Asi"""

pucro«!

Unesco

j*-

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fr

A time to live...

29 Ethiopia

The ensete seller

Using a paste extracted from the root of the

ensete or "false banana" tree, Ethiopians

prepare a kind of cake which they eat .with

ketfu, one of their country's most popular

dishes. Made from highly spice minced

meat soaked in melted butter, ketfu is a

culinary speciality of the Gurage, a farming

Photo Georg Gerster © Rapho, Paris

and trading people of southwest Ethiopia

whose lives are centred on the cultivation of

the ensete tree. Above, an open-air market

in Ethiopia. Behind the young woman (in

foreground) who is kneading butter is a

block of ensete paste.

The

UnescoCourierA window open on the world

Editorial

ÍÍLET's take science fiction out of the classroom

and put it back into the gutter where it

belongs".

These words, which participants at the founding meeting

of the Science Fiction Research Association, were astonished

to find scrawled up one day on a blackboard in their con¬

ference room, were a sardonic comment on the long struggle

of modern science fiction to emerge from the ghetto of the

luridly illustrated pulp magazines of the 1920s to the 1940s

to achievement of the status of serious literature.

We owe an incalculable debt to the men who founded and

wrote for these magazines, which the intellectual élite of the

day dismissed scornfully as no more than a new emanation

of the "gutter press".

Against all the odds, they persisted in what, ironically, can

now be seen as the educational mission of preparing the man

in the street for the incredible scientific progress of the twen¬

tieth century.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a century in which

scientific advance has become the dominant influence on our

lives and on the social fabric of our society. In the words of

Horace L. Gold, founding editor of Galaxy Science Fiction,

"Few things reveal so sharply as science fiction the wishes,

hopes, fears, inner stresses and tensions of an era, or deter¬

mine its limitations with such exactness".

As some of our contributors point out, the origins of

science fiction can be traced back to Antiquity. It is a genre

which covers a wide field embracing fantasy (including

monsters and aliens from space), "space operas" (the classic

Western film transposed to space), time travel, the coloniza¬

tion of space, catastrophes and a variety of Utopias, as well

as speculative prediction and extrapolation from hard scien¬

tific fact. It is with the two latter aspects that we are chiefly

concerned in this issue of the Unesco Courier, although we

could not resist including Kang You wei's late nineteenth-

century vision of a Utopian "Age of One World", or Isaac

Asimov's fascinating description of how he writes his best-

selling works of science fiction.

Like science itself, science fiction is the fruit of the im¬

agination. If today the reality of science may seem even more

incredible than the most fantastic inventions of science fic¬

tion, the two will continue to enrich and cross-fertilize each

other.

In today's world, science has made its presence felt in

every aspect of life, in art, in education and in social

organization. Science fiction's great achievement is to have

educated us to accept this powerful new influence, to have

warned us of its potential dangers and to have laid before us

all the immense possibilities it has to offer. Above all, science

fiction lays the bogey of science as an uncontrollable

Frankenstein by its constant reminder that the whole edifice

of science is built on the foundation of man's soaring,

limitless powers of imagination.

Cover: The Terrestrials, by the US artist Mark Paternostro.

Photo Mark Paternostro © Science Photo Library, London

Editor-in-chief: Edouard Glissant

November 198437th year

Photos © All Rights Reserved

4 Science and science fiction:

Co-explorers of reality

by Amit Goswami

8 'Where I get my ideas'

by Isaac Asimov

13 No science without fiction

by Alexander Kazantsev

17 Ariadne's thread

by Manuel Pereira

20 High societies

Space settlements of tomorrow

22 Science fiction in the classroom

by Christo Boutzev

23 'Of what is past, or passing, or to come'

by Ray Bradbury

26 Fantastic voyages in film

31 'In the Age of One World'

A Chinese Utopia

by Kang You wei

35 A voyage to the centre of Jules Verne

by Albert Ducrocq

38 Further reading

2 A time to live...

ETHIOPIA: The ensere seller

Published monthly in 27 languages

by Unesco,

The United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization

7, Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris.

English

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A selection In Braille is published

quarterly in English, French, Spanish

and Korean

ISSNO041-527B

N° 11 - 1984 - OPI - 84 - 1 - 416 A

Science and science fiction

WHAT is science fiction? Prag¬

matically, it is what a pub¬

lisher puts out as science fic¬

tion. But as a purist I will quote from

my book The Cosmic Dancers a defini¬

tion that is particularly suited to the

purpose of this article.

"Science fiction is that class of fic¬

tion which contains the currents of

change in science and society. It con¬

cerns itself with the critique, extension,

revision, and conspiracy of revolution,

all directed against static scientific

paradigms. Its goal is to prompt a

paradigm shift to a new view that will

be more responsive and true to

nature".

As the definition implies, the impor¬

tance of science fiction arises from its

choreography of the dance between

science and reality; the best of science

fiction continually prods science

toward further discovery of the mean¬

ing of reality. "Do not adhere to fixi¬

ty", it seems to challenge. "The cur¬

rent paradigm, or world view, grew out

of the past and is only adequate for the

past; new ways are needed to tackle the

ever-unfolding present, let alone the

future."

Thus the modern science fiction1

writer envisions a future world in which

space travel is commonplace, a

universe in which life is known in other

star systems, cultures in which people

routinely communicate via telepathy

without sensory signals. Are such pro¬

jections legitimate challenges to our

science or mere fantasy? Certainly

there are fantasy elements that enhance

the story lines, but there are also some

profound challenges. A few examples

may be revealing.

In Ursula Le Guin's novel The

Dispossessed, the hero Shevek is a

scientist faced with the problem of im¬

proving communication between his

Co-explorers

home planet and its neighbour. He

responds by discovering the "ansible",

a machine that makes instantaneous,

signalless communication possible not

only between the planets of his con¬

cern, but with remote planets of the

galaxy as well.

In Ian Watson's novel Miracle

Visitors, the hero John Deacon in¬

vestigates sightings of UFOs, flying

saucers. He finds an unexpected

answer in the far reaches of his research

on the nature of human consciousness.

In Robert Silverberg's novel To

Open The Sky, the leaders of a new

scientific religion squarely fix the

priorities that are necessary to so meet

the threats of the present that they can

have a future. The priorities? to open

the sky and to open the mind.

