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Chapter 1: Introduction Notes CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I. E.g. Brian Aldiss, ed., Introducing SF: a Science Fiction Anthology, p. 10, says that the stimulus ofa science fiction story comes from the fact that 'it is about what is happening toyou'; Ursula Le Guin, Introduction to her TheLeft Hand ofDarkness, no page, declares, 'Science fiction is metaphor'; Samuel Delany, Thejewel-Hingedjaw: Notes ontheLanguage ofScience Fiction, p. 178, maintains that 'Science fiction is the only area of literature outside poetry that is symbolistic in its basic conception. Its stated aim is to represent the world without reproducing it.' Aldiss , however, can also say, 'T he images are what attract me in science fiction, more even than the surprises and the ideas and the crazy plots' (Aldiss, ed., Yet More Penguin Science Fiction, p. 9 et seq .). 2. I am thinking here particularly of David Ketterer's fine New Worlds for Old: theApocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, andAmerican Literature. 3. Compare Mark Rose, Alien Encounters: Anatomy ofScience Fiction , which is a systematic account of the alien as metaphoric projection of the unknown or the 'void ' in our lives and our desire to overcome it. 4. As for example in Herbert's Dune, between the melange spice and oil. But to read only in these terms is mistaken. 5. A sane and wide-ranging account of the history of science fiction can be found in Brian Aldiss, Billion Year Spree : the TrueHistory ofScience Fiction; see also Robert Scholes and Eric S. Rabkin, 'A BriefLiterary History of Science Fiction', Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision, pp. 3-99. The nineteenth­ century development of the genre in Britain is well covered in Darko Suvin's Victorian Science Fiction in theU.K.: TheDiscourses ofKnowledge andofPower:and that in America by H. Bruce Franklin, Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of theNineteenth Century. 6. See also Susan Glicksohn, , "A City of Which the Stars are Suburbs" ', in Clareson ed., SF: the Other Side ofRealism, pp . 341-5. 7. For a full account, see Mike Ashley, TheHistory oftheScience Fiction Magazine; David Samuelson, Visions ofTomorrow: Six journeysfrom Outer to Inner Space, . pp . 17-37; Frank Cioffi, Formula Fiction?: an Anatomy of American Science Fiction, 1930-1940, ch. I. 8. For an account of the characteristics of fantasy as compared to science fiction, see my 'O n the Nature of Fantasy', in Roger C. Schlobin, ed., The Aesthetics ofFantasy Literature and Art, pp. 18-24, 29-31;jaqueline Wynten­ broek , 'Science Fiction and Fantasy', Extrapolation, XXItl, pp . 321-32. 9. See W. Warren Wagar, Terminal Visions : the Literature of Last Things, esp. pp . 185-205. 225 226 Notes to pp . 15-26 CHAPTER 2: ISAAC ASIMOV I. For a full account of its first appearance in Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov's relations with the editorJohn Campbell and his difficulties in composition (particularly in the third book) , seeJames Gunn, Isaac Asimov: theFoundations ofScience Fiction, ch. 2. 2. See also Donald Wollheim, The Universe Makers: Science FictionToday, pp. 37, 42. 3. See on this the references in note 3 of ch. 5. 4. This is reminiscent of the opposition between Arisian and Eddorean civilization in E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Triplanetary (serialized, 1934). It has been argued that the Foundation trilogy is in part an answer to Smith's 'Lensman' series - in particular in its substitution of intellectual for physical power: see Mark Rose, Alien Encounters: Anatomy of Science Fiction, pp. 12-13 . Joseph Patrouch, TheScience Fiction ofIsaac Asimov,pp. 98-9, 102-3, also makes this point in relation to Asimov's reaction to 'space opera' generally. 5. Asimov , Second Foundation (London: Panther Books, 1969) pp. 18;}-6. Nevertheless their minds were also in part controlled by the Second Foundation to think this way. 6. Asimov , Foundation (London: Panther Books, 1969), p. 14. Page references hereafter in the text will be to this edition, and to Foundation andEmpire and Second Foundation (London: Panther Books, 1968 and 1969), respectively designated I, II and III. 7. Compare Gunn, p. 49, referring to it as 'a safety measure, a strategic reserve'. 8. Compare Maxine Moore, 'Asimov, Calvin and Moses', in Thomas D. Clareson, ed., Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, I, pp . 101-2, who sees the whole trilogy in terms of electronic imagery, with the two Foundations at opposite nodes to switch the current of history from physical to mental science , and compares it to 'the structure and function of a vacuum tube or transistor' (p. 102). Moore also analyses the imagery of the trilogy in terms of the workings of an electromagnetic motor in her 'T he Use ofTechnical Metaphors in Asimov's Fiction ', inJoseph D. Olander and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Isaac Asimov, pp ., 85-9. 