The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

I was a teenage space-nut. I’m still a space-nut—but, I mean, space. Not the Space Race. Not the Missile Gap, or even Rocket Generations. Not even (to my own surprise) most of the Astronauts.

Planets—other worlds with, maybe, other people on them—I’m hot for planets.

And space itself, the big wide universe out there—the sheer volume of it; its unimaginable dimensions; the remoteness, apartness, the difference—I want to know what’s really out there, find out what that difference really is. (If we get far enough out, we might get enough perspective to see what our own world really is.)

This, I believe, is the true burden of the odd (and ever odder) assortment of literature that makes up the broad spectrum of s-f: What do you mean, “real?”

When, from what viewpoint, with what cause, does a “delusion” become a “dream” instead? And where does dream merge into concept, ambition into prospect, effort into accomplishment? Just where along the line does “psychosis” turn into “imagination,” or “fantasy” become “realized?”

The Science Fiction Writers of America held their first annual-awards dinner this year, and there were a lot of new faces. But in among them—in black ties and formals instead of with torn pockets, and some sporting a (distinguished) touch of gray—were quite a few of the old s-f-and-space nuts: the people who (like me) begged, stole, and faked invitations, fifteen (or closer now to twenty) years ago, for the press preview of Destination Moon projected on the Hayden Planetarium dome.

We held, as it were, one long joint breath, watching that preview, and came out starry-eyed, more sold than ever on the wild idea that such things would really come to be.

And so they did. Now we are not space-nuts; we are Prophets and Experts. As long as we talk about realities—like rockets, satellites, and the missile gap, that is.

(Please check your daydreams at the door.)

Well, if “reality” actually does have something to do with hardware, or with the classified (either meaning) body of scientific knowledge, there are at least two of the old s-f hands who ought to have some grasp on it: Arthur Clarke, the Prophet of Telstar, and Isaac Asimov, who is not only an officially certified Learned Doctor, but proved his right to the title all over again last year with The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science (Basic Books). But remember:

They were both teenage space-nuts too.