In his novel Rendezvous with

Rama, Arthur C. Clarke beautifully

portrays an alien space colony. Implicit

is a challenge: will humans remain far

behind in that enterprise?

In The Black Cloud, author Fred

Hoyle depicts an alien life so fantastic

that it not only faces us with the poten¬

tial variety of extraterrestrial life, but

more importantly, it challenges us to

consider the whole question of the

origin and meaning of life.

In his novel Way Station, Clifford

Simak portrays a humanity on the

verge of a holocaust engendered by the

"terror" that man carries within him.

But the holocaust is avoided by a

transformation of man with the help of

a talisman and some wise intervention

from the galactic council. We intuit

ofreality

that the talisman, like the terror, may

lie within us, the touchstone for the

transformation of humanity.

Such scenarios call for a response

from science in vastly different direc¬

tions, from the outer reaches of space

to the inner reaches of the mind and

psyche of humankind. And in fact,

science has responded favourably to

challenges on both fronts; some of our

best minds are involved in serious fron¬

tiers of research today to open the sky

and to open the mind.

Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill

originally suggested as a project in his

freshman physics course that the

students design a space colony. The in¬

itial results of this science-fiction ven¬

ture looked so good that the professor

himself began serious calculations. As

by Amit Goswami

a result, we now know that we actually

have the expertise and the raw

materials to build a space colony.

Perhaps the Soviet success with space

stations and the American success with

the space shuttle Challenger are the

first steps toward building our own

Rama.

And Carl Sagan has publicized the

continuing efforts of many serious

scientists in the area of CETI, com¬

munication with extraterrestrial in¬

telligence. Some answers and many

new questions, some examples of

which are noted below, are coming out

of these studies.

Although science fiction writers

and scientists alike have speculated for

decades about extraterrestrial in¬

telligence, there has until now been no

Scientists and technicians at a specially

prepared landing site watch the arrival

of an alien spaceship In Steven Spiel¬

berg's film Close Encounters of the

Third Kind (1977).

direct evidence for even the existence of

planets outside our solar system. But

now new data pouring in from an

orbiting infra-red astronomical

laboratory are providing direct

evidence that perhaps as many as forty

nearby stars are surrounded by cosmic

dust in the early stages of evolution into

planets. Some of these, including one

in the Vega system that is popular in

science fiction, may very well develop

life-supporting environments.

In research carried out at the

University of Maryland, the meteorite

Murchison, that fell into Australia in

1969, was found to contain all five of

the chemical bases needed for human

genes. Does this provocative evidence

indicate that life may exist elsewhere in

the universe?

In a stranger-than-science-fiction

theory of the origin of life, astronomer-

science fiction writer Fred Hoyle has

revived with many new twists the

nineteenth-century panspermis theory;

this is the theory that there are "seeds"

of life continuously bombarding the

Earth and other life-supporting planets

that create and rejuvenate life. Hoyle,

a respected scientist, seems to go

beyond the challenge of science fiction

in his most recent book The Intelligent

Universe.

Science's efforts to open the mind

are not far behind the challenge of

science fiction either. In the mid-1970s,

two Stanford Research Institute

physicists, Russell Targ and Harold

Puthoff, conducted rigorous ex¬

periments on telepathy in which one

psychic draws a picture of a distant site

that he "sees" through the eyes of

another psychic who is present at the

site. Neither psychic knows in advance

what site is to be visited; actually, the

sites were chosen by a computer.

Likewise, to ensure objectivity the

matching of the drawings and the sites

was done by judges who did not know

which drawings were done for which

sites. In more recent repetitions of this

experiment, which has been successful¬

ly replicated in dozens of independent

laboratories, the matching is being

done by a computer.

If we potentially have the telepathic

capacity that science fiction writers so

routinely see in our future, what is the

brain mechanism behind it? Premature

question? Hardly. In 1982, University

of Paris-Sud physicist Alain Aspect

and his collaborators demonstrated

conclusively that two photons objects

in the microscopic domain that obey

the laws of the new physics, quantum

mechanics can communicate at a

distance without exchanging signals.

This action at a distance, technically

called non-locality, is being heralded as

one of the fundamental properties of

quantum systems.

Could distance viewing be the result

of the brain's non-locality, a non-

locality that arises from a quantum

machinery that operates even at the

macrolevel of the brain's organization

that we call the mind? Many physicists,

among them Nobel laureate Eugene

Wigner, think that quantum mechanics

holds the key not only to our non-local

experiences such as telepathy, but also

to our consciousness itself. Some of the

new research in the frontiers of con¬

sciousness, reviewed in The Cosmic

Dancers, may truly be precursors of the

science of the twenty-first century.

Does this imply an ansible? Who

knows? But the new scientific model of

consciousness based on quantum

mechanics suggests that beyond our in¬

dividual I-ness, our ego-consciousness,

there may be a unitive, commonly-

shared primary consciousness, as fore¬

seen many years ago by Erwin

Schrödinger, the co-discoverer of

quantum mechanics; in his book What

Is Life? Schrödinger declared, "Con¬

sciousness is a singular". This message

from the new physics is clearly echoed

in the science fiction of Arthur C.

Clarke in his book Childhood's End.

"Imagine that every man's mind is

an island, surrounded by ocean. Each

seems isolated, yet in reality all are link¬

ed by the bedrock from which they

spring".

The imminence of a nuclear

holocaust incites pessimism in many

people today; as in Simak's novel, they

see the terror within us all too well. But

if we are all connected by a bedrock of

unitive consciousness, we also have the

talisman, the power of transformation,

to transcend the terror to peace and

harmony.

By now it should be clear that in

science fiction educators have an un¬

foreseen opportunity not only to instil

enthusiasm in the hearts of their

students for science, but also to en¬

courage them to follow the dance of

reality with the music of both science

and science fiction. For to cope with

the realitites of the twenty-first cen¬

tury, we will need both the arts and the

sciences.

I shall never forget the time when I

was confronted by a student in a con¬

ventional introductory physics course

for non-scientists after I had finished a

lecture that reviewed the meaning of

relativity and quantum mechanics to

our world view. "Professor," the stu¬

dent said, "these concepts are

fascinating. But the new physics seems

to apply only to elementary particles.

What is there for me, personally?"

This was many years ago, and I

couldn't answer him then.