9. Some have seen the trilogy as much more determinist (this seems to be the main issue debated in critical accounts). Wollheim, pp. 40-1 , and Charles Elkins, 'Asirnov's Foundation Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical Psycho-History', Science-Fiction Studies, III , pp.26-35 [repr. in Olander and Greenberg, pp. 97-110], both see semi-Marxist views of a controlled social future at work; and Patrouch, pp . 138-9, finds only determinism in the trilogy . Gunn, pp . 40-2, and Donald Watt, 'A Galaxy Full of People : Characterization in Asimov's Major Fiction', in Olander and Greenberg, pp . 136-40, acknowledge the role of freewill. 10. At III, 186, however, the Second Foundationers are made to claim that they controlled the situation entirely, arranging that Bayta Darell should be present to destroy Mis. II. Gene Wolfe used the same name 'Terminus' to almost the same ironic purpose in his The Book ofthe New Sun (see p. 211 below) . He may also, incidentally, have taken the name 'Urth' from the hero Wendell Urth of Notes topp. 28-35 227 Asimov's stories 'The Singing Bell' (1955), 'The Dying Night' (1956) and 'The Key' (1966). 12. On the 'flatness' of Asimov's characters see also Elkins, p. 26, who calls them 'undifferentiated and one-dimensional'; and Joseph Patrouch, 'Asimov 's Most Recent Fiction', in Olander and Greenberg, p. 161. For a lively argument on behalf of Asimov's characterization, see Donald Watt, 'A Galaxy Full of People', pp. 139-41. Gunn, pp.46-7, relates the one­ dimensionality of the characters to their being functions of a developing scheme of social science. 13. L. David Allen, 'Isaac Asimov 1920-' in E. F. Bleiler, ed., Science Fiction Writers : Critical Studies oftheMajorAuthorsfromtheEarlyNineteenth Century tothe Present Day, p. 270, says this demand, made in January 1945, arose out of Campbell's desire to see the Seldon Plan upset by some means. 14. Compare the similar, if more dismissive, objections of Elkins , pp . 103, 105, speaking of 'the sense of fatality and futility evoked in the Foundation novels' (p. 105), of 'complacency' which supposes enclosure (p, 106), and of the number of events actually involved in historical process that Asimov leaves out (pp. 108-9). 15. On Asimov's psychic need for a rational and comfortable universe, see Gunn, pp . 16-18 . 16. Elkins, pp . 107-9, sees the whole as purposeless, merely conservative and cyclic. 17. Brian Stableford, reviewing Foundation 'sEdge,in TheScience Fiction andFantasy Book Review, no. 15 (june, 1983) p. 17. 18. Trevize's use offree choice is underestimated byJohn L. Grigsby, 'Herbert's Reversal of Asimov's Vision Reassessed: Foundation 'sEdgeand GodEmperor of Dune', Science-Fiction Studies , XI, pp . 174-81, who sees the picture here, as in the earlier Foundation novels, as one in which 'the universe is still controlled and dominated . .. [by a benign scientific agency] that prevents humans from living, struggling, fighting , learning, and dying in the realistic, less-than-perfect, and yet also thinking, growing, and progressing way that they always have' (p. 178). CHAPTER 3: FREDERIK POHL I. As in The Early Pohl (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), and Planets Three (N.Y.: Berkley Books, 1982); all the stories originally appeared in magazines under pseudonyms (usually 'James MacCreigh') in the I940s. 2. In the afterword to his first solo novel, Slave Ship (1957), which is set on Earth, Pohl says that the business of the science fiction writer is 'to take what is already known and , by extrapolating from it, draw as plausibly detailed a portrait as he can manage of what tomorrow's scientists may learn . and of what the human race in its day-to-day life may make of it all' (New English Library edn, London, 1963, p. 126). 228 Notes topp. 35-47 3. Pohl, 'Ragged Claws', in Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison, eds, Hell's Cartographers: Some Personal Histories ofScience Fiction Writers, p. 164. 4. In order of composition, TheEarlyPohl,Planets Three, Alternating Currents, The Case Against Tomorrow (1957), Tomorrow TimesSeven (1959), The Man Who Ate the World (1960), Tum Left at Thursday (1961) , [with C. M. Kornbluth] The Wonder Effect (1962), The Abominable Earthman (1963), Digits and Dastards (1966) , Day Million (1970), TheGoldat theStarbow's End (1972), In theProblem Pit (1976), Midas World (1983). 5. For an introduction to Pohl's short stories in general, which places as much value on the later as on the earlier stories, see David N. Samuelson, 'The Short Fiction of Frederik Pohl', in Frank N. Magill, ed., Survey of Science Fiction Literature, IV, pp . 1948-53 . On some of the satiric stories ofthe 1950s, Kingsley Amis, New MapsofHell, pp . 102-15 is acute, though he values them more for their extrapolative force than for their intrinsic merit. For Pohl's own comments - circumstantial rather than informative - on some of his stories, see his afterword in Lester del Rey, ed., TheBestofFrederik Pohl; del Rey's own introduction, 'A Variety of Excellence', sets the stories in the context of Pohl's life and work as a whole.
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