L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth.pdf - L Ron Hubbard - margozap

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Introduction.

Recently there came a period when I had little to do. This was novel in a life

so crammed with busy years, and I decided to amuse myself by writing a novel

that was pure science fiction.

In the hard-driven times between 1930 and 1950, I was a professional writer not

simply because it was my job, but because I wanted to finance more serious

researches. In those days there were few agencies pouring out large grants to

independent workers. Despite what you might hear about Roosevelt “relief,” those

were depression years. One succeeded or one starved. One became a top-liner or a

gutter bum. One had to work very hard at his craft or have no craft at all. It

was a very challenging time for anyone who lived through it.

I have heard it said, as an intended slur, “He was a science fiction writer,

”and have heard it said of many. It brought me to realize that few people

understand the role science fiction has played in the lives of Earth's whole

population.

I have just read several standard books that attempt to define “science fiction”

and to trace its history. There are many experts in this field, many

controversial opinions. Science fiction is favored with the most closely knit

reading public that may exist, possibly the most dedicated of any genre.

Devotees are called “fans,” and the word has a special prestigious meaning in

science fiction.

Few professional writers, even those in science fiction, have written very much

on the character of "sf". They are usually too busy turning out the work itself

to expound on what they have written. But there are many experts on this subject

among both critics and fans, and they have a lot of worthwhile things to say.

However, many false impressions exist, both of the genre and of its writers. So

when one states that he set out to write a work of pure science fiction, he had

better state what definition he is using.

It will probably be best to return to the day in 1938 when I first entered this

field, the day I met John W. Campbell, Jr., a day in the very dawn of what has

come to be known as The Golden Age of science fiction. I was quite ignorant of

the field and regarded it, in fact, a bit diffidently. I was not there of my own

choice. I had been summoned to the vast old building on Seventh Avenue in dusty,

dirty, old New York by the very top brass of Street and Smith publishing

company- an executive named Black and another, F. Orlin Tremaine. Ordered there

with me was another writer, Arthur J. Burks. In those days when the top brass of

a publishing company- particularly one as old and prestigious as Street and

Smith-'invited" a writer to visit, it was like being commanded to appear before

the king or receiving a court summons. You arrived, you sat there obediently,

and you spoke when you were spoken to.

We were both, Arthur J. Burks and I, top-line professionals in other writing

fields. By the actual tabulation of A. B. Dick, which set advertising rates for

publishing firms, either of our names appearing on a magazine cover would send

the circulation rate skyrocketing, something like modern TV ratings.

The top brass came quickly to the point. They had recently started or acquired a

magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. Other magazines were published by

other houses, but Street and Smith was unhappy because its magazine was mainly

publishing stories about machines and machinery. As publishers, its executives

knew you had to have people in stories. They had called us in because, aside

from our A. B. Dick rating as writers, we could write about real people. They

knew we were busy and had other commitments. But would we be so kind as to write

science fiction? We indicated we would.

They called in John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor of the magazine. He found

himself looking at two adventure-story writers, and though adventure writers

might be the aristocrats of the whole field and might have vast followings of

their own, they were not science fiction writers. He resisted. In the first

place, calling in top-liners would ruin his story budget due to their word

rates. And in the second place, he had his own ideas of what science fiction

was.

Campbell, who dominated the whole field of sf as its virtual czar until his

death in 1971, was a huge man who had majored in physics at Massachusetts

institute of Technology and graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of

Science degree. His idea of getting a story was to have some professor or

scientist write it and then doctor it up and publish it. Perhaps that is a bit

unkind, but it really was what he was doing. To fill his pages even he, who had

considerable skill as a writer, was writing stories for the magazine.

The top brass had to directly order Campbell to buy and to publish what we wrote

for him. He was going to get people into his stories and get something going

besides machines.

