Welcome to the first issue of Ibn Qirtaiba, the magazine of the SF SIG of Australian Mensa. No doubt there are already two questions in most of your minds; viz (a) Why the silly name, and (b) What does it mean? Well, in answer to the first question, it is not a very silly name, and it has the uncommon advantage of being shortenable to IQ, thus being easier to pronounce, and providing a convenient allusion to Mensa. In answer to the second question, the phrase comes from Frank Herbert's epic novel Dune, and means "Thus go the holy words". Well, I am not sure that any of the contents of this issue could rightly be described as holy, but I hope you will find at least something to spark your interest anyway.
We start off this issue with a history of SF from Frankenstein onwards. In future issues you will be able to look forward to a short synopsis of the entire Dune series of novels, a short story or two, and introductory articles about such interesting areas of fandom as Japanese animation and cult TV series Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and, this issue, The Prisoner.
To provide a link with Mensa (token, perhaps, but the best I can do!) you will also find herein an article about the links between SF and intelligence. As the name Forum implies, this is not intended to be so much an authoritative treatise on the topic, as an attempt to spark thought (whether in agreement or otherwise) on the part of you, the readers. If you would like to air your views about this topic, or to contribute an article, letter or piece of artwork on any other topic, your contributions will be gratefully accepted at the editorial address below.
To celebrate our first issue, we are also running a competition. If you would like to win the SF paperback, magazine or comic of your choice, write an SF short-short story of 200 words or less ending with the following sentence: "As the door closed in front of them, they knew it would be a long time before they needed to worry about that". Be sure to include your name (only SIG members can enter) and a few alternative selections for your prize. The winning entry will be published in issue three.
And remember- reality is for those who can't handle SF.
Science
Fiction: History and Criticism
Man has told stories since the beginning of time, and written them down for almost as long. Most genres of fiction have existed in one form or another for centuries. Science fiction is a rare exception; a literature that has evolved from nothing into its present form in little over a century. In this article I will investigate why this should have been so, and what bearing this rapid evolution has had on the perceived place of SF in contemporary literature.
Brian Aldiss (1973) cites Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein as the first example of science fiction. The early utopias, fantasies and social satires of pre-industrial times were not SF as such, because their rudiments were pure fancy, without claim to scientific plausibility; instead, they served to analogise some political or philosophical end. Although, as with any slow evolution, it was not seen as exceptionally new at the time, Frankenstein was the first novel to base its fantastic theme on science, rather than myth or the supernatural.
In 1864 Jules Verne published the first of his
successful "voyages extraordinaires"; Journey
to the Centre of the Earth. Although pure, unashamed
adventure stories, their scientific content made them a type of
fiction, as Verne claimed, "which I have invented
myself". Neglecting a few stories by authors such as Poe,
and Stephenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the infant genre of
science fiction was to make its next major appearance with H.G.
Wells and his 1895 first novel The Time Machine. Being a
pioneer of the genre, Wells was free to write about invaders from
Mars, invisibility and flying saucers without the stigma of
cliche and comic book unoriginality suffered by the second-rate
SF writers of the next century. But unlike many of his
contemporaries, notably Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft,
Wells' stories were never simple escapism, but spoke through
fantastic extrapolations and symbols about morality and the place
of mankind in the society of his creation. Aldiss (1973) sees two
poles already to have emerged; first, the thinking or analytical
fiction of Wells, and second, the adventure or fantasy fiction of
Burroughs and his imitators. This distinction was only clarified
in the next phase in the evolution of SF.
The man awarded the title of "the father of science fiction" is neither Verne nor Wells (nor, needless to say, Mary Shelley), but Hugo Gernsback, who founded the world's first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. Brian Aldiss (1973:209) claims that Gernsback, despite his title, was "one of the worst disasters ever to hit the science fiction field". He was not a writer of any kind (English was his second language), but was educated in the sciences. Accordingly, the so-called "gadget stories" published in Amazing owe much to his previous magazine, Modern Electrics, in their reliance on pure technological prophecy, heedless of plot or character development. Nevertheless, the magazine was immediately popular, and spawned a gaggle of shorter-lived imitators in the "galactic cops 'n robbers" vein.