Subsequently, however, I developed

a course at the University of Oregon,

aptly titled The Physics of Science Fic¬

tion, that uses readings from as many

as fifty science fiction novels to in¬

troduce the principles and messages of

both the classical and the new physics

to non-scientists. The advantage of this

approach is that science is no longer

seen as isolated from our lives, a view

that vexes many non-scientists like the

student quoted above.

Another reason why science fiction is

relevant to today's science classroom is

the growing importance of futuristics

in our global society. I suspect that

science fiction started the subject of

futuristics. It was in .1934 that the dean

of science fiction, H.G. Wells, sug¬

gested that universities establish

courses on human ecology. Science fic¬

tion writers examine future problems

such as overpopulation, intelligent

computers, and nuclear holocaust with

such insight and reverberating detail

that futurists and educators would be

well advised to honour their wisdom.

And the framework of immediate per¬

sonal impact in which that wisdom is

couched can be employed by educators

to focus the attention of today's youth

on the design of the future that will be

theirs.

Ultimately, the most common bond

between science and science fiction, the

one that makes them such good part¬

ners in the dance of reality, is imagina¬

tion. Nowhere is imagination, and the

openness of mind that fosters imagina¬

tion, more essential than when we ex¬

plore the nature, structure, and destiny

of reality itself. Both science and

science fiction are engaged in the ex-

The phenomenon of relativistic time dila¬

tion, which is central to Einstein 's theory

of relativity, is a concept which students

often find difficult to comprehend. In

1905 Einstein wrote that "a clock fixed

at the earth 's equator will run slower by

a very small amount than an identical

clock fixed at one of the earth 's poles ' '.

Many science fiction authors have made

use of this scientific notion of time dila¬

tion, notably in tales of space travellers

returning to Earth after a long voyage

only to find that time has advancedmor*

quickly there and that they are aliens in

a future society.

Each age produces its own myths and

the most persistent myth of modern

times is that ourplanet is being regularly

visited by alien astronauts from outer

space. In most cases the "flying

saucers" in which they are seen ap¬

proaching turn out on investigation to be

aircraft, meteors, artificial satellites or

weather balloons. This completely

genuine photo shows how easy it is for

reports of sightings of UFOs (Unidenti¬

fied Flying Objects) to arise; the "flying

saucers ' ' it depicts are In fact lenticular

cloud formationsphotographed in Brazil

in 1969.

ploration of space, time, life, the

universe, and the place of our con¬

sciousness in the universe; both do it

well, and with mutual attention,

respect, and encouragement. And since

imagination is one of the most impor¬

tant commodities for the classroom, I

strongly urge the educator to consider a

course on the science of science fiction

for the high school or college cur¬

riculum. Benefits accrue from both the

content and the dynamic vision of

science fiction.

I will end with an example of how

science fiction can lighten a lecture on

the phenomenon of relativistic time

dilation, the monumental discovery of

Einstein that moving clocks run slower.

Can time dilation serve love? Why, yes;

witness the following letter written by a

character in Joe Haldeman's novel The

Forever War.

"William,

All this is in your personnel file. But

knowing you, you might just chuck it.

So I made sure you'd get this note.

Obviously, I lived. Maybe you will,

too. Join me.

I know from the records that you're

out at Sade-138 and won't be back for

a couple of centuries. No problem.

I'm going to a planet they call Middle

Finger, the fifth planet out from

Mizar...

It took all of my money, and all the

money of five other old-timers, but we

bought a cruiser from UNEF. And

we're using it as a time machine.

So I'm on a relativistic shuttle,

waiting for you. All it does is go out

five light years and come back to Mid¬

dle Finger, very fast. Every ten years I

age about a month. So if you're on

schedule and still alive, I'll only be

twenty-eight when you get here. Hurry!

I never found anybody else and I

don't want anybody else. I don't care

whether you're ninety years old or thir¬

ty. If I can't be your lover, I'll be your

nurse.

Marygay"

I believe that Einstein himself would

have appreciated such an illuminating

and friendly invasion of the science

classroom!

AM IT GOSWAMI, of Bangladesh, is pro¬

fessor of physics at the University of Oregon,

USA. The author of many research papers in

nuclear physics, his book The Cosmic

Dancers: Exploring the Physics of Science Fic¬

tion, was published in 1983.

How do you set about writing science fiction best-sellers?

Who better to ask than the prolific and widely-acclaimed

popularizer of science and science fiction author, Isaac

Asimov?

To date he has written or edited an astonishing total of 305

books. Of these 187 are on non-fiction subjects, mainly

scientific, but including books on history, geography,

mythology, humour, light verse, autobiography and

literature; among them are 2 two-volume books on The Bible

and Shakespeare.

He has also published 118 fictional works of which 69 are

anthologies of works and stories by other authors. Of the re¬

maining 49, written entirely by Asimov himself, 2 are

mystery novels, 6 are collections of mystery short stories, 20

are collections of science fiction short stories and 21 are

science fiction novels, including the best-selling Founda¬

tion's Edge, 1982, and The Robots of Dawn, 1983.

The list is still growing. This year will see the publication

of two new non-fiction works: Asimov's New Guide to

Science, and Opus 300.

by Isaac Asimov

I suppose that the question most fre¬

quently asked of prolific writers is

"Where do you get your ideas?"

If one is a prolific science fiction writer,

as I am, the question is likely to be

rephrased into, "Where do you get

your crazy ideas?".

The answer, in general, is a rather

simple one. I think, and think, and

think until something occurs to me. It's

by no means an easy task and if my

dear wife, Janet, comes upon me when

I happen to be lost in thought, her first

impression (even after years of ex¬

perience with me) is that I'm in dread¬

ful pain.

"What's wrong?" she cries out in

alarm.

"I'm thinking", I growl.

And yet sometimes, I must admit, an

idea is thrust upon me by the outside

world. On January 24, 1971, 1 attended

a science fiction convention and was in

the audience while two famous science

fiction writers were discussing writing

techniques. One thought that human

reactions were more important than

technological details, even in science

fiction (and I agree with him). "If you

have your motivations straight," he

said, "who cares about uh

plutonium-186".

