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An improbable success
Science Fiction
ligent machines, tapping mysterious energy sources, somehow expand the capacities of some humans to full psychic abilities. The remaining “solitaries”-unable to engage in telepathy, telekinesis, and the like-are killed off as acts of mercy, or flee the planet. If one can accept all this for the sake of the plot, what unfolds is a familiar, but interesting, tale of the dissenting individual who can find no place for herself in her home village and cannot adapt to the available alternatives. In this case, the heroine’s plight lies in her very individuality, which is anathema to a telepathic society that assumes the increasing merging of selfhood among its members as they grow older. To ensure that such members will include only those who have learned to control and integrate their mental powers with others, the community enforces a coming-of-age ritual that few survive. It is while training for her ordeal that Daiya meets a boy from whose intense curiosity the comet, has led him to take a trip to the longforgotten mother planet. The most interesting part of the
An improbable
251
story is the contrasting world views that follow as mutual awareness grows between the comet people, whose society is rationalistic and dependent on advanced technology, and the Earth folk, who have no need of machines and who perceive reality as a set of illusions contained in the dreams of the Merged One. Sargent further uses the two societies to embody a conflict well known in the present. The comet people stand for progress, change, and an emotionally-detached scientific curiosity. The Earth people are village-based, unchanging, and communally self-reliant. This clash of mind-sets is more thoughtfully handled than in traditional science fiction, with good arguments made for the viability of each way of life. All the more disappointing, by my biases, that it is the villagers who get their come-uppance in the end. It is their culture which is severely stressed by the encounter, while the comet people go on their merry way, apparently not taking very seriously the views that perhaps conventional reality is an illusion or that uncaring curiosity can be a sterile god.
success
Brian W. Aldiss Douglas Guide
Adams,
Books, 1979,
The
Hitch-hiker’s
(London, 159 pages, LO-80)
to the Galaxy
Pan
This is the runaway successful book based on the runaway successful radio series, which we can enjoy until the arrival of the runaway successful tv series and the runaway successful motion picture spin-offs. A long-playing record is also available. Much has been made of the fact, in interviews with the author, that Mr Brian Aldiss’s most recent book is Life in the West (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980).
FUTURES
19
June IWO
Adams worked on the scripts of the BBC series “Dr Who”-the interviewer feeling, perhaps, that that gave Mr Adams enough silly science fiction to practise on. However, this short novel reads rather like a pastiche or parody (one can’t say crib) of a whole lot of intergalactic SF, starting with Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero, itself a bit of a parody. Bill, as you should recall, visits the planet-covering city of Helior, and can find his way around only with the aid of a floor plan, a foot square and almost as thick, which he chains round
252
Science Fiction/Conferences
his middle in order to avoid theft. Arthur Dent, similarly, needs the printed word to orient through the world out there. At least it’s still a Gutenberg galaxy. I mention these things less to point the finger-all great originals have origins-than to avoid having to go into a synopsis of T,e Hitch-hiker’s Guide. Its method lies not with plot but deadening-to-the-point-of-ludicrousness expansion of unnecessary detail. A random example : Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem ‘Ode To a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning’ four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging . . . Grunthos is reported to have been ‘disappointed’ by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled ‘My Favourite Bathtime Gargles’ when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save Iife and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Mill-
stone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth. Obviously, many people find this very funny, and do not mind having a lot of capital letters instead of wit. The question : “Although any one extract is not funny, is the whole lot cumuIatively funny?” is as taxing as a parallel question: “Although computers have no intelligence, if you built one big enough, would it become intelligent ?” Faith largely determines one’s responses to both questions (which in my case are: “No” and “No”). Since it is unsporting to admit to finding unfunny what everyone else appears to be rolling about at, I will add that the story opens promisingly, with a cosmic bypass going through our stretch of the galaxy, so that Earth has to be demolished. This is the bit everyone tells you about. As to the effect of all this on the science fiction market . . . Critics long ago branded SF as a genre that parodies itself. Since then, we have witnessed other block-busting galactic that pastiche, Star Wars, and come through. We might just survive, boys, but I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy . . .
CONFERENCES Politicians
cold shoulder energy models
Symposium on modelling of large-scale energy systems, cosponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the International Federation for Automatic Control, Laxenburg, Austria, 25-29 Febkary 1980 message Perhaps the most important coming from this meeting was the necessity for much better communica-
tions between modellers and the decision makers they hope to influence. A great deal of effort had obviously gone into the construction of the various models described at the conference. Many
insights,
into
both
familiar
and
new problems, had been gained from the improved understanding of the energy and economic systems modelled. But there was a distinct and rather depressing feeling that the speakers were generally prophets without honour in their own lands (or, at least, among
FUTURES
June lS80
ligent machines, tapping mysterious energy sources, somehow expand the capacities of some humans to full psychic abilities. The remaining “solitaries”-unable to engage in telepathy, telekinesis, and the like-are killed off as acts of mercy, or flee the planet. If one can accept all this for the sake of the plot, what unfolds is a familiar, but interesting, tale of the dissenting individual who can find no place for herself in her home village and cannot adapt to the available alternatives. In this case, the heroine’s plight lies in her very individuality, which is anathema to a telepathic society that assumes the increasing merging of selfhood among its members as they grow older. To ensure that such members will include only those who have learned to control and integrate their mental powers with others, the community enforces a coming-of-age ritual that few survive. It is while training for her ordeal that Daiya meets a boy from whose intense curiosity the comet, has led him to take a trip to the longforgotten mother planet. The most interesting part of the
An improbable
251
story is the contrasting world views that follow as mutual awareness grows between the comet people, whose society is rationalistic and dependent on advanced technology, and the Earth folk, who have no need of machines and who perceive reality as a set of illusions contained in the dreams of the Merged One. Sargent further uses the two societies to embody a conflict well known in the present. The comet people stand for progress, change, and an emotionally-detached scientific curiosity. The Earth people are village-based, unchanging, and communally self-reliant. This clash of mind-sets is more thoughtfully handled than in traditional science fiction, with good arguments made for the viability of each way of life. All the more disappointing, by my biases, that it is the villagers who get their come-uppance in the end. It is their culture which is severely stressed by the encounter, while the comet people go on their merry way, apparently not taking very seriously the views that perhaps conventional reality is an illusion or that uncaring curiosity can be a sterile god.
success
Brian W. Aldiss Douglas Guide
Adams,
Books, 1979,
The
Hitch-hiker’s
(London, 159 pages, LO-80)
to the Galaxy
Pan
This is the runaway successful book based on the runaway successful radio series, which we can enjoy until the arrival of the runaway successful tv series and the runaway successful motion picture spin-offs. A long-playing record is also available. Much has been made of the fact, in interviews with the author, that Mr Brian Aldiss’s most recent book is Life in the West (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980).
FUTURES
19
June IWO
Adams worked on the scripts of the BBC series “Dr Who”-the interviewer feeling, perhaps, that that gave Mr Adams enough silly science fiction to practise on. However, this short novel reads rather like a pastiche or parody (one can’t say crib) of a whole lot of intergalactic SF, starting with Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero, itself a bit of a parody. Bill, as you should recall, visits the planet-covering city of Helior, and can find his way around only with the aid of a floor plan, a foot square and almost as thick, which he chains round
252
Science Fiction/Conferences
his middle in order to avoid theft. Arthur Dent, similarly, needs the printed word to orient through the world out there. At least it’s still a Gutenberg galaxy. I mention these things less to point the finger-all great originals have origins-than to avoid having to go into a synopsis of T,e Hitch-hiker’s Guide. Its method lies not with plot but deadening-to-the-point-of-ludicrousness expansion of unnecessary detail. A random example : Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem ‘Ode To a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning’ four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging . . . Grunthos is reported to have been ‘disappointed’ by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled ‘My Favourite Bathtime Gargles’ when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save Iife and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Mill-
stone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth. Obviously, many people find this very funny, and do not mind having a lot of capital letters instead of wit. The question : “Although any one extract is not funny, is the whole lot cumuIatively funny?” is as taxing as a parallel question: “Although computers have no intelligence, if you built one big enough, would it become intelligent ?” Faith largely determines one’s responses to both questions (which in my case are: “No” and “No”). Since it is unsporting to admit to finding unfunny what everyone else appears to be rolling about at, I will add that the story opens promisingly, with a cosmic bypass going through our stretch of the galaxy, so that Earth has to be demolished. This is the bit everyone tells you about. As to the effect of all this on the science fiction market . . . Critics long ago branded SF as a genre that parodies itself. Since then, we have witnessed other block-busting galactic that pastiche, Star Wars, and come through. We might just survive, boys, but I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy . . .
CONFERENCES Politicians
cold shoulder energy models
Symposium on modelling of large-scale energy systems, cosponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the International Federation for Automatic Control, Laxenburg, Austria, 25-29 Febkary 1980 message Perhaps the most important coming from this meeting was the necessity for much better communica-
tions between modellers and the decision makers they hope to influence. A great deal of effort had obviously gone into the construction of the various models described at the conference. Many
insights,
into
both
familiar
and
new problems, had been gained from the improved understanding of the energy and economic systems modelled. But there was a distinct and rather depressing feeling that the speakers were generally prophets without honour in their own lands (or, at least, among
FUTURES
June lS80