Microworlds

economic barometer of the market, the publishers will treat him in the same way as they treat his colleagues — i.e., as authors who willingly allow the titles, lengths, and structures of their books to be changed in advance according to the wishes of their masters. This author will watch helplessly the embarrassing sight of his books submerging in an ocean of trash, for the stigma of science fiction links them irrevocably to this sea. Surely Sturgeon is right in maintaining that ninety-nine percent of all books in every genre are trash, but the fact remains that in the Upper Realm of culture there are forces that never cease furthering positive selection. In the Lower Realm, the best books are placed beside the worst and most stupid, and submerged by them under the pressure of the objective situation.

Thus, science-fiction institutions only seem to be the equal of the institutions of the Upper Realm. In fact, we see before us a superficial mimicry. Science fiction merely apes and simulates the Olympian quality of literature, without reproducing the same performance capability. No famous author from the Upper Realm concerns himself with disqualifying trashy literature or defending himself against the attacks of graphomaniacs. For a while, the Knights and Blishes tried to do this, but in the end their aggressiveness had to give way to a moderated, more passive attitude. To some extent these intelligent men are conscious of their own defeat. They feel that this behavior, typical of science fiction, merely apes grown-up literature. They can see how grotesque such goings-on must look to an outside observer. The unauthenticated (because not earnest) quality of fandom, with its letters, parties, and friendly exchange of opinions, is for the authors only a weak substitute, an asylum where they can play the part of the great writer by confessing in fanzines with circulations of two hundred or less the secret of their creative writing and their deep psychological secrets.

We could consider these phenomena as insignificant and pay no attention to them, because in the end the ways in which the literati compensate their inferiority complexes, their feelings of frustration, and their Wille zur Macht are not necessarily those aspects of literature that flourish in the Upper Realm. However, in the Lower Realm these are symptoms of the chronic illness that impedes so embarrassingly the growth of the science-fiction genre. Thus the only way to better the prevailing situation is to make an outspoken diagnosis. We could support this conclusion with hundreds of examples. In an article by a contemporary science- fiction critic, the names of authors, including Farmer, Joyce, Sturgeon, and Kafka, are listed indiscriminately. But mainstream critics never reciprocate this striving for equal status. In today’s science-fiction anthologies we find, apart from science-fiction authors, such writers as Grass, Calvino, Ionesco, and Michaux, but the Upper Realm does not offer any just return. The inhabitants of the Upper Realm are invited to the Lower; they accept these invitations, but there is no return service. The inhabitants of the Upper Realm treat those of the Lower Realm properly, just as the gentry treat the rabble properly. A lady may enter a honky-tonk, but the “ladies” who reside there permanently are not allowed into a respectable house.

5

We shall now show how the work of a gifted science-fiction writer grows in the science-fiction environment and how it is accepted there. (The fate of the untalented does not concern us — but we will report on it, too, if only marginally, as it turns out in quite a characteristic way in the Lower Realm.)

The substance that fills the entire milieu of science fiction, and upon which the work of its authors feeds, is kitsch. It is the last, degenerate form of myths. From them it inherited a rigid structure. In myth the story of Ulysses is the prestabilized structure of fate: in kitsch it becomes a cliche. Superman is a spoiled Hercules, the robot a golem, even as kitsch itself is the simplified, threadbare, prostituted, but original constellation of values central to a given culture. In our culture, kitsch is what was once holy and/or coveted, awe-inspiring, or horrible, but now prepared for instant use. Kitsch is the former temple that has been so thoroughly defiled by infidels for so long that even the memory of its ancient untouchability has been lost. When hitherto untouchable idols get the status of mass products, through mechanical reproduction, and become obtainable as everybody’s objects of enjoyment, we observe how the originally sublime is degradingly transubstantiated into kitsch. The venerable paradigm is reworked in order to make it easily consumed and as simple as possible. And — quite important — kitsch does not present itself as such to its consumers; it believes in its own perfection and wants to be taken seriously. Even the psychic process that originally kept the mass of the uninitiated at a distance from the object of worship, because it was an obstacle that had to be overcome, comes wrapped up with the goods as an appetizer. Kitsch, free from all difficulties of consumption, is a product that has been prechewed for the consumer. In literature, kitsch results when all the complexity, multi-sidedness, and ambiguity of the authentic product is eliminated from the final product.

However, the people concerned (both authors and customers) have a splendid feeling of well-being if this final product retains the air of being an objet d’art, in full bloom, without restrictions. Kitsch is composed exclusively of ersatz products: of heroism, of need, misfortune, love, etc. In science fiction, kitsch is made from ersatz science and literature. From reading “inner circle” critiques and considering what science-fiction prospectuses have to offer, you would hardly believe that the authors who are reviewed display an abundant ignorance of the grammar, syntax, and style of their mother tongue; it is as if one suddenly hears that a team of athletes preparing for the Olympic Games cannot yet get up and stand.

In a stabilized culture, the sphere that kitsch might inhabit is quite small. In mass culture, it tends to overflow into neighboring genres; it has an aggressive and explosive pressure; it is a tumor that grows exuberantly, devouring that part of the body which is still intact. It is quite hard to justify morally a defense against its attacks, because the dilemma always arises as to which is the lesser evil: the trashy deformation of an art object, or its total absence from the circuit of a mass culture that cannot assimilate the real thing. Science fiction is a clinical case of a region occupied exclusively by trash, because in kitsch, the culturally and historically highest, most difficult, and most important objects are produced on the assembly line, in the most primitive forms, to be sold to the public at bargain prices.

Knowing no discretion and no reverence for things inconceivable by the human mind, piling universes upon universes without batting an eyelash, mixing up physics, metaphysics, and trite trash from misinterpreted philosophical systems without end, science fiction is the true embodiment of kitsch, because of the cheekiness of its total ignorance, which even denies the existence of a higher knowledge, toward which it finds no path, and denies it triumphantly and obstinately.

Even if there are subjects about which philosophers dare not even think, topics about which world-famous scholars can say scarcely anything at all, they can be bought for 75? to $1.25 at every newsstand for immediate inspection. Science fiction provides a pleasant substitute for the study of the handbooks of the greatest thinkers, cosmologists, astrophysicists, and philosophers who have ever lived — yes, it can even report on what scientists born a thousand years from now will know. I am not ridiculing this maximum offer; I can only repeat what you read in the science-fiction advertisements. If somebody ridicules somebody else, you could not tell from the earnestness of these statements; it is just another case when you can’t take a single word seriously, for this is advertising, which is used to talk only about the best possible and previously nonexistent products. If all this is not meant to be taken seriously, then what is the real content of all their cipher language?

One of the most incredible secrets of science fiction (although one not too closely guarded) is the fact that ninety-nine percent of its authors do not know even the titles and authors of today’s learned works, but still they want to top these scholars with their knowledge of the year 6000. If an author understands schoolteacher’s physics, he is praised by Knight, quite in earnest, and presented as a model to authors who seem to have been forced to drop out of school after three years because of general mental weakness. The public does not seem to wait to find out about these interesting facts, probably because such news would annoy them. It is quite embarrassing to find out that for the least amount of money and mental effort, one has been convinced that one was initiated into the vastest secrets of the universe and existence.

6

The exception mentioned in the title of this essay is the work of Philip K. Dick. Because of the lack of a