I laughed at this for the speaker's

memory had betrayed him. There is no

such thing as plutonium-186, and there

can't be. It struck me, though, that I

might write a story in which

plutonium-186 ¿//é/ exist. It would come

from another universe, of course, one

in which the laws of nature were dif¬

ferent. Once here, the substance would

8

slowly absorb our laws of nature and

become more and more unstable. If we

could get an indefinite amount of such

material from the other Universe, we

could have a new and enormous source

of no-cost energy. Of course, I would

have to work out some serious

drawback which would involve all

Earth, perhaps all the Universe, in a

dreadful danger. Would people then be

willing to give up a source of cost-less

energy? More and more things

developed out of that one expression

"plutonium-186". I ended with a novel

called "The Gods Themselves",

published by Doubleday in 1972.

Once I actually dreamed a book. On

April 3, 1973, I awoke from a peculiar

dream and at once told it to Janet who,

as a psychiatrist, is professionally in¬

terested in dreams. I said, "I dreamed

I was preparing an anthology of old

science fiction stories I had read and

loved when I was a teen-ager and I was

re-reading them and loving them again.

What a shame to have to wake up."

Janet said, "Well, why don't you

prepare such an anthology?".

So I did, and I got to reread all the

old stories in real life (some of them

didn't hold up). The book was entitled

"Before the Golden Age" and was

published by Doubleday on April 3,

1974, the first anniversary of my

dream.

Last year I actually dreamed a

mystery. I had followed someone into a

restaurant and he disappeared before

my eyes. There was a couch in the

restaurant with its back to me, and I

finally found him, lying down on the

couch so that I could not see him from

the doorway. In my dream I said,

"What a wonderful idea,for a Black

Widower story!" (The Black Widower

stories are a series of mysteries that I've

been writing for over ten years.) When

I woke up I thought up a story around

that basic notion, called it "The

Redhead", wrote it, and sold it. It ap¬

peared in the October, 1984, issue of

Ellery Queen 's Mystery Magazine.

Sometimes, an editor deliberately

challenges me. On March 17, 1941,

John W. Campbell, editor of Astoun¬

ding Science Fiction handed me a

quotation from an essay by Ralph

Waldo Emerson: "If the stars should

appear one night in a thousand years,

how would men believe and adore; and

preserve for many generations the

remembrance of the City of God..."

"I want you to write a story about

this", said Campbell. "Explain why

the stars should only appear once in a

long time, and what effect the ap¬

pearance would have on an intelligent

race."

I wrote the story, called it

"Nightfall" and it appeared in the

September 1941 issue of the magazine.

It is still my most famous single short

story, and I wrote it when I was only

21.

These are exceptional cases,

however. In my hundreds of stories of

all lengths, I almost never had the help

of a chance comment, of a dream, of an

editorial suggestion, or of anything

else. As I said, it then becomes a matter

of hard thought.

CONTINUED PAGE 10

©

Getting the feel of space Above, whirling around In a chair just

like the one astronauts sit on, a young

visitor to the State-run museum and

space camp at Huntsville Alabama is

experiencing some of the sensations of

travel In a space capsule. Below, a neu¬

tral buoyancy simulator at the Marshall

Space Flight Center, Huntsville. Scien¬

tists say that the difficulties Involved in

trying to walk while suspended in water

are the nearest equivalent in the Earth

environment to the problems encoun¬

tered in moving about in an orbiting

space station.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

I might begin thinking of a scientific

development and wondering "What

if

In 1956, computers were much in the

news. The existing ones were crude in¬

deed compared to what we have now,

but already it was possible to speculate

over how far they could improve. I

began to speculate, "How far? How

far? Would it eventually be able to do

this? Do that? Surpass human beings,

perchance?" In my mind, at last, I

came to what seemed to me to be the

only possible conclusion. I promptly

wrote the story "The Last Question"

which appeared in the November,

1956, issue of Science Fiction Quarter¬

ly. Of all the stories I have written, this

one is my favourite.

Or I might think of the human angle

rather than the technological one.

What if computers became so common

and integral a part of the human scene

that people forgot how to do arithmetic

in their head or by use of pen and

paper; forgot even that it was possible

to do it without a computer? It didn't

take long to think of a satirical treat¬

ment of the question and I wrote "The

Feeling of Power", which appeared in

the February, 1958, issue of //.

As you see, for me a story starts with

a word, a phrase, a statement, a ques¬

tion. That acts like a seed out of which

the rest of the story grows; or, if you

prefer another metaphor, it acts as a

piece of grit about which the pearl

layers itself.

Very frequently, the seed I must

somehow originate makes up the end of

the story. Most of my stories are

mysteries in one fashion or another. A

good number of them, both novels and

short stories, are actual mysteries,

orthodox and old-fashioned

"whodunits". Some of my science fic¬

tion novels, though thoroughly science

fiction, are also straightforward

mysteries. Examples are "The Caves of

Steel" (Doubleday, 1954); "The Naked

Sun" (Doubleday, 1957); and the very

recent, "The Robots of Dawn"

(Doubleday, 1983).

Even those science fiction stories

that are not straightforward mysteries

have mystery elements to them. There

is very often something to be found or

uncovered, a particular person or place

or motivation, something.

In every case, I must think up the en¬

ding, the gimmick, the surprise that

will fool the reader.

Once I have my ending I'm home and

safe. The next step is to think up a place

to begin. In this connexion I always

remember something that John Camp¬

bell once told me. He said, "When you

start a story and find you are having

trouble, it is because you started too

soon. Start later in the narrative." I

therefore start as late as I conveniently

can. That does not take long to work

out.

Then, once I have my ending and my

beginning, I start to write. To be sure,

I don't have anything in between the

beginning and ending except, possibly,

some vague scraps of conversation in

my head. That doesn't matter; I rely on

making up the entire story even a

novel as complicated as "The Robots

of Dawn" as I go along. I stay always

one scene ahead of myself until, as I ap¬

proach the end, the last few scenes of

the book reveal themselves and that is

how I know I am approaching the end.

What happens if half-way through

I'm stuck? Well, that is very unlikely.

As long as I know what the ending will

be I have something to aim for,

whether I am writing a short story or a

novel, and as long as there is something

to aim for, I can't get totally lost.

The actual writing (once I know

where I'm going) always turns out to be

incredibly simple. I write as fast as I can

type and it is never necessary to make

more than a few minor revisions.

I don't actually visualize my stories;

I'm not very good at visualization. I

don't really picture my characters or

my scenes and I rarely describe

anything I don't absolutely have to.

But I do hear. The entire story reels

itself off in my head as I sit at the

typewriter or word-processor and, I

can hear it especially the dialogue. It

is as though something inside myself is

dictating and I am merely typing down

what I hear as fast as I can.

