I have seen real love shown among SF writers who came together at one of the many conventions—a great authentic fondness for their colleagues, not as writers, but as close friends. I’m sure this isn’t unique to SF, and yet even other kinds of writers do not seem to exhibit this extended family quality that we have—they seem more competitive, more pitted against one another, hoping the new novel by their colleague will fail, will not turn out good. SF writers have none of that. We are a body, a corporate group working, as in the Byzantine days, on some great mosaic, upon which finally no individual name will be stamped; we are friends and we admire one another in a warm and personal way. We ratify one another and sense our identity as humans as being intimately connected with this fraternal spirit. There are few if any cold schizoid SF writers; when you meet a Ray Bradbury or a Ted Sturgeon or a Norman Spinrad or an A. E. van Vogt you find a warm person longing to know you, too; you are part of a family that goes back decades and into which we perpetually welcome others: There are no sterile, aseptic white smocks, no cruel or detached interactions among us. Writing SF requires a humanization of the person, or, put another way, I doubt if that person would want to write SF unless he had in him these empathic needs and qualities. Too timid to demonstrate, too warm to retreat to a sterile lab and experiment on objects or animals, too excited and impatient to allow all knowledge to be confined to the limits of absolute certitude—we live in a world of what a radio SF show once called “possible maybes,” and this world attracts persons who are not loners but are lonely; and between those two distinctions there is a crucial difference.
“Michelson-Morley Experiment Reappraised” (1979)
THE failure of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1881, in which the absolute velocity of the Earth moving through luminiferous ether proved to be zero, gave rise to Einstein’s Relativity Theory, which holds that the concept “absolute velocity” is meaningless. However, scientists at UCLA, using more sophisticated laser techniques, have suggested a more probable significance of the null result: that in fact the Earth does not move and that Copernicus was a crypto-Pythagorean determined to vindicate an ancient and discredited heliocentric solar system model. In a meeting of Southern California astronomers and astrophysicists it was proposed that (1) the geocentric solar system be restored as the proper model, and (2) that Copernicus be dug up and admonished. As a side issue, Einstein will be regarded with mild disfavor and some amusement, but scientists attending the meeting could not agree on the amount of amusement to be formally proposed.
“Introduction” to Dr. Bloodmoney (1979, 1985)
WELL, I predicted wrong when I wrote Dr. Bloodmoney back in 1964. Events that I foresaw never came about, and as you read this novel you will see what I mean. But it is not the job, really, of science fiction to predict. Science fiction only seems to predict. It’s like the aliens on Star Trek, all of whom speak English. A literary convention is involved, here. Nothing more.
I am amused, however, to see what specifically I got wrong. Worst of all, I totally misread the future of the manned space program. But this only shows how rapidly history unfolds. In Dr. Bloodmoney I have one American circling the world forever. This is obvious nonsense; either there would be many Americans—and many Russians, for that matter—or none at all.
Of course, the major item that I got wrong is the End of the World. Back in 1964 I was expecting it anytime; I kept checking my watch. Horace Gold, who edited Galaxy magazine, once chided me for anticipating global wipe-out within the next week. That was back around 1954; I anticipated it by 1964. Well, such were the fears of the times. Right now we have other worries. Our problem seems to be paying our debts with incredibly inflated dollars, finding gas for our cars—much more mundane worries. Less cosmic.
Oddly, these are the sort of worries that assail the characters in Dr. Bloodmoney in their post-World War Three world. There are horses pulling cars. Eyeglasses are rare and treasured. A man who manufactures cigarettes is honored wherever he goes. Of supreme value is someone who can fix things. Society has reverted, but not to the brutal level that we might expect. Rather, it has become rural in nature. The vast cities are gone, and, in their place, a sort of countryside exists that is not awful at all. I must add, however, that in no sense does it resemble any world that we actually have.
But then, of course, we haven’t had World War Three.
