The Engines of the Night (17 page)
Read The Engines of the Night Online
Authors: Barry N. Malzberg
Tags: #Education & Reference, #Literature & Fiction, #History & Criticism, #Movements & Periods, #Criticism & Theory
Son of the True and Terrible
T
HERE IS NO WAY IN WHICH A CONTEMPORARY AUDIENCE—
even the contemporary audience for “serious” fiction—can understand the degree of humiliation and self-revulsion many science fiction writers suffered until at least the mid-nineteen-sixties. Philip K Dick in a recent introduction to his collection
The Golden Man
, has written movingly of this; all through his first decade it was impossible for a science fiction writer to be regarded by writers in other fields or in the universities as a writer at all. College professors of English regarded the genre as subliterate; the timeless man on the street thought it crazy. Word rates were low, the readership was limited, and one operated from the outset with the conviction that work of even modest ambition would live and die within the same room that the debased did. Dick remembers meeting Herbert Gold at a party in the fifties and asking for his autograph; Gold gave him a card inscribed “to my colleague, Philip K Dick,” and Dick carried this around for
years
. It was the first acknowledgement from a person of literature that his work existed.
Philip Klass has an even grimmer anecdote in his essay “Jazz Then, Musicology Now” published in a 1972
Fantasy and Science Fiction
“college issue.” (At that time courses on science fiction at the universities were in the first flush; a little innocent capitalization never sent any of us to jail. Nor should it.) In 1945, Klass and a graduate student in English of his acquaintance met Theodore Sturgeon in an automat; Sturgeon (whose “Killdozer!” had just about then been published in
Astounding
) talked passionately and at length of the artistic problems of science fiction, the particular challenges of the genre, and the demands of a medium in which expository matter was of central importance to a story yet could not be permitted to overbalance it. After Sturgeon left them, Klass’s friend said with an amused laugh, “These science fiction writers, they really think of themselves as writers, don’t they? I mean he’s talking about this stuff seriously as if he were writing literature!”
A writer who came into this field after 1965 cannot really know what it must have been like for Sturgeon and Dick, Kornbluth and Sheckley. At no time has it ever been easy to attempt serious work in this form, but after 1965 science fiction’s audience had increased: there was some crossover of that audience and the audiences for literature of other sorts, and because of Sputnik, the assassinations, the Apollo Project, and the employment of the clichés of the form by certain successful commercial novelists—Drury, Wallace, Levin all had bestsellers which were thematic science fiction—the form had a certain grudging cachet; people might not know what you were writing (or care about it) but at least they had
heard
of it. In the nineteen-fifties the only people other than crazy kids who would even admit to knowledge of the form were a few engineering or scientific types and they kept the magazines well hidden.
There must have been a lot of rage in these fifties writers, rage and recrimination, and (most commonly) self-loathing for even being involved in the form and, after a while (because you fell into the habits and also because you became labeled), being unable to write anything else unless one was willing to repudiate the totality of one’s career, adopt a pseudonym, and start all over again. That rage was fueled by low advances, capricious editors, predatory publishers, policies in the book markets which consigned any science fiction novel to a defined audience, printed or overprinted a given number of copies, and after throwing them into the market, out-of-printed the book (and then cheated on the royalty statements). It was fueled yet further by the perception that most of these writers had of the disparity between their work—galaxies, world-conquering, heroes, superheroes, galactic drives, the hounds of heaven—and their lives, which were limited, entrapped, penurious, and often drenched with alcohol. Even a moderately intelligent writer could see the disjunction and its irony; some dealt with it by writing witty and highly ironic science fiction, but others went deeper into megalomania and fantasy and their promise was lost. And none of these writers were helped by the fact that television and the movies were appropriating their work to make cheap, mass-market pap of it; sometimes they paid low rights fees (Campbell got five hundred dollars for the movie rights to “Who Goes There?”), but most often they simply plagiarized. The fifties science fiction writer was a true van Vogt protagonist: surrounded by vast, inimical, malevolent powers who regarded him without compassion, struggling to reach some kind of goal which he could not define. But unlike the Gosseyns the fifties science fiction writer had no weapon shops of Isher, no Korzybskian logic, no seesaw, no secret plans, no occasionally helpful Overlords. He had only his colleagues to help him along and they were in as much trouble as he. Under these circumstances, the body of work turned out by the twenty or thirty best is a monument to the human spirit (or its perversity) unparalleled in the history of the so-called arts.
* * *
“What you have to do with this stuff,” a science fiction editor said a long time ago, “is to sit down with the outline and crank it; reel it out like porn. Otherwise it doesn’t pay, if you really get involved with it, try to have original conceptions or at least work them out originally you’ll slow down and can’t make any money. If you’re going to write science fiction for a living or even as part of a living, you have to do it fast.”