For that .reason, my stories and

novels tend to be more conversation

than action, more dialogue than

events. I am criticized for that

sometimes by people who (I can only

presume) know more about writing

than I do, and who therefore feel en¬

tirely free to castigate me for the lack of

action, description and characteriza¬

tion in my fiction.

But what can I do? I write as I write,

and I urge no one else to do as I do.

That is why, by the way, I approach

an article such as this one with a certain

reluctance. I have never taken courses

in writing, never read books on the sub¬

ject. I majored in chemistry and not in

English literature.

I am, then, clearly not an authority

in the subject. I don't pretend to know

how to write and I don't hold myself up

as a model to beginners in any way. In

fact, I think I should be considered a

horrible example for I feel that anyone

who tries to do what I do is bound to

make a mess of it.

Once again I do what I do simply

because that is all I know how to do.Ë

Ol*"1

(^^ytjiAA^^___,

"Look, just because my intelligence is artificial

doesn't mean my problems aren't real!"

Colour page

Bleu de Ciel by Wassily Kandinsky. Oil

on canvas, 100 x73 cm, 1940.

"Neither reason nor logic should be

excluded from problems ofart, but con¬

tinual correction by the' 'Irrational ' ' are

indispensable."

Kandinsky

L'Art Concret

©<

10

:j".

í

J*

)

f 1 v*»

No science without fiction

by Alexander Kazantsev

SCIENCE fiction has its own rules.

Concerned as it is with the new

frontiers of science, it portrays

the latest scientific achievements and

sometimes even produces ideas which

science can exploit; for the role of

science fiction is not only to distract

and entertain, but to announce the

future, to foresee new scientific and

technical achievements, to prompt and

predict them.

Ivan Efremov, the eminent Soviet

scientist and science fiction writer, and

author of many famous novels and

tales, describes in his short story, A

Shadow of the Past (1945) how, when

old bare rocks were illuminated in a

certain way, a lifelike three-

dimensional image of a gigantic

dinosaur appeared. This caused a

public sensation, and in particular ex¬

cited the curiosity of Yuri Denisyuk, a

young scientist who is now a correspon¬

ding member of the Soviet Academy of

Sciences. According to him, it led to

discoveries in the field of holography

(see Unesco Courier, March 1981).

In the 1950s Soviet geologists

discovered diamonds in Yakutia exact¬

ly as Ivan Efremov had described in his

story The Pipe ofDiamonds (1945). As

a scientist Efremov was able to

substantiate his hypothesis concerning

the location of the diamond deposit,

and as an artist he showed how it could

be discovered.

There is no end to the scientific and

technical predictions of Jules Verne.

One has only to recall his Nautilus. Up

to a hundred of his "fantastic"

forecasts subsequently came true.

H.G. Wells, in the War of the

Worlds, and Alexei N. Tolstoy, in his

Hyperboloid of the Engineer Garin an¬

ticipated the invention of the laser

beam, which now promises unheard of

advances in science and technology

but also has unprecedented destructive

capacities.

Colour page

La Chute d'Icare (The Fall

of Icarus), by Marc

Chagall. Oil on canvas,

1974. Although modern

man has mastered the

skills of flight in powerful

machines, his dream of

flying under his own

power, like a bird, is a

persistent and alluring

myth.

Photo © Musée National d'Art Moderne.

Centre Georges Pompidou, Parts. ADAGP,

1984

In his story, Professor Dowell's

Head (1925) the Soviet science fiction

writer Alexander Bieliayev foretold the

possibility of transplanting human

organs. Several decades later the Soviet

scientist Sergei S. Bryuchonienko

amazed the world when he grafted the

head of one dog onto the trunk of

another. Now organ transplants take

place every other day. The world was

fascinated by the pioneering heart

transplants performed by Professor

Christiaan Barnard. Nowadays such

operations have become, if not com¬

monplace, at least frequent.

Alexander Bieliayev foretold

anabiosis (suspended animation) in his

story Neither Life nor Death (1926).

Another Soviet writer, Yuri Dolgushin,

was the first to evoke the possibility of

restoring the dying to life in his

Generator of Miracles (1939). Thus,

both these writers anticipated the now

well-known technique of reanimation.

A space-traveller sets out

for the kingdom of the

sun. Illustration from

Cyrano de Bergerac's

Histoire Comique des

Etats et des Empires du

Soleil.

13

A 4,500-year-old

terra-cotta statuette,

or Dogu, discovered

on the Japanese

Island of Hokkaido.

*&u^Sti

<

©

Right, this lidofa 1,300-year-old Mayan

sarcophagus, found in the Temple of

Inscriptions, Palenque, Mexico, Is seen

by writerErich Von Daniken as an Impor¬

tantpiece ofevidence for his theory that

ancient mythologies are really garbled

accounts of the doings of extra¬

terrestrial visitors to Earth. Parts of the

reproduction of the design on the sarco¬

phagus lid, as published by Von Dani¬

ken, are blacked out to enhance the

Impression of an astronaut In the semi-

reclining position adopted for rocket

take-off.

Ramses II offers wine to the Ibis-headed

ancient Egyptian divinity Thoth, patron

ofscience and of scribes. Carving from

the Great Temple of Abu Slmbel.

The doyen of American science fic¬

tion, Hugo Gernsback, described in his

novels the mechanism of a television set

at a time when such an invention was

not even thought of. He wrote about

many technical innovations which

subsequently became realities, as well

as atomic wars which are now threaten¬

ing all life on earth.

In one of his works written shortly

after the Second World War, the well-

known English science fiction writer

Arthur C. Clarke introduced the idea

of placing an artificial geostationary

satellite in orbit at an altitude of some

30,000 kilometres above the Earth,

which could be used for telecom¬

munications and the retransmission of

radio and television programmes.

Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky's story

Beyond the Planet Earth, which was

published at the beginning of the cen¬

tury, contained so many scientifically

valid ideas that it provided a theoretical

basis for cosmonautics in both the

USSR and the USA.

But the most remarkable figure in

the domain of scientific forecasting is,

perhaps, that of Cyrano de Bergerac.

His Histoire Comique des Etats et Em¬

pires de la Lune and Histoire Comique

des Etats et Empires du Soleil, both

written over three hundred years ago,

are not only full of pungent wit but of

what his contemporaries regarded as

preposterous figments of a childlike

imagination. He proposed multi-stage

rockets for interplanetary flights,

spoke of weightlessness and parachute

descents, and claimed that the human

organism was composed of cells.

