Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension Read online

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  Science Fiction

  Adventures in Dimension

  Ed. By Groff Conklin

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  PART ONE: Time Tales

  present to future

  Theodore Sturgeon: Yesterday Was Monday

  William L. Bade: Ambition

  Murray Leinster: The Middle of the Week After Next

  Lester del Rey: . . . And It Comes Out Here

  present to past

  A. Bertram Chandler: Castaway

  Marion Gross: The Good Provider

  Amelia R. Long: Reverse Phylogeny

  William Sell: Other Tracks

  past to present

  Day Keene: “What So Proudly We Hail . . .”

  Ray Bradbury: Night Meeting

  future to present

  H. L. Gold: Perfect Murder

  E. M. Hull: The Flight That Failed

  Lewis Padgett: Endowment Policy

  Raymond F. Jones: Pete Can Fix It

  PART TWO: Parallel Worlds

  Peter Cartur: The Mist

  Miles J. Breuer, M.D.: The Gostak and the Doshes

  Isaac Asimov: What If . . .

  John D. MacDonald: Ring Around the Redhead

  Alan E. Nourse: Tiger by the Tail

  William F. Temple: Way of Escape

  Roger Flint Young: Suburban Frontiers

  Fritz Leiber, Jr.: Business of Killing

  Frank Belknap Long: To Follow Knowledge

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  INTRODUCTION

  ONCE in a while some earnest soul asks me for a definition of science fiction. I am then obliged to confess that I haven’t formulated any precise definition, and neither has anyone else, to my knowledge—at least not one that everyone would agree with. Of course, now and then those of us who are interested in the subject come up with a contribution that may eventually constitute part of an acceptable whole. My latest addition to this stock pile of ideas is this: Science fiction is based on scientific ideas that have not been proved impossible.

  My first two Vanguard collections pretty well illustrated this point, I think. Possible Worlds dealt—sometimes in a pretty fantastic way, I admit—with the definitely scientific notion of space travel (see Time for December 8, 1952, and Collier’s for October 18-25, 1952, for evidence) and with the types of life that may exist elsewhere in the Galaxy. Invaders of Earth had various alien forms of life from other worlds making contact with us on Earth in one way or another, some of the ways rather peculiar, but on the whole scientifically quite possible. From the point of view of the popular press, the alien invasion is already in the realm of possibility—the flying saucers and their alien crews—(see Life for April 7,1952, and True for January and March, 1950).

  The present volume, dealing with time travel and parallel worlds, is also science fiction by the above definition, since no one has ever actually proved, so far as I know, that such travel cannot happen or that other-dimensional worlds do not exist. On the other hand, aside from some wholly abstract thinking by mathematicians and philosophers of physics and astrophysics, the only “evidence” adduced for their existence comes from metaphysicians and from science-fiction writers. This removes the question of their existence from the “possibility” side of the ledger and places it squarely on the opposite side under the head of fantasy. And here time and travel and parallel worlds will stay, at least until someone comes along with more tangible proof of their probability than we now have

  To call the stories in this book science fantasy rather than science fiction is, to my mind, no slur. Some of the most challenging stories I have ever read fall into this category. There is in the notion of time-as-a-dimension such vast scope for unusual ideas, such enormous freedom for new concepts, such a great opportunity for irony, tragedy, paradox, wit, that I am continually finding new and unusual material in the genre—something that cannot be said with such assurance, these days, about other types of science fiction.

  Furthermore, the fact that these stories are classed as fantasy does not mean that they can have no serious import. As you will find on reading, several authors use dimensional concepts as vehicles for the expression of sharp comment on the ailments of our time and the foibles of man. If you imagine that you can travel forward to a better world, for example, you can write a peppery piece about what is wrong with ours, and many of the better science-fiction writers have done just that. Others have written of terrifying futures, in an effort to put over some idea of a way of avoiding that future by altering our actions today. Time travel is not, therefore, all beer and skittles!

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  Now let’s take a brief glance at the kinds of time adventure that have been developed in science fiction during its history. The simplest approach has been to consider time as a sort of “corridor,” a “tunnel through space-time,” through which one can move backward to the past or forward to the future. This description also covers the two other simple types of time travel: from the future to the present, which is merely travel into the past (considering “now” to be “past”); and from the past to the present (considering “present” to be “future”).

  Perhaps the most popular category of time stories is that which takes us into the future. It is so popular, I believe, because it offers the writer an easy device for the description of his favorite Utopia (or anti-Utopia) in terms of the society he has left (i.e., ours). H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine is the classic example of this sort of travel-into-the-future. In the present collection, only two of the four tales included in the “Present to Future” section have a semi-Utopian aspect—William Bade’s “Ambition,” and Lester del Rey’s “. . . And It Comes Out Here,” which is a fairly wry view of a “better” future. The other two tales are straight dream stuff, particularly Theodore Sturgeon’s story of a man who found himself onstage while the scene setters were getting Wednesday ready. Murray Leinster’s tale, too, is strictly for fun, a neat bit of hop-scotch with metaphysics.