Without evaluating these remarks (they are true for most of us; even in the decade of five-figure advances the average return for a science fiction novel in all its editions is still about five thousand dollars), they function as partial explanation as to why no science fiction writer has published more than two or three books of the first rank.
In 1960, in fact, reviewing A. J. Budrys’s
Rogue Moon
, James Blish stated that no science fiction writer had ever written more than
one
masterpiece (he concluded his review by suggesting that if Budrys were able to come back to the field and get work done, he might be the first to break the pattern), and even two decades later there is not much evidence in contradiction; Silverberg has done five or six novels which are very strong, and so has Philip K. Dick, but even now as we regard the Le Guins or Delanys or Wolfes, even James Blish himself (who was a strong writer), who can be said to have published more than two?
The economics of this business may change. Other exigencies will not. Science fiction is a difficult, rigorous, exhausting form demanding at the top the concentration and precision of the chess master and the skills of the first-rate
litterateur
. How often do these qualities intersect in any of us? How often can they be reproduced?
Fortunately, for most, science fiction on the scene-by-scene level can be cranked, can fill space, can be mechanically conceived and rapidly written . . . it is a genre, it does have recourse to devices and a handy stock of the familiar. But here too the schism at the center is manifest: there has never been a science fiction novel so bad that breathing in its center was not an idea which once had merit; there has never been one so good that it could not be seen at the bottom to be based upon the clichés and clutter of the form.
No, there ain’t nothing so good that we cannot get a glimpse of the worst, ain’t nothing so bad that it doesn’t demonstrate a little of the good . . . there’s the best in the worst of us, worst in the best, all of us dummies of varying workmanship and attractiveness in the service of the Great Ventriloquist who do, he surely do, give voice to us all.
1980: New Jersey
The All-Time, Prime-Time, Take-Me-to-Your-Leader Science Fiction Plot
E
ARLIER I OFFER THE CONTINUING DIALOGUE
a number of plots or conceptions which would be—at least from my perspective, and perspective I have—unsaleable. Truthful as this material is, it is anything but helpful; if there is any audience for this book (in truth, there is no other) it is one comprised of aspirant writers, and I would not want them to regard science fiction as an endless series of Thou Shalt Nots.
Science fiction, to the contrary, represents perhaps the last open and relatively accessible market in America (if one can write to format one can still, although just barely, sell without personal acquaintance) and needs all the new material that it can acquire; the old writers are beginning to perish (if not mortally at least productively) by the scores now and the middle-agers like myself are retreating to despair, editing books of ruminant essays, or continuations of the Albderan Raiders on the Moon series.
Accordingly and generously I would like to contribute to the gene pool a number of plots, all of which, granted that you are a writer of routine proficiency, fluency, and dedication (a drinking acquaintance with the editors in all cases would not hurt), almost certainly
will
sell. Why shouldn’t they? They have been good enough for the markets for decades; they should be good until at least the millennium. Perhaps even the
next
millennium.
Too much of a good thing is not nearly enough
is the motto of science fiction;
we want more of what we’ve got
could be in Latin on the seal of Science Fiction University, good old Ess Eff You, weak major sports but good javelin and outstanding in track, water polo, and wrestling. The aspirant writers are welcome to them in full measure, and I seek neither thanks, praise, blame, a share of the advance, or a collaboration credit—only honor.
* * *
“The Underground”: Henry Walker Smith is a youth in the future, let us make it 2312 and be done; this particular extrapolation is based upon some mad extension of present-day circumstance that has overtaken the society.
Okay, let’s get
some
use out of the things and use automobiles. In 2312 in Henry’s world (it is America but let us be futuristic and call it, say, “Occidentalia”) automobiles are banned. The ownership of an automobile, driving it, even concealing knowledge of anyone who owns or drives are criminal offenses. Citizens move around Occidentalia via tramways, chutes, corridors, and the like. Most live and work within the same Domicile and only the elite are in need of far conveyance, which is fast jet. Henry has little to do with the elite, accepting his position as a subclerk in the Bureau of Fabrication and Design with the feeling that it is all he could deserve, and to travel more than a very few kilometers from Domicile would be self-indulgent.
We know that Henry is agoraphobic and terrified and can write some amusing scenes in which he reveals this tendency while justifying it to himself as “loving Domicile.” That will be one of the key phrases of the book—“loving Domicile”—and perhaps will catch the eye of the fans who will make it part of their lore.
Henry is twenty-three. He enjoys his culture and aspires to be nothing other than a Senior Overclerk in Fabrication & Design, but shortly after the story opens, of course, in Chapter Two, things begin to rapidly change. He falls in because his girlfriend’s father is a crook (Marge confesses this tearfully to him the night that he tells her he would like to Co-Domicile) who works with a rowdy bunch keeping forbidden automobiles on a private estate dozens of kilometers from Domicile. “That’s horrible,” Henry says as the full implication bursts upon him, “something has to be done for his own sake; I’ll turn him in to the Overlords.”