Moreover, several decades before

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek produced

his microscope and more than two cen¬

turies before the discoveries of Pasteur

and Mechnikov, on which the science

of microbiology is based, Cyrano de

Bergerac asserted the existence of

microbes in the blood and resistance to

them by antibodies. He designed lamps

in the form of luminous balloons (elec¬

tric bulbs?), extraordinary speaking

books attached to the ear and reciting

the text, starting with the chapter men¬

tally chosen by the hearer.

What is more, Cyrano assured his

readers that he had learned all these

things from the son of the Sun (an ex¬

traterrestrial?). He did not hesitate to

make this assertion at a time when the

burning of Giordano Bruno by the In¬

quisition for his heretical ideas about

14

EEf&V&ßkMRSsXiM

an infinite number of worlds in the

Universe was still fresh in men's minds.

As a scientist who has turned to

literature, I have devoted myself to

science fiction while continuing to be a

scientist and engineer. Some of the

ideas advanced by me several decades

ago are now being realized. For in¬

stance, that of using superconductivity

for the storage of energy (The Burning

Island, 1939) and of a floating sub¬

marine tunnel (The Arctic Bridge,

1941). At present no such tunnel passes

through the North Pole, but one is be¬

ing built by Japanese engineers bet¬

ween the islands of Honshu and Hok¬

kaido and, as we know, there is a pro¬

ject for a tunnel under the English

Channel.

In my story Explosion (1946) I put

forward the hypothesis that the enor¬

mous devastation over an area of 2,000

square kilometres in the Podkamen-

naya Tunguska river basin (Eastern

Siberia) in 1908 was not caused by a

falling meteorite but could have been

due to the crash of an extra-terrestrial

spaceship because of a breakdown. My

story excited the imaginations not only

of science fiction writers but also of

scientists, and although my hypothesis

is rejected by some people it also has its

supporters.

Palaeocosmonautics, which studies

the traces of contacts with extra¬

terrestrial beings in ancient times, at¬

tracts me as a science fiction writer not

only because of its romantic character,

but also because of its potential

demonstrability.

Certain scientists who have not

studied this question seriously never¬

theless maintain that there are no

proofs of actual extraterrestrial con¬

tacts in the past, and consequently they

consider it unethical to concern

themselves with this question. But this

is by no means correct. One has only to

consider the many arguments in sup¬

port of the hypothesis. True, there are

speculative "pseudo-proofs" with little

or no foundation, but genuine science

fiction is based exclusively on the pro¬

vability of the improbable.

The French scholar Henri Lhote

discovered at Tassili, in the Sahara, a

rock-drawing several thousands of

years old, which he jocularly named

"the great god Martian". A stone

sculpture of "the great god Martian"

dating from the same period was

discovered on the Japanese island of

Hokkaido, thousands of miles from

Africa. Nearby were uncovered a

number of terracotta statuettes or

dogu, which means "a loose overall

covering with hood" in other words,

what we would nowadays call a diver's

suit. Radiocarbon tests revealed that

they were 4,500 years old. This meant

that they had been made by the Ainu,

the predecessors of the Japanese.

But presumably their portraits were

not the only traces of themselves which

the visitors left behind. Legends and

traditions have survived. In Egypt, for

instance, the god Thoth was the patron

of science and scribes. Tradition has it

that he flew in from Sirius. According

to the ancient legends of the Dogons,

an African tribe of cattle-breeders, it

appears that Sirius was not a double

star, as was established in our time, but

a triple one. According to the Dogons,

the Universe emanated from a single

"egg", i.e. an atom which took part in

the original "Big Bang" a theory

subscribed to by many contemporary

astronomers. Does this not explain

why, in ancient Egypt, there was a

calendar linked to Sirius and its fifty-

year cycle or rotation period, and why

15

^^^^TZpHy**^.

s^rtb^e*"'**"^?^

Sketch taken from Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of

Reaction Devices. 1 903

Original sketch of a space rocket by

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

(1857-1935), the Soviet research scien¬

tist who pioneered the development of

rocket andspace research, published in

his major work on astronautics Explora¬

tion of Cosmic Space by Means of Reac¬

tion Devices (1903). The words in the

sketch read: above, "Liquid hydrogen",

below, "Liquid oxygen", right,

"Passengers".

references to certain principles of the

relativity theory as well as to the atomic

structure of matter and other facts of

contemporary knowledge, were

deciphered on the emerald tablets of

the god Thoth?

How can it be explained that the

masses of the pyramids of Cheops,

Chephren and Mycerinus have the

same inter-ratios as those of the planets

Earth, Venus and Mars? How can we

explain that the height of the pyramid

of Cheops is exactly a thousand million

times less (whatever unit of measure-

In 1908, a meteorite struck the earth near

Tunguska, in eastern Siberia, with an

impact energy equivalent to that of a

30-megaton H-bomb. The trunks of thou¬

sands of trees still lie today where they

fell toppled by the blast nearly eighty

years ago. In his story Explosion, the

author of this article speculated that the

disaster could equally well have been

caused by the crash of an extra¬

terrestrial spaceship; this theory has

aroused wide interest among science

fiction writers and scientists alike.

ment is used) than the average annual

distance between Earth and Sun? How

did the ancient Egyptians manage to

calculate these measurements without

the aid of optical instruments?

In the temple-pyramid of inscrip¬

tions of the Mayas in Mexico a sar¬

cophagus was found. The covering slab

bore the effigy of a man. His posture

resembled that of a cosmonaut at the

take-off of a rocket one foot placed

as if on a pedal and one hand as though

on an instrument panel. Some experts

in palaeocontacts think this Maya relief

depicts an apparatus of the rocket type.

When deciphered according to the

method of the Leningrad scientist Y.

Knorozov, the ornamentation proved

to consist of cosmic symbols.

Three masks were found in the sar¬

cophagus. They all had a common

characteristic the nose began above

the eyebrows. According to an¬

thropologists there is no ethnic group

in the world with this characteristic. In¬

cidentally, the Egyptian god Thoth

already mentioned was also called "the

big-nosed". There are representations

of him in the form of an ibis with a long

beak (nose!) starting above the

eyebrows. In ancient primitive

sculpture of Asian origin, humans are

also depicted with the nose starting

above the eyebrows. Does this not offer

food for speculation?

