might be a friend or neighbor who was well acquainted with our neighboring culture,
it might be the local Mexican consul. If the expert told you that the background
material of the book was nonsense, you would not give the book shelf room.
The same procedure applies to science fiction. No one can be expected to be
expert in everything. If you do not happen to know what makes a rocket go when there
is no air to push against, you need not necessarily read Willy Ley’s Rockets,
Missiles, and Space Travel-although it is a fine book, a “must” for every library,
desirable for any home. You may instead consult anyone of your acquaintance who does
know about rocket ships-say an Air Force or Artillery officer, a physics teacher, or
almost any fourteen-year-old boy, especially boys who are active in high school
science clubs. If the novel being judged concerns cybernetics, nuclear physics,
genetics, chemistry, relativity, it is necessary only to enlist the appropriate
helper.
You would do the same, would you not, with a novel based on the life of
Simon BolIvar?
Of course, there is the alternate, equivalent method of testing the
authenticity of any book by checking on the author. If the SimOn BolIvar novel was
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written by a distinguished scholar of South American history, you need concern
yourself only with the literary merit of the book. If a book about space travel is
written by a world-famous astronomer (as in the case of the one who writes under the
pen name of “Philip Latham”), you can put your mind at rest about the correctness of
the science therein. In many cases science-fiction writers have more than adequate
professional background in the sciences they use as background material and their
publishers are careful to let you know this through catalog and dustjacket blurb. I
happen to be personally aware of and can vouch for the scientific training of
Sprague de Camp, George 0. Smith, “John Tame,” John W. Campbell, Jr., “Philip
Latham,” Will Jenkins, Jack Williamson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, E. E. Smith,
Philip Wylie, Olaf Stapledon, H. G. Wells, Damon Knight, Harry Stine, and “J. J.
Coupling.” This listing refers to qualifications in science only and is necessarily
incomplete, nor do I mean to slight the many fine writers without formal scientific
training who are well read in science and most careful in their research.
But some means of checking on a writer of alleged science fiction is
desirable. Most writers of historical fiction appear to go to quite a lot of trouble
to get the facts of their historical scenes correct, but some people seem to feel
that all that is necessary to write science fiction is an unashamed imagination and
a sprinkling of words like “ray gun,” “rocket tube,” “mutant,” and “space warp.” In
some cases the offense is as blatant as it would be in the case of an author of
alleged historical fiction who founded a book on the premise that SimOn BolIvar was
a Chinese monk! It follows that, in order to spot these literary fakers it is
necessary to know that BolIvar was not a Chinese monk-know something of the sciences
yourself or enlist competent advisers.
AFTERWORD
Writers talking about writing are about as bad as parents boasting about
their children. I have not done much of it; the few times that I have been guilty, I
did not instigate the project, and in almost all cases (all, I think) my arm was
twisted.
I promise to avoid it in the future.
The item above, however, I consider worthy of publication (even though my
arm was twisted) because there really are many librarians who earnestly wish to buy
good science fiction. . . but don’t know how to do it. In this short article I tried
very hard to define clearly and simply how to avoid the perils of Sturgeon’s Law in
buying science fiction.
Part way through you will notice the origin of the last name of the STRANGER
IN A STRANGE LAND.
“It is far, far better to have a bastard in the family than an unemployed
son-in-law.”
-Jubal Harshaw
FOREWORD
Superficially this looks like the same sort of article as PANDORA’S BOX; it