I cannot tell you how many other writers were called in. I do not know. In all

justice, it may have been Campbell himself who found them later on. But do not

get the impression that Campbell was anything less than a master and a genius in

his own right. Any of the stable of writers he collected during this Golden Age

will tell you that. Campbell could listen. He could improve things. He could

dream up little plot twists that were masterpieces. He well deserved the title

that he gained and kept as the top editor and the dominant force that made

science fiction as respectable as it became. Star Wars, the all-time box office

record movie to date (exceeded only by its sequel), would never have happened if

science fiction had not become as respectable as Campbell made it. More than

that-Campbell played no small part in driving this society into the space age.

You had to actually work with Campbell to know where he was trying to go, what

his idea was of this thing called “science fiction.” I cannot give you any

quotations from him; I can just tell you what I felt he was trying to do. In

time we became friends. Over lunches and in his office and at his home on

weekends- where his wife Dona kept things smooth- talk was always of stories but

also of science. To say that Campbell considered science fiction as “prophecy”

is an oversimplification. He had very exact ideas about it.

Only about a tenth of my stories were written for the fields of science fiction

and fantasy. I was what they called a high-production writer, and these fields

were just not big enough to take everything I could write. I gained my original

reputation in other writing fields during the eight years before the Street and

Smith interview.

Campbell, without saying too much about it, considered the bulk of the stories I

gave him to be not science fiction but fantasy, an altogether different thing.

Some of my stories he eagerly published as science fiction- among them Final

Blackout. Many more, actually. I had, myself, somewhat of a science background,

had done some pioneer work in rockets and liquid gases, but I was studying the

branches of man's past knowledge at that time to see whether he had ever come up

with anything valid. This, and a love of the ancient tales now called The

Arabian Nights, led me to write quite a bit of fantasy. To handle this fantasy

material, Campbell introduced another magazine, Unknown. As long as I was

writing novels for it, it continued. But the war came and I and others went, and

I think Unknown only lasted about forty months. Such novels were a bit hard to

come by. And they were not really Campbell's strength.

So anyone seeking to say that science fiction is a branch of fantasy or an

extension of it is unfortunately colliding with a time-honored professional

usage of terms. This is an age of mixed genres. I hear different forms of music

mixed together like soup. I see so many different styles of dance tangled

together into one “dance” that I wonder whether the choreographers really know

the different genres of dance anymore. There is abroad today the concept that

only conflict produces new things. Perhaps the philosopher Hegel introduced

that, but he also said that war was necessary for the mental health of the

people and a lot of other nonsense. If all new ideas have to spring from the

conflict between old ones, one must deny that virgin ideas can be conceived.

So what would pure science fiction be?

It has been surmised that science fiction must come from an age where science

exists. At the risk of raising dispute and outcry- which I have risked all my

life and received but not been bothered by, and have gone on and done my job any

way- I wish to point out some things:

Science fiction does not come after the fact of a scientific discovery or

development. It is the herald of possibility. It is the plea that someone should

work on the future. Yet it is not prophecy. It is the dream that precedes the

dawn when the inventor or scientist awakens and goes to his books or his lab

saying, “I wonder whether I could make that dream come true in the world of real

science.”

You can go back to Lucian, second century A.D., or to Johannes Kepler (1571-

1630)- who founded modern dynamical astronomy and who also wrote Somniom, an

imaginary space flight to the moon- or to Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein, or

to Poe or Verne or Wells and ponder whether this was really science fiction.

Let us take an example: a man invents an eggbeater. A writer later writes a

story about an eggbeater. He has not, thereby, written science fiction. Let us

continue the example: a man writes a story about some metal that, when twiddled,

beats an egg, but no such tool has ever before existed in fact. He has now

written science fiction. Somebody else, a week or a hundred years later, reads

the story and says, “Well, well. Maybe it could be done.” And makes an

eggbeater.

But whether or not it was possible that twiddling two pieces of metal would beat

eggs, or whether or not anybody ever did it afterward, the man still has written

science fiction.

