The best known fantasy writer, and the one who almost single-handedly brought out the fantasy into public aware­ness, however, is undoubtedly the English philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-). His epic trilogy The Fellow­ship of the Ring (1954-55) has by now sold in the mil­lions, and a veritable Tolkien-cult has appeared. There are Hobbit clubs everywhere, where the members appear in typical dresses, take names from the trilogy, perform rites from the books and so forth. Learned books are written about Tolkien and his world, and in sf fandom equally scholarly fanzines are published, discussing the trilogy, Tolkien's use of the Anglo-Saxon myths that form its basis, the literary shaping and so forth. How many fanzine pages that during the last years have been devoted to speculations about Tolkien's next work, The Silmarillion, I don't even care to guess.

  Personally, I see this popularity as a very positive thing, leading, as it were, to a renewed interest in fantasy and al­most forgotten fantasy writers like Mervyn Peake, E. R. Eddison, David Lindsay and James Branch Cabell. One might, however, ask why Tolkien turned out to be the catalyst that opened up the gates for fantasy literature. He is far from unique. Tolkien fans point to the grand scope of the trilogy (actually a tetralogy, The Fellowship of the Ring is preceded by another book, The Hobbit, from 1937, giving the prehistory of the magic ring). There are also many attractive traits in the traditional fairyland in which the story is laid. It is based directly on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic mythology, with Midgard (Middle Earth) as the center of the world. In this Midgard live the small peace-loving, pipe-smoking and tea-drinking Hobbits in their cozy dens in the Earth, amid elves, trolls, dragons, white and black magicians and all the other attributes of the fairy tale. The mythology is painstakingly constructed (Tolkien is the author of a number of scholarly works on Nordic and an­cient Anglo-Saxon literature) and over everything hovers a gossamer veil of nostalgia, goodness and the victory of jus­tice and righteousness over all evil forces.

  This means that Tolkien's books are rather conservative in their outlook, more so, actually, than most fantasy works, as they usually are very keen in adapting new viewpoints and the new order of things and following them to their more or less logical conclusions. Tolkien's Midgard is in many ways not so much a creation of unbridled imagination as a conservative man's Utopia, where an old white-haired philologist can expect to study to his heart's delight with­out being disturbed by the coarse populace and their cries of justice, food, freedom, human rights and other triviali­ties. What we have here, is H. G. Wells's "paradise of little fat men" once again. William Ready, in his book Understanding Tolkien, has rightly pointed out that:

  (Tolkien) is a most intolerant and conservative man, as the English are, in the end. The Hobbits are all sorts and degrees, rich and poor, upper, middle and lower classes, but Hobbit lower classes are forelock-tugging yokels as divorced from their own dreams and agony as the Irish creatures of Somerville and Ross, the grinning, bowing, house servant-slaves of the old South, the quaint little 'tween-maids of the Victorian ménage, the cottagers who hedged and thatched and plowed for the gentry while their children went into domestic service in the Big House . . . The class struc­ture is apparent all through Tolkien's description of Hobbit life. They are nonintellectual, as he is in this day and age. He shares a lot of their tastes, or he would if he could. There is no understanding or ap­preciation of new-fangled ways. They would no more give house room to an abstract painting than they would read a Westron text if they didn't have to. He places them . . . his characters, in an archaic society where the song resounded:

  "God bless the Squire and his relations

  And keep us all in our proper stations." (32)

  Catherine R. Stimpson, in her study J. R. R. Tolkien, goes even further, saying that:

  (Tolkien's) popularization of the past is a comic strip for grown-ups. The Lord of the Rings is almost as colorful and easy as Captain Marvel. That easiness is perhaps the source of Tolkien's appeal ... To those who pride themselves on cynicism, an adolescent fail­ure, he spews forth a reductive, yet redemptive, alle­gory of the human urge to fail. For those who actually long for security, he previews a solid moral and emo­tional structure. His authoritarianism is a small price for the comfort of the commands: Love thy Aragorn; fear the Nâzgul. (33)

