The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (106 page)

As it happened, during World War II, Canada saw fit to protect the tender sensibilities of its citizens by banning all American science fiction magazines. A partial exception was made for van Vogt, who needed to read
Astounding
for professional reasons, and he continued to receive his copies forwarded to him through the Canadian censor’s office.

In the course of 1943, a science fiction reader named O.C. Wilson got in touch with van Vogt. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting System, and his job had taken him to the censor’s office, where he had happened to notice a science fiction magazine addressed to van Vogt. Was it possible that he might borrow back copies of
Astounding
and
Unknown?
Van Vogt let him have the magazines, and in return Wilson lent van Vogt his copy of
Science and Sanity.

Korzybski’s work was exactly what van Vogt the systematician was most eager to see—a system for the development of clearer human thought. Heinlein, in his story, had used Korzybski’s studies as the basis by which those in society who do think with clarity could manipulate and direct that part of the populace still a slave to limited thinking. But what van Vogt perceived in General Semantics was the means by which all mankind might set itself free.

In van Vogt’s novel,
The World of Null-A,
it is the year 2560, and everyone on Earth has the opportunity to absorb education in the super-General Semantics of his imagination. The result is an egalitarian society: “There simply weren’t any special people in the null-A universe. . . . People were people, normally born equal, requiring the simple, straightforward null-A training to integrate their intelligence. There were no kings, no archdukes, no supermen, traveling incognito.”
⁸⁷²

Every year, during a special month, people who wish to advance themselves come to the capital city from all over the world to be tested by a great Games Machine. Those who do well are honored and placed in positions of social authority. And the few who do well enough—those who can demonstrate that they are completely functional human beings—graduate to another society on Venus where people live in peace and harmony without any need for the coercions of government and law.

In the course of the story, human beings from an ongoing galactic civilization who are powerfully armed, but mentally are still “
unintegrated
men,”
⁸⁷³
invade this superior civilization. But the null-A men of Venus meet this threat with such clarity of mind, tenacity of purpose and uncompromising resistance that a galactic observer is soon saying to the leader of the invasion, “ ‘Haven’t you realized that null-A cannot be destroyed?’ ”
⁸⁷⁴

In this society in which supermen traveling incognito have no place, van Vogt’s natural superman, Gilbert Gosseyn, would be far less effective.

At the outset of the story, Gosseyn has just arrived in the capital city from his small hometown in California to be tested by the Games Machine. But it is very quickly revealed to him that everything he thinks he knows about himself and his background is false or inadequate. The identity he has accepted as sufficient is not his true self.

Reflecting on the situation of this character, van Vogt would come to remark: “Analogically, this is true of all of us. Only, we are so far gone into falseness, so acceptant of our limited role, that we never question it at all.”
⁸⁷⁵

In his search for who he really is, and for what he can really do, Gosseyn (whose name can be pronounced “go-sane”
⁸⁷⁶
—van Vogt’s own personal preference once his literary agent had pointed this out to him) would consult a psychiatrist, Dr. Kair. The doctor examines his “extra-brain”
⁸⁷⁷
and reports in awe:

“The evidence shows, Gosseyn, that what you have resembles not so much a brain as the great control systems in the solar plexus and the spine. Only it is the most compact set-up of controls that I have ever seen. The number of cells involved is equal to about a third of the total now in your brain. You’ve got enough control apparatus in your head to direct atomic and electronic operations in the microcosm, and there just aren’t enough objects in the macrocosm to ever engage the full potential control power of the automatic switches and relays now in your brain.”
⁸⁷⁸

But when Gosseyn asks for aid in actualizing this potential, Dr. Kair can be of no help. He likens Gosseyn’s case to that of a boy named George who was raised by a pack of wild dogs from the age of two to eleven. After his capture, George proved beyond socialization, never learning to walk and talk and take part in normal human society:

“He died at twenty-three, still an animal; a wizened up creature-boy looking hardly human in the bed of his padded cell. A post-mortem revealed that his cortex had not fully developed, but that it existed in sufficient size to have justified belief that it might be made to function.”
⁸⁷⁹

This—or something like it—is Gosseyn’s situation. For all his incredible potential, in actual practice he is pitifully underdeveloped.

