I didn't altogether lose touch with science fiction; I did book reviews for Fantasy & Science Fiction under Bob Mills's editorship and later Avram Davidson's. Unfortunately, my standards had become so high that I seemed to infuriate the fans who wanted special treatment for science fiction. My attitude was that science fiction was merely one of many forms of fiction and should be judged by the standards which apply to all. A silly story is a silly story whether written by Robert Heinlein or Norman Mailer. One enraged fan wrote in to say that I was obviously going through change of life.
Alas, all things must come to an end. Holiday failed after a robust twenty-five years; my eyes failed, like poor Congreve's; and here I am, here I am, back in my workshop again, immured and alone, and so turning to my first love, my original love, science fiction. I hope it's not too late to rekindle the affair. Ike Asimov once said to me, "Alfie, we broke new trails in our time but we have to face the fact that we're over the hill now." I hope not, but if it's true, I'll go down fighting for a fresh challenge.
What am I like? Here's as honest a description of myself as possible. You come to my workshop, a three-room apartment, which is a mess, filled with books, mss., typewriters, telescopes, microscopes, reams of typing paper, chemical glassware. We live in the apartment upstairs, and my wife uses my kitchen for a storeroom. This annoys me; I used to use it as a laboratory. Here's an interesting sidelight. Although I'm a powerful drinker I won't permit liquor to be stored there; I won't have booze in my workshop.
You find me on a high stool at a large drafting table editing some of my pages. I'm probably wearing flimsy pajama bottoms, an old shirt and am barefoot; my customary at-home clothes. You see a biggish guy with dark brown hair going grey, a tight beard nearly all white and the dark brown eyes of a sad spaniel. I shake hands, seat you, hoist myself on the stool again and light a cigarette, always chatting cordially about anything and everything to put you at your ease. However, it's possible that I like to sit higher than you because it gives me a psychological edge---I don't think so, but I've been accused of it.
My voice is a light tenor (except when I'm angry; then it turns harsh and strident) and is curiously inflected. In one sentence I can run up and down an octave. I have a tendency to drawl my vowels. I've spent so much time abroad that my speech pattern may seem affected, for certain European pronunciations cling to me. I don't know why. GA-rahj for garage, the French "r" in the back of the throat, and if there's a knock on the door I automatically holler, "Avanti!" a habit I picked up in Italy.
On the other hand my speech is larded with the customary profanity of the entertainment business, as well as Yiddish words and professional phrases. I corrupted the WASP Holiday office. It was camp to have a blond junior editor from Yale come into my office and say, "Alfie, we're having a tsimmis with the theater piece. That goniff won't rewrite." What you don't know is that I always adapt my speech pattern to that of my vis-à-vis in an attempt to put him at his ease. It can vary anywhere from burley (burlesque) to Phi Beta Kappa.
I try to warm you by relating to you, showing interest in you, listening to you. Once I sense that you're at your ease I shut up and listen. Occasionally I'll break in to put a question, argue a point, or ask you to enlarge on one of your ideas. Now and then I'll say, "Wait a minute, you're going too fast. I have to think about that." Then I stare into nowhere and think hard. Frankly, I'm not lightning, but a novel idea can always launch me into outer space. Then I pace excitedly, exploring it out loud.
What I don't reveal is the emotional storm that rages within me. I have my fair share of frustrations and despairs, but I was raised to show a cheerful countenance to the world and suffer in private. Most people are too preoccupied with their own troubles to be much interested in yours. Do you remember Viola's lovely line in Twelfth Night? "And, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief."
I have some odd mannerisms. I use the accusing finger of a prosecuting attorney as an exclamation point to express appreciation for an idea or a witticism. I'm a "toucher," hugging and kissing men and women alike, and giving them a hard pat on the behind to show approval. Once I embarrassed my boss, the Holiday editor-in-chief, terribly. He'd just returned from a junket to India and, as usual, I breezed into his office and gave him a huge welcoming hug and kiss. Then I noticed he had visitors there. My boss turned red and told them, "Alfie Bester is the most affectionate straight in the world."
I'm a faker, often forced to play the scene. In my time I've been mistaken for a fag, a hardhat, a psychiatrist, an artist, a dirty old man, a dirty young man, and I always respond in character and play the scene. Sometimes I'm compelled to play opposites---my fast to your slow, my slow to your fast---all this to the amusement and annoyance of my wife. When we get home she berates me for being a liar and all I can do is laugh helplessly while she swears she'll never trust me again.
I do laugh a lot, with you and at myself, and my laughter is loud and uninhibited. I'm a kind of noisy guy. But don't ever be fooled by me even when I'm clowning. That magpie mind is always looking to pick up something.
NAOMI MITCHISON
Out of the Waters
To Naomi Mitchison all life is one. In her lifetime circle of friends are her adopted tribes-people in Botswana and Lawrence of Arabia. Around her home in Scotland is a great farm where all animal life is respected, where the death of a small deer that invaded the kitchen garden is felt as much as that of a cow dead of bracken poisoning. It is not sentimentality at all but realism—for all life is one. As in this story.
It was of course their own doing. Not their fault; that would be meaningless. But when they crawled out of water, when they started to copulate on land, developing arms and legs and at last brains and hands, the thing was there. Communicating through air by voices they lost communication through mutually touching water; they lost the great echo belts far down round our liquid-enveloped mother; that made what followed almost inevitable. Almost, for they had a glimpse of what they had become before the end came to them. We tried to show them and teach them. At first, as with children, we played games with them, even allowed them to shut us into enclosing spaces to learn communication. Yes, we even tried to communicate through air by voices like themselves, though a few of them were learning our way. Strangely, they thought they were doing us a favor, they felt they were superior. A large deep sea octopus will sometimes do this, waving forty feet of suckers, and the same is true of some of the sharks, but it is not a very pleasant thing to communicate.
It had taken hundreds of years and terrible pain to get so far with them. They had come on our bigger cousins whom they called whales and murdered them with every possible cruelty. But our cousins too tried to show them better ways, the sacrifice of self, refusal to leave the gashed and bleeding, the screaming body of the harpooned child. They clustered round the ship, heavy with plunder of what had been living flesh; they attempted to communicate, to show forgiveness, to be willing to be friends. It was useless. For a time the slaughter was so terrible that we were compelled to hate them although it already seemed possible that there was a chance of fellow-feeling developing. But as the slaughter dwindled out hatred rationally dwindled with it. It is productive of nothing to continue hatred: a pity for them that they could never learn that lesson. Instead, they always had to have enemies. That had become a necessity to them.