  A great deal of Tolkien's appeal probably lies in a nos­talgic longing for the good old days of yore when life was nice and secure and people knew their place; in other words, as I have pointed out earlier a sort of Utopia where the sun always shines and the grass is greener and the evil dragon always can be slain by a gallant knight. The story of Frodo's quest for the magic ring, together with his wiseacre servant Sam, Gandalf the magician, and a group of dwarves, is taken directly out of the old fairy tales, but yet very human and the heroics are held on a believable level. It doesn't take long until the reader is carried away and accepts it all, including wizards and dragons and the rest. It is fantasy on a high level, where black is black and white is white and Gandalf, the secure old father-figure, is always present somewhere. The small, kindhearted Hobbits' desperate longing to go back to the peace and quiet of teapot and pipe in the womblike Earth-dens stands in glar­ing contrast to Sauron's army of living dead and the black sky that hangs threateningly over the terrible Mordor, Sau­ron's kingdom in the east. This is a fitting symbol of indus­trialization, socialism and all the dangers of the new age that threaten to destroy the secure life of the good old days. The magic ring is science and knowledge with power over the world, and when Frodo finally overcomes himself and manages to destroy the ring, the factories of Sauron crumble to dust, the machines grind to a standstill, the hor­rors of industrialization are aborted. Frodo returns to his peaceful village, defeats the remainder of the revolting lower classes (aptly described as some kind of sub-human crea­tures) and later leaves for a place more fit for a gentleman. It is a beautiful description of the upper class's inability to face change, and the efforts of the same to fight evolution, although I am sure Tolkien never consciously meant it that way. The Fellowship of the Ring is the protest of an old man against everything new, and the fairy tale brings all his hidden fears out in the open.

  Outside the English-speaking countries, Heroic Fantasy fiction is quite scarce; in Scandinavia indeed almost non­existent, possibly due to the fact that the Eddas are read in school and any modern Heroic Fantasy must seem rather pale in comparison. However, if I might be permitted to entertain my parochial side, I should mention the Finnish (but Swedish-languaged) writer and artist Tove Jansson, whose delightful Moomin books have been cherished by children and adults alike for more than twenty years. The Moomin books, which in later years have become increas­ingly adult, drop the security of the beautiful never-never land on behalf of a deeper psychological significance, and tell of the Moomin-trolls. These are humanized animals that look rather like small, furred hippopotami with long tails (except that they walk upright) that until a couple of books ago lived peacefully in the Moomin valley amid a number of bizarre creatures; the nasty and very nega­tive Little My, the gloomy Muskrat, the not-too-bright Hemulen and some very unlikely acquaintances as well, such as The-Thing-Which-Lives-Under-The-Sink. It is a delight­ful fantasy, but in no way naïve. The world is, on the whole, good, but not altogether so. The Moomins and their friends are small and insignificant creatures, and outside the Moomin valley darkness is closing in. In some of the latest Moomin books, particularly The Invisible Child and Moominpappa at Sea the fantasy has been brought to a heightened aware­ness of the outside world and the forces of change. Instead of fighting change, as Tolkien's Hobbits do, the Moomin-trolls face it They leave the happy Moomin valley, ventur­ing out into the insecurity of the outside world, shadowed by dark clouds that billow up like reflections of the dark­ness over Tolkien's Mordor. Moominpappa stands in the lighthouse tower, far out in the raging sea, gazing out over the endless horizon where everything can happen and where nothing is as it once was.

  With the risk of evoking the wrath of every science fic­tion old-timer, I am including the Space Opera branch of science fiction in this chapter, as being the direct descendant of the fantasy tale. It is really the same branch, only with some of the old symbols exchanged for new. The Space Opera was prevalent in science fiction from the late twenties to the early forties, appearing in the pulp magazines of the time—Amazing Stories, Astounding, Thrilling Wonder Stories and others. They were crude stories, usually lacking even the simplest literary merits. People were painted in black or white, nothing else and the only thing in them more idiotic than the scientific theories was the immature han­dling of the compulsory love interest

  Nevertheless, they conveyed a Sense-of-Wonder, and this to an extent that probably never has been surpassed. When things started rolling, by golly, it really started. Whole galaxies crumbled before the atomic cannons, and the evil alien monsters were slaughtered by the quintillions by the heroes and their faithful friends. The galactic patrols roamed the void, spreading Pax Terra at blaster-point, and scientific miracles were as common as apple pie. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible in Space Opera. It might be a lot of rubbish, but I can't resist liking it.

