Science Fiction — the World's Nightmare ! // Fantasy Review, Volume II, № 12, 1948, p. 2-4
Перевод статьи:
Виктор Болховитинов, Василий Захарченко. В мире бредовой фантастики (статья) // Литературная газета, 1948, № 25 (2408), 27 марта, с. 4 / читать
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Рубрика: As The Soviets See It . . .
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Science fiction has been praised, ridiculed, and even lightly condemned in the past on the ground of its "morbidity" or sheer fantasy. But never before has it been thoroughly denounced as monstrous propaganda, a tool of the reactionary forces seeking to enslave mankind, which yet reveals the dreadful doom in store for the world-or most of it. This remarkable article, which appeared in a recent issue of a Soviet literary journal, is another instance of the notice fantasy-fiction is attracting on all sides, even behind the Iron Curtain. We reproduce it here*, with all its invective, as a reflection of quite a new attitude to this literature.
*Condensed from "The World of Nightmare Fantasies," by Victor Bolkhovitinov and Vassilij Zakhartchenko, published in the Literaturnaya Gazyeta.
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The American Raymond F. Jones, experienced writer of “scientific” fantasies, attempts to lift the curtain of the future for the reader. He uses all his flaming imagination in describing a machine which analyses the inclinations , talents, character and other potentialities of a new-born infant. If it finds the child normal, it returns it to the arms of the waiting mother. If it finds a future “superman,” the mother will never see him again; he will be sent to a world “parallel” to ours where he will be raised without the help of parents. But woe to the baby the machine finds defective – it will be immediately destroyed. According to the “scientific” forecast of author Jones, a network of such machines will cover the world of the future.
This tale, monstrous in its openly fascistic tendency, appears in the American magazine Astounding, under the optimistic title of Renaissance. Jones’ fascist revelations are not an isolated instance in American science fiction literature. There are numerous such examples under the brightly colourful covers which enterprising publishers throw on the market in millions of copies. From their pages glares a fearful world, apparently conceived in the sick mind of an insane, a world of nightmare fantasies. Miasma, mental decay, fear of to-day and horror of the future: all these innumerable ills of capitalism are clearly reflected.
In their science fiction delirium, the authors reveal the innermost secret of capitalism. With shameless boldness they bring to the surface what serious literature still tries to present in a veiled form. The lackey of Wall Street, in the livery of a science fiction writer, first of all carries out the main order of his bosses: to persuade the reader of the invulnerability of the capitalist system. The wolf-pack laws, the so-called American Way Of Life, are represented as inevitable for all people on Earth, now and in the future.
No matter to what planet the author carries his heroes, he describes worlds constructed according to the American system. In The Mysterious World by Eando Binder, the bandit Yorin, following the trade of his Chicago colleagues, steals an interplanetary taxi, kidnaps the scientist Tom and the beautiful Della, and takes them to an unknown planet to look for hidden pirate treasure. In a story by Eric Frank Russell, The Secret of Mr. Wiesel, there is an ecstatic description of the adventures of a spy from Mars.
The American science-fantasy, in its unbridled racial propaganda, reaches heights which might have made Goebbels envious. The author of Lilies of Life, Malcolm Jameson, tries to impress on the reader that there is inequality on Venus and that there are inferior and superior races. With the revolting cynicism of a coloniser and a slave owner, he writes: ‘The natives of Venus are lazy, vicious and shameless. The native is a born liar and thief; he shuns work, is indifferent to physical pain and completely incapable of thought.’
The dollar, the gun and the fist function equally well on the most distant planets, even those in the dust of the galaxy. Obeying the order of the Wall Street owners, the writers glorify war as the basis of life and as the natural condition of the planet. In Destiny Times Three, Fritz Leiber Jr. describes a cruel, unending war between two nations who have swallowed all the rest. They are constantly goaded on by the thought that the war must be continued or all previous sacrifices will have been in vain. In The Lights of Mars the author foresees war not only on Earth but also on Mars.
To fortify the propaganda of the imperialist war machine, the ‘science’ fantasts of America unrestrainedly threaten with the atomic bomb monster. Robert Moore Williams in The Incredible Pebbles, describes a future atom bomb factory into which, having made a mysterious leap through time, there wander a moronic little boy with a slingshot. The little boy shoots atom bombs with his slingshot like pebbles. A hooligan with an atomic slingshot – isn’t this the true symbol of modern imperialism?
To distract the mind of the reader from ‘harmful’ thoughts on the origins of social evils, American publishers release a flood of horrifying tales with ‘other side’ themes such as telepathy, reincarnation and failure of memory. The authors of these ‘scientific-fantastic’ works do everything to pervert and stultify their readers. They foretell the total destruction of matter, which is replaced by a concentration of thought-energy. Throwing in a few mathematical theories, the ignoramuses of these American magazines arrive at a belief in the existence of other worlds in the fourth dimension. Thus, in a story by John and Dorothy de Courcy, there appears an immortal corpse out of a grave! In Joseph J. Millard’s The Crystal Invaders, the protagonists are bodiless creatures of ‘concentrated pure energy’ which by feeding on the nervous energy of people arouse in them emotions of fear and hatred.
In huge quantities appears the writing of literary fiends like Richard S. Shaver, consisting of a mixture of mysticism and sadism in the fascist style. In his novels Shaver constantly avers that all the troubles on Earth are caused by an incredibly ancient and learned super-race of Lemurians who once owned the Earth but who have been driven into deep underground caves with all their machines. They operate from these caves with special rays which inspire anti-social thoughts and actions and invite man to suicidal war.
The authors of this arch-reactionary and screamingly shameless mess cannot, however, hide their fear of the future which has seized the entire capitalistic world. Capitalism, which enslaves and exploits men, would much prefer that its factories were worked by uncomplaining automatons. So, to please their bosses, the writers bring forth a whole army of robots who push live workers out of the factories. Characteristic is a story by Eando Binder, Adam Link Saves the World. Adam Link is a robot with a platinum sponge brain superior to a human’s. In a war with monsters arrived from Sirius, he leads herds of bestial and merciless people. In Lester del Rey’s Though Dreamers Die, all humans die out, while on a faraway planet the robots survive and multiply.
In the contemporary bourgeois world, the fruits of the creativeness of inventors and scientists are turned into objects for speculation and robbery or the means of slavery and exploitation. Capitalism has chained inventors to its chariot by its patent laws and forces scientists to do things against humanity. The hero of the modern science fiction story is usually not a scientist but a business man or a gangster who utilises the fruits of other people’s labours. Science, in the opinion of the American business man, is above all else a means of enrichment, crime and tyranny.
Capitalism has no future. Time is working against it. Pessimism shows through all science fiction literature., in spite of a bravado on the part of the authors. The reader is presented with scenes of a world reverting to wilderness and of the destruction of civilisation. The revelations appearing in this delerium of unbridled fantasy, poorly concealed by the label of ‘science’, vividly betray the incurable disease of the capitalistic system. The hacks supplying the fantastic drivel feel this, and try to present the doom of capitalism as that of the world. But all their endeavours are in vain, their nauseating, evil ravings cannot fool the peoples of the world who believe in progress and the bright future of humanity.
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* Although this article appeared only recently, most of the stories mentioned were published four or five years ago, during the war when, if they had any propagandist tendency at all, it Was more likely to be anti-Fascist.—Ed.
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