In my opinion, this is an extremely hopeful novel. It does not posit the end of human civilization as a result of the next war. People are still around and they are still coping. Those who survive, anyhow, are fairly lucky in their new lives. What is interesting is the subtle change in the relative power status of the survivors. Take Hoppy Harrington, who has no arms or legs. Before the bomb hits, Hoppy is marginal in terms of power. He is fortunate if he can get any kind of job at all. But in the postwar world this is not the case. Hoppy is elevated by stealthy increments until, at last, he is a menace to a man not even on the planet’s surface; Hoppy has become a demigod, and a complex one at that. He is not really evil, in the usual sense… but here is an instance of the abuse of power: evil emanating from power per se. It is not so much that Hoppy is evil but that his power is evil.
In the satellite, Walt Dangerfield is transformed from a man assisting the fragmented postwar society, giving it unity and strength, raising its morale, to a man desperate for help from it, a man who is becoming weaker day by day. He signifies isolation, which is the horror of the many down below: isolation and a loss of the objects and values that comprised their original world. As time passes, Walt Dangerfield must gain strength from those on the planet’s surface, rather than giving strength to them. And into the vacuum created comes Hoppy Harrington, who epitomizes the monster in us: the person who is hungry. Not hungry for food but hungry for coercive control over others. This drive in Hoppy stems from a physical deprivation. It is compensation for what he lacked from birth. Hoppy is incomplete, and he will complete himself at the expense of the entire world; he will psychologically devour it.
You will note in Dr. Bloodmoney an account of a test conducted in 1972 that turned out to be a catastrophe, and, of course, there was in fact no such test and no such catastrophe. But then, there was no such person as Dr. Bluthgeld. This is a work of fiction. And yet at a certain level it is not. The West Marin County area where much of the novel is set is an area that I knew well. When I wrote the novel I lived in that area. Many of the features that I describe are real. So a great deal of the veridical is blended in with the fiction. As do some of the characters, I searched for wild mushrooms in West Marin, and I found the varieties they find (and avoided the varieties they avoid). It is one of the most beautiful areas in the United States, and is called by the Sierra Club “The Island in Time.” When I lived there in the late fifties and early sixties it was set apart from the rest of California and therefore seemed to me a natural locus for a postwar microcosm of society. Already, in fact, West Marin was a little world. When I read over Dr. Bloodmoney I discover, to my pleasure, that I have captured in words much of that little world that I so loved—a little world from which I am now separated by time and distance.
My favorite character in the novel is the TV salesman Stuart McConchie, who happens to be black. In 1964, when I wrote Dr. Bloodmoney, it was daring to have a major character be a black man. My God, how much change has taken place in these recent years! But what an excellent change, one we can be proud of. In my first novel, Solar Lottery, I had a black man as captain of a spaceship—daring, indeed, for a novel published in 1955. Stuart is in my opinion the focus of the novel, and he appears first. It is through his eyes that we initially see Dr. Bluthgeld, which is to say, Dr. Bloodmoney. Stuart’s reaction is simple; he is seeing a lunatic, and that is that. Bonny Keller, however, knowing Dr. Bluthgeld more intimately, holds a more complex view of the man. Frankly, I tend to see Bluthgeld as Stuart McConchie sees him. I am, so to speak, Stuart McConchie, and at one time I was a TV salesman at a store on Shattuck Avenue in Ber
keley. Like Stuart, I used to sweep the sidewalk in front of the store in the early morning, noticing the cute girls on their way to work. So I do have to confess to an overly simple view of Doctor Bluthgeld: I hate him and I hate everything he stands for. He is the alien and the enemy. I cannot fathom his mind; I cannot understand his hates. It is not the Russians I fear; it is the Dr. Bluthgelds, the Dr. Bloodmoneys, in our own society that terrify me. I am sure that to the extent that they know me, or would know me, they hate me back and would do exactly to me what I would do to them.
“And, sure enough as Stuart watched, leaning on his broom, the furtive first nut of the day sidled guiltily toward the psychiatrist’s office.”