  This branch of science fiction is, of course, closely related to the fairy tale and the Heroic Sword & Sorcery Fantasy, with the magic sword exchanged for the atomic blaster and the magic for super-science. Wizards have become sci­entists, with thick spectacles added to their long beards, wearing white smocks instead of the multicolored cloaks of yore. Instead of the cabalistic magic signs, we have equ­ally meaningless formulae that, to a present-day reader, promises exactly the same things that the magic words once did. The monsters look about the same as before. The set­ting is somewhat more original, drawing ideas not from the ancient sagas but from contemporary science. Instead of the book of magic, we have books of mathematical tables; instead of the philosophers' stone, uranium; instead of the pentagram, the computer.

  This is truly the modern fairy tale, gigantic in scope, utilizing worlds of an entirely new type, creating, in effect, something that never existed before out of time-honored materials. The basic formula is, of course, the good old traditional one, with gallant knights and evil adversaries and quests hither and thither, but the scope is decidedly brand-new. Or perhaps I should say was—forty years or so ago. It is still very much popular, though, as attested by new pocket editions of the old Space Opera novels.

  The Space Opera aspect of science fiction will be dis­cussed in the next chapter, but it is interesting to note here that the branch, together with an increasing interest in tradi­tional fantasy, is again gaining in popularity. The miraculous adventures of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark and Lensman series, Jack Williamson's The Legion of Space, A. E. van Vogt's Slan (an interesting mutant novel, aside from its Space Opera merits), Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future and so forth are being reissued and, apparently, very well received. It might be the old Utopian dream of man con­quering matter again, and the dream of easy solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems.

  In a world ridden by anxiety and fear, the exploits of star heroes and swordbearers alike must be of considerable interest. The Space Opera regards the future with hope and a positive attitude, although mostly overly naïve and sometimes openly escapist. But as a contrast to the defeatist attitude of many recent works of science fiction, it certainly serves a purpose. Perhaps this particular branch is overdoing it; but that is the prerogative of writers anywhere, anytime.

  6. OUT IN THE UNKNOWN

  Barchay rode into the Comanche village alone, on the back of a swaybacked horse that he had caught and broken himself, five years past. He had been travel­ing westward six days and six nights from the encamp­ment on the distant eastern shore of the continent, feeding himself en route with whatever his gun could bring down.

  He sat stiffly upright in the saddle, head staring for­ward so solidly and so massively that it might seem his neck had calcified. He had spent the whole trip in much the same posture, as the hooves of the horse carried him along, westward, and in a sense backward in time as well. It was twenty years since he last had visited this particular Comanche village, or indeed the flat lake country here in the west at all. And he was the first white man to venture out of the encampment on the ocean shore since the massacre, three months since, when the sullen Comanche had risen suddenly to claim eight hundred settlers' lives.

  This run-of-the-mill Wild West story doesn't seem to be able to defend its place in a book on science fiction—and indeed it does not. But substitute the sullen Comanches for the equally sullen V'Leegs of some distant frontier planet, the horse for a "pink running-beast," the white settlers for Earthmen and the gun for a blaster, and you suddenly have the opening sequences of a "science fiction" story by a well-known sf writer (34) which tells of how the lean-hipped and broad-shouldered hero Barchay returns to the V'Leeg village to have a look at his mixed-breed son, the result of an earlier visit to the local chieftain's daughter. The story is as much science fiction as the quoted opening im­plies, which is nothing. Now, I don't have anything against Wild West stories, not even one based on a plot as old and feeble as this one—but I dislike badly written Wild West, and I object most strongly to having it masqueraded as science fiction. Unfortunately, this example is far from unique.

  Theodore Sturgeon, one of the most brilliant writers of science fiction, has said that "a science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content." Damon Knight, another of the living giants of the genre, has suggested that the word "speculative" should be inserted before "scientific," which would "clearly divide true science fiction from even the best imitations."