“You can’t,” Marge says, “I love him and besides if you turn him in the Driverists will know exactly who did it and will run you over in a corridor with one of their miniatures.” She caresses him soothingly. “Besides,” she adds, “cars aren’t that bad, they’re kind of
fun
. In the old days before Daddy got seedy and turned into a Narcotics Degenerate he used to take all of us out to the estate for drives and let us crash things and watch the great races and it was kind of fun.” Her eyes twinkle madly. “You might like it yourself, Henry, not that I’m asking you of course.”
“I’d
hate
it,” Henry says, “are you saying that part of our Co-Domicile is the condition that I become a Felon? I won’t do it,” and he decides that he must look at Marge in a new light. Perhaps she is not quite the woman with whom he wants to Co-Domicile. He is awfully young to get into a permanent arrangement anyway, although the Overlords encourage early pair-bonding for their own sinister reasons.
It is, however, too late for Henry; Marge’s father, a bumbling but fearful sort, has kept an eye on her relationship and comes to know almost immediately that she has told him about his double life. Before he can go to Headquarters and report the situation, Henry is abducted by the rowdies, spirited from Domicile, and taken to their crude and automobile-ringed estate far from there. His struggles during the abduction scene are quickly subdued, his protests are met with laughter, his pleas that he will be thrown out of Fabrication & Design are met with contempt. “Please forgive me, Henry,” a tear-streaked Marge says to him when he recovers consciousness (they have finally had to Overnarcotic him so valiantly did he protest) on the estate, “I didn’t think that they would do this to you but they’re desperate men. Anyway, why don’t you just listen to them and try to learn about the situation? You may find that you
like
automobiles. I know that I did.”
Henry shakes his head, bitterly retreats to silence, resolves that he will have nothing further to do with her. He may be enchained by desperadoes but he does not have to lose his integrity even though Marge appears every evening after her own shift in Reconstruction & Reminiscence to plead with him to be reasonable. He finally begins to change his attitude when Marge tells him that her father has been imprisoned by the Overlords for circulating a Pro-Automobile petition in a tramway and is now being beaten by them daily. “That’s a little excessive,” Henry says, breaking his silence. “I mean, they’re not even giving an old man a
hearing
. And besides, those cars outside that I can see through the bars are kind of attractive; they glisten in the sun, which is much brighter here than back in Domicile. They said it was all poisoned here but it isn’t. Hey, if they lied to us about that one thing they could lie about a
lot
of things? Am I right? Marge, do I have a point there? Not that I’m ready to question the authorities to the point of defying them. At least not yet.”
“But someday, Henry, you will,” Marge says, and the first (and last) scene of gentle sexual foreplay is written as Henry and Marge make love Oldstyle (but the scene terminates long before do their thrashings and moanings).
A new and chastened Henry is then educated by the rowdies—who all turn out to have degrees in Traffic Control & Reconstruction; they have been falsely portrayed as ruffians when actually they are scientists whose search for personal freedoms as transmuted into their love for automobiles have become threatening to the Overlords—into the realities of the situation. What he comes to realize is that in the name of “energy survival” and “cleaning up the environment” the Overlords have managed to erode virtually all personal freedoms. The first encroachments via restriction of automobiles were seen in the last third of the twentieth century; hundreds of years later the Overlords’ control is virtually complete except that the scientists have managed to set up the underground kilometers from Domicile and with the use of the retrieved, sacred, reconstructed automobiles are ready to mass an attack upon the oppressors. They need, however, someone who knows everything about the Department of Fabrication & Design for it is deep in that department that the machinery which controls is hidden, and would Henry like to help them?
“I don’t know,” Henry says, and he is truly uncertain until word reaches them that Marge has been abducted by Overlords who have gotten wind of the situation and are torturing her for information. “I can’t save her,” her father says, “but I’m going to
try
, by Cadillac I will. I did this to my only daughter and I’ll die to get her back.”
Looking at the old man Henry hears the thunder of his own heart. “You won’t go alone, old man,” he says. “I’m going to go
with
you. They lied to us from the beginning but now we know the truth. Don’t we?” The scientists nod. “Now we know the truth,” Henry says.
He takes driving lessons—there are some comic scenes here—on a replicated 1962 Cadillac Calais Coupe in brown with red leather interior and autotronic eye; at length he is at the head of an invading driving corps of the scientists who in seventy automobiles roar through the barriers of Domicile and descend upon Fabrication & Design. Marge’s father unfortunately dies in the second wave, being chased by the Overlords’ distracting robots, who dazzle him with mirrors and cause him to crash into a retaining wall, impaling himself on the steering hub of a replicated 1955 Chevrolet. Henry barely has time to weep at the spectacle before he is plunged into the sweeping combat scenes of the last chapters; he overcomes the Overlords’ defenses, fights his way to the heart of the bureau, and confronts the Chief Overlord. “You’re dead, Henry Walker Smith,” the cowardly Overlord says from behind his shield, but Henry (still in his car) uses the autotronic beam to dazzle the knave and then does away with him by backing the car with its protuberant, deadly tail fins into his belly. The Overlord expires with a gush.