How do you look at this word “fiction?” It is a sort of homograph. In this case

it means two different things. A professor of literature knows it means “a

literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not

necessarily based on fact; the category of literature comprising works of this

kind, including novels, short stories, and plays.” It is derived from the Latin

fictio, a making, a fashioning, from fictus, past participle of fingere, to

touch, form, mold.

But when we join the word to “science” and get “science fiction,” the word

“fiction” acquires two meanings in the same use: 1) the science used in the

story is at least partly fictional; and 2) any story is fiction. The American

Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language defines science fiction as “fiction in which scientific developments

and discoveries form an element of plot or background; especially a work of

fiction based on prediction of future scientific possibilities.”

So, by dictionary definition and a lot of discussions with Campbell and fellow

writers of that time, science fiction has to do with the material universe and

sciences; these can include economics, sociology, medicine and suchlike, all of

which have a material base.

Then what is fantasy?

Well, believe me, if it were simply the application of vivid imagination, then a

lot of economists and government people and such would be fully qualified

authors! Applying the word “imaginative” to fantasy would be like calling an

entire library “some words. “ Too simplistic, too general a term.

In these modern times many of the ingredients that make up “fantasy” as a type

of fiction have vanished from the stage. You hardly even find them in

encyclopedias anymore. These subjects were spiritualism, mythology, magic,

divination, the supernatural, and many other fields of that type. None of them

had anything really to do with the real universe. This does not necessarily mean

that they never had any validity or that they will not again arise; it merely

means that man, currently, has sunk into a materialistic binge.

The bulk of these subjects consists of false data, but there probably never will

come a time when all such phenomena are explained. The primary reason such a

vast body of knowledge dropped from view is that material science has been

undergoing a long series of successes. But I do notice that every time modern

science thinks it is down to the nitty-gritty of it all, it runs into (and

sometimes adopts) such things as the Egyptian myths that man came from mud, or

something like that. But the only point I am trying to make here is that there

is a whole body of phenomena that we cannot classify as “material. “ They are

the nonmaterial, nonuniverse subjects. And no matter how false many of the old

ideas were, they still existed; who knows but what there might not be some

validity in some bits of them. One would have to study these subjects to have a

complete comprehension of all the knowledge and beliefs possible. I am not

opening the door to someone's saying I believe in all these things: I am only

saying that there is another realm besides dedicated- and even simple-minded-

materialism.

“Fantasy, “ so far as literature is concerned, is defined in the dictionary as

“literary or dramatic fiction characterized by highly fanciful or supernatural

elements. “ Even that is a bit limited as a definition.

So fantasy could be called any fiction that takes up elements such as

spiritualism, mythology, magic, divination, the supernatural, and so on. The

Arbian Nights was a gathering together of the tales of many, many countries and

civilizations- not just of Arabia as many believe. It s actual title was A

Thousand and One Nights of Entertainment. It abounds with examples of fantasy

fiction.

When you mix science fiction with fantasy you do not have a pure genre. The two

are, to a professional, separate genres. I notice today there is a tendency to

mingle them and then excuse the result by calling it “imaginative fiction. “

Actually they don't mix well: science fiction, to be credible, has to be based

on some degree of plausibility; fantasy gives you no limits at all. Writing

science fiction demands care on the part of the author; writing fantasy is as

easy as strolling in the park. (In fantasy, a guy has no sword in his hand;

bang, there's a magic sword in his hand.) This doesn't say one is better than

the other. They are simply very different genres from a professional viewpoint.

But there is more to this: science fiction, particularly in its Golden Age, had

a mission. I cannot, of course, speak for my friends of that period. But from

Campbell and from “shooting the breeze” with other writers of the time, one got

the very solid impression that they were doing a heavy job of beating the drum

to get man to the stars.

At the beginning of that time, science fiction was regarded as a sort of awful

stepchild in the world of literature. But worse than that, science itself was

not getting the attention or the grants or the government expenditures it should

have received. There has to be a lot of public interest and demand before

politicians shell out the financing necessary to get a subject whizzing.

