Dear John,
It has been brought to my attention, by those who have read the story,
that "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" might conceivably be charged with
being a "reader cheater"--_i.e._, that it does not play fair with the
reader, but leads him astray by means of false statements. Naturally, I
feel it me bounden duty to refute such scurrilous and untrue affronts,
and thus save meself from opprobrium.
Therefore, I address what follows to the interested reader:
It cannot be denied that you must have been misled when you read the
story; indeed, I'd be the last to deny it, since I _intended_ that you
should be misled. What I most certainly _do_ deny is any implication
that such misleading was accomplished by the telling of untruths. A
fiction writer is, _by definition_, a professional liar; he makes his
living by telling interesting lies on paper and selling the results to
the highest bidder for publication. Since fiction writing is my
livelihood, I cannot and will not deny that I am an accomplished
liar--indeed, almost an habitual one. Therefore, I feel some small pique
when, on the one occasion on which I stick strictly to the truth, I am
accused of fraud. _Pfui!_ say I; I refute you. "I deny the allegation,
and I defy the alligator!"
To prove my case, I shall take several examples from "Despoilers" and
show that the statements made are perfectly valid. (Please note that I
do not claim any absolute accuracy for such details as quoted dialogue,
except that none of the characters lies. I simply contend that the story
is as accurate as any other good historical novelette. I also might say
here that any resemblance between "Despoilers" and any story picked at
random from the late lamented _Planet Stories_ is purely intentional and
carefully contrived.)
Take the first sentence:
"In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had
been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the
Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged
by the examples of its predecessor."
Perfectly true. By the time of the Renaissance, the nobles of the Holy
Roman Empire knew that their empire was not just a continuation of the
Roman Empire, but a new entity. The old Roman Empire had collapsed in
the Sixth Century, and the _Holy_ Roman Empire, which was actually a
loose confederation of Germanic states, did not come into being until A.
D. 800, when Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) was crowned emperor by the
Pope.
Anyone who wishes to quibble that the date should be postponed for a
century and a half, until the time of the German prince, Otto, may do
so; I will ignore him.
A few paragraphs later, I said:
"Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself
together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And
power was linked solidly to one element, one metal ..."
The metal, as I said later on, was Gold-197.
By "power," of course, I meant political and economic power. In the
Sixteenth Century, that's what almost anyone would have meant. If you
chose to interpret it as meaning "energy per unit time," why, that's
real tough.
Why nail the "power metal" down to an isotope of gold with an atomic
weight of 197? Because that's the only naturally occurring isotope of
gold.
The "Emperor Carl" was, of course, Charles V, who also happened to be
King of Spain, and therefore Pizarro's sovereign. I Germanicized his
name, as I did the others--Francisco Pizarro becomes "Frank," et
cetera--but this is perfectly legitimate. After all, the king's name in
Latin, which was used in all state papers, was _Carolus_; the Spanish
called him _Carlos_, and history books in English call him _Charles_.
Either _Karl_ or _Carl_ is just as legitimate as _Charles_, certainly,
and the same applies to the other names in the story.
As to the title "His Universal Majesty," that's exactly what he _was_
called. It is usually translated as "His Catholic Majesty," but the word
_Catholic_ comes from the Greek _katholikos_, meaning "universal." And,
further on in the story, when the term "Universal Assembly" is used, it
is a direct translation of the Greek term, _Ekklesia Katholikos_, and is
actually a better translation than "Catholic Church," since the English
word _church_ comes from the Greek _kyriakon_, meaning "the house of the
Lord"--in other words, a church _building_, not the organization as a
whole.
Toward the end of Chapter One, I wrote:
"Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the
problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far
none of the processes was commercially feasible."
I think you will admit that the alchemists never found a method of
transmuting the elements--certainly none which was commercially
feasible.
In Chapter Three, the statement that Pizarro left his home--Spain--with
undermanned ships, and had to sneak off illegally before the King's
inspectors checked up on him, is historically accurate. And who can
argue with the statement that "there wasn't a scientist worthy of the
name in the whole outfit"?
At the beginning of Chapter Four, you'll find:
"Due to atmospheric disturbances, the ship's landing was several hundred
miles from the point the commander had originally picked ..." and "...
the ship simply wasn't built for atmospheric navigation."
The adverse winds which drove Pizarro's ships off course were certainly
"atmospheric disturbances," and I defy anyone to prove that a Sixteenth
Century Spanish galleon was built for atmospheric navigation.
And I insist that using the term "carrier" instead of "horse," while
misleading, is not inaccurate. However, I _would_ like to know just what
sort of picture the term conjured up in the reader's mind. In Chapter
Ten, in the battle scene, you'll find the following:
"The combination [of attackers from both sides], plus the fact that the
heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him [the commander]. He
toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the carrier parted
company.
"Without a human hand at its controls, the carrier automatically moved
away from the mass of struggling fighters and came to a halt well away
from the battle."
To be perfectly honest, it's somewhat of a strain on my mind to imagine
anyone building a robot-controlled machine as good as all that, and then
giving the drive such poor protection that he can fall off of it.
One of the great screams from my critics has been occasioned by the
fact that I referred several times to the Spaniards as "Earthmen." I
can't see why. In order not to confuse the reader, I invariably referred
to them as the "_invading_ Earthmen," so as to make a clear distinction
between them and the _native_ Earthmen, or Incas, who were native to
Peru. If this be treachery, then make the most of it.