Henry, breathing hard, is barely able to enjoy the triumph before he remembers that Marge is unaccounted for. She falls, however, from behind one of the walls of the Overlord’s Chamber in deshabille; she had been tied up for subterranean sexual purposes but, fortunately, not yet ill-used. “You did it, Henry,” she says, “now we can Domicile together forever.”
“Not so soon,” Henry says grimly, holding her. “Marge, not so soon.” His face has the look of eagles; a spare and haunting cast. He has matured greatly within these months as who, granted his experiences and insight, would not? “It isn’t that easy and it isn’t over.”
“Oh Henry—”
“We must return to the countryside, find more automobiles and continue the liberation. There are other Domiciles.”
“You’re magnificent, Henry.”
“But at the end of all of it,” he says, holding her lightly, “a little peace and the reconstruction of the internal combustion engine, the turbomatic transmission, dual radials with sidebar kit and the luxury package with two-tone strips and soft-ride finish.”
Marge kisses him lightly. “We’ll get there,” he says.
* * *
“Remembering the Old Man”: The Old Man, let us call him Lothar, is a beggar on Mule IV in the Vegan system; very old and dirty he lives at the virtual bottom of the corrupt, feudal, technologically oppressive society of the 87th Century Human. “There is a better time for all of us coming,” he chants as he pleads for coins and sweetmeats from the occasional tourists who comprise the only element of the economy of this picturesque but poverty-stricken backwater planet. “We have had a great history and our time will come again.” The tourists think that he is crazy but harmless; the governmental forces on Mule IV are too sparse and corrupt to pay any attention to Lothar at all. This is a good thing since Lothar is the last representative of a fallen hierarchy which was obliterated before the memory of all presently in power, to say nothing of the tourists who admire the views, pick up their illegal drugs, and return to the rockets as quickly as possible.
Lothar finds a baby abandoned in a nest of concrete pilings. He takes pity upon the child, the government tending to make waste products of humanity, as he thinks, and the poor thing’s mother being desperate, and takes him into his humble dwelling where he gives him a name and raises him as his own. Corear goes on the streets with him at an early age, showing intelligence by ingeniously adding some tricks to the nuances of begging.
A great bond of affection unites Corear and Lothar, and although their surroundings can hardly be said to improve, their relationship is magnificent. When Corear is eighteen, Lothar dies, passing on as his legacy in an extended and touching deathbed scene a coin to he who is as his son. “For you
are
my son and were always of my flesh,” he says mysteriously as he expires. This leaves open-ended as is only proper the question of paternity and imparts ambiguity to the novel. Ambiguity is not to be scorned, particularly when it can be managed with a device as simple as this, one which will not need constant further reference or tie up the progression with dull explanation.
The coin invests Corear with vast psychic powers. He can perceive the thoughts of anyone on whom he focuses, traverse thousands of light years by taking a deep breath and concentrating, move planets in their orbits, and cause any human being to submit to his desires. He discovers these powers one by one and slowly over a period of many months, trying to ascertain what might be the best use to which they can be put. (He is sure from the outset that he does not want to take advantage of women to obtain sexual favors.) Through this period he lives in obscurity. However when he sees Lothar’s memory being sullied on Mule IV—the old man, for reasons he cannot understand, becomes the object of virulent attacks by the government—he decides that he can stand mute no longer.
LOTHAR IS ALL EVIL
he sees inscribed on public squares;
LOTHAR WAS A BAD MAN
is the title of a column in the weekly journal in which scurrilous (and untrue) tales of the old man are told. Corear becomes angry.
He uses the magic coin to quickly dethrone the government and achieve power. Having done so he discovers that Lothar was the deposed ruler of Mule IV thrown out of office decades ago because he had discovered that the planet was merely a front for an enormous, intergalactic drug trade. (Drugs were used then to wipe his memory from the minds of his subjects; no one remembered who he was.) His death had, by preordainment by Lothar himself, caused old holograms to stalk the palace waving accusing fingers and hence the repudiatory measures. They came out of guilt. Corear is saddened to learn all of this but at the least he feels that he has redeemed the good name of Lothar, who in a final revelation—he goes through the palace documents slowly—turns out to be his father who had sired him unthinking in a final night of lust before he was deposed and who had found him in the streets when his mother had come to him nine months later to report that the government had seized her child upon birth and taken him from the Great Creche.
