Riverside Quarterly V4#2 Sapiro 1970-01
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78 RIVERSIDE QUARTERLY RQ MISCELLANY January 1970 Vol. 4, No. 2 BALLARD BIBLIOPHILES Editors: Leland Sapiro, Jim Hannon, David Lunde William Blackboard, Redd Boggs, Jon White If your curiosity is roused by "Homo Hydrogenesis" this issue— or if you've a previous interest in French Symbolism and Jim Bal Send poetry to: 1179 Central Ave., Dunkirk, NY 14048 lard's latter-day extension thereof—you'll profit by consulting Send other correspondence to: Box 40 Univ. Sta., Regina the last few issues of Pete Weston’s Speculation (31 Piewall Ave, Masshouse Lane, Birmingham-30, UK; 3 copies 7/6d or $1 USA). The current number even contains some non—Baudelarian correspondence TABLE OF CONTENTS from Mr. Ballard himself. RQ Miscellany............................................................................ 79 INEXCUSABLE OMISSIONS—FIRST SERIES Challenge and Response: Last time (p.73) I forgot to list the address—55 Bluebonnet Foul Anderson's View of Man.. Sandra Mleael... 80 Court, Lake Jackson, Texas 77566—of Joanne Burger, who offers the N.E.T. tapes, "H.G. Wells, Man of Science." I also failed to say Aphelion.................................... ................Bob Parkinson... 96 that Michel Desimones article (pp. 48-51) was taken from the dou ble editioji of Philip Jose Farmer's Les Amants Etrangers and Homo Hydrogenasia: L'Uniyers AL*Envers (The Lovers and inside Outside), Club du Liv Notes on J.G. Ballard..............Nick Perry..............98 re Anticipation, Paris, 1968. So far, contact with Mr. Desimon has .................... Roy Wilkie been impossible--which is just as well, since in addition to the omission just cited I mis-spelled his name twice and possibly com The Presence of Angels........................ Bob Parkinson...107 mitted another sin too unspeakable to mention here. Half-Poem........... ...................................... Bob Parkinson...108 THE WORST OF FANDOM A new fan-activity, culminating at the St. Louis convention, was The Crowd...........................................T.C. Burtt, Jr..109 the Hall of Infamy poll, fantasy equivalent to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Men. Voted fourth was your present editor, who a month pre-. Ont of Tine's Abyss: viously had mailed fifty notes to inform selected readers that the The Martian Storlas of ERB.....Richard Kyle.... 110 RQ had won the Hugo award for Best Fanzine. Those who (by my guess) had voted for the opposition received messages like, "Sorry ya' Casvilda in Taagoroth......................................... ..125 finked out to the Establishment but we beat 'em anyway," while Friends of the RQ were simply told, "We beat those Establishment bastards" or Andre Norton: (in the case of an Alabama fan), "We beat those yankee Establishment Why Has She Been Neglected? ...Barry McGhan....128 bastards." --------- The Animal........... .Burt Shephard...132 Bleats of anguish soon re-echoed from Beverly Hills to New England, with various fans writing directly to Chairman Ray Fisher, to inquire Opere Citato..... .Harry Warner.... 134 how the information had leaked out, and Charlie Brown, in the 23 Aug. Locus,complaining about "idiotic letters": "We've tried to ignore The Seasonal Fan ,Jim Hannon.......... 138 them but...they can't be. A report next issue. Watch for this special feature." I'm honoured to be featured in a recondite journal such as Selected Letters .................143 Locus, but since Charlie wasn't among the original Fifty, his com plaint that he "tried to ignore them" was purely rhetorical. Frost and back cots a by Vincent di Fate Third in the poll* was our collective host, the Chase-Plaza hotel, which disapproved of the Saturday-night Rock concert (and the untidi Sandra Wiesel...82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 95 ness of its Hippie-type audience) and several hours later tried to stop the convention movie show because of a city ordinance that pro Derek Carter..........78 Adrienne Fein...................126 hibits public enjoyment on Sundays. Although C-P^s actions are * not to be condoned, they reflected just the 19th century mores Alpajpuri..................101, 105 DEA...................................... 127 of the American Midwest, not any special malice of hotel personnel. Mary Acosta............. 106, 142 Mike Gilbert.....................131 ’This result (plus the next two) was learned via a postcard from Harry Habblitz.. .114, 123 Evelyn Holland...136, 137 Bruce Pelz, who conducted the poll, and thus supersedes that an nounced in issue #32 of Bruce's own newsletter, De Profundis. " Steve Riley............. 124, 153 Gabe Eisenstein..140, 141 . (continued on page 154) Copyright 1970 Leland Sapiro 60$ per issue $2.00 per year 80 CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE 81 Frederick Jackson Turner thought the western frontier had been CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE: for Americans. Anderson feels "our enterprise beyond the sky will keep alive that sense of bravery... and achievement without which Poul Anderson’s View of Man man wpuld hardly be himself." (Is There Life on Other Worlds? 