There may be other types, and numerous subdivisions of each; in fact, you may have a different system of classification altogether. However, the salient fact is that fantasy is a very broad and heterogeneous field of literature, and that each variety can vary in quality from the very good to the very bad. In every case, the very good will tempt us. After all, fantasy, like science fiction, is imaginative literature and there are times when this courtship can excuse our being inclusionistic.

  In fact, it doesn’t take much to switch from fantasy to science fiction, and it can be done easily enough if you are a skilled practitioner. I, myself, rarely write fantasy; but when I do, once in a while, I tend to write what I can only think of as Collier-influenced material.

  I began writing my George-and-Azazel stories as unabashed fantasies, and my reason for wanting to do them was because the satirical element made possible elaborate overwriting and straight-faced slapstick. My science fiction is chemically free of such things, and I’m human enough to want to indulge now and then.

  I sold two specimens to a competing magazine and the beauteous Shawna objected.

  “But they’re fantasies,” I said, “and we almost never do fantasies.”

  Shawna said, “Well, then, make them science fiction.”

  And I did. Azazel is no longer the demon he was at the start; he is now an extraterrestrial creature. Earlier I had assumed he was brought to Earth and into George’s control by means of some magical spell—but I had never described it. I still don’t, but you are free to suppose that he is pulled through a space warp.

  What he does is no longer outright magic. I manage to describe it in terms of rationalistic (if imaginary) science. The result is science fiction, even if not of a very “hard” nature.

  Now some of you may find George-and-Azazel stories too nearly “fantasy” for your tastes, but I will continue to write them and hope that Shawna will buy one or two of them now and then, because I love them. And someday, when I have written enough of them, I will collect them into a book.

  PART THREE

  BEYOND FANTASY

  READING AND WRITING

  A CAREFUL SURVEY COMPLETED EARLY in 1990 has shown that American school children have not improved their ability to read or write over the past 18 years. We’re not talking math and science, or history and geography. We’re talking reading and writing. A distressingly large proportion of children simply cannot read or write at a level considered appropriate for their age.

  What this means is that we have built up, and are continuing to build up, a large reservoir of Americans who are only fit for unskilled labor in a technological society that has almost no use for unskilled labor. This, in turn, means a reservoir of unemployables or those who will be forced to work at rock-bottom wages in the most menial forms of labor. And this in turn means we will have a large demand for drugs as the only means of making the unbearable seem bearable. The drug culture—and we all know what that means—will tighten ever more forcefully on our nation.

  But why can’t we teach our children to read and write? The report lists three reasons:

  1. Too much television;

  2. Too little reading matter; books, magazines, newspapers in the home;

  3. Too little homework.

  All this sounds reasonable, but what do we do about it? The report suggests that parents grow more involved in their children’s work and progress.

  Here I feel a little cynical. I’m afraid that the parents of children who are backward in reading and writing are themselves likely to be similarly backward and could not, even if they wished, be of much help.

  I think the problem is more fundamental. American society knows very well what it desires and admires. It desires to be amused. Fame and fortune are showered on show business personalities, on sports stars, on rock singers, and so on. Americans also desire to make money, a great deal of money, preferably without working too hard for it. So we admire wheeler dealers who manipulate junk bonds and dubious investments in order to make vast sums of money. Many of the rest of us keep hoping to win a few million in the lottery.

  All this is perfectly understandable, and I do not intend or even wish to fight the universe on such matters. Of course people want amusement and easy money.

  But in a technological society such as ours—and we boast that the United States is the most technologically advanced society in the world—why is learning and scholarship held in such contempt?

  We see movies in which college students who are actually interested in their studies are called “nerds” and are pictured—male and female—as dumpy, plain, weak, unattractive. Opposed to them are the glorious “jocks” and “pinup girls,” who are all pictured as Hollywood starlets and whose pleasure lies in endlessly humiliating the nerds—to the laughter of the audience.

  I believe this reflects reality, and that at many schools students who try to pursue their studies are derided and scapegoated by the others. (I seem to recall such incidents in my own childhood years.)

  Why is this? I have heard some explain it by saying America arose as a pioneer society where strong arms and sturdy frames were needed to tame a wilderness, with no use for stoop-shouldered professors. But we are no longer a pioneer society and we are no longer taming a wilderness—we are despoiling an environment, and now we need professors.

  I have also heard it said that our dismissal of scholarship and learning is purely a matter of money. Becoming a learned man is no way to get rich and that is the measure of its worthwhileness. Yet surely that is a rather sleazy way of setting a value on human activity. How much more ought we to respect a $60 billion drug lord than a $60,000 professor?

