Otherness (31 page)

The debate is one we have inherited, both in society as a whole and in the field of science fiction and fantasy. Those who proclaim that SF is purely a literature of reason forget that its foundations rest on
both
the erector-set rib work of 1920's radio magazines and the grisly, sewn-up rib
cage
of Frankenstein's monster. Meanwhile, many writers of horror or fantasy, as well as so-called cyberpunks, carry on the tradition of Shelley and Poe, rejecting any sterile tomorrow based solely on rationality.

Naturally, this gulf is a caricature. In real life there are fantasists and artists who subscribe to
Scientific American
, and physicists who paint and study Zen. Still, many romantics continue to call rationalism soul killing, while latter-day children of the Enlightenment label romanticism mind-melting drivel. It seems clear that we cannot be
both
trained naturalists and devout dryad worshipers, much as both professions love trees.

Is there a
fundamental
conflict between science and the realms one might call magical?

In a later chapter we'll take up one profound and crucial difference, the
time sense of wisdom
—whether one looks to a past golden age as the ultimate source of truth, or to the future. (Nearly every tribe except our own traditionally has taken a "look-back" attitude toward wisdom and lore.) For now, however, let's just consider one image, that of the perfect wizard.

The magician, as portrayed in countless legends, films, and novels, is a solitary being of great power, often depicted as dwelling on some craggy, clifftop aerie where he guards the secrets of his craft. His prowess derives not only from deep knowledge, but from some indwelling force of will, a talent that at an early age set him aside from mere mortals. He—and the magician's most powerful manifestations are nearly always male—generally uses his manna sparingly. Even "good" wizards perform beneficent wonders grudgingly, and only when conditions seem auspicious.

Ever notice how seldom magicians of fantasy cohabit with printing presses, indoor plumbing, alternating current, free public education, bicameral legislatures, or other democratic amenities? Generally, they share power with sword-wielding kings, reigning over great masses of unwashed, barely noticed peasantry. Naturally, a wizard's power is accessible only to a select few. He may have a talented young apprentice, but he doles his secrets to the neophyte slowly. His works and ideas are not subject to scrutiny or criticism.

Naturally, Joe magician thinks he's pretty hot stuff.

So does the scientist, at least as he or she is portrayed in popular media. Yet think for a moment of the truly great scientists, the ones most admired. Are the very best of them not seen as kindly? Even saintly? In the ideal image they are depicted as men and women who keep their egos under control. There are reasons for this.

A scientist who makes a discovery does not hoard it, for the greatest credit comes from instantly
sharing
new knowledge, publishing, not scribbling into some locked book of arcana. Indeed, top scientists love nothing better than narrating popular shows for Public Broadcasting! The assumption seems to be, "The public paid for my research. And, anyway, no one really knows a subject unless he or she can explain it to a nine-year-old."

No scientist can accomplish anything without the cooperation of hundreds of skilled professionals—from filter manufacturers, glassblowers, and electricians to copier repairmen and chalk makers. She must be a team player, or fail.

Finally, in comparing the scientist with the magician, there is one nontrivial difference to note. The scientist's miracles reliably and repeatably
work
. The magician's, generally, do not.

If magic is so inferior, why, even now, does it attract us? Why does the appeal of fantasy not wane in the face of technological marvels and the promise of a glittering tomorrow? Why do so many of us still love to scare ourselves half to death, reading horror novels by firelight?

Even within science fiction this urge remains strong. Many authors who write "glittering tomorrows" filled with glossy, ultratech imagery wind up describing not engineers, but magicians dressed in white coats. Never mind the dialogue, consisting of pseudo-techish mumbo jumbo. The dead giveaway can be seen whenever a book or film's resident wonderworker
behaves
more like a wizard than any realistic scientist—solitary, secretive, obsessed, and tyrannical.

Perhaps I sound churlish, picking on the underdog, at a time when magic seems down for the count. But remember, this underdog has dominated over rational skepticism since long before recorded history, right up to recent times, and its attraction continues drawing us today.

Consider a basic premise of magic—that the universe can be
persuaded
into giving what you want. Using incantations, threats, and cajoling propitiations, the mystic or shaman speaks directly to hidden powers of nature—spirits, gods, and elementals—urging bad ones to depart the sick and good ones to bring rain or wealth. Using symbols of the one desired, they cast love spells. Making images of a hated one, they fling curses. If others, watching, truly believe a witch's power, sometimes the hex comes true. Today we call it the power of suggestion.

Can you really make it rain by dancing? Or restore a parched stream by shouting certain phrases? Of course not. Then why did people believe it for so long, in nearly every culture?

Because they
are
certain objects in a person's environment that
can
be manipulated that way! These objects are far more important than wheat, or rain clouds, or flowing streams. They are
other people
. Other people
can
be persuaded by dance and song and incantation. A talented enough persuader can make people believe anything.

In other words, a witch doctor may not actually be able to end a drought, but if he's good, he can make darn sure other people feed him!

Wizardry may have been a wild-goose chase for thousands of years, but it's easy to see why. Strong-willed persons in every culture reasoned—"If I can persuade
people
to do my will in incantation, why not animals, plants, the sky?" These charismatic types threw themselves into their art, often with the best of intentions, in order to heal disease, or help the tribe. Augmented by pragmatic, sometimes splendid, herbal lore, they won success just often enough to persuade themselves and others.

Skepticism is seldom anywhere near as much fun. It flies in the face of human nature, especially individual pride and egotism, to switch from flamboyant performance art to a system based on criticism and experimentation . . . in which the theory you hold dearest may come crashing down, and you must smile, hold out your hand, and congratulate the snot-nosed grad student who demolished it. A system that makes it harder every day to suppress inconvenient questions with that favorite, ancient mantra of priests, mages, and old poops—"You wouldn't understand. Just trust me."