Long may speculation and fantasy

help to stimulate each one of us, for

man is the only creature gifted with im¬

agination and capable of conceiving

something which does not exist. His

mind can conquer time and space,

create things that never were, advance

the frontiers of science. There is no

science without fiction.

ALEXANDER KAZANTSEV, of the Soviet

Union, is one of the leading writers of science

fiction in the Russian language. The author of

a prize-winning scenario for the film Arenida,

his first novel, The Burning Island, ivas pub¬

lished in 1939. In 1981, he was awarded a

special prize by the Writers' Union of the Rus¬

sian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic for

his creative contribution to science fiction

over a period of forty-five years.

v-

J^w

Ariadne's threadby Manuel Pereira

THE flowering of science in the

last century has accustomed us

to identify science fiction with

what is most modern, newfangled and

futuristic in imaginative literature.

When we speak of science fiction we

almost invariably have in mind writers

such as Verne, Wells or Bradbury.

But is science fiction really of such

recent origin? If we look at the creative

works of the pre-scientific era, we shall

find that the roots of what we

nowadays call science fiction are to be

found in myths, folklore, cabalistic

writings, alchemy, and architecture

and plastic art of magico-religious

inspiration.

The devices and situations most fre¬

quently encountered in science fiction

can be traced back to this poetical

heritage. The earliest antecedent of

computers, for instance, was the

Delphic Oracle, which could divine and

foretell everything concerning the gods

and man. The time machine is merely a

modern version of metempsychosis,

which enabled the souls of the ancients

to transmigrate from one body to

another and consequently from one

epoch to another. As for the invisible

man, the Chinese alchemist Pao

Pu'Tsu wrote that "if someone rubs his

body with cypress juice he will become

invisible", while his European counter-

Above, this representation of a masked

figure is typical of the neolithic rock

paintings ofSefar, in the Tassili-n-Ajjer

region of the Sahara, which have been

included in Unesco's WorldHeritage List

of Cultural and Natural Properties of

outstanding universal value. It bears a

curious resemblance to many of the

illustrations of "Martians" to be found

in the science fiction magazines of the

1920s.

17

Above, neolithic rock painting from

Tasslll-n-Ajjer, In the Sahara. "Perhaps

we shall neverknow the full truth about

these Tasslli paintings. But there they

are transmitting something baffling and

mysterious, especially the most esote¬

ric scene, depleting what look like wings

floating above the heads ofmen, resem¬

bling an old-fashioned fan or the rotor

blades of a helicopter. "

* parts believed they would disappear if

they squeezed the Philosopher's Stone

in their hands. The principle of the

robot is nothing more than the

"mechanization" of the alchemist's

homunculus and the Golem of the

cabalists.

AH the interplanetary fauna which

nowadays forms part of the stock in

trade of science fiction is derived from

the mythological monsters, bestiaries

and demonology of the Middle Ages.

The creatures who pass through

Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

could have been taken straight out of

some war of the galaxies, and many

other fabulous beings still look down

on us from the walls of Gothic

cathedrals.

And what about the laser beams

which turn up so frequently in

futuristic literature? All the religions

were peopled with gods who cast rays

and angels with flaming swords.

Homer speaks of "Apollo, he who

wounds from afar". When Cortez ask¬

ed the Aztecs where they got their

knives, they pointed to the sky because,

as Mircea Eliade says, the blacksmiths

of ancient times employed "sacraliz-

ed" meteoric iron.

Everything that is powerful and

warlike comes from on high, whether it

be Zeus, the Indo-European God of

Thunder, or the Shango of the

Yorubaswho has been culturally

transferred to Brazil and the Carib¬

bean. The Book of Exodus tells how

"Mount Sinai was altogether on

smoke, because the Lord descended

upon it in fire". In the Vedas we also

find Indra casting lightning-flashes

with one of his four arms.

"They arose in the midst of the

light", we read in the Popol Vuh of the

Quiche Indians of Guatemala, "the

Sun fell to one of them and the Moon

to the other. Then the firmament was

filled with light... the four hundred

youths who were killed by Zipacna also

arose and were transformed into

stars..."

Of all the mysteries surrounding our

ancestors, the most undecipherable

were in the heavens. The best, if not all,

efforts of science fiction are directed

towards this aerial ocean which has

been given metaphorical form in every

culture. Thus science fiction becomes,

as it were, a counter-mythology, a

cosmogony of the future divested of

religious significance.

Man's oldest dream to fly derives

from this cosmic curiosity, and "fly" is

the dominant verb in futuristic

literature. Possibly because of

nostalgia for the winged deities, many

Yoga-fakir legends speak of people ris¬

ing in the air, and the alchemist Yo-Tsi-

Yuan claimed that by eating pine-

kernels he could rise above the ground.

Of all mythologies, the one which

best expresses this longing to fly is the

fable of the Cretan hero Icarus, the

first "cosmonaut", who flew with

wings made for him by his father

Daedalus.

Daedalus is the prototype of the syn¬

thesis between artist and scientist be¬

queathed to us by classical antiquity.

This legendary figure was sculptor, ar¬

chitect, painter and inventor. Accor¬

ding to mythologists he infused life and

movement into his statues (another

préfiguration of the robot) but he also

produced inventions in the field

of navigation. His engineering

Above, model of a helical-screw flying

machine designedby Leonardo da Vinci.

It is said that it was this design that In¬

spired Igor Sikorsky to develop the

modern helicopter.

achievements include the labyrinth

which enclosed the Minotaur (another

creature worthy of science fiction), the

thermal baths at Selianthus, the for¬

tifications of the city of Camikos, a

canal in the river Alaban, the temple of

Apollo at Cumae and the foundations

of the temple of Aphrodite on Mount

Eryx.

It was not until the Renaissance that

a living Daedalus appeared upon the

scene. Leonardo da Vinci, I'uomo

universale, was the perfect heir to the

humanist ideal of reconciling science

and the arts.

Painter, sculptor, architect, military

engineer, physicist, writer, Leonardo

also devoted himself to stratigraphy,

autopsy, anatomy, and the technical

designing of cities and machines. He

studied the fossil shells of the Appen-

nines and prided himself on his skill as

a lute-player. Careful observation of

the flight of birds led him to design the

very thing invented by Daedalus.