This is our initial glimpse of Dr. Bloodmoney: through the eyes of a man pushing a broom. I am with the man pushing the broom, here at the beginning of the novel and all the way to the end. Stuart McConchie is an astute man, and in seeing Dr. Bloodmoney he has experienced a moment of instant insight that Bonny Keller in her years of personal, intimate knowledge lacks. I admit to prejudice, here. I think the first response by the man pushing the broom can be trusted. Doctor Bloodmoney is sick, and sick in a way that is dangerous to the rest of us. And much of the evil in our world now emanates from such men, because such men do exist.
So in writing Dr. Bloodmoney in 1964 I may have erred in many of my predictions, but upon rereading the novel recently I sensed a basic accuracy in it—an accuracy about human beings and their power to survive. Not survive as beasts, either, but as genuine humans doing genuinely human things. There are no supermen in this novel. There are no heroic deeds. There are some very poor predictions on my part, I must admit; but about the people themselves and their strength and tenacity and vitality… there I think I foresaw accurately. Because, of course, I was not predicting; I was only describing what I saw around me, the men and women and children and animals, the life of this planet that has been, is, and will be, no matter what happens.
I am proud of the people in this novel. And, as I say, I would like to number myself as one of them. I once pushed a broom on the sidewalk of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley and I felt the joy and sense of busy activity and industry that Stuart feels, the excitement, the sense of the future.
And, as the novel depicts, despite the war—the war that did not in fact happen—it is a good future. I would have enjoyed being there with them in their microcosm, their postwar West Marin world.
“Introduction” to The Golden Man (1980)
WHEN I see these stories of mine, written over three decades, I think of the Lucky Dog Pet Store. There’s a good reason for that. It has to do with an aspect of not just my life but with the lives of most freelance writers. It’s called poverty.
I laugh about it now, and even feel a little nostalgia, because in many ways those were the happiest goddamn days of my life, especially back in the early fifties, when my writing career began. But we were poor; in fact, we—my wife, Kleo, and I—were poor poor. We didn’t enjoy it a bit. Poverty does not build character. That is a myth. But it does make you into a good bookkeeper; you count accurately and you count money, little money, again and again. Before you leave the house to grocery shop you know exactly what you can spend, and you know exactly what you are going to buy, because if you screw up you will not eat the next day and maybe not the day after that.
So anyhow there I am at the Lucky Dog Pet Store on San Pablo Avenue, in Berkeley, California, in the fifties, buying a pound of ground horsemeat. The reasons why I’m a freelance writer and living in poverty is (and I’m admitting this for the first time) that I am terrified of Authority Figures like bosses and cops and teachers; I want to be a freelance writer so I can be my own boss. It makes sense. I had quit my job managing a record department at a music store; all night every night I was writing short stories, both SF and mainstream… and selling the SF. I don’t really enjoy the taste or texture of horsemeat; it’s too sweet… but I also do enjoy not having to be behind a counter at exactly 9:00 A.M., wearing a suit and tie and saying, “Yes, ma’am, can I help you?” and so forth…. I enjoyed being thrown out of the University of California at Berkeley because I wouldn’t take ROTC… boy, an Authority Figure in a uniform is the Authority Figure!—and all of a sudden, as I hand over the thirty-five cents to the Lucky Dog Pet Store man, I find myself once more facing my personal nemesis. Out of the blue, I am once again confronted by an Authority Figure. There is no escape from your nemesis; I had forgotten that.
The man says, “You’re buying this horsemeat and you are eating it yourselves.”
He now stands nine feet tall and weighs three hundred pounds. He is glaring down at me. I am, in my mind, five years old again, and I have spilled glue on the floor in kindergarten.
“Yes, sir,” I admit. I want to tell him, Look: I stay up all night writing SF stories and I’m real poor but I know things will get better, and I have a wife I love, and a cat named Magnificat, and a little old house I’m buying at the rate of $25-a-month payments, which is all I can afford. But this man is interested in only one aspect of my desperate (but hopeful) life. I know what he is going to tell me. I have always known. The horsemeat they sell at the Lucky Dog Pet Store is only for animal consumption. But Kleo and I are eating it ourselves, and now we are before the judge; the Great Assize has come; I am caught in another Wrong Act.