The best that Gosseyn can do is attempt to remember himself—to discover who he really is. And, indeed, at the conclusion of the story, he does learn that he is nothing less than the latest clone of the immortal superman who long ago was originally responsible for setting up null-A society.

(In the 1948 book version of the story, it is explained that because of an accident suffered by the eldest current Gosseyn, it has proved impossible for him to transfer to his younger clone the cumulative memory that is the true immortality of the line. And this is the reason why this latent superman has been condemned to wander about so aimlessly from Earth to Venus—as he himself puts it, “ ‘like a bewildered child.’ ”
⁸⁸⁰
)

This elder Gosseyn is killed, but as he dies he indicates to his younger clone-successor that the best thing he/they have been able to accomplish was to take the obscure system of null-A and make it into the basis for a society:

“ ‘I nourished null-A, which was then like a tiny flowering plant in a wilderness of weeds.’ ”
⁸⁸¹

(In the second revision of the book in 1970, the dying elder superman adds this indication that his/their immortality in itself is meaningless in comparison to the sanity of null-A man: “I was looking for a place to settle, and for something to be that was more than mere continuity; and it seemed to me that Non-Aristotelian Man was it. . . .’ ”
⁸⁸²
)

If van Vogt was correct in his stories of the later Golden Age, the human way forward lay not merely in being dominant, or in having greater firepower, or conquering more and more territory, and neither did it depend on mankind changing in form and developing special powers like telepathy or immortality. What was actually required was for men and women of our own kind to learn how to actualize their present untapped potential and become beings who were completely sane and fully effective.

We should recognize that the various stories of 1943 to 1945 which we’ve been looking at were not in the majority in
Astounding.
They were only one element in a mix which included old-fashioned stories of scientific invention, time-travel paradoxes, stories in which technical problems were posed and solved, and even a line of patriotic SF in which various dire fates were imagined for the Axis powers, in particular the Nazis and their leaders.

At the same time, however, there can be no doubt that these stories were far and away the most original and visionary work published by Campbell during the war—the model for SF written throughout the rest of the Atomic Age. Here, transcendence, like a snake that has been struggling to shed its old skin, cast off the appearance of science-beyond-science which had served it through the modern scientific era, and presented itself in the shining new raiment of consciousness-beyond-consciousness.

The shift in the perceived locus of transcendence that took place in these wartime stories was every bit as significant as the earlier shift from transcendent spirit to transcendent science with which our story began. We may understand it as the sign of the start of a whole new era in the social and psychic development of the Western world, which, as it unfolds, will necessarily be as different from the modern scientific era as that was from the preceding era of spirit-based religion.

It is possible to catch this shift in the very act of taking place in the SF stories that were written during World War II by John Campbell’s most diligent pupil, Isaac Asimov—even though Asimov was someone who was scientifically educated and scientifically employed, and consciously dedicated to the proposition that science fiction was fiction about imaginary science and its possible effects upon human beings.

For a time, Asimov wasn’t writing science fiction of any kind. He stopped in the spring of 1942 when he left his parents’ candy store and suspended work on his Ph.D. at Columbia in order to go off to Philadelphia to serve as a chemist in the Navy Yard. He was fully occupied in learning to live on his own, adjusting to his new job, and preparing to be married in July to a girl he had begun dating in February.

Asimov had always looked upon his science fiction writing as a convenient and enjoyable means of earning money to support his studies in college and graduate school. But he didn’t need to do that anymore. Now that the Navy was paying him to be a chemist, he was bringing in more money more regularly than ever before in his life.

It went further than this, however. Now that he wasn’t spending those long hours behind the counter of the candy store in Brooklyn, he no longer had the inclination to go on reading the science fiction pulp magazines that had been so important to him for so many years. He did continue to buy
Astounding
each month, but he got farther and farther behind in reading that, too. It was almost as though science fiction were part of some other life which he had now left behind.