1963, 189) As explained in "Marque and Reprisal" "That's why we've got to move into space.... Room. A by chance to get out of this horrible huddle on Earth, walk free, be our own men, try out new ways to live, work, think, create, wonder." Sandra Miesel Dispersal into space would also insure survival of the human species if Earth were destroyed.! "The Children of Fortune" (1961), "The Day After Doomsday" (1961), "Epilogue" (1962), and "To Outlive Eternity" (1967) are based on this premise. Perpetuation of the race guarantees a kind of immortality— the only really certain kind. The house and the blood ... are holy. Men die and women weep, but while the kindred live our names are remembered. ("The Man Who Came Early" 1956) But "there can be too great a price for survival" ("Turning Point" 1963). It is by no means the ultimate value. Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits.... Some things were more important than survival. Than even Poul Anderson is a remarkably skilled creator of authentic the survival of a cause. physical and historical enviroments. These enviroments not only serve as stage sets behind rational actors, they play roles It came to Sverdlov thst this was another way a man in the dramas as well. Anderson’s concern— unlike that of the might serve his planet: just by being the right kind of New Writers— is the interaction of consciousness with the real man, maybe a better way than planning the extinction of universe. If this interaction is expressed in the formula "chal people who happened to live somewhere else. lenge and response" then Anderson's views can be summarized ("We Have Fed Our Sea") thus: (1) man needs challenge, (2) man must respond to challenge, (3) man must accept responsibility for his response. As the hero of "The Mills of the Gods" (1961) reminds us: Men need challenge if they are to remain human. "Honor wasn't enough. Survival wasn't enough. You had to be kind as well." No people live long, who offer their young men naught but fatness and security. Mere prolongation of life, whether of the species or the in ("We Have Fed Our Sea" 1958) dividual is a futile goal in itself, as the immortal men in "The Star Beast" (1950) painfully realize. So essential is challenge on both racial and individual scales that an artificial one can serve as effectively as a real one. Death is the longest voyage of all. Without death there For example, a non-existent criminal wrecks a dictatorship in is no evolution, no real meaning to life, the ultimate "Sam Hall" (1953); contrived political pressure changes society adventure has been snatched away. in "Robin Hood's Barn" (1959) and "Inside Earth" (1951). As the The quality of life is all that matters. Anderson's interest hero of the last story explains: is in how well, how creatively, how intensely people live. Men "Valgolia /Terra's foe7 is the great and lonely enemy, require the stimulation of constant challenge to attain indi the self-appointed Devil, since none of us can be angels. vidual excellence. A technologically perfect world devoid of It is the source of challenge and adversity such as has challenge would be soul-destroying. always driven intelligence onward and upward, in spite In "Quioxte and the Windmill" (1950) complete automation has of itself." robbed ordinary people of the opportunity to create and to feel Again and again the author stresses space exploration as the useful, resulting in mass ennui. The same craving for meaningful great challenge of the future. This would be a safety valve and work is reiterated in "What Shall It Profit?" (1956). Material a psychological stimulus for the entire species just as satiety produces mindless hedonism, apathy, and ultimately, de cadence in "The Star Beast" and "Conversation in Arcady" (1963). A totally planned society causes evolutionary reversal in "The High Ones" (1958) since absence of challenge obviates the neces sity for intelligence. 82 SANDRA. MIESEL CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE 83 Actually, technological anti-utopias are far more common in sensitive neo-Polynesian civilization ("The Sky People” 1959)and Anderson's writings.2 The author is distinctly hostile towards "Progress"). After the fall of the Terran Empire, they develop a existing technic civilization for it ravages the planol .md de voluntary mutual aid society to replace interstellar government humanizes the individual. Men, he says in "License" (1957), do ("Starfog" 1967). The world-wrecking catastrophe in Brain Wave not want to be "crowded together, and chained to one tiny spot (1954) is not war but a sudden increase in the intelligence of of the earth's surface, and be an anonymous unit, bossed and man and all higher animals which yields a transfigured, space herded and jammed into an iron desert of a city, subordinating faring civilization.