some ichthyoid, some arachnoid, each with its own outlooks and morals and goals. People—well, intelligent beings, anyway—travel between the stars and ultimately even among the galaxies.
But there’s more. The stars themselves are sentient, and eventually all the sentient entities in the galaxy—men, aliens, stars, everything—merge into a single Cosmic Mind.
But Stapledon didn’t even stop there. He was interested in what created that Cosmic Mind, and became the first—and almost the only—to tackle the notion of God (i.e., the Star Maker) in a non-religious way.
It’s almost impossible to find a science fiction idea in the pulps of the 1930s and 1940s, or even the digests of the last half century, that does not owe something—usually a major something—to Stapledon. (In fact, when Larry Niven’s brilliant Ringworld came out and credited Dyson Spheres as its inspiration, I decided that that was the first truly major science fictional concept that did not owe anything to Stapledon. I should have known better. When I read Freman Dyson’s autobiography a few years later, I discovered—not surprisingly, in retrospect—that he credited Stapledon with inspiring the notion of the Dyson Sphere.)
Those two novels were quite enough to solidify Stapledon’s place in the history of science fiction, but he wrote two others, not as huge in scope or as bold in concept, but sufficiently influential that any writer other than Stapledon would be happy to let his reputation rest on them. One was Odd John, the first novel of a mental (rather than a physical) superman; and the other was Sirius, about a dog with artificially enhanced intelligence. (I wonder how many books and stories owe a tip of the hat to those two “minor” novels? 500? 1,000? More?)
And now, three-quarters of a century after his two major works appeared, the books are all but forgotten. Ask almost any American science fiction writer if he’s heard of Stapledon and he’s likely to answer in the affirmative. Ask him if he’s read Star Maker and the answer will usually be No.
And yet Stapledon’s ideas are alive and well. You’ll find them in almost every story in almost every issue of Analog and Asimov’s and Jim Baen’s Universe, and in well over half the science fiction novels you’ll find in the bookstores and the libraries.
You might even mosey over to your local library or second-hand bookstore, pick up a copy of Star Maker (and perhaps Last and First Men as well) and experience our greatest thinker first-hand. Some of the concepts in them will seem like old friends, but others are still capable of blowing you away—which is one of the things that the very best science fiction is supposed to do.
The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow
There was a (brief) time when they closed the Patent Office because there was nothing left to invent. That was not only before the creation of jet planes, polio vaccine, and computers, but before the telephone and the electric light, believe it or not.
Just goes to show that the future has more surprises than most people think.
There was a time when people thought science fiction was all played out, too. When Apollo XI touched down and Neil Armstrong took his one small step for Man, half the talking heads on TV pointed out that now that we had reached the Moon, science fiction writers had run out of stories.
That was before the height of the New Wave (which, like most of the 1960s, took place more in the 1970s), and before cyberpunk, and before slipstream, and before… Well, you get the picture.
Then Dell killed its science fiction line, and so did Playboy Press, and Pyramid vanished, and Fawcett/Gold Medal were no longer players…but lo and behold, along came DAW and Tor and Baen and a host of smaller presses.
Amazing and Galaxy and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and half a dozen other magazines died, and that was the end of magazines and short stories. Until you activated your computer and found us, and Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, and a dozen more e-zines, all paying competitive rates.
Sound familiar—like you’ve heard or read it all before? Like maybe three paragraphs ago?
Now that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died, the last of the so-called “Big Three” (Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov) has gone, and I’m hearing the same pessimism about the future from all the self-appointed experts who are as ignorant of the field as they are of its history.
Just about the time Stanley G. Weinbaum and Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft passed from sight, along came Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt and Leigh Brackett. And when some of them went off to war, or out to Hollywood, here came Jack Vance and Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. And when some of them went into teaching or Scientology, why, we had Robert Sheckley and Alfred Bester and Cyril Kornbluth in the full flowering of their literary powers. And when some of them deserted us for movies and non-fiction, here came Robert Silverberg and J. G. Ballard and Anne McCaffrey, and when everyone was sure there was no more talent out there, along came Roger Zelazny and Larry Niven and Ursula K. Le Guin…and it’s been like that ever since.
I just came back from Worldcon and DragonCon, and I can tell you that there is still a lot of new talent that just came through the door or is about to start knocking at it. John Scalzi’s only been around three or four years, but he’s already got a Campbell, a Hugo, and a bestseller. Tobias S. Buckell has a Campbell nomination and a Nebula nomination. Naomi Novick, another Campbell winner, was a hit from the start, and the start was only three years ago. And there are a handful of (current) unknowns whose work I’ve seen, here at Jim Baen’s Universe and elsewhere, who are just making their first sales now, and a number of them are going to be major forces in the field a few years up the road.
Just as there’s always a new generation of writers, there’s always a new generation of naysayers. The thing to remember is that history is not on their side.
And who knows more about future history than science fiction people?
* * * *
A little sidenote to those of you who nominate for the Hugos. If you’re reading this, you’re subscribers—and if you’re subscribers, I have to assume you like the job Eric and I are doing with Jim Baen’s Universe.
There are always five nominees in each Hugo category. This year it took 35 nominations to make the ballot for Best Short Fiction Editor.
Eric Flint received 15 nominations. I received 13 nominations. Eric and I as a team received 15 nominations. That’s a total of 43, quite enough to make the ballot, which would have been very nice publicity for a relatively young magazine…but officially, they were totals of 15, 15 and 13. Next year you might nominate the pair of us together. Just a gentle suggestion.
Words Matter
Ever hear of Joe Esterhaus?
No reason why you should. He doesn’t know that Jim Baen’s Universe exists. As far as I know, he’s never read a word of science fiction.
I know about him, though. The reason I know is because he makes over a million dollars a screenplay, and is one of the very few writers, even in an industry that seems to play with Monopoly money, to pull down that kind of fee.
Ever hear of Tom Cruise? Brad Pitt? George Clooney? Harrison Ford? Julia Roberts? Sandra Bullock?
Sure you have. They make ten million or more per film, plus a piece of the gross—and that, of course, has nothing to do with the quality of the film. Film bombs, film makes no sense, film has an IQ that would freeze water (and they’ve all made their share of them), they get their money anyway.
So what does this have to do with science fiction?
Bear with me while I explain.
Recently Carol and I rented some Tales of Tomorrow DVDs from Netflix. That’s a show that was run from 1949 to 1951, starting when we were 7 years old. It was in black-and-white, of course, always performed live (and you wouldn’t believe how many professional actors from Lee J. Cobb on down muffed their lines), and boasted a series of young actors like Paul Newman who became household names.
About one in every seven episodes was pretty good, always allowing for