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PARTISAN REVIEW
Take a look at the empire builders. Some of them are crusty
old commanders. But more frequently-and significantly-the hero is
an up-and-coming young man, second in command under a Colonel
Blimp type superior. He follows an enlightened progressive policy to–
ward the natives, which his boss does not. Needless to say, he wins out
in the end.
They all, the young and the old, the golden-haired youths and the
martinets, are cogs in a gigantic military-administrative machine. The
type of the adventurous hero who strikes out alone, who has freedom
of action within the natural law and responsibility to none but himself
and such higher powers as he believes in, this hero is for all practical
purposes unknown. The parallel with the renaissance, indeed! The con–
queror of galaxies relies on his weapons, his communication system, and
the organization that will back him up. He may be assailed by monsters
but not by doubts. His strength is as the strength of ten because his
heart is sure.
These characteristics have been noted by the critics of science fic–
tion. Philip Wylie, himself an author of some standing in this field, finds
that the usual current story contains "wild adventure, wanton genocide
on alien planets, gigantic destruction and a piddling phantasmagoria of
impossible nonsense. One needs only to read the contents of half a
dozen representative magazines and anthologies to recognize the fact."
Even Clarke, in his favorite role of elder statesman, counsels
moderation:
We have seen that there is little likelihood of encountering intelli–
gence elsewhere in the Solar System. That contact may have to wait for
the day, perhaps ages since, when we can reach the stars. But sooner
or later it must come.
There have been many portrayals in literature of these fateful
meetings. Most science fiction writers, with characteristic lack of im–
agination, have used them as an excuse for stories of conflict and violence
indistinguishable from those which stain the pages of our own history.
Lack of imagination? One wonders. "These fateful meetings" have
emerged as the kingpin among the motifs of science fiction. All their
science and all their space travel is scarcely more than a little system
of devices to get the dramatis personae with a minimum of fuss to the
time and place where they can meet-i.e., where our culture and an
imagined alien culture will be face to face. The thought would be sad–
dening but not perhaps entirely unreasonable that such a meeting, if
it ever came, would indeed be more likely a clash, and that it is perhaps
the illusion that it could be otherwise which really betrays lack of
imagination.
