), but became a major New Wave figure as a writer, anthologist, and critic. Beyond his prolific writing (more than 350 short stories published), the anthologies he edited exposed many readers to significant SF writers they might not have encountered otherwise, or well-known writers in unexpected contexts. Aldiss and Harry Harrison founded the first magazine devoted to SF criticism,
SF Horizons
in 1964, and Aldiss’s sprawling 1973 history of the field,
Billion Year Spree
(expanded and revised as
Trillion Year Spree
in 1986) is a key work of criticism. Aldiss has won two Hugos and a Nebula as well as multiple awards for criticism. In 2005 he was awarded the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth for his literary services.

When I asked Aldiss which story he would prefer to have readers first encounter him by, he suggested the New Wave classic “Man in His Time,” a thought-provoking and utterly unconventional look at a very different side of time travel.

First published in
Science Fantasy
, April 1965

His absence

Janet Westermark sat watching the three men in the office: the administrator who was about to go out of her life, the behaviourist who was about to come into it, and the husband whose life ran parallel to but insulated from her own.

She was not the only one playing a watching game. The behaviourist, whose name was Clement Stackpole, sat hunched in his chair with his ugly strong hands clasped round his knee, thrusting his intelligent and simian face forward, the better to regard his new subject, Jack Westermark.

The administrator of the Mental Research Hospital spoke in a lively and engaged way. Typically, it was only Jack Westermark who seemed absent from the scene.

Your particular problem, restless

His hands upon his lap lay still, but he himself was restless, though the restlessness seemed directed. It was as if he were in another room with other people, Janet thought. She saw that he caught her eye when in fact she was not entirely looking at him, and by the time she returned the glance, he was gone, withdrawn.

“Although Mr Stackpole has not dealt before with your particular problem,” the administrator was saying, “he has had plenty of field experience. I know—”

“I’m sure we won’t,” Westermark said, folding his hands and nodding his head slightly.

Smoothly, the administrator made a pencilled note of the remark, scribbled the precise time beside it, and continued, “I know Mr Stackpole is too modest to say this, but he is a great man for working in with people—”

“If you feel it’s necessary,” Westermark said. “Though I’ve seen
enough of your equipment for a while.”

The pencil moved, the smooth voice proceeded. “Good. A great man for working in with people, and I’m sure you and Mr Westermark will soon find you are glad to have him around. Remember, he’s there to help both of you.”

Janet smiled, and said from the island of her chair, trying to smile at him and Stackpole, “I’m sure that everything will work—” She was interrupted by her husband, who rose to his feet, letting his hands drop to his sides and saying, turning slightly to address thin air, “Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse Simmons?”

Her voice no longer wavered

“Everything will be all right, I’m sure,” she said hastily. And Stackpole nodded at her, conspiratorially agreeing to see her point of view.

“We’ll all get on fine, Janet,” he said. She was in the swift process of digesting that unexpected use of her Christian name, and the administrator was also giving her the sort of encouraging smile so many people had fed her since Westermark was pulled out of the ocean off Casablanca, when her husband, still having his lonely conversation with the air, said, “Of course, I should have remembered.”

His right hand went halfway to his forehead—or his heart? Janet wondered—and then dropped, as he added, “Perhaps she’ll come round and see us some time.” Now he turned and was smiling faintly at another vacant space with just the faintest nod of his head, as if slightly cajoling. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Janet?”

She moved her head, instinctively trying to bring her eyes into his gaze as she replied vaguely, “Of course, darling.” Her voice no longer wavered when she addressed his absent attention.

There was sunlight through which they could see each other

There was sunlight in one corner of the room, coming through the windows of a bay angled towards the sun. For a moment she caught, as she rose to her feet, her husband’s profile with the sunlight behind it. It was thin and withdrawn. Intelligent: she had always thought him over-burdened with his intelligence, but now there was a lost look there, and she thought of the words of a psychiatrist who had been called in on the case earlier: “You must understand that the waking brain is perpetually lapped by the unconscious.”