  Time travel backward, our second category, appeals to some writers as more “possible.” They view the time corridor as extending in one direction only: to events that have already happened. These writers don’t like the predestinarian idea that the future already exists; they believe that it only happens as it happens. However, traveling in the past also involves some highly unlikely eventualities, among which the problem of the time paradox is the most fascinating. Hardly a story of travel into the past has ever been written that did not bring to mind the difficult point that one might meet oneself—and then what? Or cause a basic change in past events— in which case what would happen? Marion Gross’s “The Good Provider” simply sidesteps the issue by not mentioning it, and Amelia Long’s “Reverse Phylogeny” gets around it successfully by having only the memories, rather than the actual bodies, of the protagonists glide into the past. This story also takes its characters so far back that they would hardly be likely to meet their own ancestors. The same type of time travel is used in one of the classics of science fiction, John Taine’s Before the Dawn.

  The paradox of backward time travel is met head on in the other two stories in this section. A. Bertram Chandler’s “Castaway” boldly accepts the paradox as insoluble and makes a horrifying little story out of it. William Sell’s precedent-breaking “Other Tracks,” on the other hand, provides that whenever anyone goes back and then returns, he returns to a world different from the one he left, a world changed by the very fact that he did go back. Here the paradox receives its most logical treatment.

  The third variety of travel in time, from past to present,
is very rarely encountered in science fiction, since it does not offer much in the way of dramatic opportunity. Day Keene’s “What So Proudly We Hail ...” makes as much as can possibly be made out of the notion, and does so with real effectiveness. Ray Bradbury’s “Night Meeting,” on the other hand, assumes the past-in-the-present and, like most of his tales, stands alone in its strange loveliness. One should not have to try to fit this story into a category, as I have had to here, for it is uncomfortable in any such formal strait jacket.

  Time travel from the future to the present, our fourth group, is nearly as popular with the science-fiction writers as is time travel from the present to the future. Here (usually) the stories have to do with a futurian who wants to change the past so that his future, or the world’s future, will be better—or at least different. Lewis Padgett’s “Endowment Policy” shows us a mean and selfish man of the future, and is also an excellent example of the time paradox. A man meets himself as a boy and tries to change the course of his life. It doesn’t work, naturally. . . . Horace Gold’s “Perfect Murder” (also about a selfish man of tomorrow) picks up the time paradox by the tail and lets it yowl in confusion. This is the sort of story it must be fun to write!

  The other side of the picture is shown by Raymond Jones’s ominous “Pete Can Fix It,” with its frightening shuttle back and forth in time to tell of a selfless futurian, a man who is desperately anxious to help the people of today avert a future which, in his world, has actually happened. E. M. Hull’s “The Flight That Failed” reports on a man from the future who actually helps us avert a calamity that had happened in his own world.

  There is one other type of time-travel story that is purposely not represented here. This is the tale of travel from the future to the past. Most of these stories tell of future scientists who go back in time on archaeological expeditions, or traders who travel back to negotiate profitable deals in past ages. My only excuse for not including this type of story is that I could find no example that I particularly liked. The whole concept is somehow fuzzy, and so, it seems to me, are the stories written about it. There may be, of course, some excellent examples that I may have missed; to their authors I herewith make my apologies in advance.

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  As far as pure time stories go, the field is just about covered. There are hundreds upon hundreds of variants, but on the whole I think our classification is a complete one. The other half of the concept of Adventures in Dimension involves the notion of parallel, or simultaneous, or alternate, or coexistent worlds or universes. The planets in touch with Earth may be Earthlike or they may be completely different. Both types are represented here.

  One of the bridges between the time story and the parallel-world story in which the parallel world is Earthlike is William Sell’s “Other Tracks,” previously mentioned. Here it is assumed that the various worlds the protagonist enters in the past remain in existence even though he is not in all of them. The same idea, “meta-scientifically” expressed, exists in the writings of certain modern theoretical metaphysicians—not fiction writers—who propound the theory that, since time is infinite, every conceivable kind of world, representing every conceivable variation on the least act of the smallest individual, has existed an infinite number of times in the past and will exist that many times again in the future. This ponderous concept becomes so uncomfortable to handle in fiction that most writers prefer kindergarten simplifications of the idea, which they use in a variety of entertaining ways, as you will see.

