The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

Speaking of reality, or the lack of it, I think part of the reason the Space Race began to make me yawn was the prepackaged imitation-of-life atmosphere surrounding the whole thing—till recently, at least. Between political ploysmanship and scorekeeping, and the deft image-building of the PR people, everything has (or had) acquired a faintly phony air. (I’m still suspicious; I wonder if the PR men didn’t decide the operation needed a bit more “realism”?)

In any case, when Major White’s walk in space was announced, I couldn’t work up enough interest to find a friendly nearby TV set and watch. I knew it could be done; Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov had done it a week earlier. And I knew what it would look like: I’d already seen Destination Moon.

I thought I knew. But Ed While went out there and did everything they told him to, until they told him to get back in. And his wife— his wonderful, non-cardboard wife—watched him and understood, and threw the world one happy sentence not (I think) on the prepared script: “He’s having a ball!”

Then there were the Mars pictures. That time, I did look for a TV set—and I am here to tell you the day of the TV bar is over, at least in Washington, D.C

Well, I saw the pictures in the paper: MARS POSES LIFELESSLY. EARTH STANDS ALONE. NO LIFE ON MARS.

Of course, I don’t believe it. (There was all that confusion in interpretation.) I’m holding out for life out there. Somewhere out there, anyhow. And, besides, I had Asimov’s article. The September Esquire arrived on my doorstep right on the heels of those first Mars photos, with Asimov’s article on “The Anatomy of a Man from Mars.” Of course, he started off with a disclaimer! If life on Mars exists at all, it probably resembles only the simplest and most primitive terrestrial plant life. But then he explained what it would be, if it were. . . .

And there’s new hope for the moon too, you know: The U.S. Geological Survey found “permafrost”—a “rock-hard layer of ice that never thaws”—9,000 feet up in the High Sierras; the article said there might be such deposits on the moon. And Venus: Sir Bernard Lovell helped there. When the Soviet ship crashed. Sir Bernard was quoted as concerned about contamination of the planet by Earth bacteria. If it didn’t have life, maybe now it does?

Reality can be changed, you know. Sometimes we have to make it (up) as we go along. There’s life out there; or there will be. I believe it. Asimov believes it. And Arthur Clarke believes it too.