  The fact is that America (and the whole world for that matter) desperately needs its scientists. We need only rapidly go through the litany of disasters that faces us—the pollution and poisoning of the environment, the destruction of the rain forests and wetlands, the disappearing ozone layer, the threatening greenhouse effect. These are problems that for possible solutions require technological advance and understanding.

  It can be argued that the problems, even something as fundamental as the ever-increasing world population, have been caused by technological advance. There is truth to this. But these problems have resulted from the short-sighted use of technology by people who grabbed for the immediate short-term benefits of new discoveries and new techniques without sufficient consideration of long-term effects.

  What we need, you see, are not merely scientists, engineers, and technologists, but political and industrial leaders willing to try to understand the world of science and technology in depth and to avoid basing their judgments on the “bottomline”—of instant profit or loss.

  Consider the disputes that fill the minds of human beings today. The endless conflict of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, of Azerbijanis and Armenians in the Soviet Union, of Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East, of Bulgars and Turks in Bulgaria. These and dozens of other such disputes are devils dancing at the lips of a volcano about to erupt. Money, effort, and emotion are expanded endlessly on these apparently insoluble problems right when the Earth is sliding down the chute to destruction for all the disputants alike.

  And America’s responsibility in all this? As the most advanced, the strongest, the richest nation in the world, we owe the world leadership. We can’t solve the problems by ourselves, but we can show the way, we can rally our allies, alert even our enemies.

  But we are also the freest nation in the world, so we have no dictator to pull us along. We have an elected president, an elected legislature, elected officials at every governmental level. We must depend on them to understand the state of the world and the nature of the measures that must be taken.

  Because we are a democracy, it is the people themselves who must choose adequate leaders. Smiles are not enough, nor is flag-waving oratory. We must have understanding, or if you want to put it in another way, scholarship and learning.

  And for that we must turn to an electorate, many of whom cannot even read or write. Does this not make a mockery of democracy? Frankly, as the 1990s open, the state of American education freezes my blood with fear for all humanity.

  THE RIGHT ANSWER

  THE NUMBER OF GENERAL CONCLUSIONS one can come to about the Universe, or about any significant part of it, is usually limited, and the various sages of the world, past and present, have (with their eyes closed and their intuitions working) come up with every one of them.

  It follows, then, that whatever conclusion scientists arrive at concerning anything, it remains always possible to quote some item in Eastern speculation or Celtic mythology or African folklore or Greek philosophy, that sounds the same.

  The implication, on making the comparison, is that scientists are foolishly wasting a lot of money and effort in finding out what those clever Eastern (Celtic, African, Greek) sages knew all along.

  For instance:

  There are exactly three things that might be happening to the Universe in the long run.

  1. The Universe may be unchanging on the whole and therefore have neither a beginning or an end.

  2. The Universe may be changing progressively, that is in one direction only, and therefore have a distinct beginning and a different end.

  3. The Universe may be changing cyclically, back and forth, and therefore ends at the beginning and starts over.

  All the sages who have speculated on the Universe intuitively must come up with one of these three alternatives and, all things being equal, there is a one-in-three chance of their having duplicated whatever conclusions science eventually comes to on the subject.

  At the present moment, scientists are inclined to accept the second alternative. The Universe seems to have begun in a big bang and to be changing progressively so as to end in infinite expansion and maximum entropy (with or without black holes).

  If you pick out the proper verses of the Bible, then, and interpret them with sufficient ingenuity, you can maintain that the Bible says the same thing. All you need to do is to decide, for instance, that “Let there be light” is the theological translation of “big bang” and that six days is not very different from fifteen billion years and you can freely state that the latest astronomical theories support Genesis.

  What characterizes the value of science, however, is not the particular conclusions it comes to. Those are sharply limited in number and guesswork will get you the “right” answer with better odds than you’ll find at the racetrack.

  What characterizes the value of science is its methodology, the system it uses to arrive at those conclusions.

  A hundred sages, though speaking ever so wisely, can never offer anything more persuasive than an imperative “Believe!” Since human beings can be found to believe each of the hundred, there are endless quarrels over points of doctrine, and people have hated vigorously in the name of life and have murdered enthusiastically in the name of peace.

  Scientists, on the other hand, begin with observations and measurements and deduce or induce their conclusion from that. They do so in the open and nothing is accepted unless the observation and measurement can be repeated independently. Even then the acceptance is only tentative, pending further, better, and more extensive observations and measurements. The result is that despite controversy in the preliminary findings, a consensus is arrived at eventually.

  Consequently, what counts about science is not that it has currently (and tentatively) decided that there was a big bang; what counts is the long chain of investigation that led to the observation of the isotropic radio wave background that supports that conclusion.