  Merely assume the existence of a parallel world, with interminglings difficult but possible, and you have a story like Peter Cartur’s “The Mist.” Or another sort of world that can be reached only by a strange sort of “thinking” about it, and Miles J. Breuer’s “The Gostak and the Doshes” comes to mind.

  Or imagine alternate worlds commencing with the commission or noncommission of a specific act, and you have a story like Isaac Asimov’s “What If . . .” Similar tales have appeared many times in the past; Britain’s famed Prime Minister Winston Churchill once wrote one. Think of one other world, exactly like ours except that time is a little faster there, so that by now it is about a thousand years ahead of us, and you have William F. Temple’s “Way of Escape.” This, like “What If . . . ,” presumes a splitting off, upon the occurrence of some event, of an alternate world; only in this instance the event is far in the past.

  Or conceive of an infinite number of different worlds that can be “reached” by a complex machine on our Earth, and you have strange concepts like John D. MacDonald’s “Ring Around the Redhead.” Alan E. Nourse’s “Tiger by the Tail” imagines a single other world, and between it and us a physical fourth-dimensional condition, or “hole,” through which objects may pass.

  Then there is the other universe with a time scale vastly swifter than ours; this you will find in Roger Flint Young’s “Suburban Frontiers.” Fritz Leiber’s “Business of Killing” assumes an infinite number of worlds, and one man who is able to travel between them. Finally, Frank Belknap Long’s “To Follow Knowledge” involves a machine that makes contact with many different worlds simultaneously—in this instance through an error, the results of which are terrifying.

  The parallel-world concept is thus as varied and as fresh as the outlook of the writers who tackle it. There is no possible way of categorizing stories of this sort, as there is with “simple” time-travel tales. All one can predict is that each one will be different; this is one reason, I am sure, why the idea attracts such good writers in the science-fiction field.

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  Incidentally, in talking about science fiction to groups of people, among them hundreds of high-school boys and girls, I have recently begun to notice an interesting change in point of view, which I believe is a good one. When I first became interested in the subject, some eight years ago, what discussion there was seemed always to be centered around the relative probability of the phenomena described in the stories and the estimated time when they would “come true.” This interest is still paramount today, but it seems to me that the emphasis on the point is not quite so heavy as it was and that other aspects of science fiction are becoming important.

  For example, I find it gratifying that many science-fiction readers today, and especially the young people, are becoming more concerned with the freshness and the variety of science-fiction concepts, and the excellence with which they are presented, than they are with whether or not these concepts turn out to be true predictions of things to come. A novel idea, whether scientific or pseudoscientific, is useful because it stretches the mind the way a good game of tennis or football stretches the body. It helps to develop the unused muscles of the imagination. It is this aspect of science fiction, and specifically of the adventures in dimension included in this book, that intrigues me most. These stories are genuine experiments in free-wheeling make-believe. They have no other reason for being. And for that reason alone—that they will test the elasticity of your mind—they are worth the time you take off from your various humdrum pursuits to read them.

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  I would like to thank Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, H. L. Gold, Murray Leinster, and Theodore Sturgeon for suggesting stories of their own for inclusion in this book and for helping me thereby to clarify my own ideas about time travel and dimensional adventures.

  Thanks are also due to a number of other friends for various favors, to the discerning folk at the Vanguard Press for the faith they continue to show in my taste, aberrant though it may be at times, and to Lucy, of course. Her enjoyment in the play of ideas, the unexpected turns and twists and quirks of plot so often found in other-dimensional stories, encourages me to believe that I am far from being alone in my admiration for this highly special subdivision of the science-fiction field.

  Groff Conklin

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  PART ONE

  TIME TALES

  Present to Future

  WHAT tomorrow will be like, no one knows. All we thin
k we know for sure is: “Tomorrow will be’’ It is perhaps also safe to say that it will be—different.

  Many science-fiction writers who deal with travel into future time make no pretense of knowing what it will be like, either. Thus, in this section we have four stories, only one of which really takes us into a distant future and describes what it may be like. Another is a curious sort of circular pattern with a clear picture of something, but whether it is the future isn’t made too clear because the story doesn’t establish beyond reasonable doubt whether there is any tomorrow.

  As for the other two, they simply ignore the matter and have a lot of fun with the forward notion of forward motion in time. These are really much more “logical” tales about the future, because the future never catches up with them to prove them right or wrong. They don’t prophesy—they just are. And very amusing, too.

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  Theodore Sturgeon

  YESTERDAY WAS MONDAY

  The purpose of putting this blithely incredible story first is to give you a massive dose of disorientation. Time-travel stories do that to you, and you might as well get used to it. . . . Indeed, the delightful thing about this particular item is the way in which it throws you off balance by denying perfectly obvious things like Tuesday, or, rather, one particular Tuesday for one particular man. Let us devoutly hope that Harry Wright’s trouble isn’t catching!