I half expect the man to say, “You have a bad attitude.”
That was my problem then and it’s my problem now; I have a bad attitude. In a nutshell, I fear authority but at the same time I resent it—the authority and my own fear—so I rebel. And writing SF is a way to rebel. I rebelled against ROTC at U.C. Berkeley and got expelled; in fact, told never to come back. I walked off my job at the record store one day and never came back. Later on I was to oppose the Vietnam War and get my files blown open and my papers gone through and stolen, as was written about in Rolling Stone. Everything I do is generated by my bad attitude, from riding the bus to fighting for my country. I even have a bad attitude toward publishers; I am always behind in meeting deadlines (I’m behind in this one, for instance).
Yet—SF is a rebellious art form and it needs writers and readers and bad attitudes—an attitude of “Why?” or “How come?” or “Who says?” This gets sublimated into such themes as appear in my writing as “Is the universe real?” “Are we all really human, or are some of us just reflex machines?” I have a lot of anger in me. I always have had. Last week my doctor told me that my blood pressure is elevated again and there now seems to be a cardiac complication. I got mad. Death makes me mad. Human and animal suffering make me mad; whenever one of my cats dies I curse God and I mean it; I feel fury at him. I’d like to get him here where I could interrogate him, tell him that I think the world is screwed up, that man didn’t sin and fall but was pushed—which is bad enough—but was then sold the lie that he is basically sinful, which I know he is not.
I have known all kinds of people (I turned fifty a while ago and I’m angry about that; I’ve lived a long time), and those were by and large good people. I model the characters in my novels and stories on them. Now and again one of these people dies, and that makes me mad—really mad, as mad as I can get. “You took my cat,” I want to say to God, “and then you took my girlfriend. What are you doing? Listen to me; listen! It’s wrong what you’re doing.”
Basically, I am not serene. I grew up in Berkeley and inherited from it the social consciousness that spread out over this country in the sixties and got rid of Nixon and ended the Vietnam War, plus a lot of other good things, the whole civil rights movement. Everyone in Berkeley gets mad at the drop of a hat. I used to get mad at the FBI agents who dropped by to visit with me week after week (Mr. George Smith and Mr. George Scruggs of the Red Squad), and I got mad at friends of mine who were members of the Communist Party; I got thrown out of the only meeting of the CP-USA I ever attended because I leaped to my feet and vigorously (i.e., angrily) argued against what they were saying.
That was in the early fifties,
and now here we are in the very late seventies and I am still mad. Right now I am furious because of my best friend, a girl named Doris, twenty-four years old. She has cancer. I am in love with someone who could die anytime, and it makes fury against God and the world race through me, elevating my blood pressure and stepping up my heartbeat. And so I write. I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I’m out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That’s what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream best-selling writers. But you are reading SF and I am writing it for you. I want to show you, in my writing, what I love (my friends) and what I savagely hate (what happens to them).
I have watched Doris suffer unspeakably, undergo torment in her fight against cancer to a degree that I cannot believe. One time I ran out of the apartment and up to a friend’s place, literally ran. My doctor had told me that Doris wouldn’t live much longer and I should say good-bye to her and tell her it was because she was dying. I tried to and couldn’t and then I panicked and ran. At my friend’s house we sat around and listened to weird records (I’m into weird music in general, both in classical and in rock; it’s a comfort). He is a writer, too, a young SF writer named K. W. Jeter—a good one. We just sat there and then I said aloud, really just pondering aloud, “The worst part of it is I’m beginning to lose my sense of humor about cancer.” Then I realized what I’d said, and he realized, and we both collapsed into laughter.
So I do get to laugh. Our situation, the human situation, is, in the final analysis, neither grim nor meaningful but funny. What else can you call it? The wisest people are the clowns, like Harpo Marx, who would not speak. If I could have anything I want I would like God to listen to what Harpo was not saying, and understand why Harpo would not talk. Remember, Harpo could talk. He just wouldn’t. Maybe there was nothing to say; everything has been said. Or maybe, had he spoken, he would have pointed out something too terrible, something we should not be aware of. I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me.