The Astral Mirror (12 page)

The author of
Children of the Dream
and
The Uses of Enchantment,
Professor Bettelheim sees science fiction as an attempt to create a modern mythology, a set of beliefs fitted to the needs of a society that is based on science and technology.

Joseph Campbell, Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College, has made mythology his special field of study, in books such as
Hero with a Thousand Faces
and the four-volume
The Masks of God.
He has pointed out that modern man has no mythology; the old myths are dead, but no new mythology has been raised in their place.

Is science fiction serving as a mythology for modern times? Campbell insists that all human societies need a mythology to give emotional meaning to the world in which their people live. A mythology is a sort of codification on the emotional level of people’s attitudes toward life, death, and the entire vast, mysterious universe.

Professor Campbell has shown that there are at least four major functions that a mythology must accomplish.

1. A mythology must induce a feeling of awe and majesty in the people. In science fiction, this is called “a sense of wonder,” the almost child-like thrill of discovering new worlds, new ideas. This “sense of wonder” is the driving spirit behind science fiction; it is what brought tens of millions of viewers into movie theaters to see
Star Wars
and
E.T.
Classic science fiction novels such as Asimov’s
Foundation
series and Bradbury’s
The Martian Chronicles
impart this sense of awe and majesty when they are read for the first time.

2. A mythology must define and uphold a system of the universe, a self-consistent explanation for the phenomena of the world around us. Science fiction’s “system” is, of course, the continuously-expanding body of knowledge we call science. At heart, science is the bedrock of faith on which our society is built. And science fiction is the one field of literature that consistently deals with science and its offspring technology.

Much of science fiction warns against the consequences of allowing technology to run amok. But even in a tale as darkly dystopian as C.M. Kombluth and Frederik Pohl’s
The Space Merchants,
where advertising agencies rule the world, it is not technology that is seen as the danger, but the people who use technology as a weapon against human freedom.

3. A mythology usually supports the establishment. For example, the mythology of ancient Greece apparently originated with the Achaean conquerors of the earlier Mycenaean civilization. When Theseus slew the Minotaur, it represented the triumph of the Achaeans over the Mycenaeans. Science fiction stories steadfastly support the basic established line of Western civilization, the concept that the individual human being is more valuable than the state or the organization. Even in Soviet and Eastern European science fiction, the individual is the focus of the story, and he or she is often in conflict with “the organization.” Behind the Iron Curtain, science fiction is one of the few avenues for social criticism available to writers—and readers.

Science fiction writers tend to project their society’s political systems into their future scenarios. Robert A. Heinlein writes invariably about the plucky, bright, industrious entrepreneur making his fortune despite the bureaucracies of tomorrow. Stanislaw Lem sees a socialist future, but one with room enough for his hero Pirx to exert his individuality.

4. A mythology serves as a crutch to help the individual member of a society through the emotional crises of life, such as the transition from childhood into adulthood, and the inevitability of death. It is difficult to tell if science fiction qualifies on this point, although it may be significant that science fiction has always had its largest readership among the young, the adolescents who are trying to determine just where they fit into our complex society. Critics such as Klein may have missed the point entirely when they castigate science fiction for its “adolescent” point of view. And are not all those stories of superheroes and time-travel and immortality nothing less than an attempt to grapple with the inevitability of death?

In a society where science and technology are such obviously dominant factors, it is natural for a literature that deals with science and technology to be widely read. The future is becoming an obsession with us, largely because we now understand that the problems which beset us can only be solved in the future. The past is gone, the present is but a dimensionless moment; the future is all we have to work with.

Science fiction enthusiasts claim that science fiction is the
only
form of literature that attempts to examine the future; all other forms are backward-looking. They attempt to examine yesterday, not tomorrow.

Be that as it may, science fiction looks to me like a sort of Horatio Alger story: born in the poverty of the pulp magazines, through hard work and sheer drive Our Hero has not only risen to the top, but is now influencing the entire American industry of fiction and entertainment.

No one typifies the Horatio Alger aspect of the field better than Isaac Asimov. Born in Russia, brought to Brooklyn as an infant, raised in a succession of family-owned candy stores, Dr. Asimov has worked hard and steadily, turning out book after book, until now, after more than forty years of effort, he is a Best Selling Author. How does he feel about that?

A bit worried. “Now Doubleday probably thinks my next novel is going to sell 250,000 copies. I don’t know if I can stand this kind of pressure,” says the usually ebullient Dr. Asimov.

But there’s a grin lurking beneath his troubled frown. Above all else, science fiction tends to be optimistic.

The following three short stores are science fiction tales which deal with the here-and-now—almost. “Love Calls” (and “The Angel’s Gift,” which appeared earlier in this book) originally appeared under a pen name. When I was the Editorial Director of Omni magazine, I would occasionally submit a short story to the fiction editor or the editor of The Best of Omni Science Fiction through my agent, using a pen name so that they would not know who the actual author was. Once I left the magazine, though, I could put my “alter ego” into retirement and go back to writing short fiction under my own name.

Branley Hopkins was one of those unfortunate men who had succeeded too well, far too early in life. A brilliant student, he had immediately gone on to a brilliant career as an investment analyst, correctly predicting the booms in microchip electronics and genetic engineering, correctly avoiding the slumps in automobiles and utilities.

Never a man to undervalue his own advice, he had amassed a considerable fortune for himself by the time he was thirty. He spent the next five years enlarging on his personal wealth while he detached himself, one by one, from the clients who clung to him the way a blind man clings to his cane. Several bankruptcies and more than one suicide could be laid at his door, but Branley was the type who would merely step over the corpses, nimbly, without even looking down to see who they might be.

