Introduction
John W. Campbell, Jr.
Every editor is always pleased to hear from one of his regular, good authors. Being as human as his readers, he, too, tends to read first stories arriving from known authors; in reading a magazine, most people do the same thing—read first the stories by the authors they know and like. But the editor’s real pleasure comes when, from that pile of manuscripts from unknowns—technically known as the “slush pile”—a manuscript of real impact and value appears.
Bob Heinlein, completely unknown, sent in a yarn called “Life-Line”—and gave me that pleasure. You’ll read it yourself in this book—but you won’t have the pleasure I did, because you know beforehand that it’s a good story, or it wouldn’t be here.
When such a new star appears, the editor’s next worry and wonder is “Can he repeat—or is he another one-shot?” There are a lot of men who have one good story; having told it, they lapse dismally back into mediocrity. Heinlein, however, was no one-shot, he never did repeat—he progressed. Many of the readers of this book are old-time science-fictioneers, many are newcomers to the field. To the old timers, some realization of Heinlein’s achievement has already come. To the newcomers, reading these stories, the quality of workmanship displayed conceals itself. A really good acrobat makes all his feats seem easy, natural, graceful movements—his technique is so smoothly flawless that the audience never fully appreciates the near-impossibility of the act. Similarly, once a master workman has shown how to handle a problem in story technique, the answer seems so easy, natural and simple that the actuality of a major literary invention is completely missed.
This is the first volume of the Future History series; it is worthwhile here to consider the problem of science-fiction presentation, and point out the easily overlooked neatness of Heinlein’s solutions. For Heinlein was one of the major molders of the science-fiction medium.
First, science-fiction is an extremely difficult medium in which to produce good work—really good work. In the story of here-and-now, the author starts with the reader already coached on the background. The author need only say “New York City,” and the reader has a sort of mental vision montage of skyscrapers, Broadway theaters, East Side slums and millions of people. If the author mentions “taxi,” a very real mental image of a taxicab is called to mind in the reader’s memory.
But if the science-fiction author says “Luna City”—there is no mental image whatsoever, save a very vague association with the full moon riding in a night sky, as seen from Earth. If the author has laid his scene a century hence, and mentions a taxiplane—no mental image results. Helicopter? Antigravity mechanism? Some sort of repulsion beams? Rocket-type drive? Atomic engine, or gasoline powered? Nothing—no image, no conception of the limitations, abilities, or characteristics.
This sort of problem isn’t limited to those two things, of course; the entire background against which the story is to be acted out is completely unknown to the reader. Where a here-and-now short-story writer need only develop his characters, the reader supplying in full detail the background, the science-fiction short-story writer must first supply background, and then character before he can tell his story.
The Romans had human slavery; the Middle Ages called it serfdom. And neither bore any marked resemblance to Colonial America’s institution of slavery. Here, in a period of some 2000 years, there has been a vast alteration in the social pattern that we can all understand. In India we have the caste system, and the Untouchables. In China, one of the supreme disgraces is to have someone commit suicide on your doorstep.
True, human nature doesn’t change over the years—but human nature is a reaction to group mores and the cultural pattern. Those do change, and change drastically. The people of one South Pacific island hold in highest esteem the man who can lie, cheat, murder, steal and blackmail most successfully. The basic of human nature is to win and hold the admiration of friends in the group; if murder, dishonesty and blackmail are held to be virtues—the motivations of a man are different.
Cultural patterns change; one of the things Heinlein “invented,” was the use of that fact. But to do so, it was necessary to invent a technique that would permit an author, in the course of a story, to build up not only characters, but also to give the reader an understanding of the cultural pattern, since the characters must react in normal, human-nature fashion, to that pattern, not on the basis of our cultural pattern.
H. G. Wells did something of the sort in some of his novels. But Wells’ method was to spend two chapters or so describing, for the reader, the cultural pattern he wanted to operate against. In the leisurely ’90s and early twentieth century, that was permissible. The reader accepted it. Long descriptive passages were common. But the development of literary techniques in the last third of a century has changed that; stage techniques, where long character-descriptions are ruled out, have moved into the novel field. Today, the reader won’t stand for pages of description of what the author thinks the character is like; let the character act, and show his character.
That’s not too tough an assignment—provided the author and reader are talking about characters against a mutually understood cultural background. But in science-fiction, the problem is a dilly. Briefly stated, the science-fiction author must put over to the reader (1), the mores and patterns of the cultural background, (2), interwoven with that—stemming from it, and in turn forcing it into existence—the technological background and then, finally, the characters. He may not use long descriptive passages for any of this necessary material.
The cross-influence of cultural patterns and mores on technological background is one of the prime fields of exploration for science-fiction. The invention of the cotton gin made unnecessary the slave-labor engaged in separating cotton from the seeds—but so cheapened and increased the demand for cotton that more slaves were needed for the field work. Had an efficient mechanical cotton-picker and weed-killer, like those available today, been invented in 1850, the institution of slavery would have been uneconomic, and an entirely different cultural pattern would have grown up in the South.
So long as hand tools were the only way of manufacturing, the corporation and the labor union alike were impossible. When technology advanced to the point of developing a half-million dollar machine for producing a ten-cent article, both became necessary. This interaction of technology and social pattern works both ways, of course. The invention of the machine to produce zippers is dependent on the social custom of wearing complex clothing.
This complexity of interaction of technology and social custom must then be added to the third factor: the reaction of human nature to the resultant mixture. There is the true field of science-fiction—and the difficulty of handling the problem, the near impossibility of doing it well, becomes evident.
Heinlein was one of the first to develop techniques of story-telling that do it. Like the highly skilled acrobat, he makes his feats seem the natural, easy, simple way—but after you’ve finished and enjoyed one of his stories—“The Roads Must Roll” for example—notice how much of the cultural-technological pattern he has put over, without impressing you, at any point, with a two-minute lecture on the pattern of the time. It’s a fine action yarn—with an almost incredible mass of discussion somehow slipped in between without interrupting the flow of action.
Finally, Heinlein was one of the first to build up the description of cultural background to its logical point. He developed a carefully mapped out “history of the future,” a succession of events which serve as the great, broad background against which these stories are laid. For the casual reader of the magazine, each story is complete in itself. But for the regular reader, the individual stories added up one by one into an even larger, even stronger structure.
But all this talk of the technical business of story-telling gives a false impression. These stories do a good job of presenting a new cultural pattern—but that’s not why they’re worth reading. They’re good stories. That’s important. I have dwelt on their technique primarily because they are such smooth work that the reader is apt to miss completely the precision work behind the swift-moving, smoothly told yarn.
The important thing is that these, sirs, are high adventure. The high adventure of the years to come—the years we, unfortunately, may not live to see. These are a window on tomorrow; a television set tuned to the future. But we lack the key to the door that would let us walk through into that future; we must only watch and listen to the highest of all adventure—the conquest of the stars!
Westfield, N.J.
21 September 1949