Look where it got me.
! ! !
I can see the sky at night from my room, and I’ll keep watching! If he’s a dirty liar I’ll deal with him when they bring him to 8! If he’s not a dirty liar I’ll see his ship coming down from the stars soon like a silver angel.
Angel mother
In the moon
love the world
I’ll be waiting! ! !
I was a teenage space-nut. I’m still a space-nut—but, I mean, space. Not the Space Race. Not the Missile Gap, or even Rocket Generations. Not even (to my own surprise) most of the Astronauts.
Planets—other worlds with, maybe, other people on them—I’m hot for planets.
And space itself, the big wide universe out there—the sheer volume of it; its unimaginable dimensions; the remoteness, apartness, the difference—I want to know what’s really out there, find out what that difference really is. (If we get far enough out, we might get enough perspective to see what our own world really is.)
This, I believe, is the true burden of the odd (and ever odder) assortment of literature that makes up the broad spectrum of s-f: What do you mean, “real?”
When, from what viewpoint, with what cause, does a “delusion” become a “dream” instead? And where does dream merge into concept, ambition into prospect, effort into accomplishment? Just where along the line does “psychosis” turn into “imagination,” or “fantasy” become “realized?”
The Science Fiction Writers of America held their first annual-awards dinner this year, and there were a lot of new faces. But in among them—in black ties and formals instead of with torn pockets, and some sporting a (distinguished) touch of gray—were quite a few of the old s-f-and-space nuts: the people who (like me) begged, stole, and faked invitations, fifteen (or closer now to twenty) years ago, for the press preview of Destination Moon projected on the Hayden Planetarium dome.
We held, as it were, one long joint breath, watching that preview, and came out starry-eyed, more sold than ever on the wild idea that such things would really come to be.
And so they did. Now we are not space-nuts; we are Prophets and Experts. As long as we talk about realities—like rockets, satellites, and the missile gap, that is.
(Please check your daydreams at the door.)
Well, if “reality” actually does have something to do with hardware, or with the classified (either meaning) body of scientific knowledge, there are at least two of the old s-f hands who ought to have some grasp on it: Arthur Clarke, the Prophet of Telstar, and Isaac Asimov, who is not only an officially certified Learned Doctor, but proved his right to the title all over again last year with The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science (Basic Books). But remember:
They were both teenage space-nuts too.
EYES DO MORE THAN SEE
ISAAC ASIMOV
After hundreds of billions of years, he suddenly thought of himself as Ames. Not the wavelength combination which, through all the universe was now the equivalent of Ames-but the sound itself. A faint memory came back of the sound waves he no longer heard and no longer could hear.
The new project was sharpening his memory for so many more of the old, old, eons-old things. He flattened the energy vortex that made up the total of his individuality and its lines of force stretched beyond the stars.
Brock’s answering signal came.
Surely, Ames thought, he could tell Brock. Surely he could tell somebody.
Brock’s shifting energy pattern communed, “Aren’t you coming, Ames?”
“Of course.”
“Will you take part in the contest?”
“Yes!” Ames’s lines of force pulsed erratically. “Most certainly. I have thought of a whole new art-form. Something really unusual.”
“What a waste of effort! How can you think a new variation can be thought of after two hundred billion years. There can be nothing new.”
For a moment Brock shifted out of phase and out of communion, so that Ames had to hurry to adjust his lines of force. He caught the drift of other-thoughts as he did so, the view of the powdered galaxies against the velvet of nothingness, and the lines of force pulsing in endless multitudes of energy-life, lying between the galaxies.
Ames said, “Please absorb my thoughts, Brock. Don’t close out. I’ve thought of manipulating Matter. Imagine! A symphony of Matter. Why bother with Energy. Of course, there’s nothing new in Energy; how can there be? Doesn’t that show we must deal with Matter?”
“Matter!”
Ames interpreted Brock’s energy-vibrations as those of disgust.
He said, “Why not? We were once Matter ourselves back-back- Oh, a trillion years ago anyway! Why not build up objects in a Matter medium, or abstract forms or-listen, Brock-why not build up an imitation of ourselves in Matter, ourselves as we used to be?”
Brock said, “I don’t remember how that was. No one does.”
“I do,” said Ames with energy, “I’ve been thinking of nothing else and I am beginning to remember. Brock, let me show you. Tell me if I’m right. Tell me.”
“No. This is silly. It’s-repulsive.”
“Let me try, Brock. We’ve been friends; we’ve pulsed energy together from the beginning-from the moment we became what we are. Brock, please!”
“Then, quickly.”
Ames had not felt such a tremor along his own lines of force in-well, in how long? If he tried it now for Brock and it worked, he could dare manipulate Matter before the assembled Energy-beings who had so drearily waited over the eons for something new.
The Matter was thin out there between the galaxies, but Ames gathered it, scraping it together over the cubic light-years, choosing the atoms, achieving a clayey consistency and forcing matter into an ovoid form that spread out below.
“Don’t you remember, Brock?” he asked softly. “Wasn’t it something like this?”
Brock’s vortex trembled in phase. “Don’t make me remember. I don’t remember.”
“That was the head. They called it the head. I remember it so clearly, I want to say it. I mean with sound.” He waited, then said, “Look, do you remember that?”
On the upper front of the ovoid appeared HEAD.
“What is that?” asked Brock.
“That’s the word for head. The symbols that meant the word in sound. Tell me you remember, Brock!”
“There was something,” said Brock hesitantly, “something in the middle.” A vertical bulge formed.
Ames said, “Yes! Nose, that’s it!” And NOSE appeared upon it. “And those are eyes on either side,” LEFT EYE-RIGHT EYE.
Ames regarded what he had formed, his lines of force pulsing slowly. Was he sure he liked this?
“Mouth,” he said, in small quiverings, “and chin and Adam’s apple, and
the collarbones. How the words come back to me.” They appeared on the form.
Brock said, “I haven’t thought of them for hundreds of billions of years. Why have you reminded me? Why?”
Ames was momentarily lost in his thoughts, “Something else. Organs to hear with; something for the sound waves. Ears! Where do they go? I don’t remember where to put them!”
Brock cried out, “Leave it alone! Ears and all else! Don’t remember!”
Ames said, uncertainly, “What is wrong with remembering?”
“Because the outside wasn’t rough and cold like that but smooth and warm. Because the eyes were tender and alive and the lips of the mouth trembled and were soft on mine.” Brock’s lines of force beat and wavered, beat and wavered.