such as “Manhattan Project” and “Hiroshima,” but not rewritten, and is one of a
group of stories published under the pretentious collective title of The History of
the Future (!) (an editor’s title, not mine!)-which certainly sounds like prophecy.
I disclaim any intention of prophesying; Iwrote that story for the sole
purpose of making money to pay off a mortgage and with the single intention of
entertaining the reader. As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face-any
tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces- but I think it is still entertaining as a
story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation to protect and wish
to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this motivation. Very little of the
great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to “create art”; most
writing, both great and not-sogreat, has as its proximate cause a need for money
combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard “honest labor.”
Fiction writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma.
A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in
addition to pursuit of profit. He may wish to create “art for art’s sake,” he may
want to warn the world against a course he feels to be disastrous (Orwell’s 1984,
Huxley’s Brave New World- but please note that each is intensely entertaining, and
that each made stacks of money), he may wish to urge the human race toward a course
which he considers desirable (Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, Wells’ Men Like Gods), he
may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle. But the science fiction
writer-any fiction writer-must keep entertainment consciously in mind as his prime
purpose . . . or he may find himself back dragging that old cotton sack.
If he succeeds in this purpose, his story is likely to remain gripping
entertainment long years after it has turned out to be false “prophecy.” H. G. Wells
is perhaps the greatest science fiction author of all time- and his greatest science
fiction stories were written around sixty years ago (i.e., about 1895). . . under
the whip. Bedfast with consumption, unable to hold a job, flat broke, paying
alimony-he had to make money somehow, and writing was the heaviest work he could
manage. He was clearly aware (see his autobiography)
that to stay alive he must be entertaining. The result was a flood of some of the
most brilliant speculative stories about the future ever written. As prophecy they
are all hopelessly dated . . . which matters not at all; they are as spellbinding
now as they were in the Gay ‘Nineties and the Mauve Decade.
Try to lay hands on his The Sleeper Awakes. The gadgetry in it is
ingenious-and all wrong. The projected future in it is brilliant-and did not happen.
All of which does not sully the story; it is a great story of love and sacrifice and
blood-chilling adventure set in a matrix of mind-stretching speculation about the
nature of Man and his Destiny. I read it first in 1923, and at least a dozen times
since . . . and still reread it whenever I get to feeling uncertain about just how
one does go about the unlikely process of writing fiction for entertainment of
strangers-and again finding myself caught up in the sheer excitement of Wells’
story.
Page 131
“Solution Unsatisfactory” herein is a consciously Weilsian story. No, no,
I’m not claiming that it is of H. G. Wells’ quality-its quality is for you to judge,
not me. But it was written by the method which Wells spelled out for the speculative
story: Take one, just one, basic new assumption, then examine all its
consequences-but express those consequences in terms of human beings. The assumption
I chose was the “Absolute Weapon”; the speculation concerns what changes this forces
on mankind. But the “history” the story describes simply did not happen.
However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues
just as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an
“unsatisfactory” solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached no