108
PARTISAN REVIEW
of it. Science fiction jumps bravely into the breech, offering at least
a
new frontier in
fantasy.
The proponents of space travel seem to hold this truth self-evident,
that it is somehow desirable for man to get away from the Earth.
Those holding the contrary view formulate theories.
He was a man obsessed with the idea which is at this moment cir–
culating all over our planet in obscure works of "scientifiction," in little
Interplanetary Societies and Rocketry Clubs, and between the covers of
monstrous magazines, ignored or mocked by the intellectuals, but re3ldy,
if ever the power is put into its hands, to open a new chapter of misery
for the universe. It is the idea that humanity, having now sufficiently
corrupted the planet where it arose, must at all costs contrive to seed
itself over a larger area: that the vast astronomical distances which are
God's quarantine regulations, must somehow be overcome. This for a
start. But beyond this lies the sweet poison of the false infinite-the
wild dream that planet after planet, system after system, in the end
galaxy after galaxy, can be forced to sustain, everywhere and for ever,
the sort of life which is contained in the loins of our own species--a
dream begotten by the hatred of death upon the fear of true immor–
tality, fondled in secret by thousands of ignorant men and hundreds who
are not ignorant. The destruction or enslavement of other species in the
universe, if such there are, is to these minds a welcome corollary. In
Professor Weston the power had at last met the dream. The great
physicist had discovered a motive power for his space-ship. (C. S. Lewis,
Perelandra)
This is from the work of a man who by application of formal
criteria can be described as one of the great science fiction writers,
though of course underneath the surface he is quite different from most
of them. Where the "monstrous magazines" are shrill, he is urbane.
Where their galactic empires are smashed by blind law, accident, or
equally blind superlative crime, so that in all their universe there is no
room for Providence, he is religious. Where they are saturnine onlookers,
his hero walks to his rendezvous with destiny through the blackout–
to fight the Battle of Britain between the stars. He is, if this word be
permitted in this Review, partisan.
This makes him, perhaps, a suspect witness; it scarcely exonerates
us from examining his point. What his critique implies is the funda–
mental statement that in talking about space travel, science fiction does
not
talk about space travel, but about something quite different, some–
thing beyond space travel-the new start after the traveling is done,
and life and death (more the latter) on distant stars.
Their distance actually matters least. Those large figures and arcane
measurements seem to have a strangely intoxicant effect on the "fans."
Yet, with the greatest of ease, science fiction serves as a deintoxicant also:
distances are annulled by superspeedy transportation. Displaying a cava-
