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Vanguard Variorum, May 1946

2     VANGUARD VARIORUM

We have then the oldest theme in literature, the story of a man vainly trying to solve the mystery of himself. The fact that I introduced this theme into science fiction should exhilarate readers who desire to raise the level of their favorite type of story. To Mr. Knight it is merely evidence that my stories have no plots.

A little later I shall take up a few of Knight's criticisms of the so-called illogicalities in WORLD OF A and I shall show that they are capable of such simple explanations that at the time I wrote the story I decided that they would take up too much space, and so I didn't bother. Right now I want to agree with Mr. Knight that it is impossible to prove that an author's style is bad, but I want to add that it is also impossible to prove that it is good.

However, some of the examples which Mr. Knight cites as particularly atrocious writing constitute a partial answer to another criticism he makes, that is, that there is no science in my stories. I could of course refer him to THE STORM (the nature of a storm in space, a description unique in science fiction, and what a planet of a super-Nova is like), THE VAULT OF THE BEAST (a discussion, out of which I cut a thousand words to speed up the action, of the philosophy of numbers), JUGGERNAUT (Let any steel man criticise my descriptions of what goes on in a steel mill), THE HARMONIZER (an accurate picture of the structure of life in the twilight zone where the microscope only recently penetrated), and finally WORLD OF A itself, in which, for the first time, the basic science and vocabulary of semantics was introduced to the world of science fiction. In addition, in null-A, I included such an array of psycho-logical and non-Aristotelian pedagogy that the story probably stands alone as an example of science-fiction.

The science in my stories literally permeates the stories. I seldom pause, as so many writers do, and launch a solid chunk of science at the reader. Theirs is the easy way, and enormously bad examples appear in all the more juvenile pulps. The result of course always varies with the skill of the writer, but in my opinion my method belongs definitely in the skilled group. For instance, I shall re-quote one of the sentences that Mr. Knight attempted to use against me:

"Gosseyn compared his awareness of the night to the physical world as it appeared to man's senses."

There is a re-statement of one of A's basic ideas, emphasizing the limited world of the sense. Man is a being who, with his nervous system, attempts to understand the real world. He is like a creature standing in a great night, and he shines a dim flashlight into the surrounding darkness. What does he see? We know that he sees very little, and all that immense meaning is there in one sentence. Naturally, I did not expect the meaning to penetrate from one statement, but the same statement in a different fashion, and others about other points, are repeated from time to time throughout the story.

I admit that sometimes this method of introducing ideas makes for awkward sentence structure, but I maintain that science fiction is different from other kinds of writing. In science fiction, endless explanation is necessary. The measure of an author's skill is his ability to introduce his explanations into his story without slowing up the action. My stories are not necessarily the best examples of this type of skill, but it is not from want of trying.

The fact that some readers found their first bite into the most fascinating of all the sciences indigestible does not condemn A. The groundwork had to be laid. It has been, and I think I can safely say that WORLD OF A is not a story that will be quickly forgotten. As a result of it, scores of people

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2 VANGUARD VARIORUM We have then the oldest theme in literature, the story of a man vainly trying to solve the mystery of himself. The fact that I introduced this theme into science fiction should exhilarate readers who desire to raise the level of their favorite type of story. To Mr. Knight it is merely evidence that my stories have no plots. A little later I shall take up a few of Knight's criticisms of the so-called illogicalities in WORLD OF A and I shall show that they are capable of such simple explanations that at the time I wrote the story I decided that they would take up too much space, and so I didn't bother. Right now I want to agree with Mr. Knight that it is impossible to prove that an author's style is bad, but I want to add that it is also impossible to prove that it is good. However, some of the examples which Mr. Knight cites as particularly atrocious writing constitute a partial answer to another criticism he makes, that is, that there is no science in my stories. I could of course refer him to THE STORM (the nature of a storm in space, a description unique in science fiction, and what a planet of a super-Nova is like), THE VAULT OF THE BEAST (a discussion, out of which I cut a thousand words to speed up the action, of the philosophy of numbers), JUGGERNAUT (Let any steel man criticise my descriptions of what goes on in a steel mill), THE HARMONIZER (an accurate picture of the structure of life in the twilight zone where the microscope only recently penetrated), and finally WORLD OF A itself, in which, for the first time, the basic science and vocabulary of semantics was introduced to the world of science fiction. In addition, in null-A, I included such an array of psycho-logical and non-Aristotelian pedagogy that the story probably stands alone as an example of science-fiction. The science in my stories literally permeates the stories. I seldom pause, as so many writers do, and launch a solid chunk of science at the reader. Theirs is the easy way, and enormously bad examples appear in all the more juvenile pulps. The result of course always varies with the skill of the writer, but in my opinion my method belongs definitely in the skilled group. For instance, I shall re-quote one of the sentences that Mr. Knight attempted to use against me: "Gosseyn compared his awareness of the night to the physical world as it appeared to man's senses." There is a re-statement of one of A's basic ideas, emphasizing the limited world of the sense. Man is a being who, with his nervous system, attempts to understand the real world. He is like a creature standing in a great night, and he shines a dim flashlight into the surrounding darkness. What does he see? We know that he sees very little, and all that immense meaning is there in one sentence. Naturally, I did not expect the meaning to penetrate from one statement, but the same statement in a different fashion, and others about other points, are repeated from time to time throughout the story. I admit that sometimes this method of introducing ideas makes for awkward sentence structure, but I maintain that science fiction is different from other kinds of writing. In science fiction, endless explanation is necessary. The measure of an author's skill is his ability to introduce his explanations into his story without slowing up the action. My stories are not necessarily the best examples of this type of skill, but it is not from want of trying. The fact that some readers found their first bite into the most fascinating of all the sciences indigestible does not condemn A. The groundwork had to be laid. It has been, and I think I can safely say that WORLD OF A is not a story that will be quickly forgotten. As a result of it, scores of people