Greatest Science Fiction Story of All Time

Daniel Keyes died one year ago at the age of 86.  He lived a full life and his death is not a time for sadness, but to appreciate the singular accomplishment of his life.  He wrote "Flowers for Algernon," which I consider to be the greatest science fiction story of all time.

In that odd way of ranking art, we often like to describe something as the finest example of such and such.  "Nightfall," by Isaac Asimov, is often touted as the best science fiction story ever published.  While I like "Nightfall," it never really affected me emotionally, just intellectually, and I disagree with the ranking.  When the Science Fiction Writers of America were voting, they only ranked stories from before 1965.  First published as a short story in 1959 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, "Flowers for Algernon" also ranked high in the voting, but “Nightfall” won.  I suspect that Nightfall won because Isaac Asimov was such a commanding presence within the community of science fiction writers, and while “Nightfall” was his best work, it was one of many outstanding works.  As for Keyes, while he published other work, "Flowers for Algernon" shines so brightly that he almost feels like a one-hit wonder.

I was an adult before I read the story and I am not going to describe what happens.  Read it yourself.  According to the New York Times obituary, Daniel Keyes said that “the character of Charlie occurred to him while he was teaching a special needs class; a student approached him at the end of the period and asked to be transferred out of the ‘dummy’s class’ because he wanted to be smart.”

After Keyes wrote the story, the editor of one science fiction magazine thought that the story was “good,” but would be “great” if he changed the ending.  Keyes refused and published in another magazine and won a Hugo Award for best novelette of 1960.  The editor at Doubleday also wanted a different ending for the later novel.  Keyes again refused.  Both editors were wrong.  This is a great example of an artist sticking with his original vision and being rewarded.  A different ending would have compromised the power of the story.

“Nightfall” is essentially a gimmick story, based on a single idea, while "Flowers for Algernon" confronts the central issue that forms the core of scientific inquiry and the themes of science fiction--that is, intelligence.

Even in a modern world, where race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are often obstacles to succeeding, the greatest obstacle to success has always been the lack of intelligence.  Being intelligent is an enormous asset, as are the accompanying traits of conscientiousness, perception, emotional control, and the ability to sacrifice for long-term goals.

What makes us human is our minds and “Flowers for Algernon” teaches us how precious that intelligence is.

Posted: 15 June 2015

Book Review

David Brin, Existence (Tor, 2012)

Its been too long since I immersed myself in a big science fiction novel where world-building and ideas hold sway, prompting me to think big thoughts and muse about the fundamental purposes of human life.  David Brin’s novels and short stories have often provoked those emotions in me, an example of the sense of wonder that is so key to good science fiction.  I have read most of his novels and two of his non-fiction books and enjoyed reading his most recent novel, Existence (Tor, 2012) (ebook).

This is a long novel (I estimate 300,000 words), a sprawling epic, scientifically-grounded and optimistic, similar in scope and intent to his 1990 novel Earth (ebook)  A large cast of characters and events occur over the course of the next hundred years or so, though the exact time frame is only vaguely described.  The plot centers around the discovery of large crystals which contain the virtual remains of extinct aliens.  Brin imagines a world with virtual overlays, instant information, a rapid rate of change, and human civilization striving to make the right decisions and avoid possible civilization-ending traps.  As is common with his writing, he focuses on themes of how alien civilizations might evolve, humans adding other intelligent species to our planet by genetically modifying dolphins and chimpanzees, and issues about privacy, transparency, and how political power works.

His characterization is good, particularly in showing how people can get excited about science.  His portrayal of autistic people, as a type of new human with different capabilities, is intriguing and heartfelt.  One character is obviously based on the late Michael Chrichton, well-known for his thrillers based on science gone wrong.  For Brin, the greatest human traits are curiosity, problem-solving, and diversity.

Brin ends the Afterword of the book with an ode to humans, decrying the idea that humans are a pox on the environment.

We aren’t a curse upon the world.  We are her new eyes.  Her brain, testes, ovaries . . . her ambition and her heart.  Her voice.  So sing. (556)

While it is not a popular idea among some circles, I personally believe that humans are the culmination of life on Earth and give the Earth meaning.  In the best science fiction, we see these ideas discussed and dissected, a useful activity for all of us, because these issues will someday become burning issues of the present day.

Posted: 16 November 2013

What If . . . ? Armageddon 1962

In July, I went to New York City to be interviewed for a documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis.   It is called "What If . . . ? Armageddon 1962," and was created by NBC News for the Military History Channel, a Discovery Network channel.  Last week, Discovery flew me back to Washington, D.C. for the premiere, a panel, and dinner.   Four historians were involved in the documentary, all with books on the subject.  My book is When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I saw the documentary for the first time and am pleased with it.  I think it is well-done, accurate, and the narrative made it easy to tell the difference between real history and the counterfactual history.  The Military Channel has arranged a radio tour for me tomorrow morning, being interviewed on seven stations within about an hour and a half.  The combined listenership is about 450,000.