  What counts is not that science has currently (and tentatively) decided that the Universe is changing progressively by way of an apparently endless expansion; what counts is the long chain of investigation that led to the observation of red-shifts in galactic spectra that supports that conclusion.

  Don’t tell me, then, that those clever Eastern (Celtic, African, Greek, or even Biblical) sages have spoken of something that sounds like the big bang or like endless expansion. That’s idle speculation.

  Show me where those sages worked out the isotropic radio wave background, or the red-shifts in galactic spectra, which alone support those conclusions on anything more than a mere assertion.

  You can’t. Science stands alone!

  IGNORANCE IN AMERICA

  FOR A LONG TIME NOW, SCIENTISTS have been concerned about the low level of scientific and mathematical instruction in American schools. Recent reports in 1988 and 1989 are unanimous in indicating not only that American students are scientifically and mathematically illiterate, but that they are more so than students in any other industrial society studied.

  This is depressing in the extreme. The United States is the scientific leader of the world. Partly this may be due to the steady influx of scientists who were educated in other parts of the world. During the 1930s, Nazi oppression drove numerous scientists to Great Britain and the United States, and they were a key factor in the development of the nuclear bomb—a development widely touted in the United States as based on “Yankee know-how.” Except that virtually all the Yankees had foreign accents.

  And where do we stand today? Must we depend on the continued maintenance of our scientific lead on foreign imports?

  Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depend on a good grasp of science. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, questions of diet and of heredity—all require scientific literacy. Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs if they are scientifically illiterate?

  The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion—but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?

  Let us take an example. In July 1988, Jon Miller of the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University conducted a telephone poll of 2,041 adults and asked each about 75 questions on basic science. The results of the questionnaire showed that almost 95 percent of those questioned were ignorant of basic and simple scientific facts and had to be considered scientifically illiterate. There seemed to be a popular impression, for instance, that laser beams were composed of sound waves (rather than light waves) and that atoms are smaller than electrons (rather than the other way around).

  This point might seem a little esoteric, but consider this: Twenty-one percent of those questioned were of the opinion that the Sun revolved about the Earth and an additional 7 percent didn’t know which went around which.

  Considering that it is now four centuries that science has been unanimous over the fact that the Earth goes about the Sun, how is it possible that a quarter of those asked didn’t know about it? To my mind, there are three possibilities.

  Those who didn’t know either:

  1. Had never gone to school and had never read any book that dealt with science in any significant way.

  2. Had indeed gone to school and had read some books but had paid no attention whatever.

  3. Had gone to school and had read books and had paid attention but hadn’t been properly taught.

  To me the first two possibilities are unthinkable, and I am forced to consider the third.

  That Americans aren’t properly taught is all too likely, considering the fact that a great many teachers must be as scientifically and mathematically illiterate as the general public. Yet how can any teacher, however poorly prepared, not teach the kids that the Earth goes around the Sun?

  Well, there is a passage in the Bible that describes a fight between the Israelites under Joshua and the Gibeonites. The Israelites were winning, but it seemed the Gibeonites might escape under cover of darkness. To complete the victory, Joshua therefore commanded “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon … And the sun stood still … and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua 10:12–13.)

  Now, how can Joshua have ordered the Sun to stand still and how could the sun have proceeded to stand still, if it weren’t moving to begin with? These verses were used by people in the 1500s and 1600s to fight the notion that the Earth was moving around the sun. They kept quoting the passage in Joshua.

  In actual fact, this story was told when everyone in the world thought the Sun did move. We now know better. And, even if the passage were divinely inspired, it may simply have been worded in a way that would make sense to the people of that time.

  Nevertheless, there are millions of people in the United States who still firmly believe that every word of the Bible is inspired and absolutely, literally true; that the sun is moving and Joshua did command it to stand still, and it did stop moving temporarily.

  Perhaps that means that in areas where such views are strong, teachers teach that the sun goes around the Earth, either out of stubborn belief or out of the fear that they will be fired if they don’t. And perhaps that is why so many Americans are ignorant of so vital and elementary a point.

  Imagine the harm things like this can do to our country!

  This kind of backward thinking must not continue if America is to keep its role of the world’s scientific leader.

  KNOCK PLASTIC!

  ONE OF MY FAVORITE STORIES (undoubtedly apocryphal, else why would I remember it?) concerns the horseshoe that hung on the wall over the desk of Professor Niels Bohr.

  A visitor stared at it with astonishment and finally could not help exclaiming, “Professor Bohr, you are one of the world’s great scientists. Surely you cannot believe that object will bring you good luck.”

  “Why, no,” replied Bohr, smiling, “of course not. I wouldn’t believe such nonsense for a moment. It’s just that I’ve been informed it will bring me good luck whether I believe it will or not.”