Sometimes it's a little hard to get people to realize that not only has
the world changed in the past, but that it is changing now, and will
change in the future. In fact, it takes something on the order of an
atomic bomb to blast them out of their congenital complacency.
And it took the literally shocking violence of the atomic bomb to make
the general public understand the fact that science-fiction is _not_
"pseudo-science" (that's what you find in Sunday Supplements--fiction,
pretending to be science) but an entirely different breed of
thing--fiction stories based on science, and attempting to extrapolate
the curves of past development into future years. On August 6, 1945,
people suddenly discovered that that fool fantasy stuff about atomic
bombs hadn't been quite so fantastic as they had--well, to be brutally
frank, _hoped_.
Their immediate reactions were that a good guess or two, a chance,
coincidental correspondence between fiction-fantasy and fact, didn't
mean much. Still, relatively few people have learned to understand how
science-fiction originates--why it does successfully predict.
The answer is, actually, that science-fiction's prophecy is to a large
extent phony. It isn't prophecy at all, not in the true sense. It's
more like the astronomer's prophecy that there will be an eclipse of
the sun visible for so many seconds, on such and such a day, at a
specified point. The astronomer's prediction is based on information he
has that is not generally recognized--though anyone who wants to get it
can go dig it out of the text books.
The science-fiction author predicts in the same general way. With the
knowledge of what has been accomplished in the laboratories, and a
general understanding of what people have wanted in the past, want
today, and will probably want in the future, it's not hard to guess how
those laboratory facts will be applied.
By 1915 it was generally known among scientists that there was
an enormous store of energy locked in every pound of matter. Men
have, sadly, wanted more deadly killing instruments for all human
history--and will pay much more for a means of killing an enemy than
they will to save a friend's life. From these facts it's a simple
prediction that atomic energy will some day be released--and probably
first in the form of a bomb.
Science-fiction made such predictions. When the laboratories found
U-235 was probably capable of a chain reaction, the science-fictioneer
began saying U-235 bombs instead of the more generalized "atomic" bomb.
The essentials for good prophetic fiction--and hence good
science-fiction--are fairly easily stated.
It takes a technically inclined mind.
That mind must be intimately acquainted with one or more
technologies--and by that I mean both the branch of theoretical science
and that branch's engineering applications as of today.
Imagination is a third requirement; if imagination is put first,
fantasy, not science-fiction, results.
An understanding of how political and social set-ups react to
technological changes must be added, for the best types of
science-fiction.
George O. Smith's "Venus Equilateral" series represents an excellent
progressive development of a single line of extrapolation.
George O. Smith is a radio engineer; at the time the Venus Equilateral
series started, he was working on radar equipment and Army
communications radio units. It was only natural that he should pick the
field of communications engineering as his line for development--he
was intimately acquainted with the problems and possibilities of that
field, and with the past history of the art.
"QRM Interplanetary," the first of the stories, appeared in Astounding
Science-Fiction to start the series; typically, it serves merely to
introduce the concept of the equilateral relay station as a necessary
link in interplanetary communications. But the story has been so
constructed that the working out of its plot gives a good concept of
the general nature of the station, and of its functioning. Still,
the story is essentially simply a suggestion that interplanetary
communications will require the construction of a station in space to
relay messages.
The immediately following stories of the series introduce successive
problems of the purely technical art; only gradually are the associated
social and political reactions of the rest of that civilization of
the future brought in. From the start, the author's problem has been
simplified by picking a small, almost wholly isolated segment of the
culture, so that only the technology itself need be discussed.
As the series develops, however, more and more the social and political
effects of the developments are brought into the picture, until, in the
end, practically nothing but the social-political effects remain. The
final story of the series to appear in Astounding Science-Fiction was
devoted entirely to the cultural, rather than technical, problems of
the matter transmitter.
In essence, Venus Equilateral represents the basic pattern of
science-fiction--which is, equally, the basic pattern of technology.
First starting from the isolated instance, the effects spread outward
through the culture. Scientific methodology involves the proposition
that a well-constructed theory will not only explain every known
phenomenon, but will also predict new and still undiscovered phenomena.
Science-fiction tries to do much the same--and write up, in story form,
what the results look like when applied not only to machines, but to
human society as well.
The science-fiction writer can be extremely accurate in the guesses
he makes of future progress--and yet there are factors that may make a
complete failure of his prediction.
George O. Smith is a radio engineer; radio is his field of technology.
As such, his predictions tend to be based on the extrapolation of a
single line of activity. But it may be that all his predictions may
come to nothing due to a development in an entirely separate field of
technical progress. It might be, for instance, that Dr. Rhine's work on
extra-sensory perception developed into a science, that equipment was
developed capable of recording, receiving, amplifying and broadcasting
whatever strange energy form is involved--and that telepathy completely
displaced radio engineering. The atomic pile is the only form of
nuclear energy machine we have available; because war-time engineering
was operating under forced draft, and war-time basic science was in
abeyance, we have no basic science from which to predict more advanced
forms of energy-harnessing devices. But it is quite conceivable that,
long before we reach Mars and Venus to establish colonies, we will
achieve the ultimate in energy-harnesses for atomic energy--a small,
sealed box with two projecting terminals from which unlimited electric
power can be drawn directly.
Also, any extrapolation whatsoever is, necessarily, based on the
implied, but unstated proposition, "If things go on as they have
been...." The proposition is, right now, open to serious question. For
one thing, whenever science becomes engineering, it meets legislation
made by men. Now the laws of Nature are predictable, understandable,
and absolute. They don't depend on the viewpoint of the individual,
or the social theory popular at the time, or the Majority Leader's
severe chronic indigestion. The patent law very definitely does. At the
moment, as a matter of fact, an extrapolation of the trend of patent
law suggests that half the Venus Equilateral series will be rendered
plotless; there won't be any patents.
The science-fiction writer is, therefore, faced with a simply stated
problem: Taking off from the solid ground of known laboratory science,
sighting along the back-track of past experience, he launches into the
future.
But he may come down in a never-will-be future, because somebody
harnessed telepathy, and threw civilization off on an entirely
unexpected track. Or because the Supreme Court, currently invalidating
24 out of every 25 patents brought before it, has eliminated the
institution of patents. Or because a new social theory has decided that
no scientific advance should be permitted for a period of 250 years
while a great program of meditation and navel-inspection instead of
Naval inspection is pushed forward.
Nevertheless, science-fiction can be not only fun, but an extremely
valuable experience. If a friend steps out of a dimly lighted doorway
it may provoke a "Yipe!" of momentary fear, or a casual "Hi," dependent
entirely on whether or not you expected to meet him there.
The science-fiction reader is a lot less apt to jump in senseless fear
and alarm when a new process comes from some unexpected doorway--he'll
have been expecting it, and recognize a friend or an enemy--which can
be very helpful to survival.