During this vacation from SF, Asimov was content to do his job and settle into his marriage. He didn’t stop reading—he read a lot, especially in history. And if he felt the need for intellectual stimulation, he had Robert Heinlein to talk to, and L. Sprague de Camp, and de Camp’s friend John D. Clark, a science fiction fan and chemist who was doing wartime work in explosives and who lived within convenient walking distance of Asimov’s apartment.

To be sure, Asimov’s relationship with Heinlein wasn’t an altogether easy one. Almost from the moment they first met, there was a strong personality clash between them, which only increased with the passage of time.

Heinlein was a man with an overwhelming need to dominate and control other people, and he was only fully comfortable in social situations in which he was the one setting the terms and conditions. Because of the difference in their ages, and because of the great respect in which Asimov held Heinlein’s science fiction writing, Heinlein had the psychological jump on Asimov from the beginning of their acquaintance, and he was bent on keeping things that way.

But Asimov, as we have seen, had just as strong a drive not to let anybody—not his father, not his teachers, not even John Campbell—tell him what to do and think. Over the years, he had developed a thousand tricks for undermining and evading authority while still maintaining apparent deference and respect.

Asimov had impressed his wife-to-be early in their courtship when she had asked him the old conundrum about what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, and he had explained that it was impossible for the two to co-exist in the same universe. That was precisely the problem in the relationship between Heinlein and Asimov. One was irresistible, the other was immovable, and it wasn’t possible for the two to comfortably co-exist in the same little Navy Yard universe.

The biggest battle between the two men was fought over the nominal issue of lunch. Asimov, never one for exercise, disliked the half-mile trek to the Navy Yard cafeteria, and found the food that was served there next to inedible. It was his preference to bring a bag lunch to work, eat in the quiet, air-conditioned comfort of the lab, and read in peace. Asimov cherished that hour, having spent a lifetime bolting down food and then hustling back to the candy store so that someone else could have a meal.

But Heinlein wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He wanted Asimov’s presence to fill out his lunch table in the Navy Yard cafeteria, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He bullied Asimov into joining his party by portraying eating at the cafeteria as a matter of patriotic duty. And when Asimov made disparaging remarks about the food he was being forced to choke down, Heinlein instituted fines of a nickel for each complaint, with the money to go toward the purchase of a war bond.

Asimov finally got him to agree that if he could find some way of complaining about the food which wasn’t on the face of it a complaint, Heinlein would drop this game. But then, when Asimov would saw away at a slab of haddock and innocently ask, “ ‘Is there such a thing as tough fish?’ ”,
⁸⁸³
Heinlein would reply, “ ‘That will be five cents, Isaac. The implication is clear.’ ”
⁸⁸⁴

Asimov says, “Since Bob was judge, jury and executioner, that was that.”
⁸⁸⁵

In the long run, however, Asimov was able to make his point. It happened like this:

“Someone new joined the table who did not know the game that was going on. He took one mouthful of some ham that had been pickled in formaldehyde and said, ‘Boy, this food is awful.’ ”
⁸⁸⁶

That was the opportunity Asimov had been waiting for, and he didn’t let it get past him. He immediately rose to his feet, raised his hand for attention, and declared with feeling: “ ‘Gentlemen, I disagree with every word my friend here has said, but I will defend with my life his right to say it.’ ”
⁸⁸⁷

Not only was that the end of this particular game, but it demonstrated to Heinlein that Asimov was simply not a person he could handle any old way he pleased. In consequence, when Heinlein shortly thereafter started to put together regular social evenings for SF writers along the lines of his old Mañana Literary Society, with the nominal purpose of brainstorming an answer to Japanese kamikaze attacks on U.S. warships, he saw fit to invite everyone he knew who was then living between New York City and Washington, D.C., from John Campbell to Will F. Jenkins. But he didn’t ask Isaac Asimov to come.