Campbell's crew of writers were pretty stellar. They included very top-liner

names. They improved the literary quality of the genre. And they began the boom

of its broader popularity.

A year or so after The Golden Age began, I recall going into a major

university's science department. I wanted some data on cytology for my own

serious researches. I was given a courteous reception and was being given the

references when I noticed that the room had been gradually filling up. And not

with students but with professors and deans. It had been whispered around the

offices who was in the biology department, and the next thing I knew, I was

shaking a lot of hands held out below beaming faces. And what did they want to

know: What did I think of this story or that? And had I seen this or that writer

lately? And how was Campbell?

They had a literature! Science fiction!

And they were proud of it!

For a while, before and after World War II, I was in rather steady association

with the new era of scientists, the boys who built the bomb, who were beginning

to get the feel of rockets. They were all science fiction buffs. And many of the

hottest scientists around were also writing science fiction on the side.

In 1945 I attended a meeting of old scientist and science fiction friends. The

meeting was at the home of my dear friend, the incomparable Bob Heinlein. And do

you know what was their agenda? How to get man into space fast enough so that he

would be distracted from further wars on Earth. And they were the lads who had

the government ear and authority to do it! We are coming close to doing it. The

scientists got man into space and they even had the Russians cooperating for a

while.

One can't go on living a naive life believing that everything happens by

accident, that events simply follow events, that there is a natural order of

things and that everything will come out right somehow. That isn't science.

That's fate, kismet, and we're back in the world of fantasy. No, things do get

planned. The Golden Age of science fiction that began with Campbell and

Astounding Science Fiction gathered enough public interest and readership to

help push man into space. Today, you hear top scientists talking the way we used

to talk in bull sessions so long ago.

Campbell did what he set out to do. So long as he had his first wife and others

around him to remind him that science was for people, that it was no use to just

send machines out for the sake of machines, that there was no point into going

into space unless the mission had something to do with people, too, he kept

winning. For he was a very brilliant man and a great and very patient editor.

After he lost his first wife, Dona, in 1949- she married George O. Smith- and

after he no longer had a sounding-board who made him keep people in stories, and

when he no longer had his old original writing crew around, he let his magazine

slip back, and when it finally became named Analog, his reign was over. But The

Golden Age had kicked it all into high gear. So Campbell won after all.

When I started out to write this novel, I wanted to write pure science fiction.

And not in the old tradition. Writing forms and styles have changed, so I had to

bring myself up to date and modernize the styles and patterns. To show that

science fiction is not science fiction because of a particular kind of plot,

this novel contains practically every type of story there is-detective, spy,

adventure, western, love, air war, you name it. All except fantasy; there is

none of that. The term “science” also includes economics and sociology and

medicine where these are related to material things. So they're in here, too.

In writing for magazines, the editors (because of magazine format) force one to

write to exact lengths. I was always able to do that- it is a kind of knack. But

this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she

rolled, so long as the pace kept up. So I may have wound up writing the biggest

sf novel ever in terms of length. The experts- and there are lots of them to do

so- can verify whether this is so.

Some of my readers may wonder that I did not include my own serious subjects in

this book. It was with no thought of dismissal of them. It was just that I put

on my professional writer's hat. I also did not want to give anybody the idea I

was doing a press relations job for my other serious works.

There are those who will look at this book and say, “See? We told you he is just

a science fiction writer!” Well, as one of the crew of writers that helped start

man to the stars, I'm very proud of also being known as a science fiction

writer. You have satellites out there, man has walked on the moon, you have

probes going to the planets, don't you? Somebody had to dream the dream, and a

lot of somebodies like those great writers of The Golden Age and later had to

get an awful lot of people interested in it to make it true.

I hope you enjoy this novel. It is the only one I ever wrote just to amuse

L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth.pdf

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