Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 2

  It’s easy to get the impression from some literary anthologies that writing is an entirely solitary profession, and that most writers lock themselves in garretts and work in a vacuum. Science fiction doesn’t get written that way. It’s a small, incestuous, gossipy field and always has been. By and large everyone knows everyone else. People can be amazingly supportive or carry grudges for generations. Drop by the bar at a literary convention and you’ll run into writers telling stories and kicking ideas around, in much the same way that if you dropped into the right bar in the seventeenth century you’d run into Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe drinking and telling stories and kicking ideas around. I’ve tried to make this book comprehensive, but also to convey a sense of the relationship between writers, editors, and fans that has made science fiction so distinctive over the last century.

  * * * *

  Before anyone else, I need to extend a broad thanks to all of the writers who agreed to allow me to reprint their work at rates far below what they deserved, in the interest of making an inexpensive science fiction textbook available to students. Even in a two-million-word book there were a few painful omissions, and a few writers had to be left out because no ebook rights were available.

  While I mostly worked directly with writers in securing story rights, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to a number of literary agents. Most literary agents prefer not to represent authors for story sales, since they generally lose money on them. (The payments are far less than the time required to represent their clients.) Sometimes it’s necessary, as in the case of literary estates where there is no author to work with directly. I am deeply appreciative of all the agents who went out of their way to make sure this book could come together in a way that showcased their clients and remained affordable to students. I especially want to thank Vaughne Lee Hansen of the Virginia Kidd Agency, who has more writers in the book than any other agent but remained cheerful and helpful throughout. Eleanor Wood was involved in the project at a very early stage, since she is the agent for SFWA as well as many writers I wanted to include. That meant extra time getting the boilerplate contracts right and making sure things got off on the right foot. I’m grateful to Eleanor and her assistant Maria Leone Karastergiou of the Spectrum Literary Agency. I also want to thank Kay McCauley of the Pimlico Agency; Merrilee Heifetz and Miriam Newman at Writers House; Russ Galen and Ann Behar at Scovil Galen Ghosh; Jane Judd; Katy Loffman at Pollinger, Limited; Diana Finch; Colin Smythe; John Silbersack and Nicole Robson at Trident Media; and Linn Prentis.

  Editorial assistants Lauren Cunningham, Sheri Giglio, and Colleen Lynch did yeoman research work during the book’s last stages, as well as taking on many other small projects that helped make Sense of Wonder a better book.

  John Betancourt of The Wildside Press stepped forward and picked up the book when its original publisher backed out of the project. I couldn’t have hoped for a more supportive publisher or one who shared my vision any more closely.

  Amy Goldschlager and Dennis McCunney made suggestions that helped shape the earliest forms of Sense of Wonder, as it began its evolution from raw idea to its present form. Elizabeth Glover lent both formative suggestions and her design expertise.

  Many colleagues at UConn lent support in various ways, particularly Wayne Franklin, A. Harris Fairbanks, Ruth Fairbanks, and Sydney Plum. Richard Bleiler, UConn’s superb Humanities Librarian, had a wealth of suggestions that helped widen the scope of the book, and contributed an essay on Hugo Gernsback. I am also indebted to Seo-Young Jennie Chu at Queens CUNY for suggestions that strengthened the book’s poetry component enormously. John Kessel at NC State University and Ayana Abdallah at the University of Houston both made excellent story and author suggestions, in addition to contributing their own work to the book. Don Riggs at Drexel was one of the first contributors and I leaned on him a number of times for suggestions. Likewise Thomas Bertonneau, Kyle Bishop, Laurel Bollinger, Samuel Collins, Sibelan Forrester, Carol Franko, Sonja Fritsche, Andrew Gordon, Darren Harris-Fain, Mack Hassler, Karen Hellekson, Ericka Hoagland, Lee Hobbs, Jay Ingrao, Calvin Johnson, James McGrath, Katherine Pandora, Twila Papay, Amerdeep Singh, Breyan Strickler, and Lisa Swanstrom all helped to improve the book in important ways with their feedback and suggestions above and beyond the expertise they contributed in their essays.

  Mike Resnick was the first author who committed to the book, even before I finalized the agreement with the publisher; I went to him for contract advice and ended up with that and much more. John Joseph Adams, Faye Ringel, Stan Robinson, Darrell Schweitzer, Gordon van Gelder, and Michael J. Walsh were enormously helpful in tracking down difficult-to-find writers (in addition to Stan’s and Darrell’s own contributions to the book).

  In addition to the academic essay contributors, Betsy Wollheim of DAW Books, Toni Weiskopf of Baen Books, Hildy Silverman of Space & Time, Ian Randal Strock of SFScope, and reviewers Dan Kimmel and Tom Easton all generously contributed essays, suggestions, and support to the book.

