I have seen real love shown among SF writers who came together at one of the many conventions — a great authentic fondness for their colleagues, not as writers, but as close friends. I’m sure this isn’t unique to SF, and yet even other kinds of writers do not seem to exhibit this extended family quality that we have — they seem more competitive, more pitted against one another, hoping the new novel by their colleague will fail, will not turn out good. SF writers have none of that. We are a body, a corporate group working, as in the Byzantine days, on some great mosaic, upon which finally no individual name will be stamped; we are friends and we admire one another in a warm and personal way. We ratify one another and sense our identity as humans as being intimately connected with this fraternal spirit. There are few if any cold schizoid SF writers; when you meet a Ray Bradbury or a Ted Sturgeon or a Norman Spinrad or an A. E. van Vogt you find a warm person longing to know you, too; you are part of a family that goes back decades and into which we perpetually welcome others: There are no sterile, aseptic white smocks, no cruel or detached interactions among us. Writing SF requires a humanization of the person, or, put another way, I doubt if that person would want to write SF unless he had in him these empathic needs and qualities. Too timid to demonstrate, too warm to retreat to a sterile lab and experiment on objects or animals, too excited and impatient to allow all knowledge to be confined to the limits of absolute certitude — we live in a world of what a radio SF show once called “possible maybes,” and this world attracts persons who are not loners but are lonely; and between those two distinctions there is a crucial difference.
“Michelson-Morley Experiment Reappraised” (1979)
The failure of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1881, in which the absolute velocity of the Earth moving through luminiferous ether proved to be zero, gave rise to Einstein’s Relativity Theory, which holds that the concept “absolute velocity” is meaningless. However, scientists at UCLA, using more sophisticated laser techniques, have suggested a more probable significance of the null result: that in fact the Earth does not move and that Copernicus was a crypto-Pythagorean determined to vindicate an ancient and discredited heliocentric solar system model. In a meeting of Southern California astronomers and astrophysicists it was proposed that (1) the geocentric solar system be restored as the proper model, and (2) that Copernicus be dug up and admonished. As a side issue, Einstein will be regarded with mild disfavor and some amusement, but scientists attending the meeting could not agree on the amount of amusement to be formally proposed.
“Introduction” to Dr. Bloodmoney (1979, 1985)
Well, I predicted wrong when I wrote Dr. Bloodmoney back in 1964. Events that I foresaw never came about, and as you read this novel you will see what I mean. But it is not the job, really, of science fiction to predict. Science fiction only seems to predict. It’s like the aliens on Star Trek, all of whom speak English. A literary convention is involved, here. Nothing more.
I am amused, however, to see what specifically I got wrong. Worst of all, I totally misread the future of the manned space program. But this only shows how rapidly history unfolds. In Dr. Bloodmoney I have one American circling the world forever. This is obvious nonsense; either there would be many Americans — and many Russians, for that matter — or none at all.
Of course, the major item that I got wrong is the End of the World. Back in 1964 I was expecting it anytime; I kept checking my watch. Horace Gold, who edited Galaxy magazine, once chided me for anticipating global wipe-out within the next week. That was back around 1954; I anticipated it by 1964. Well, such were the fears of the times. Right now we have other worries. Our problem seems to be paying our debts with incredibly inflated dollars, finding gas for our cars — much more mundane worries. Less cosmic.
Oddly, these are the sort of worries that assail the characters in Dr. Bloodmoney in their post-World War Three world. There are horses pulling cars. Eyeglasses are rare and treasured. A man who manufactures cigarettes is honored wherever he goes. Of supreme value is someone who can fix things. Society has reverted, but not to the brutal level that we might expect. Rather, it has become rural in nature. The vast cities are gone, and, in their place, a sort of countryside exists that is not awful at all. I must add, however, that in no sense does it resemble any world that we actually have.
But then, of course, we haven’t had World War Three.
In my opinion, this is an extremely hopeful novel. It does not posit the end of human civilization as a result of the next war. People are still around and they are still coping. Those who survive, anyhow, are fairly lucky in their new lives. What is interesting is the subtle change in the relative power status of the survivors. Take Hoppy Harrington, who has no arms or legs. Before the bomb hits, Hoppy is marginal in terms of power. He is fortunate if he can get any kind of job at all. But in the postwar world this is not the case. Hoppy is elevated by stealthy increments until, at last, he is a menace to a man not even on the planet’s surface; Hoppy has become a demigod, and a complex one at that. He is not really evil, in the usual sense. . . but here is an instance of the abuse of power: evil emanating from power per se. It is not so much that Hoppy is evil but that his power is evil.
In the satellite, Walt Dangerfield is transformed from a man assisting the fragmented postwar society, giving it unity and strength, raising its morale, to a man desperate for help from it, a man who is becoming weaker day by day. He signifies isolation, which is the horror of the many down below: isolation and a loss of the objects and values that comprised their original world. As time passes, Walt Dangerfield must gain strength from those on the planet’s surface, rather than giving strength to them. And into the vacuum created comes Hoppy Harrington, who epitomizes the monster in us: the person who is hungry. Not hungry for food but hungry for coercive control over others. This drive in Hoppy stems from a physical deprivation. It is compensation for what he lacked from birth. Hoppy is incomplete, and he will complete himself at the expense of the entire world; he will psychologically devour it.
You will note in Dr. Bloodmoney an account of a test conducted in 1972 that turned out to be a catastrophe, and, of course, there was in fact no such test and no such catastrophe. But then, there was no such person as Dr. Bluthgeld. This is a work of fiction. And yet at a certain level it is not. The West Marin County area where much of the novel is set is an area that I knew well. When I wrote the novel I lived in that area. Many of the features that I describe are real. So a great deal of the veridical is blended in with the fiction. As do some of the characters, I searched for wild mushrooms in West Marin, and I found the varieties they find (and avoided the varieties they avoid). It is one of the most beautiful areas in the United States, and is called by the Sierra Club “The Island in Time.” When I lived there in the late fifties and early sixties it was set apart from the rest of California and therefore seemed to me a natural locus for a postwar microcosm of society. Already, in fact, West Marin was a little world. When I read over Dr. Bloodmoney I discover, to my pleasure, that I have captured in words much of that little world that I so loved — a little world from which I am now separated by time and distance.
My favorite character in the novel is the TV salesman Stuart McConchie, who happens to be black. In 1964, when I wrote Dr. Bloodmoney, it was daring to have a major character be a black man. My God, how much change has taken place in these recent years! But what an excellent change, one we can be proud of. In my first novel, Solar Lottery, I had a black man as captain of a spaceship — daring, indeed, for a novel published in 1955. Stuart is in my opinion the focus of the novel, and he appears first. It is through his eyes that we initially see Dr. Bluthgeld, which is to say, Dr. Bloodmoney. Stuart’s reaction is simple; he is seeing a lunatic, and that is that. Bonny Keller, however, knowing Dr. Bluthgeld more intimately, holds a more complex view of the man. Frankly, I tend to see Bluthgeld as Stuart McConchie sees him. I am, so to speak, Stuart McConchie, and at one time I was a TV salesman at a store on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. Like Stuart, I used to sweep the sidewalk in front of the store in the early morning, noticing the cute girls on their way to work. So I do have to confess to an overly simple view of Doctor Bluthgeld: I hate him and I hate everything he stands for. He is the alien and the enemy. I cannot fathom his mind; I cannot understand his hates. It is not the Russians I fear; it is the Dr. Bluthgelds, the Dr. Bloodmoneys, in our own society that terrify me. I am sure that to the extent that they know me, or would know me, they hate me back and would do exactly to me what I would do to them.