CREEMEDIA

IT CURES CANCER, CHASES AWAY YOUR BLUES, GIVES YOU NATURAL RHYTHM, KEEPS YOU REGULAR... Its...SCIENCE FICTION!

[Sure, you laughed at those Trekkie conventions, scorned your brother's Marvel comics, and prefer Johnny Carson to I Was A Teenage Frankenstein. It is, after all, Sci-fi — weird, huh? And who wants to read about stuff that never really happened? Well, kid, science fiction is affecting your culture more and more each day, and Star Wars is just the beginning. We offer you here a chance to get hip. In a multiplepart series, Ed Naha will unscramble the cobwebs from your mind, help you learn to live happily and love science fiction. Here is Part One. —Ed.]

Ed Naha is the author of Horrors— From Screen To Scream (Avon Books), and the producer of a record, Gene Roddenberry: Inside Star Trek (CBS). My idea of GOOD science fiction is:

a) Flash Gordon being attacked by a giant hot comb while Dale is carried off by a group of stuntmen wearing feathers and beaks.

b) A well-worn copy of the Spiro Agnew novel.

c) A Japanese movie on the late show with Tokyo being destroyed by giant radioactive cheese dip, named Chedra.

d) A prehistoric vacuum cleaner salesman attacking an all-surfer high school.

e) World peace.

If you bothered to consider ANY of the above, you know about as much about science fiction as most people do about the night life of a gnat. Contrary to popular belief, modern science fiction is NOT the stomping ground of frizzy haired mad scientists with their fingers poised on the doomsday button or little green men who show up in the tulip garden after a bachelor party on Pluto.

Science fiction IS a type of literature and celluloid, that turns its attention to a world of scientific speculation, to realities of what MAY be and not what already IS. As noted author Ray Bradbury once described it, its the last frontier of a modern philosopher. Phew!

And, while the nation has been busying itself with the latest Peter Benchley novel and looking forward to Jaws II and Return Of The Son Of The Sister Of The Exorcist In The Valley Of Kong, science fiction has been carrying on a revolution of sorts; a revolution to gain respectability in the “real" world. From the looks of it, the fight is going well. Science fiction courses are being taught in hundreds of colleges and high schools across the nation. Book publishers are having a field day for, while general fiction sales are down, SF sales are soaring in both hard and soft cover. Motion picture studios are once again sinking big bucks into “speculative fiction" epics (Logans Run, Food Of The Gods, Star Wars, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Futureworld and the upcoming Star Trek filrfi) and respected publications (Newsweek, Cue, People, New Times and The N. Y. Times), are suddenly becoming aware of the far out genre.

If, at this point, YOUR involvement with SF has been limited to watching I Married A Monster From Outer Space on a Saturday morning or having vile dreams about Wonder Woman, this article is for you! Its a thumbnail sketch of the lighter than air world of science fiction with enough information to allow you to fend for yourself at the next Bowie concert, Star Trek convention or conversation with one of the Alligator People.

Youd better take notes, too. Who knows? The way the science fiction boom is spreading, within a few months it may be right up there with TM, est, Rev. Moon and hang gliding into the sides of cliffs.

The Science Fiction Family Tree

Unlike many Jacqueline Susann novels, science fiction can trace its history back a couple of thousand years to honest-to-god respectable literature. Greek mythology teemed with wiredout alchemists who had the power to turn men into animals, bring life to inanimate objects and perform other nifty party tricks. Throughout history, many highly regarded chaps, philosophers and writers alike have told tales of speculative fiction (in some cases, their literary skills earned them the revered title of “moron", but modern man knows better, right?). As far back as 165 AD, philosopher Lucien (in his Incaromeniuppus) wrote of a trip to the moon. And this was before Pink Floyd.

Astronomer Johannes Keplers Somnium (1634) moontripped as did Bishop Godwins Man In The Moone (1698) and de Bergeracs Voyage To The Moon And The Sun (1657). Aside from planet hopping, many philos^ ophers sci-fi concepts concerned more perfect societies of the near future. Thomas Mores Utopia (1516), Francis Bacons New Atlantis (1627) and Merciers Memoir Of The Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (1771) described the shape of things to come. It is interesting to note that not one of the abovementioned had ever heard of Buck Rogers or knew they were writing that “science fiction kid stuff." In their time, it was referred to simply as “art."

As literature developed, so did the embryonic SF, with a legion of highly respected authors dabbling within its boundaries; among them Jonathan Swift (Gullivers Travels), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Herman Melville (The Bell Tower), Edward Everett Hale (Brick Moon), Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Rappacinis Daughter"), Poe (“Hans Pfall") and Robert Lewis Stevenson (Dr. Jekyl And Mr. Hyde). All saw the chance at masking sometimes harsh editorializing with fantasy trappings and made the most of it. Most English teachers, alas, try their damndest to avoid mentioning the abovementioned works while concentrating on the more overbloated creations like Moby Dick, The Man Without A Country and House Of The Severi Gables. I mean, REALLY.

Science fiction “proper" was spawned by either of two authors (depending upon which side of the binding you wake up on); Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Verne, the son of a wealthy Parisian lawyer, was a product of the industrial revolution in Europe and saw gadgetry as a simply wondrous campanion to man, years before Bell Telephone decided to make you pay for the same idea. Foretelling the invention of the submarine, electricity, dirigibles and cars in such novels as From The Earth To The Moon, Mysterious Island, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Robeur The Conquerer and Master Of The World, Verne commanded quite a following among the scientific-minded armchair adventurers and still provides thrills for the millions of pre-pubescent pursuers of imagination today.

Wells, on the other hand, sends chills up and down the spines of futuristic philosophers everywhere. The son of a fairly poverty-stricken British gardener, he was an avid student of Darwin, sociology and history. His mixed background made for action-packed exemplums and his best work includes The Time Machine, When The Sleeper Wakes, The War Of The Worlds, Food Of The Gods and The Shape Of Things To Come.

During Wells lifetime, SF started to mushroom. The father of modern science fiction was a delightful gent named Hugo Gernsback. A fervent dabbler in electronics, he founded the first science fiction magazine in 1926, Amazing Stories, in an effort to popularize technology through fiction. A host of competing magazines followed, but it was Gernsback who set the standards. And his standards were high with names like Ray Cummings, E.E. Smith, David Keller, John W. Campbell, Hal Vincent and Jack Williamson flourishing under his reign.

The 30s saw the start of such giants as Murray Leinster, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. Van Vogt, Frederick Pohl, Asimov, Simac, Del Ray, Blish, Bradbury and Clement. Most of these famous folks got their start via John W. Campbell whose rule at Astounding from 1938-50 brought the movement into full flower.

Although science fiction became more popular than ever during the 30s and 40s (both in pulp and film), the 50s saw a slackening off. SF, it seemed, was TOO thought-provoking for a nation of REAL Fonzies occupied with a very real cold war and a Commie witch hunt. Television, too, tookitstoll, drawing avid readers away into the boob tube placebo. Why worry about atomic war when Lucy could bake bread and Desi sweated in Spanish? Film-wise, the high intensity of SF on the screen during the decades outset {War Of The Worlds, The Dai; The Earth Stood Still) collapsed under the weight of the schlock aimed at drawing the teen armies away from the tube and into the drive-in (Teenage Cavemen, Teenagers From Outer Space, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein).

Happily enough, the ambitious Zeitgeist of the 60s coupled with the development of a more irreverant, socially aware type of sci-fi (termed the “New Wave") brought SF back into the swim of things, where it still remains today. Films like 2001, The Time Machine, Planet Of The Apes, West-

world and The Andromeda Strain had em lining up at the box office, while authors like J.G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, Norman Spinrad, Tom Disch and Harlan Ellison had their eyeballs glued to the pages at home. Frank Herberts Dune became a counter-culture classic as did Heinleins Stranger In A Strange Land and Tolkiens Lord Of The Rings.

And thats where speculative fiction hovers today. So, while the politicians in D.C. make with the slapstick, food prices go up and this weeks minority army blows up a bank, why not pick up a book by Asimov, turn on a re-run of Star Trek, place the soundtrack from Logans Jiun on the stereo, relax and see the way the world OUGHT to look like.

[Stay tuned for more Naha: “Women in Science Fiction", “Futuristic Flicks", “Television", and much more, in a future issue.—Ed.]