Prefatory Afterthoughts

When I write these afterthoughts, some eight years have elapsed since the rather lengthy paper to which they apply was "submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science." The only reason why my vanity was sufficiently reawakened to prompt me to turn to the old thesis again is rather simple: one of our secretaries asked me if I had any "outside" typing for her to do, and I suddenly remembered that not only had I thought once or twice in the past about "getting the thing published," but an average of 1.5 friends and acquaintances per year had expressed an interest in seeing the M.I.T. thesis that was about science fiction. So with a market of at least a dozen assured, I decided to go back to it and see what it was like. The results follow.

With the exception of these notes, the paper is largely unchanged. Although the prose sometimes borders on scholarly parody, it would simply be an exercise--and a tedious one at that--to attempt to alter the style significantly. Besides, it's a faintly amusing style, and it includes several of the most outrageous puns I ever made; so it's probably worth preserving. And as to the argument, I will stick with it, by and large. That leaves only the question of whether to offer additional readings, of some of the last eight years' worth of science fiction which I found noteworthy. Perhaps it would be a good idea. However, although the exercise of altering the style would present no difficulties to one who has practiced the largely linguistic trades of teaching Freshman Composition, doing technical writing/editing, and programming computers in the intervening years, the performing of close readings is a skill which I am not convinced I could reacquire.

So it stands largely as was--with exceptions. For example, one could scarcely have taught Freshman Comp for two and one half years and not clean up the odd comma problem or untangle the odd syntax, every so often. Some embarrassingly consistent spelling errors were also attended to along the way. And then there are the retractions, revisions, and desired alterations in emphasis; these I do here.

Perhaps the major point to make about science fiction from the vantage point of 1968 is that popular critical misconceptions of the field seem to have abated a good deal since Sputnik et seq. sunk into the common knowledge of the critics. This consideration tends somewhat to diminish the "need" for a defense/explanation/ justification/plea for science fiction. That it does not diminish the need too greatly is illustrated by the fact that my old high school, which had refused classroom space for an after-hours course in the calculus in my day (on the grounds that the project was "undemocratic"), is now offering a genuine college-prep math course--on the grounds that we must catch up with Them technologically. No, doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not quite good enough.

Then there are the changes I would have made to the contents had I not been amused by the notion of preserving my views as a college senior, for some sort of "historical" reasons. For one thing, in the light of later experience, I think I was far too kind to the so-called social sciences throughout; this bias is based upon having seen too much of the way in which so-called social scientists abuse electronic data processing, among other, less tangible, factors. I also feel that I was not harsh enough to Mr. Amis; his book came out while I was in the middle of writing the thesis, and I didn't really have the time to evaluate closely. What else? Well, I was rather surprised to see how upbeat I was eight years ago: humanism, optimism, and all manner of upbeat notions. That I am a far cry from that sort of thing now is perhaps best witnessed by the fact that I cannot understand why I apologized for the kiddy divorce court; it's a splendid idea. But it does remind me of the one regret I have over not being up to adding new readings: Robert Heinlein has written some absolutely superb books in the last eight years; it is no longer the case that "and of course there's Heinlein" is what one says after listing a few of one's favorite authors: there's Heinlein, and then there are the others. He still doesn't write "pretty" prose, but he's the best storyteller, and he tells the best stories.

{The one irresistible addition [8/00]: Go get the as-written ("original uncut", ©1991) version of "Stranger" if you haven't already. Compare it to the as-published (1963) version. Before you've finished with the first page, and certainly by the time you finish the first chapter, you should realize that his prose was, in its natural state, far, far more attractive than we've been led to believe. Indeed, when I first performed the exercise, I threw the as-published one into the air and screamed, "I hate copyeditors!" after only a few paragraphs' worth of p. 1.   I later learned that Heinlein had done the cutting himself, at the publisher's behest since they didn't want to invest in so "big" a science fiction book in the then-current state of the market, but having become a published author myself during the interval between the two publications, I still hate copyeditors. [There's also an as-written version of "Puppet Masters" available. The differences between it and the as-published version are nowhere near so striking as is the case with "Stranger", but since the book figures in Chapter III, it seemed worth mentioning here.] }

Aside from that, there are no particular apologies to be made. I still feel, my thesis advisor to the contrary notwithstanding, that a basically deductive approach was the only one to take in an undergraduate thesis. He still feels that I should have taken the same sort of inductive approach which he took in his Ph.D. dissertation on Restoration Comedy, but that was, after all, for the doctorate--and from Harvard. To me, 25-28,000 words is more than one really should say for a mere Bachelor's degree.

To conclude these afterthoughts as I began the thesis, with Theodore Sturgeon. There is attributed to him a sublime natural law, known as Sturgeon's Law, of course. When told that 90% of science fiction is crap, he replied, "Of course it is. 90% of everything is crap." Perhaps apocryphal, but the best and onlie true conclusion to the following.

M.A.P.

Cambridge

March 1968

{and a wee bit from Lotosland, August 2000}

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©2003 Michael A. Padlipsky. All rights reserved.