My book had already attracted some earlier attention.  It won the Sidewise Award for Alternate Fiction (long form) in 2010.  It was the partial basis for an earlier documentary, CloudsOverCuba, which is part of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library web site.  That documentary just won a News and Documentary Emmy Award.  This article in the British history magazine All About History is an interview with me about the same subject.

The documentary airs on Tuesday evening on The Military Channel, which 195 on The Dish, 287 on DirecTV, and 112 on Comcast.  It will air at 10 PM (EST), 9 PM (Central), 8 PM (Mountain), and 7 PM (Pacific).

Posted: 21 October 2013

Author’s Afterword

Author’s Afterword to Seeking Valhalla: A Retro Science Fiction Novel

When I was about twelve years old, visiting my grandmother's, I discovered a small bookcase full of paperback novels.  As a voracious reader, I was intrigued.  These novels belonged to my uncle, who had died in a car accident at the age of seventeen a decade earlier.  I borrowed a dozen or so and took them home.  Gradually all of the novels moved to my house, with a promise that I would take care of them.  A promise I have kept.  I think that my grandmother had always wanted to read them as a homage to her youngest child, but her tastes in fiction ran more to westerns and romances.

Many of the novels were by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Burroughs is best known for his Tarzan novels, which I enjoyed, but I found his science fiction much more interesting.  What Burroughs wrote was called scientific romance, because it really didn't meet the modern definition of science fiction.  I will not go into what science fiction is, mainly because I would never be able to climb out of that argument.  Burroughs had started publishing in 1912, long before the term "scientifiction" was coined by Hugo Gernsback in 1929, and died in 1950, over a quarter century before I started reading him.

The world of John Carter of Barsoom thrilled me, with adventures on a Mars where canals existed and a dying civilization struggled for survival.  The story was a combination of swordplay, daring heroics, rescuing the princess and other damsels, and futuristic marvels.  When the novels were written, the idea that Mars was a sister world to Earth, with canals on it, was still scientifically acceptable.

I also enjoyed the Carson of Venus novels, set on a jungle planet that thrived under the mysterious clouds that blanketed the planet nearest to us.  The idea that such a environment existed was quite plausible until the 1960s, when American and Soviet spacecraft passed by or landed on the planet.  We discovered not the steamy tropics, but a hellish furnace with temperatures over 800 degrees Fahrenheit and a surface pressure ninety times Earth normal caused by a run-away greenhouse effect.

His Caspak trilogy, beginning with The Land That Time Forgot, written in 1918, told of a green valley in the Antarctica, heated by volcanism, where the different stages of evolution were played out the further one walked up the valley.  Antarctica at that time was still a mysterious place.

The science behind Pellucidar, the land inside the hollow Earth, was discredited long before Burroughs created his stories, but they were a compelling read for me anyhow.  A whole new world, only miles below my feet, provided hours of enjoyment.  Other Burroughs novels such as The Moon Maid and The Mad King also excited my youthful desire for vicarious adventure.  Burroughs wrote about one hundred novels in his life and I calculate that I read about a third of them.  I also read other science fiction and fantasy novels in my uncle's collection, such as the Time Trader series of Andre Norton.

The novels of Burroughs are probably the one author that I regularly read repeatedly as a youth, other than the novel Swiss Family Robinson.  By my later teens, I could no longer read Burroughs.  The plots were too predictable, the characters too pulpy, and my tastes had changed.  Burroughs was a man of his times, and for modern sensibilities, he is racist, ethnocentric, sexist; a whole host of negative -ism's.  Burroughs was financially successful, and incredibly influential on the science fiction and fantasy fields emerging out of the pulps in the 1930s and 1940s.  The importance of Burroughs in the field of science fiction can hardly be overstated and one can say without qualification that he was the best-selling science fiction and fantasy author of the twentieth century.

The curious result of reading my uncle's books is that I was introduced to science fiction as if I had been twenty years further back in the past, and as my reading habits changed, they recapitulated the history of speculative fiction.  As a scholar interested in the history of the genre, this is an invaluable background.

It has been observed one can read older science fiction stories and novels and still enjoy them by considering them to be a form of alternative history.  Just remember what was known about science at that time and enjoy the story for what it was, not condemn it for what it got wrong.

[This Afterword is in the printed version of the novel, but not the ebook version.  I don't know why.]

Posted: 1 September 2013