In 1938, one of these "pulp" magazines (allegedly so named for the quality of the paper rather than of its content), with the typically garish name of Astounding Stories of Super Science, passed into the editorship of SF writer, John W. Campbell, who immediately renamed it Astounding Science Fiction (progressively de-emphasising the "Astounding" with each issue); and set the evolution of the genre on a new path. Isaac Asimov (1979:171), one of many SF writers first published in Astounding, claims Campbell to be the pioneer of "social science fiction". In contrast to the romantic outer galaxy adventure of the Gernsbackian "space opera", Campbell, says Asimov, "de-emphasized the nonhuman and nonsocial in science fiction", instead insisting on character (be it human, alien or robotic) as the focus of the stories, and reducing science to a mere background or setting. In this way the same difference observed between the writing of Wells and Burroughs (or even Verne), may be used to compare the editorships of Campbell and Gernsback. Inevitably, the former began to win out, with the success of such magazines as Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction, which emphasised quality of style and expression, rather than scientific content.
Only with the atomic and space ages did SF
necessarily begin to permeate the barrier of public recognition.
J.H.R. Tolkein had opened up the genre of fantasy to the public,
and Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Daniel Keyes and Arthur C. Clarke
were among the first writers of SF to be read by the mainstream
since George Orwell and Aldous Huxley with 1984 and Brave
New World respectively (although even in these cases, the
prevalent attitude, as mainstream writer Kingsley Amis once said,
was one of either "This is science fiction - it can't be
good" in the case of the former authors' works, or
"This is good - it can't be science fiction" in the
case of the latter's).
It was about this time- the 1960s- that the "New Wave" of SF came into being, and this was a revolution more marked than any of the evolutionary changes before it. New Wave was the complete antithesis of pulp science fiction; revolving around technique rather than plot, personal subjectivity rather than third person objectivity; and it was violently condemned by the old school of SF as cynical pseudo-avant-garde rubbish, displaying ignorance and fear of the science and technology the pulps had celebrated. New wave writers (such as J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison and Brian Aldiss) reacted against the romantic optimism of the past in favour of style, symbolism and the literary styles of mainstream 20th century experimental writers. The pessimistic New Wave is considered to have died with the hippy culture in the in the 1970s, but in its aftermath SF has been liberated from the shackles of spaceships and bug-eyed monsters to the freedom of the unfamiliar; exactly as it had enjoyed in the beginning, before science fact had begun to catch up with it.
In 1977, SF was suddenly thrust into the mainstream with George Lucas' blockbuster film Star Wars. This was a traditional space opera more of the style of the 1930s than the 1970s (Harlan Ellison has even contended that it was a parody of the space opera form); but to mainstream viewers then, and still now, that was science fiction. In my experience, this one film has gone a long way to perpetuating the misinterpretation and exclusion of SF from the mainstream of "serious" literature. This is not the fault of the SF genre, but of its interpretation by the media in the light of Star Wars and the other SF movies that have entered its tested market since. Given, space opera and pulp SF are a part of SF, as Mills & Boon novels are a part of mainstream fiction. SF writer Theodore Sturgeon (1974:98) is famous for saying that 90% of science fiction is trash. "But then," he adds, "90% of everything is trash"! The inference is that mainstream fiction is judged on its most worthwhile examples, while SF is judged on the early escapism that "has bedeviled the history, he criticism, and the writing of science fiction ever since" (Aldiss, 1973:135).
Should SF then return to the days when it was simply a part of mainstream fiction? Reginald Bretnor (1979:273-277) answers that it is, indeed, not a separate genre, as it has access to all the themes and viewpoints that other genres lay claim to, as well as the ability to create its own. In fact, he attacks "non-science fiction", not because it reflects in a "very limited, subjective passive sense ... the experience of certain sorts of people in our time", but for "the contention, outright or implied, that no literature can or should do more." Mainstream literature attaches all importance to the study of the human experience, but refuses to suspend its disbelief as to other potential environments in which this could exist, even if larger and more important and interesting issues could thereby be raised and addressed. In SF, no boundaries are erected to define which ideas can and cannot be tackled; the intricacies of individual human experience can be explored concurrently with the mysteries of life and the universe itself. As the genre continues to evolve (I have not even been able to discuss such recent developments as science fantasy and cyberpunk), it will, irrespective of its acknowledgment or otherwise by mainstream critics and literary academics, continue to be, as in my opinion it is, the most innovative and stimulating genre of fiction there is.
Bibliography
Aldiss, B. Billion Year Spree. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973.
Asimov, I. "Social Science Fiction" in Bretnor, R. (ed.). Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and its Future. Advent, Chicago, 1979.
Bretnor, R. "The Future of Science Fiction" in Bretnor, R. (ed.). Science Fiction: Its Meaning and its Future. Advent, Chicago, 1979.
Sturgeon, T. "Science Fiction, Morals and Religion"
in Bretnor, R. (ed.). Science Fiction- Today and Tomorrow.
Harper & Row, New York, 1974. 
