The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Frigate had lit a cigarette. He had quit smoking for a year, but now, as he put it, he had “fallen from grace.” He was almost as tall as Burton. His eyes were hazel. His hair was almost as black as his companion’s, though it reflected a reddish undercoating in sunlight. His features were irregular: bulging supraorbital ridges, a straight nose of average size but with large nostrils, full lips, the upper very long, a clefted chin. The latter seemed to recede because of his unusually short jaw.

On Earth he had been, among many other things, one of that rare but vigorous breed which collected all literature by, about, and relevant to Burton. He hadn also written a biography of him but had eventually novelized it as A Rough Knight for the Queen.

On first meeting him, Burton had been puzzled when Frigate had identified himself as a science fiction writer.

“What in Gehenna is that?”

“Don’t ask me to define science fiction,” Frigate had said. “No one was ever able to give it a completely satisfactory definition. However, what it is … was … was a genre of literature in which most of the stories took place in a fictional future. It was called science fiction because science was supposed to play a large part in it. The development of science in the future, that is. This science wasn’t confined to physics and chemistry but also included extrapo­lations of the sociological and psychological science of the author’s time.

“In fact, any story that took place in the future was science fiction. However, a story written in 1960, for instance, which projected a future of 1984, was still classified as science fiction in 1984.

“Moreover, a science fiction story could take place in the present or the past. But the assumption was that the story was possible because it was based on the science of the author’s time, and he merely extrapolated, more or less rigorously, what a science could develop into.

“Unfortunately, this definition included stories in which there was no science or else science poorly understood by the author.

“However (there are a lot of howevers in science fiction), there were many stories about things which could not possibly happen, for which there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. Lake time travel, parallel worlds, and faster-than-light drives. Living stars, God visiting the Earth in the flesh, insects tail as buildings, world deluges, enslavement through telepathy, and more in an endless list.”

“How did it come to be named science fiction?”

“Well, actually, it was around a long time before a man named Hugo Gernsback originated the label. You’ve read the Jules Verne novels and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, haven’t you? Those were considered to be science fiction.”

“It sounds as if it were just fantasy,” Burton had said.

“Yes, but all fiction is fantasy. The difference between mundane fantasy, what we called mainstream literature, and science fiction was that mainstream stories were about things which could have happened. They also always took place in the past or the present.

“Science fiction stories were about things that could not happen or were highly improbable. Some people wanted to name it specula­tive literature, but the term never caught on.”

Burton never thoroughly understood what science fiction was, but he did not feel bad about it. Frigate couldn’t explain it clearly either, though he could give numerous examples.

“Actually,” Frigate had said, “science fiction was one of those many things that don’t exist but nevertheless have a name. Let’s talk about something else.”

Burton had refused to drop the subject. “Then you were in a profession which didn’t exist?”

“No, the profession of writing science fiction existed. It was just that science fiction per se was nonexistent. This is beginning to sound like a dialog in Alice in Wonderland.”

“Was the money you made from your writings also nonexis­tent?”

“Almost. Well, that’s an exaggeration. I didn’t starve in a garret, but I also wasn’t driving a gold-plated Cadillac.”

“What’s a Cadillac?”

Thinking of that now, Burton found it strange that the woman who slept with him was the Alice who had been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s two masterpieces.

Suddenly, Frigate said, “What’s that?”