SCIENCE FICTION
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develop what is often a highly ingenious idea. In another tale, he will
use this same background in order to develop another idea, without
taking the trouble to coordinate them. The result is an infinity of various–
ly sketched futures, all independent of one another and generally con–
tradictory. We shall have, in the same way, an infinity of Venuses, each
of which diminishes the plausibility of the rest.
This dispersion has monotony as its direct consequence, for the
authors, since they renounce constructing systematically, can describe
only in a rudimentary fashion and depart only slightly from banality.
It appears that SF has begun with the cake. It had things too
much its own way: it was once enough to mention Martians to enthrall
the reader. But the time has come when the reader will notice that
most of these monsters, despite their crests, their tentacles, their scales,
are much less different from the average American than an ordinary
Mexican. SF has cut the grass under its own feet, has spoiled thousands
of ideas. The doors have been thrown open to start on a great quest,
and we discover we are still walking round and round the house.
If
the
authors scamp their texts, it is because they realize that an effort to
improve them would lead to an impasse.
The SF narratives derive their power from a great collective dream
we are having, but for the moment they are incapable of giving it a
unified form. It is a mythology in tatters, impotent, unable to orient
our action in any precise way.
v
But the last word has not been said, and it is certainly possible that
SF will surmount this crisis in its growth.
It has the power to solicit our belief in an entirely new way, and
it is capable of affording, in its description of the possible, a marvelous
precision. But to realize its full power, it must undergo a revolution, it
must succeed in unifying itself. It must become a collective work, like
the
science which is its indispensable basis.
We all dream of clean, well-lighted cities, so that when an author
situates a narrative in such a place, he is certain of striking a sympathetic
note. But we find ourselves, in the present state of SF, facing an enorm–
ous choice of barely sketched future cities among which the imagination
hesitates, unsatisfied.
Everyone knows Heraclitus' famous fragment: "Those who are
awakened are in the same world, but those who sleep are each in a
separate world." Our dreamers' worlds are simultaneously without com-