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Those who have heard of The Prisoner may be wondering
what it is doing in a science fiction magazine. But Ibn
Qirtaiba is not a science fiction magazine, it is an SF
magazine, and speculative fiction is the only adequate
description for this astonishing and provocative series of 1968.
Sometimes called a "fantasy mystery" series, sometimes
simply an adventure series, The Prisoner was so unlike
anything we had seen on television before or since that none of
the traditional labels seem appropriate. Think of a cross between 1984, The
Avengers, Twin Peaks and The Saint, and you're
still not half way there. 
Only one
season of 17 hour long episodes was made, but the series is even
more popular today than when it was first screened. If you hunt
around your local video libraries, you should be able to find an
episode or two, and they are all required viewing.
In the first episode, Arrival, the Prisoner (whose name we never discover) is kidnapped after resigning from his job in the British Secret Service. He awakes to find himself in the Village, a cosmopolitan and seemingly friendly community in which everyone is known by a number; his is Number 6. He is to remain imprisoned in this village for the duration of the series, both by the Mountains and the Sea, and by a giant elastic white ball named Rover which is under the authorities' control. Some of the flavour of this first episode is conveyed by the following exchange between Number 6 and his jailer, Number 2:
6: Where am I?
2: In the Village.
6: What do you want?
2: Information.
6: Whose side are you on?
2: That would be telling. We want information.
6: You won't get it.
2: By hook or by crook we will.
6: Who are you?
2: The new Number 2.
6: Who is Number 1?
2: You are Number 6.
6: I am not a number. I am a free man.
This sets the tone for most of the rest of the series, in which those who run the Village (and who are indistinguishable from the other prisoners) attempt to discover the reason behind Number 6's resignation, and Number 6 tries to escape and to discover the identity of Number 1. (Naturally, I would not be so rash as to divulge whether either side succeeds in their ambitions! In any event, the way in which these questions are answered in the last episode raises only more questions.)
For example, in one episode (The Chimes of Big Ben),
Number 6 is led into believing that he has successfully escaped.
In another (Schizoid Man) a double of him is used to try
to destroy his self-identity. 
But on other
occasions (eg. Hammer into Anvil), Number 6 is able to
turn the tables on Number 2, and is even seemingly given the
chance to run for election to this position (Free For All,
and see the photo).
The creator of the series, Patrick McGoohan, also starred as Number 6; and was the only regular cast member (other than the butler, who never spoke and took no part in the action). Even Number 2 was replaced in almost every episode (presumably for being outwitted by Number 6). As befits such a bizarre series, Ron Grainer, responsible for the spooky Doctor Who theme, provided the music for The Prisoner, which was filmed on the grounds of an idyllic hotel in Wales.
The themes dealt with in The Prisoner reflected both its creator's cynicism about modern society, and the wider concerns of its time; including the nature of freedom and identity, the legitimacy of authority, drugs (which led to the banning of one episode in America), politics and the indominability of the human spirit. But at the same time that it dealt metaphorically with such profound intellectual issues, it was also on the level of pure entertainment, always engaging, suspenseful and original. It is no doubt for this reason that despite its (probably necessarily) short duration, the series remains the subject of discussion, debate, fiction, philosophy and argument among fans worldwide.
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Artificial intelligence is one of those many fields of scientific endeavour that was invented by science fiction authors long before it became a viable area of research. Even today, science has not been able to actually define what artificial intelligence is. Tesler's theorum (popularised by Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach) is that artificial intelligence will always be considered simply to be whatever the next step is. Anything that we have already done will always be dismissed as not really intelligence, there being beyond it a core component which still only humans possess (until that is programmed into machines too, and the core of intelligence is redefined).
SF, however, has forecast the day when robotic minds not only match, but exceed the intelligence of their human masters. Such an artificial mind is potentially capable of dealing not only with complex logical/mathematical problems, but human problems as well. For instance, Deep Thought from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was set to work on the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything; while the Earth was asked to find out what the question was. On the other hand authors like Arthur C. Clarke have postulated that with human intelligence might come the potential for human mental problems, such as those manifested by HAL in 2001.
A more startling problem was forecast by Isaac Asimov in his story ... That Thou Art Mindful of Him, in which robots become so advanced that they decide they fulfil the definition of "human" better than those who created them, and so they no longer need to serve anyone but themselves. The same author took this one step further still in The Last Question, as did Frederick Brown in Answer, in both of which stories a super-intelligent computer takes over the role of God himself.
A revolution in the market for illicit drugs is taking place in the United States that only a few years ago would have been classed as science fiction. Where once recreational drugs were used to take one's brain to a different level of consciousness, "smart drugs" are now taking over as a way to actually increase its power. Legal versions of these drugs are available in some American cocktail bars, mostly containing caffeine and other stimulants. Of course, the effect which these drugs and drinks actually have on intelligence is questionable, but those who take them (mainly business people) are not waiting for scientific proof. Meanwhile, research on the drugs continues, not to boost the incomes of American profiteers, but to help victims of such disorders as Parkinson's Disease.
