i think he will not destroy me as he did his friend the last petal falls
all is black
ALFRED BESTER
My Affair with Science Fiction
He will hate me for saying it, but Alfred Bester is in the running for Crand Old Man of science fiction. His first sale was in 1939 and was followed soon after by unforgettable stories like "Adam and No Eve" and "The Push of a Finger." Is it possible to say that his novel The Demolished Man has been a classic since it was first published. It is possible. When he writes about the world of science fiction he bears listening to. This exercise in autobiography is from the soon to be published book Hell's Cartographers, a collection of similar pieces by other history makers such as Damon Knight and Brian W. Aldiss.
I'm told that some science fiction readers complain that nothing is known about my private life. It's not that I have anything to conceal; it's simply the result of the fact that I'm reluctant to talk about myself because I prefer to listen to others talk about themselves. I'm genuinely interested, and also there's always the chance of picking up something useful. The professional writer is a professional magpie.
Very briefly: I was born on Manhattan Island December 18, 1913, of a middle-class, hard-working family. I was born a Jew but the family had a laissez-faire attitude toward religion and let me pick my own faith for myself. I picked Natural Law. My father was raised in Chicago, always a raunchy town with no time for the God bit. Neither has he. My mother is a quiet Christian Scientist. When I do something that pleases her, she nods and says, "Yes, of course. You were born in Science." I used to make fun of her belief as a kid, and we had some delightful arguments. We still do, while my father sits and smiles benignly. So my home life was completely liberal and iconoclastic.
I went to the last little red schoolhouse in Manhattan (now preserved as a landmark) and to a beautiful new high school on the very peak of Washington Heights (now the scene of cruel racial conflicts). I went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where I made a fool of myself trying to become a Renaissance Man. I refused to specialize and knocked myself out studying the humanities and the scientific disciplines. I was a miserable member of the crew squad, but I was the most successful member of the fencing team.
I'd been fascinated by science fiction ever since Hugo Gernsback's magazines first appeared on the stands. I suffered through the dismal years of space opera when science fiction was written by the hacks of pulp Westerns who merely translated the Lazy X ranch into the Planet X and then wrote the same formula stories, using space pirates instead of cattle rustlers. I welcomed the glorious epiphany of John Campbell, whose Astounding brought about the Golden Age of science fiction.
Ah! Science fiction, science fiction! I've loved it since its birth. I've read it all my life, off and on, with excitement, with joy, sometimes with sorrow. Here's a twelve-year-old kid, hungry for ideas and imagination, borrowing fairy-tale collections from the library---The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Paisley Fairy Book---and smuggling them home under his jacket because he was ashamed to be reading fairy tales at his age. And then came Hugo Gernsback.
I read science fiction piecemeal in those days. I didn't have much allowance, so I couldn't afford to buy the magazines. I would loaf at the newsstand outside the stationery store as though contemplating which magazine to buy. I would leaf through a science fiction magazine, reading rapidly, until the proprietor came out and chased me. A few hours later I'd return and continue where I'd been forced to leave off. There was one hateful kid in summer camp who used to receive the Amazing Quarterly in July. I was next in line, and he was hateful because he was a slow reader.
It's curious that I remember very few of the stories. The H. G. Wells reprints, to be sure, and the very first book I ever bought was the collection of Wells's science fiction short stories. I remember "The Fourth Dimensional Cross Section" (Have I got the title right?) which flabbergasted me with its concept. I think I first read Flatland by A. Square as an Amazing reprint. I remember a cover for a novel titled, I think, The Second Deluge. It showed the survivors of the deluge in a sort of Second Ark gazing in awe at the peak of Mt. Everest now bared naked by the rains. The peak was a glitter of precious gems. I interviewed Sir Edmund Hillary in New Zealand a few years ago and he never said anything about diamonds and emeralds. That gives one furiously to think.
Through high school and college I continued to read science fiction but, as I said, with increasing frustration. The pulp era had set in and most of the stories were about heroes with names like "Brick Malloy" who were inspired to combat space pirates, invaders from other worlds, giant insects, and all the rest of the trash still being produced by Hollywood today. I remember a perfectly appalling novel about a Negro conspiracy to take over the world. These niggers, you see, had invented a serum which turned them white, so they could pass, and they were boring from within. Brick Malloy took care of those black bastards. We've come a long way, haven't we?
There were a few bright moments. Who can forget the impact of Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey"? That unique story inspired an entire vogue for quaint alien creatures in science fiction. "A Martian Odyssey" was one reason why I submitted my first story to Standard Magazines; they had published Weinbaum's classic. Alas, Weinbaum fell apart and degenerated into a second-rate fantasy writer, and died too young to fulfill his original promise.
And then came Campbell who rescued, elevated, gave meaning and importance to science fiction. It became a vehicle for ideas, daring, audacity. Why, in God's name, didn't he come first? Even today science fiction is still struggling to shake off its pulp reputation, deserved in the past but certainly not now. It reminds me of the exploded telegony theory; that once a thoroughbred mare has borne a colt by a nonthoroughbred sire, she can never bear another thoroughbred again. Science fiction is still suffering from telegony.
Those happy golden days! I used to go to secondhand magazine stores and buy back copies of Astounding. I remember a hot July weekend when my wife was away working in a summer stock company and I spent two days thrilling to Van Vogt's Slan and Heinlein's Universe! What a concept, and so splendidly worked out with imagination and remorseless logic! Do you remember "Black Destroyer"? Do you remember Lewis Padgett's "Mimsy Were the Borogroves"? That was originality carried to the fifth power. Do you remember---But it's no use. I could go on and on. The Blue, the Red and the Paisley Fairy Books were gone forever.
After I graduated from the university I really didn't know what I wanted to do with myself. In retrospect I realize that what I needed was a Wanderjahr, but such a thing was unheard of in the States at that time. I went to law school for a couple of years (just stalling) and to my surprise received a concentrated education which far surpassed that of my undergraduate years. After thrashing and loafing, to the intense pain of my parents, who would have liked to see me settled in a career, I finally took a crack at writing a science fiction story which I submitted to Standard Magazines. The story had the ridiculous title of "Diaz-X."
Two editors on the staff, Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff, took an interest in me, I suspect mostly because I'd just finished reading and annotating Joyce's Ulysses and would preach it enthusiastically without provocation, to their great amusement. They told me what they had in mind. Thrilling Wonder was conducting a prize contest for the best story written by an amateur, and so far none of the submissions was worth considering. They thought "Diaz-X" might fill the bill if it was whipped into shape. They taught me how to revise the story into acceptable form and gave it the prize, $50. It was printed with the title, "The Broken Axiom." They continued their professional guidance and I've never stopped being grateful to them.