  A number of students at UConn and elsewhere volunteered to read over drafts of the introductory essays to help catch anything that might be confusing to undergraduates who were new to science fiction. I especially want to thank Emily Bonner, Georgios Katsikis, Jeremy Lawson, Kim Lawson, Sam Martin, Ryan McLean, Arthur Nowell III, Chelsea Raiola, Katelyn Wilson, and Myles Udland.

  PART 1: Early Science Fiction

  ( –1926)

  By and large, books were expensive and published in comparatively small numbers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mass market paperpacks were still well into the future, and people did most of their fiction reading in magazines and even newspapers (which were expensive as well, but not as pricy as books). Before the middle of the nineteenth century, fiction reading was looked down on in polite society, but that changed with the enormous popularity of Charles Dickens (in much the same way J. K. Rowling made it acceptable for adults to read children’s fantasy in the late twentieth century).

  While science fiction wasn’t yet thought of as a genre, stories using proto-SF themes weren’t all that unusual. There wasn’t much actual science in works by Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, but they were certainly speculative in a way that would later cause writer and critic Brian Aldiss to label Shelley’s Frankenstein the first science fiction novel. Other writers used science fictional images or ideas in otherwise mainstream works, or wrote quasi-allegorical utopias and dystopias set in distant places or times.

  By the late nineteenth century, many recognizable science fictional tropes had begun to appear. The field had its first star authors in Jules Verne, writing near-future technothrillers, and H. G. Wells, writing more speculative social and military SF with deeply political themes. Both of those threads continue to be hugely influential on SF today; naturally, Verne and Wells politely despised each other’s writing choices, a tradition that also continues into the present.

  In the early twentieth century, Edgar Rice Burroughs became fantastically wealthy by writing (among other things) planetary romances. There’s no more science in John Carter’s trip to Mars than there was in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court a generation earlier; both characters have inexplicable out-of-body journeys allowing them to journey in space or time. Once on Mars, however, Carter’s swashbuckling experiences on the vast canvas of the Martian planet embody a sense of adventure that’s extraordinarily appealing in the increasingly mechanized world that World War I-era readers lived in.

  EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

  (1875–1950)

  The mythology of Edgar Rice Burroughs can be a bit misleading. Supposedly he was a failed pencil salesman, who thought he could do better than what he was reading in the pulp magazines, and went on to become the biggest-selling writer in America. (That part is true.)

  No one wrote more popular adventure fiction than Burroughs, and in creating both Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars he made enormous contributions to both fantasy and science fi
ction. But his qualifications for the role were somewhat better than the mythology. Son of a Civil War officer and successful businessman, Burroughs attended (and later instructed) at a military academy and served in the 7th Cavalry before a heart condition ended his military career. He drifted into a variety of jobs before beginning to write seriously at age thirty-five.

  A Princess of Mars was his first success, netting him $400 (a huge amount in 1912) for its serialized magazine publication. Tarzan of the Apes came out the same year to even bigger success. Burroughs assumed an extravagent lifestyle, which he paid for by writing three books a year for the next two decades, many of them adapted into films. He eventually bought a publishing house and a vast ranch (now Tarzana, California) and lived a life of adventure that rivaled some of his characters: marrying an actress, moving to Hawaii, becoming the oldest war correspondent to serve in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and so on. He eventually died in bed while reading a comic book.

  A PRINCESS OF MARS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  First published in All-Story Magazine, February 1912. Original title “Under the Moons of Mars” by Normal Bean

  FOREWORD

  To the Reader of this Work:

  In submitting Captain Carter’s strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.

  My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent at my father’s home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack.

  He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of the world. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

  He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.

  His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often heard my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

  When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning, and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way. He was, when others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his manuscript years afterward.

  He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied. As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them at all.

  He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York, where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited him once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York market—my father and I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed he was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this manuscript.

  He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he wished me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a compartment in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I would find his will there and some personal instructions which he had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.

  After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal. I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never understood that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious man.

  Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to come to him at once. I had always been his favorite among the younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his demand.

  I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to drive me out to Captain Carter’s he replied that if I was a friend of the Captain’s he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman attached to an adjoining property.

  For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to his place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body and of his affairs.

  I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study. The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it. It lay, he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when he showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical one where I had seen him on those other nights, with his arms raised in supplication to the skies.

  There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a local physician the coroner’s jury quickly reached a decision of death from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told me I would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar indeed, but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was able.

  He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming, and that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he previously had had constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated. The instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this was carried out just as he directed, even in secrecy if necessary.

  His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after his death.

  A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring lock which can be opened only from the inside.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  CHAPTER I

  ON THE ARIZONA HILLS

  I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.

  And because of this conviction I have determined to w
rite down the story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an Arizona cave.

  I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

  My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of Virginia. At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain’s commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.