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PARTISAN REVIEW
topics that are burning issues in the scientific life of the day. The rela–
tionship is less obvious and more intimate. It has materialized in the
favorite motifs which are ubiquitous in science fiction and potentially
ubiquitous in other manifestations of our culture.
There are motifs of
Weltanschauung-certain
ideas as to what the
world is like and what its meaning may be-and volitional motifs-the
expression of desires and fears. Outstanding among the latter are the
yearning to escape from the confining bounds of the Earth: from its
choking reality and its drab restrictions; the longing for a new and
greater frontier-with all that this implies in variety and impunity; the
desire, finally, for an extension of Man and his works-for longevity,
however specious, for immortality whatever its price.
The
Weltanschauung
which pervades much of the space travel
literature all but ignores the traditional concepts of the fundamental
laws and drives, and makes bold to supersede cherished sets of values.
The spaces in which those stories are set are often but thinly disguised
replicas of the arena in which the global activities of the United States
are unfolding and will unfold in the near future. Yet the heroes are
often seen as thoroughly jaded, and their one appetite that is not blunted
is aggression. Held to its course by neither physical nor moral law, their
world tumbles from one catastrophe into the next:
1
A good time is
had by the tough ones who survive for a while. They owe their tough–
ness to the armor which is supplied by organization; by hierarchical yet
fluid, aggressive, humorless and merciless organization.
If
we try to strike a balance of values, we find in the one scale the
liveliness and modernity of science fiction, the unencumbered freshness
of its imagination, its ability to come to grips, by the very device of
gaining distance, with the less ephemeral aspects of the problems that
plague us (surely there is something to be said for the idea of looking
at the Cold War, for instance, from the vantage point of a remote
star). It is hard to see how we can advance human society unless we
experiment in thought with the various possibilities of its development.
The other scale is heavily weighted with negatives: Hostility unre–
strained by love; brash young men in the service of super-imperial
schemes; devouring clashes of incompatible civilizations-these are the
laws and the prophets that the authors of space travel stories have pro–
jected onto the heavenly bodies. May our lucky stars prevent them from
ever becoming reality on our old Earth.
1 Disintegration and reintegration, removal from the community of the liv–
ing, impersonation and depersonalization, mind reading, telepathy, and influenc–
ing machines arc other significant motifs which I do not have the space to discuss.