In other words, I contend that I simply did what any other good
detective story writer tries to do--mislead the reader without lying to
him. Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," for instance, uses
the device of telling the story from the murderer's viewpoint, in the
first person, without revealing that he _is_ the murderer. Likewise,
John Dickson Carr, in his "Nine Wrong Answers" finds himself forced to
deny that he has lied to the reader, although he admits that one of his
characters certainly lied. Both Carr and Christie told the absolute
truth--within the framework of the story--and left it to the reader to
delude himself.
It all depends on the viewpoint. The statement, "We all liked Father
Goodheart very much" means one thing when said by a member of his old
parish in the United States, which he left to become a missionary. It
means something else again when uttered by a member of the tribe of
cannibals which the good Father attempted unsuccessfully to convert.
Similarly, such terms as "the gulf between the worlds," "the new world,"
and "the known universe" have one meaning to a science-fictioneer, and
another to a historian. Semantics, anyone?
In Chapter Ten, right at the beginning, there is a conversation between
Commander Frank and Frater Vincent, and "agent of the Assembly" (read:
_priest_). If the reader will go back over that section, keeping in mind
the fact that what they are "actually" talking about are the Catholic
Church and the Christian religion _as seen from the viewpoint of a
couple of fanatically devout Sixteenth Century Spaniards_, he will
understand the method I used in presenting the whole story.
Let me quote:
"Mentally, the commander went through the symbol-patterns that he had
learned as a child--the symbol-patterns that brought him into direct
contact with the Ultimate Power, the Power that controlled not only the
spinning of atoms and the whirling of electrons in their orbits, but the
workings of probability itself."
Obviously, he is reciting the _Pater Noster_ and the _Ave Maria_. The
rest of the sentence is self-explanatory.
So is the following:
"Once indoctrinated into the teachings of the Universal Assembly, any
man could tap that power to a greater or lesser degree, depending on his
mental control and ethical attitude. At the top level, a first-class
adept could utilize that Power for telepathy, psychokinesis, levitation,
teleportation, and other powers that the commander only vaguely
understood."
It doesn't matter whether _you_ believe in the miracles attributed to
many of the Saints; Pizarro certainly did. His faith in that Power was
as certain as the modern faith in the power of the atomic bomb.
As a matter of fact, it was very probably that hard, unyielding Faith
which made the Sixteenth Century Spaniard the almost superhuman being
that he was. Only Spain of the Sixteenth Century could have produced the
Conquistadors or such a man as St. Ignatius Loyola, whose learned,
devout, and fanatically militant Society of Jesus struck fear into the
hearts of Protestant and Catholic Princes alike for the next two
centuries.
The regular reader of Astounding may remember that I gave another
example of the technique of truthful misdirection in "The Best Policy,"
(July, 1957). An Earthman, captured by aliens, finds himself in a
position in which he is unable to tell even the smallest lie. But by
telling the absolute truth, he convinces the aliens that _homo sapiens_
is a race of super-duper supermen. He does it so well that the aliens
surrender without attacking, even before the rest of humanity is aware
of their existence.
The facts in "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" remain. They _are_ facts.
Francisco Pizarro and his men--an army of less than two
hundred--actually _did_ inflict appalling damage on the Inca armies,
even if they were outnumbered ten to one, and with astonishingly few
losses of their own. They did it with sheer guts, too; their equipment
was not too greatly superior to that of the Peruvians, and by the time
they reached the Great Inca himself, none of the Peruvians believed that
the invaders were demons or gods. But in the face of the Spaniards'
determined onslaught, they were powerless.
The assassination scene at the end is almost an exact description of
what happened. It _did_ take a dozen men in full armor to kill the
armorless Pizarro, and even then it took trickery and treachery to do
it.
Now, just to show how fair I was--to show how I scrupulously refrained
from lying--I will show what a sacrifice I made for the sake of truth.
If you'll recall, in the story, the dying Pizarro traces the Sign of the
Cross on the floor in his own blood, kisses it, and says "_Jesus!_"
before he dies. This is in strict accord with every history on the
subject I could find.
But there is a legend to the effect that his last words were somewhat
different. I searched the New York Public Library for days trying to
find one single historian who would bear out the legend; I even went so
far as to get a librarian who could read Spanish and another whose
German is somewhat better than mine to translate articles in foreign
historical journals for me. All in vain. But if I _could_ have
substantiated the legend, the final scene would have read something like
this:
Clawing at his sword-torn throat, the fearless old soldier brought
his hand away coated with the crimson of his own blood. Falling
forward, he traced the Sign of the Cross on the stone floor in
gleaming scarlet, kissed it, and then glared up at the men who
surrounded him, his eyes hard with anger and hate.
"I'm going to Heaven," he said, his voice harsh and whispery. "And
_you_, you _bastards_, can go to _Hell_!"
It would have made one hell of an ending--but it had to be sacrificed in
the interests of Truth.
So I rest my case.
I will even go further than that; I defy anyone to point out a single
out-and-out lie in the whole story. G'wan--I _dare_ ya!
(SECRET ASIDE TO THE READER; J. W. C., Jr., PLEASE DO _NOT_ READ!)
Ah, but wait! There _is_ a villain in the piece!
_I_ did not lie to you, no. But you were lied to, all the same.
By whom?
By none less than that conniving arch-fiend, John W. Campbell, Jr.,
that's who!
Wasn't it he who bought the story?
And wasn't it he who, with malice aforethought, published it in a
package which was plainly labeled Science Fiction?
And, therefore, didn't you have every right to think it _was_ science
fiction?
Sure you did!
I am guilty of nothing more than weakness; my poor, frail sense of
ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to
become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his
own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of us is perfect, I suppose.