Again, this is a development that science fiction has heralded. Possibly the first instance appears in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which genetic engineering and drugs are used to customise intelligent children, who are educated subliminally in their sleep. In Monica Hughes' juvenile novel Devil On My Back, databanks of information are wired into people's brains. To learn about a certain topic, they simply download it. But some of the most frightening examples of augmentation of intelligence found in SF involve not merely supplementation of the human brain, but modification of it. The Cybermen of Doctor Who fame demonstrate one direction in which this can lead. After removing all the human weaknesses from their bodies, the Cybermen decided their brains suffered from a fatal weakness which also had to be removed - emotions. Another direction appears from ...That Thou Art Mindful of Him, mentioned above, in which humans actually become one with the computers of their creation.
Aliens of awesome intelligence are commonplace in SF. Every second life form the Star Trek crew came across seemed to be an omniscient entity the like of which Spock (or Data, as the case may be) had never encountered before, but which they nevertheless managed to defeat before the end of the episode. Perhaps to leave us humans with some shred of pride in the face of such godlike beings, they are inevitably portrayed as totally amoral, so as to allow the Star Trek crew, intelligently or not, to claim superiority nevertheless. This can even be seen in the case of Spock and Data themselves, who, although more intelligent than the rest of the crew, pay the price of coming up short in the emotions stakes.
Another recurring theme about intelligent lifeforms in SF is that the intelligence of a species has more to do with its stage of development than its genetics. This theme is certainly a comforting one, in that as a corollary, humans need never reach a mental ceiling to their development or have to resort to artificially augmenting their intelligence to know the Mind of God. It may well be true, although I have seen no data, that the intelligence of the human race has increased with the corpus of its knowledge and the complexity of its social organisation, through socialisation rather than natural selection. This would explain why peoples low on the scale of social organisation tend to perform badly even on "culturally fair" IQ tests, despite the absence of any demonstrated relationship between race and intelligence within cultures. On the other hand, even if, as Albert Einstein is reputed to have said, we only use 10% of our mental potential, this still implies the existence of a ceiling, albeit a high one, beyond which homo sapiens at its present stage of evolution cannot progress. From this it follows that there may indeed be lifeforms, whether or not they bear much resemblance to those from Star Trek, to whose intelligence we humans cannot even aspire. In the fifth Star Trek movie it was even suggested, although in a deliberately ambiguous way, that God is such a lifeform. I think it is safest for me to leave discussion of this hypothesis to readers.
Another comforting thought, at least to SF fans, is that it takes greater than average intelligence to appreciate their genre of choice, and this is why it is not taken seriously by many of their friends and relatives. This proposition (which could no doubt be tested by comparing the Mensa Profiles with equivalent data from the general population- any offers?) does not simply contend that intelligence is required to understand the scientific content in some authors' works (Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven perhaps among them), but that even those works without explicit scientific content are free to deal with larger, more mind-expanding issues than mainstream fiction (to quote Douglas Adams, questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything). These issues appeal most to intelligent minds, and only confuse and disorient less intelligent readers, who prefer to read about the comforting familiarity of present reality.
The only problem with this thesis is that it seems to me almost to be equating intelligence with the ability to suspend one's disbelief (note eg. such comments from SF-depreciators as "That could never happen," or "That's too far-fetched"). In fact, the mainstream has often demonstrated its ability to suspend disbelief about SF. Note, for instance, the hysteria which swept through the USA following the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, and the success of the SF-based religion of Scientology. Moreover, it seems to me that the masses (presumed to be unintelligent) have taken to SF more often and more enthusiastically (eg. Star Wars, ET) than the (presumably intelligent) literary elite (eg. 1984, Brave New World). Hence I believe that the reason for the non-acceptance of SF by the mainstream lies not in the intelligence required to appreciate it, so much as in the way in which the genre has evolved, as set out in the essay which began this issue.
On the other hand, there is a lot more to be said for the argument that SF can promote intelligence in its readers. Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock considered science fiction's main value to be not as literature, but as "a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation". SF not only equip us for social change, but can also prepare us for a role in directing and regulating it. Hence, if we are to follow Paul Keating's advice and become the clever country, perhaps a good first step would be to read and watch more science fiction! If, as I, in contrast to Toffler, believe, SF can be good literature at the same time as performing this function, then it has at least one advantage over all the rest of contemporary fiction.
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