  Even without Damon Knight's amendment, the quoted story is revealed for what it is: a very, very crude imita­tion, using the symbols of science fiction without any of their meanings. Knight's amendment makes it even more obvious: this is definitely not science fiction.

  Science fiction has shown that it can accommodate itself to all possible overcoats and still exploit its unique possi­bilities to the fullest extent, still exist as unquestionable science fiction. There are social satires like Pohl/Kornbluth's The Space Merchants (1952), crime mysteries like Alfred Bester's brilliant The Demolished Man (1953), historical fiction like Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee (1952), spy thrillers like Eric Frank Russell's Wasp (1957), way-out avant garde like Brian W. Aldiss' Barefoot in the Head (1969), military propaganda like Robert A. Heinlein's Star-ship Troopers (1959), anti-military works like Harry Harri­son's Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), powerful poetry like Harry Martinson's Aniara (1956) and even pornographic science fiction, as shown by some of Philip José Farmer's recent novels for Essex House. Not to mention religious novels like James Blish's A Case of Conscience (1958). And, of course, the numerous weird and horror science fic­tion stories, with which the genre abounds. Obviously, the genre can also accommodate Wild West yarns, dealing with the opening of new frontiers by tall, lean and sunburned (space-burned) men brandishing ugly Colts (blasters) and stealing land from the Indians (the aliens), but using the old science fiction paraphernalia doesn't make it science fiction. It still is Wild West to me.

  I have already mentioned the Space Opera stories of the twenties and the thirties, which originally sprang di­rectly from the pulp Wild West yarns, but still managed to turn out as something entirely new in pulp fiction. Their world was the fairyland of super-science, and even if the heroes were molded in the time-honored knight and cow­boy formula, they nevertheless existed and committed their heroic deeds under conditions vastly different from the fiction of old. Granted, the literary quality was low, and the science was, with few exceptions, corny, but this was easily over­looked, and, I feel, with good cause. The sf writers were chartering new seas far from the well-trodden lands of predictability and security, and this was, in itself, good. The literary writers would come later on, basing their imagina­tion upon foundations laid under a wild spree of heroic star-jumping improbability. Today, when science fiction writ­ers are leaving "outer space" and instead concentrating on the "inner space" of man's mind, they are merely repeating the lamented pulp writers' works, treading into an unknown world where conditions are so different from the ones around us as to seem paradoxical or completely senseless to us. It is still the "strange encounter" tale.

  These were the formative years of science fiction as a separate literary genre, a process started by Hugo Gerns­back when he published the first real science fiction maga­zine, Amazing Stories, in 1926, and furnished the genre with a name of its own. The magazines "with their gaudy and dynamic covers which promised every reading adven­ture imaginable" shaped the development of the genre, pro­viding it not only with readers and fans but with a needed and very creative "feedback" system between writers and readers through the letter columns. The Space Opera reigned unchallenged, and is now looked back on with considerable nostalgia. Alva Rogers' description of one of the Space Opera classics in his book on Astounding gives a good pic­ture of the Space Opera's impact:

  Who can ever forget the thrill of reading The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson for the first time? The first part of this classic began in the April issue and ran for six breathtaking installments. The adventures of John Star, Giles Habibula, the mighty Hal Samdu, and Jay Kalam on the evil world of the Medusae, the planet Yarkand, as they fought to save the lovely Ala­doree Anthat and the secret weapon, AKKA, which she alone held in her mind and which was the only salvation of Earth, were high adventure indeed with a Sense of Wonder in ample measure. (35)

  It has been pointed out that around the turn of the cen­tury, a large number of writers not usually associated with science fiction used the media as a vehicle for satire or pure entertainment, but that their numbers sharply decreased dur­ing the twenties and onward, leaving only a few accepted literary writers like Aldous Huxley and André Maurois us­ing the versatile tool of science fiction to some degree. The reason for this might be traced down to the pulps, which at this time were shaping the science fiction genre, minting, as it were, its own coinage which was negotiable only within the field.

 

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