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Bizarre, v. 4, issue 1, Janurary 1941
Page 17
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January 1941 Page 17 snapped onto a spaceship instantly, full strength, as though it were a steel cable, and snapped off with equal suddenness. There are impossibilities by logic. (I do not mean illogical sequences or situations; they are too common to mention). Thus, hard radiations may very well affect genes and so cause monstrous progeny; but it seems to me that to have such radiations cause devolution of an already adult body is to perpetrate the logically impossible. And this, too, has been done a sickening number of times. There are also impossibilities of convention. Thus, it is impossible for two plus two to equal anything except four. And in so many S-F stories it equals anything, from zero up! But these three classes just about exhaust the impossibilities. Some of you may not agree with me, but I hold that the others must be classed as conditional, or philosophical, impossibilities. That is, they appear to be impossible in the light of our present knowledge and observational findings, but there are no definitely established natural laws which preclude the possibility of future developments making them not only possible, but commonplace. For example, it was observational, philosophical reasoning which declared the airplane impossible. Things heavier than air always had fallen through it—birds to the contrary notwithstanding—therefore they always would. The argument was finished: the minds were closed to the possibility of future development of light-weight power plants. At present, it seems impossible to cross-breed the elephant with the mosquito. But is it absolutely, intrinsically impossible? Can you prove it? Observation and exeperiment upon species much closer have always resulted negatively; but that fact falls far short of being conclusive. It is quite definitely possible that future biological researches will make such crosses fertile. Burroughs wrote of an impossibility when he had the mammalian John Carter and the oviparous Princess of Mars have a son—not in the fact, but in that he failed to introdue anything new to render such cross-breeding possible. These philosophical impossibilities, it seems to me, present the richest, most fascinating field in scientific fiction; as those of you who have read any of my stuff may have observed. Inertialessness cannot be proved impossible. Neither can Jack Williamson's perfectly gorgeous concepts in "The Legion of Time." And here in Bizarre seems a good place to take a crack at a recent critic; both for myself and for others, perhaps more turn-the-other cheekish authors who think and write as I do. He did not mention names, so I won't either; but most of you will know what the shooting is all about. He wrote: " . . . the brain doesn't vibrate. Therefore thought-waves do not exist. Waves are of two types . . . in our bodies there is just one vibrating system, the vocal cords . . . if we do have a sixth sense, it has nothing to do with waves or the brain. So science fiction authors take heed; it's certain we have only five senses." Wow! How the boy covers ground! While it may be true that the brain as a whole does not vibrate (although that statement cannot be proven to be a fact) it is neither necessary nor functionally desirable that it should do so in order to send out what this critic so loosely calle "waves." Molecules certainly "vibrate," and it would seem eminently possible that molecular agrregates in the brain might "vibrate" and send out "waves" which, although not detectable by our present instruments, might very well affect receptors of the proper make-up and size. I am rebutting this criticism here becuse it is a classic example of the output of a certain school of alleged thought: a school which takes as premises statements which are neither axiomatic not proven—which in fact may very well be and probably are entirely false—and from them draws conclusions which it would have us accord the weight of cosmic verity. So, fellows, before you try to blast an author out of the ether, be sure that you are not putting yourselves into the same class as those who said that no airplane, ever, could possibly fly. Remember also that our very existence is a philosophical impossibility. A probability greater than any assigned value can be set up against the existence of a planetary solar system Continued on page 20
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January 1941 Page 17 snapped onto a spaceship instantly, full strength, as though it were a steel cable, and snapped off with equal suddenness. There are impossibilities by logic. (I do not mean illogical sequences or situations; they are too common to mention). Thus, hard radiations may very well affect genes and so cause monstrous progeny; but it seems to me that to have such radiations cause devolution of an already adult body is to perpetrate the logically impossible. And this, too, has been done a sickening number of times. There are also impossibilities of convention. Thus, it is impossible for two plus two to equal anything except four. And in so many S-F stories it equals anything, from zero up! But these three classes just about exhaust the impossibilities. Some of you may not agree with me, but I hold that the others must be classed as conditional, or philosophical, impossibilities. That is, they appear to be impossible in the light of our present knowledge and observational findings, but there are no definitely established natural laws which preclude the possibility of future developments making them not only possible, but commonplace. For example, it was observational, philosophical reasoning which declared the airplane impossible. Things heavier than air always had fallen through it—birds to the contrary notwithstanding—therefore they always would. The argument was finished: the minds were closed to the possibility of future development of light-weight power plants. At present, it seems impossible to cross-breed the elephant with the mosquito. But is it absolutely, intrinsically impossible? Can you prove it? Observation and exeperiment upon species much closer have always resulted negatively; but that fact falls far short of being conclusive. It is quite definitely possible that future biological researches will make such crosses fertile. Burroughs wrote of an impossibility when he had the mammalian John Carter and the oviparous Princess of Mars have a son—not in the fact, but in that he failed to introdue anything new to render such cross-breeding possible. These philosophical impossibilities, it seems to me, present the richest, most fascinating field in scientific fiction; as those of you who have read any of my stuff may have observed. Inertialessness cannot be proved impossible. Neither can Jack Williamson's perfectly gorgeous concepts in "The Legion of Time." And here in Bizarre seems a good place to take a crack at a recent critic; both for myself and for others, perhaps more turn-the-other cheekish authors who think and write as I do. He did not mention names, so I won't either; but most of you will know what the shooting is all about. He wrote: " . . . the brain doesn't vibrate. Therefore thought-waves do not exist. Waves are of two types . . . in our bodies there is just one vibrating system, the vocal cords . . . if we do have a sixth sense, it has nothing to do with waves or the brain. So science fiction authors take heed; it's certain we have only five senses." Wow! How the boy covers ground! While it may be true that the brain as a whole does not vibrate (although that statement cannot be proven to be a fact) it is neither necessary nor functionally desirable that it should do so in order to send out what this critic so loosely calle "waves." Molecules certainly "vibrate," and it would seem eminently possible that molecular agrregates in the brain might "vibrate" and send out "waves" which, although not detectable by our present instruments, might very well affect receptors of the proper make-up and size. I am rebutting this criticism here becuse it is a classic example of the output of a certain school of alleged thought: a school which takes as premises statements which are neither axiomatic not proven—which in fact may very well be and probably are entirely false—and from them draws conclusions which it would have us accord the weight of cosmic verity. So, fellows, before you try to blast an author out of the ether, be sure that you are not putting yourselves into the same class as those who said that no airplane, ever, could possibly fly. Remember also that our very existence is a philosophical impossibility. A probability greater than any assigned value can be set up against the existence of a planetary solar system Continued on page 20
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