Lapped by the unconscious

Fighting the words away, she said, addressing the smile of the administrator—that smile which must have advanced his career so much—“You’ve helped me a lot. I couldn’t have got through these months without you. Now we’d better go.”

She heard herself chopping her words, fearing Westermark would talk across them, as he did: “Thank you for your help. If you find anything…”

Stackpole walked modestly over to Janet as the administrator rose and said, “Well, don’t either of you forget us if you’re in any kind of trouble.”

“I’m sure we won’t.”

“And, Jack, we’d like you to come back here to visit us once a month for a personal check-up. Don’t want to waste all our expensive equipment, you know, and you are our star—er, patient.” He smiled rather tightly as he said it, glancing at the paper on his desk to check Westermark’s answer. Westermark’s back was already turned on him, Westermark was already walking slowly to the door, Westermark had said his goodbyes, perched out on the lonely eminence of his existence.

Janet looked helplessly, before she could guard against it, at the administrator and Stackpole. She hated it that they were too professional to take note of what seemed her husband’s breach of conduct. Stackpole looked kindly in a monkey way and took her arm with one of his thick hands.

“Shall we be off then? My car’s waiting outside.”

Not saying anything, nodding, thinking, and consulting watches

She nodded, not saying anything, thinking only, without the need of the administrator’s notes to think it, “Oh yes, this was when he said, ‘Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse’—who’s it?—Simpson?” She was learning to follow her husband’s footprints across the broken path of conversation. He was now out in the corridor, the door swinging to behind him and to empty air the administrator was saying, “It’s her day off today.”

“You’re good on your cues,” she said, feeling the hand tighten on her arm. She politely brushed his fingers away, horrid Stackpole, trying to recall what had gone only four minutes before. Jack had said something to her; she couldn’t remember, didn’t speak, avoided eyes, put out her hand and shook the administrator’s firmly.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Au revoir to both of you,” he replied firmly, glancing swiftly: watch, notes, her, the door. “Of course,” he said. “If we find anything at all. We are very hopeful.…”

He adjusted his tie, looking at the watch again.

“Your husband has gone now, Mrs Westermark,” he said, his manner softening. He walked towards the door with her and added, “You have been wonderfully brave, and I do realise—we all realise—that you will have to go on being wonderful. With time, it should be easier for you; doesn’t Shakespeare say in Hamlet that ‘Use almost can change the stamp of nature’? May I suggest that you follow Stackpole’s and my example and keep a little notebook and a strict check on the time?”

They saw her tiny hesitation, stood about her, two men round a personable women, not entirely innocent of relish. Stackpole cleared his throat, smiled, said, “He can so easily feel cut off you know. It’s essential that you of all people answer his questions, or he will feel cut off.”

Always a pace ahead

“The children?” she asked.

“Let’s see you and Jack well settled in at home again, say for a fortnight or so,” the administrator said, “before we think about having the children back to see him.”

“That way’s better for them and Jack
and
you, Janet,” Stackpole said. “Don’t be glib,” she thought; “consolation I need, God knows, but that’s too facile.” She turned her face away, fearing it looked too vulnerable these days.

In the corridor, the administrator said, as valediction, “I’m sure Grandma’s spoiling them terribly, Mrs Westermark, but worrying won’t mend it, as the old saw says.”

She smiled at him and walked quickly away, a pace ahead of Stackpole.

Westermark sat in the back of the car outside the administrative block. She climbed in beside him. As she did so, he jerked violently back in his seat.

“Darling, what is it?” she asked. He said nothing.

Stackpole had not emerged from the building, evidently having a last word with the administrator. Janet took the moment to lean over and kiss her husband’s cheek, aware as she did so that a phantom wife had already, from his viewpoint, done so. His response was a phantom to her.

“The countryside looks green,” he said. His eyes were flickering over the grey concrete block opposite.

“Yes,” she said.

Stackpole came bustling down the steps, apologising as he opened the car door, settled in. He let the clutch back too fast and they shot forward. Janet saw then the reason for Westermark’s jerking backwards a short while before. Now the acceleration caught him again; his body was rolled helplessly back. As they drove along, he set one hand fiercely on the side grip, for his sway was not properly counterbalancing the movement of the car.

