Science Fiction

Press, Volume C, Issue 29454, 4 March 1961, Page 3

Science Fiction

Best SF Two: Science Fiction Stories. Edited by Edmund Crispin. Faber. 296 pp, (Paper covered edition.)

Science fiction brings a special problem to the literary critic. Before he can evaluate particular stories he must assess the genre itself. Science fiction is a modern development of an ancient kind of writing, fantasy, which might include Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp.” “The Tempest” and parts of Aristophanes and the Odyssey. C. S. Lewis and H. G. Wells have demonstrated that such fantasy in its modem form is not incompatible with literary quality. This high quality is not often reached as the book under review will show. The writers are too singlemindedly interested in their section of science, usually physics or biology. They have not had time to become acquainted with the English literary tradition and so have not learned to write. This is betrayed by a violence of style suggesting impotence: “They were leaning across the table at each other, angry eyes nailed together” or “Abhorrence jerked up inside him like retching.” The stories are no doubt read for the ide» behind them by people not over-sensitive to style, but even from this view there is a limitation. We are taken into the future to admire or be appalled by some new development in physics or biology or some interstqjlar

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invasion, but find this future world surprisingly unchanged but for a few technical gadgets. Since the stories are almost always American, it is not surprising that the United States remains undisputed top country; it is more surprising that spacemen speak the current slang of the nineteenfifties and work for companies operating in an economic and political atmosphere which shows no development from that of the American postWorld War Two situation. Behind the cosmic scenery we glimpse the familiar brick wall of the local stage. We recall Julius Vogel’s science fiction, “A.D. 2000,” and its dominating political problem of votes for women.

On the credit side it can be said that several stories in this selection have a genuinely interesting idea. A story by Arthur C. Clark, "The Nine Billion Names of God,” combines a particularly good idea with delicate competence in the writing which makes the story stand out Even more skilfully written is C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Alter at Midnight” which is almost over-literary but gains as science from the author’s feeling for language in that the talk of the characters, though spacemen of the future, has an authentic ring. Kombluth realises intuitively how language will adjust itself to such a development as space travel His space travellers do not talk in the polsyllables of theoretical physics.