LIGHTER THAN AIR
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This is at least true when we think of the idea which forms the
basis of the typical colonization plot: the idea that mankind will de–
velop space travel and will encounter an alien civilization somewhere
on a distant heavenly body, and that the ghastly drama of galactic im–
perialism will unfold. But the pattern can be, and sometimes is, reversed.
The even more uncanny possibility can be envisaged that there are
races living somewhere in the universe who are superior to us ; that we
will not discover them but that they will discover us. This has the
charm of novelty, for the opposite is based on historical precedent: we
have never been able to forget, try as we may, the appalling sagas of
Cortez and Pizarro. History does not tell us what would have become
of us if the Aztecs or the Incas had happened to have more effective
weapons than the Europeans and if they had landed in Spain.
It is this version of the motif of the meeting which has stirred the
popular fantasy especially powerfully. The idea has found its classical
expression in H. G. Wells's
War of the Worlds
and in its half tragic and
half burlesque sequel, Orson Welles's famed broadcast in 1938. A less
dramatic but much more sustained mass hysteria has since then been
achieved by the flying saucers.
The spokesmen of space travel claim, straight-faced, that their
literature is a reflection and pace-setter of science. Since they obviously
have something different in mind than what is usually meant by
"science," they have some explaining to do. They do it.
].
0. Bailey in
Pilgrims through Space and Time,
one of the few
sizeable scientific studies on the subject, notes as one of the develop–
ments that have led to the modern state of affairs "a tendency to employ
science fiction to explore psychological, moral, ethical, and even meta–
physical problems." John W. Campbell Jr., editor of
Astounding Science
Fiction,
the most renowned magazine in the field, says in his introduc–
tion to an anthology culled from its pages: "Science fiction, in its earliest
days, considered the machine. In its adolescence, it considers the effect
of the machine and of technology on Man. And in its more mature
form it considers Man's proper relationship to Man and the Universe."
There used to be a belief that this consideration was the concern of
philosophy or religion, but that does not faze the spaceman. Villiers
Gerson, in a book review in the
N ew York Times,
put the same idea into
a more limited frame: "It is intere!ting to note how stories written since
1945 have forsworn gadgetry to emphasize the relationship between
human beings and the parahuman life forms which they encounter in
space."
