The editor and I were talking about large science fiction conventions. Editors and writers, fans and mistresses who have hated one another, some of them for forty years, come by the thousands and dwell in the same space for three days. Old passions, old griefs; it must be understood that envy and recrimination in science fiction are higher per capita than anywhere except, possibly, the reform wing of the New York Democratic Party. "It doesn't mean anything, though," the editor said calmly, "if these people were really serious, they'd kill each other."
The capsulization of science fiction. In print and behind one another's backs we33 will revile, condemn, curse, and whisper scurrilities of the most urgent sort: face to face we are mild and reasonable individuals. Old enemies buy one another fresh drinks; new lovers and old whisper confidences in the corners. Publishers of venomous fanzines will ask writers for autographs. As the editor said, if we were serious, we would almost certainly kill but the key to science fiction—perhaps for all I know the key to the Ultimate Mystery—is that it is not a serious field at all. In its gnarled little heart it is, in fact, frivolous.
The nature of the form counsels frivolity. Consider the reader's slack-jawed wonder: faster-than-light travel, haunting sea beasts on the Jovian plain, mutiny on the Antares bypass, alternate and mysterious worlds in which dragons can fly and understand Elizabethan English . . . and then it is time for dinner, the chemistry assignment or the subway transfer. Escape reading, you know. If the reader were to really deal with this material on the level apparently offered, he would be quite unable to make the changes: how can one carry on even the gestures of one's life if one is rocketing over Jupiter astride a sea beast? One reads science fiction—even at the age of eight one had better read it this way—in contract; just kidding you know. Not to be taken straight. The same failsafe factor seems to operate within the science fiction reader34 as within the American consumer; no one really believes all those ads, you know. One could go quite insane if one accepted the vision of America squeezed through the interstices of automobile, deodorant, or cosmetic commercials. Everyone over the age of two (might it be one?) in the United States knows that ads are . . . well, just ads. As science fiction is just science fiction.
Simil, the writer. Four cents a word, maybe five, portions and outlines, magazine rates, editors, special intergalactic issues, put an 8 1/2 X 11 in the machine and let it go. Whoops! and a flight to Mars. Whee! and an invasion of the capitol by the hired assassins of Merm. Whap! and a parallel universe in which time runs contrawise rather than causally. And how much of this can I get done before dinner, and is New Dimensions paying on acceptance these days? The first fine exhilaration of youth becomes, with any kind of persistence at all, the routine of middle age; if it did not, if one began to dwell in these universes, take the Merm seriously, incur a deep sense of obligation to imbue the imagined circumstance with the consequence that one knows in the real—35
The effects of writing science fiction in quantity and over a period of time have been amply discussed, the carryover is not insignificant and the damages are evident. One does, as a science fiction writer, tend to hate a little more richly, cleave a little more tightly, recriminate somewhat more sensationally . . . but only up to a point and quickly beyond that lassitude sets in. It is one thing to despise the old colleague who stole your plot idea from a forgotten Ace Double and got it into hardcover; it is another thing to plot against the wretched editor who bought that book and rejected your own while also making love to your ex-mistress and blackening your name around town; it is another to come up against the swine in the hotel bar36 and deal with the situation. A handclasp will suffice and a word of cheer; after all, the son of a bitch may be back in the market someday. Your old colleague who is somewhere upstairs drunkenly fornicating with your ex-wife has been doing this kind of thing since 1953 and you are only one of his victims—he's done more to others, and besides if you recall, you did the same thing to him when you swiped that Worlds of If short story idea, a really lovely pivot for your own 1964 Pyramid novel. Who knows what he might be saying about you? Besides, the old bastard is consultant now for a medium-sized paperback firm and your agent has some portions and outlines on offer; he might even buy them. Then again, he might not. It depends upon who is on his good side in the next month or so and this convention is certainly no time to throw down the gauntlet. Is it? Let's be reasonable now. Besides, a scene would only make the future more difficult; there's no end to this, you see, for a lifetime he and you and the editor (at least until the editor is fired) are going to be showing up at these things and a Philadelphia riot would only lead to a coda in Boston, a recapitulation in St. Louis, a scherzo and variations in London two years from now.
Better to take your losses and live with them. You do—one does, after all—have to deal with these people for the duration; they have been around. All of you have been around since 1953; why should anything change now? Or next week? You take your losses, you stick the editor with the bill, you look for a new mistress or a now unembittered older one. You go through the weekend and you go home, wherever that may be. If you were serious, yes, you might kill the bastards but then again, if they were serious, they would kill you, right? Every loss a gain; every action a reaction, the great mid-century vision of the middle class and science fiction is nothing—anyone who ponders this for five minutes will see it clearly—if it is not a middle-class phenomenon.
—1980: New Jersey