Once outside the grounds of the institute, they were in the country, still under a mid-August day.

His theories

Westermark, by concentrating, could bring himself to conform to some of the laws of the tune continuum he had left. When the car he was in climbed up his drive (familiar, yet strange with the rhododendrons undipped and no signs of children) and stopped by the front door, he sat in his seat for three and a half minutes before venturing to open his door. Then he climbed out and stood on the gravel, frowning down at it. Was it as real as ever, as material? Was there a slight glaze on it?—as if something shone through from the interior of the earth, shone through all things? Or was it that there was a screen between him and everything else? It was important to decide between the two theories, for he had to live under the discipline of one. What he hoped to prove was that the permeation theory was correct; that way he was merely one of the factors comprising the functioning universe, together with the rest of humanity. By the glaze theory, he was isolated not only from the rest of humanity but from the entire cosmos (except Mars?). It was early days yet; he had a deal of thinking to do, and new ideas would undoubtedly emerge after observation and cogitation. Emotion must not decide the issue; he must be detached. Revolutionary theories could well emerge from this—suffering.

He could see his wife by him, standing off in case they happened embarrassingly or painfully to collide. He smiled thinly at her through her glaze. He said, “I am, but I’d prefer not to talk.” He stepped towards the house, noting the slippery feel of gravel that would not move under his tread until the world caught up. He said, “I’ve every respect for the
Guardian,
but I’d prefer not to talk at present.”

Famous Astronaut Returns Home

As the party arrived, a man waited in the porch for them, ambushing Westermark’s return home with a deprecatory smile. Hesitant but businesslike, he came forward and looked interrogatively at the three people who had emerged from the car.

“Excuse me, you are Captain Jack Westermark, aren’t you?”

He stood aside as Westermark seemed to make straight for him.

“I’m the psychology correspondent for the Guardian, if I might intrude for a moment.”

Westermark’s mother had opened the front door and stood there smiling welcome at him, one hand nervously up to her grey hair. Her son walked past her. The newspaper man stared after him.

Janet told him apologetically, “You’ll have to excuse us. My husband did reply to you, but he’s really not prepared to meet people yet.”

“When
did he reply, Mrs Westermark? Before he heard what I had to say?”

“Well, naturally not—but his life stream.…I’m sorry, I can’t explain.”

“He really is living ahead of time, isn’t he? Will you spare me a minute to tell me how you feel now the first shock is over?”

“You really must excuse me,” Janet said, brushing past him. As she followed her husband into the house, she heard Stackpole say, “Actually, I read the
Guardian,
and perhaps I could help you. The Institute has given me the job of remaining with Captain Westermark. My name’s Clement Stackpole—you may know my book.
Persistent Human Relations,
Methuen. But you must not say that Westermark is living ahead of time. That’s quite incorrect. What you can say is that some of his psychological and physiological processes have somehow been transposed forward—”

“Ass!” she exclaimed to herself. She had paused by the threshold to catch some of his words. Now she whisked in.

Talk hanging in the air among the long watches of supper

Supper that evening had its discomforts, although Janet Westermark and her mother-in-law achieved an air of melancholy gaiety by bringing two Scandinavian candelabra, relics of a Copenhagen holiday, to the table and surprising the two men with a gay-looking hors d’oeuvre. But the conversation was mainly like the hors d’oeuvre, Janet thought: little tempting isolated bits of talk, not nourishing.

Mrs Westermark senior had not yet got the hang of talking to her son, and confined her remarks to Janet, though she looked towards Jack often enough. “How are the children?” he asked her. Flustered by the knowledge that he was waiting a long while for her answer, she replied rather incoherently and dropped her knife.

To relieve the tension, Janet was cooking up a remark on the character of the administrator at the Mental Research Hospital, when Westermark said, “Then he is at once thoughtful and literate. Commendable and rare in men of this type. I got the impression, as you evidently did, that he was as interested in his job as in advancement. I suppose one might say one even
liked
him. But you know him better, Stackpole; what do you think of him?”