On his thirty-fifth birthday he retired completely from the business of advising other people and devoted his entire attention to managing his personal fortune. He made a private game of it to see if he could indulge his every whim on naught but the interest that his money accrued, without touching the principal.

To his astonishment, he soon learned that the money accumulated faster than his ability to spend it. He was a man of fastidious personal tastes, lean and ascetic-looking in his neatly-trimmed beard and fashionable but severe wardrobe. There was a limit to how much wine, how many women, and how loud a song he could endure. He was secretly amused, at first, that his vices could not keep up with the geometric virtue of compounded daily interest. But in time his amusement turned to boredom, to ennui, to a dry sardonic disenchantment with the world and the people in it.

By the time he was forty he seldom sallied forth from his penthouse condominium. It took up the entire floor of a posh Manhattan tower and contained every luxury and convenience imaginable. Branley decided to cut off as many of the remaining links to the outside world as possible, to become a hermit, but a regally comfortable hermit. For that, he realized, he needed a computer. But not the ordinary kind of computer. Branley decided to have a personalized computer designed to fit his particular needs, a computer that would allow him to live as he wished to, not far from the madding crowd, but apart from it. He tracked down the best and brightest computer designer in the country, never leaving his apartment to do so, and had the young man dragged from his basement office near the San Andreas Fault to the geologic safety of Manhattan.

“Design for me a special computer system based on my individual needs and desires,” Branley commanded the young engineer. “Money is no object.”

The engineer looked around the apartment, a scowl on his fuzzy-cheeked face. Branley sighed as he realized that the uncouth young man would have to spend at least a few days with him. He actually lived in the apartment for nearly a month, then insisted on returning to California.

“I can’t do any creative work here, man,” the engineer said firmly. “Not enough sun.”

Six months passed before the engineer showed up again at Branley’s door. His face shone beatifically. In his hands he held a single small gray metal box.

“Here it is, man. Your system.”

“That?” Branley was incredulous. “That is the computer you designed for me? That little box?”

With a smile that bordered on angelic, the engineer carried the box past an astounded Branley and went straight to his office. He placed the box tenderly on Branley’s magnificent Siamese solid teak desk.

“It’ll do everything you want it to,” the young man said.

Branley stared at the ugly little box. It had no grace to it at all. Just a square of gray metal, with a slight dent in its top. “Where do I plug it in?” he asked as he walked cautiously toward the desk.

“Don’t have to plug it in, man. It operates on milliwaves. The latest. Just keep it here where the sun will fall on it once a week at least and it’ll run indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely?”

“Like, forever.”

“Really?”

The engineer was practically glowing. “You don’t even have to learn a computer language or type input into it. Just tell it what you want in plain English and it’ll program itself. It links automatically to all your other electrical appliances. There’s nothing in the world like it!”

Branley plopped into the loveseat by the windows that overlooked the river. “It had better work in exactly the fashion you describe. After all I’ve spent on you...”

“Hey, not to worry, Mr. Hopkins. This little beauty is going to save you all sorts of money.” Patting the gray box, the engineer enumerated, “It’ll run your lights and heat at maximum efficiency, keep inventory of your kitchen supplies and reorder from the stores automatically when you run low, same thing for your clothes, laundry, dry cleaning, keep track of your medical and dental checkups, handle all your bookkeeping, keep tabs on your stock portfolio daily—or hourly, if you want—run your appliances, write letters, answer the phone...”

He had to draw a breath, and Branley used the moment to get to his feet and start maneuvering the enthusiastic young man toward the front door.

Undeterred, the engineer resumed, “Oh, yeah, it’s got special learning circuits, too. You tell it what you want it to do and it’ll figure out how to do it. Nothing in the world like it, man!”

“How marvelous,” said Branley. “I’ll send you a check after it’s worked flawlessly for a month.” He shooed the engineer out the door.

One month later, Branley told the computer to send a check to the engineer. The young man had been perfectly honest. The little gray box did everything he said it would do, and then some. It understood every word Branford spoke and obeyed like a well-trained genie. It had breakfast ready for him when he arose, no matter what the hour; a different menu each day. With an optical scanner that it suggested Branley purchase, it read all the books in Branley’s library the way a supermarket checkout scanner reads the price on a can of peas, and memorized each volume completely. Branley could now have the world’s classics read to him as he dozed off at night, snug and secure and as happy as a child.

The computer also guarded the telephone tenaciously, never allowing a caller to disturb Branley unless he specified that he would deign to speak to that individual.

On the fifth Monday after the computer had come into his life, Branley decided to discharge his only assistant, Ms. Elizabeth James. She had worked for him as secretary, errand girl, sometimes cook and occasional hostess for the rare parties that he threw. He told the computer to summon her to the apartment, then frowned to himself, trying to remember how long she had been working for him. Severance pay, after all, is determined by length of service.

“How long has Ms. James been in my employ?” he asked the computer.

Immediately the little gray box replied, “Seven years, four months, and eighteen days.”

“Oh! That long?” He was somewhat surprised. “Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it.”

The computer spoke with Branley’s own voice, which issued from whichever speaker he happened to be nearest: one of the television sets or radios, the stereo, or even one of the phones. It was rather like talking to oneself aloud. That did not bother Branley in the slightest. He enjoyed his own company. It was other people that he could do without.

Elizabeth James plainly adored Branley Hopkins. She loved him with a steadfast unquenchable flame, and had loved him since she had first met him, seven years, four months, and eighteen days earlier. She knew that he was cold, bitter-hearted, withdrawn, and self-centered. But she also knew with unshakable certainty that once love had opened his heart, true happiness would be theirs forever. She lived to bring him that happiness. It had become quite apparent to Branley in the first month of her employment that she was mad about him. He told her then, quite firmly, that theirs was a business relationship, strictly employer and employee, and he was not the kind of man to mix business with romance.