Magic may
seem
the underdog right now, but that is a very recent change, and perhaps illusory. As in the days of the Enlightenment, science is still the true rebel in this play. After countless millennia, human nature is awfully hard to overcome.

Yet science itself comes up with grounds for magic!

If the latest creation-myth is to be believed, we evolved in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, numbering a few dozen individuals at a time. Our brains, deep instincts, and egotistic drives were formed when existence was simple, straightforward. Today our battles are complex, our foes seldom purely good or evil. Often, in order to get by, we must compromise and make complex alliances, trusting others we barely know, each with his or her own murky, unreadable agenda.

Even if we have our outer lives under control, what about the inner self? We may spend our days taking part in the great enterprise of building a diverse, complex society. But inside there often remains that tribal warrior, wanting out.

In fantasy we are free to be heroes and heroines. Through a protagonist we can battle unadulterated evil—by ourselves or in the company of a few stalwart, archetype sidekicks numbering no more than the dozen or so our ancestors knew in a tribal hunting band. Imagination vents fizzing notions through a brain that, after all, spent far longer peering into forest glooms than sitting safely by electric lamps. In the fantastic we give our egos room to stretch, and our fears simple shapes that we can fight. Midway along evolving from bipedal apes to . . . who knows? . . . we cant give ourselves over wholly to maturity. In all of us there remains a need for the extravagant, the irrational, the vividly unreasonable.

Some squelch that need. Others bring it into the real world, and so lose touch with reality.

For some, however, the want is fulfilled marvelously well through artistic magic and myth.

Are we doomed to war within ourselves? To perpetual conflict of honest but boring productivity versus untruthful but inspiring romance? Or can fore-brain and midbrain find ground for compromise?

A hint at the answer may be found in the venerable institution of the SF "cautionary tale." Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, in
Brave New World
and
Nineteen Eighty-four
, portrayed alternate worlds which so frightened people that—ironically—the scenarios they depicted are probably no longer possible. Countless examples exist where images, drawn from the pit of an author's fears, have been clothed in raiment of believable extrapolation and used to scare us, warn us, and make us wary of dangers to our lives, our world, our freedoms . . . and sometimes even vote accordingly. That is the synergism of the cautionary tale, the self-preventing prophesy, the plausible horror story, in which fantasy and reason serve on the same team. In which science and a kind of magic collaborate.

But fantasy need not only serve dire warnings. The images and feelings stretch us, provoke us, and sometimes challenge us with possibilities.

Suppose for a moment that we
are
slowly maturing toward a civilization guided by wisdom and what I earlier called "otherness." If so, that maturity cannot be one of uniform, crystalline logic. Not a future of antiseptic, sterile Utopias or stainless-steel smugvilles. These aren't reasonable or desirable human tomorrows, just as any city bereft of shadows would not be a human city. As we grow up, some of the rage and roaring egotism may seep away. People may grow less cantankerously crazy. But we'll probably never lose a hankering to hoot and holler at the fringes of a camp-fire, to shout at the night, or shiver when the wings of an owl eclipse the moon.

In this entertainer-crazed culture of ours, we make heroes of rock stars, sports stars, movie stars, as if they were irreplaceable. But if every actor, singer, ballplayer, and yes, sci-fi author, dropped dead tomorrow, a dozen more would step forward to replace them. The magical impulse fizzes through our pores. It is at once the cheapest and most precious human trait.

I have a feeling that a thousand years from now, when all our dreaded mental ailments have gone the way of smallpox, when war and murder are fading memories, children will still listen, wide-eyed, as their moms and dads whisper ghost stories in the dark, shrieking in play terror when their parents finally shout—"Boo!"

Then the kids will plead, "Tell us another one!'

Magic will never die.

On planets, they say, water always runs down-hill
. . .

Serena had no way of knowing if it was true. She had never been on a planet. Not in the brief million or so years she had been aware. Neither had any of her acquaintances. The very idea was ridiculous.

Very few Grand Voyageurs ever got to
see
a planet. And yet, even among them, the ancient truisms were still told.

That which goes up must fall, and will
. . . .

The clichés came out of a foggy past. Why should she question them? Why should she care?

No matter how far down you fall, you can always go lower still
. . . .

Stunned and still nearly senseless from her passage through the maelstrom, Serena numbly contemplated truths inherited down the aeons from distant times when her ancestors actually dwelled on tiny slivers of rock, down close to the bright flames of burning stars.

She had had no inkling, when she had tunneled away from Spiral Galaxy 998612a with a full cargo, that the ancient sayings would soon apply to her.

Or do they
? she wondered. Was she perhaps as far down as one could possibly get? It seemed to Serena, right then, that there just wasn't any lower to go.

Her systems creaked and groaned as her instruments readapted to normal space-time. Serena still felt the heat of her passage through Kaluza space. That incandescent journey through the bowels of the singularity had raised her temperature dangerously near the fatal point.

Now, though, she realized that her radiators were spilling that excess heat into a coldness like none she had ever known before. Blackness stretched in all directions around her.
Impossible. My sensors must be damaged
, she hoped.

But the repair drones reported nothing wrong with her instruments. The real harm had been done elsewhere.

Then why can I not see stars
?

She increased the sensitivity of her opticals, increased it again, and at last began to see a pattern—a spray of tiny motes of light—spread across the black vault.

Tiny, tiny, faraway spirals and fuzzy globes.

Galaxies.

Had she been an organism, Serena might have blinked, have closed her eyes against dismay.

Only galaxies
?

Serena had traveled deep space all her life. It was her mission—carrying commerce between far-flung islands of intelligence. She was used to black emptiness.