Three centuries were to pass before

the appearance of another Daedalus.

This time it would be a writer, an artist

of vast scientific knowledge: Jules

Verne, whose visions would have been

impossible without the accumulated

achievements of the imagination exten¬

ding from Daedalus to Leonardo a

veritable Ariadne's thread leading, as it

were, through a labyrinth to a kind of

archaeology of science fiction.

But there are other, perhaps more

far-fetched, labyrinths, and since we

are dealing with science fiction there

can be no disrespect. I am thinking of

the Maya pyramids which, according

to archaeologists, were built as

astronomical observatories.

18

Not long ago, when workers of the

Electricity Company in Mexico City

were digging up a street in order to in¬

stall a transformer, they came upon a

rock covered with reliefs. Thus was

discovered the Great Temple, which

constitutes an entire treatise on astral

symbolism, an allegorical narration by

the Aztecs offering an explanation of

the formation of the cosmos and pro¬

jecting man to the stars. Science fiction

in stone?

But the greatest flight of speculation

was launched in the Sahara in the

mid-1950s with the discovery of the

Tassili n'Ajjer rock paintings, dating

from about the Neolithic period. A

procession of really startling images is

depicted on the walls of caves.

Although some experts think they

represent ritual masks or head-dresses,

what is certain is that several of the

figures look like divers or astronauts.

Perhaps we shall never know the full

truth about these Tassili paintings. But

there they are, transmitting something

baffling and mysterious, especially the

most esoteric scene, depicting what

look like wings floating above the

heads of men, resembling an old-

fashioned fan or the rotor blades of a

helicopter. Indeed, these helicoidal ob¬

jects seem to be driven in circular

movement around an axis. In both

cases the axes are discs, and an irides¬

cent halo or reverberation can be clear¬

ly distinguished around them.

Here we can no longer speak of head¬

dresses or masks or hats. What, then, is

the meaning of these two artefacts?

The most widely advanced hypothesis

is that they are ships from another

planet which visited the region in the

remote past. I am inclined to imagine

that it is a wishful design for some kind

of flying machine. Another Tassili

painting shows wheeled cars drawn by

horses, and another depicts perfectly-

drawn insects in full flight. If the ends

of the blades of the two artefacts are

studied carefully, it will be seen that

their texture is similar to that of a but¬

terfly's wings. Why not assume that a

Daedalus could also have lived in this

cave?

From the flight of Icarus to the

sphere of Phileas Fogg and the projec¬

tile that travels from the Earth to the

moon, via the wall-paintings of Tassili,

the flying broomstick of the medieval

witch and the wings designed by

Leonardo, science and poetry combin¬

ed have traced an impressive trajec¬

tory, ending in the spaceship of today.

MANUEL PEREIRA is a Cuban novelist and

journalist whose novels El Comandante

Veneno and El Ruso have been translated into

several languages. His reports on Nicaragua

have been published under the title Cro-Nica.

He is currently a member of Cuba 's Permanent

Delegation to Unesco, and is working on a

novel set in Old Havana.

19

HIGH SOCIETIES

Spate settlements oftomorrow

SETTLEMENT of our sister planets

and planetary systems of stars

outside our solar system is one of

the recurring themes of science fiction.

However, we now know that planets

such as Mars and Venus are not capable

of supporting life, and the technical prob¬

lems of achieving the velocity necessary

to reach even the nearest star within one

person's lifetime seem today to be

insuperable.

Undeterred, science fiction writers

came up with the idea of the "generation

starship", a kind of Noah's Ark in space

in which the crew completing the mis¬

sion would be the descendants of the

original crew several generations remov¬

ed. In other words, the starship would, in

effect, be a miniature, self-contained

"travelling world".

When high-energy physics professor

Gerard O'Neill considered the problem,

he asked himself "If several generations

can survive in a starship, why send it to

the possibly hostile environment of

another planetary system? Why not

create the desired environment in the

starship itself and simply place it within

easy reach of the Earth?"

Why should we want to create col¬

onies in space? There are many good

reasons for doing so. With the world

population doubling every thirty-five

years, our own planet is becoming over¬

crowded and suffering increasingly from

the effects of pollution and its renewable

energy resources will eventually run out.

It makes sense to move some of our

polluting industries out of the Earth's at¬

mosphere and to construct solar power

stations in space where radiation from

the Sun is available twenty four hours a

day, at full strength. (1) Artist's impres¬

sion of the scene during the construction

of a space power station.

It would also be possible to develop en¬

tirely new industries. Alloys can be made

under the weightless conditions of space

from metals which do not mix suc¬

cessfully under the pull of gravity on

Earth. Experiments conducted in Skylab

and the Salyut space station have

already resulted in the production of new

alloys and special types of glass that are

unobtainable on Earth. (2) Soviet

cosmonaut Svetlana Saritskaya, the first

woman to walk in space, conducts an ex¬

periment in welding, soldering and cut¬

ting metal in space.

20

Skylab and Salyut are, in fact, the first

existing space habitats, and three Soviet

cosmonauts, Leonid Kizim, Vladimir

Solovyev and Dr. Oleg Atkov, have just

completed a mission in which they spent

a record, 237 consecutive days (eight

months) in space. (3) Interior of the

Salyut space station during a previous

mission.

Skylab and Salyut were not, of course,

designed as long-term habitats and can

only accommodate a handful of specially

trained cosmonauts. However, advanc¬

ed, technically feasible designs for space

habitats which could accommodate

some 10,000 people in Earth-style com¬

fort already exist. (5) The Stanford torus

(doughnut-shaped) habitat was designed

at Stanford University in 1975. Approx¬

imately two kilometres in diameter and

with a mass of over ten million tons, the

torus rotates around a stationary central

axis to provide a simulation of Earth

gravity. (4) An artist's impression of the

living area in the outer rim of the torus.

The windows at the top of the illustration

look towards the central, stationary axis.

That is to say, the "floor" of the living

area is perpendicular to the central axis

but would feel "downwards" because of

the spin of the torus.

The space colony would need to be

self-sufficient in food. (6) An artist's im¬

pression of the agricultural area designed

for the Stanford torus space colony. The

area is situated between two areas of

parkland. On the top four levels of the

farm, soybeans, wheat, sorghum and

some other crops would be grown. The

bottom level is a drying facility. Water

would be supplied directly from the river

(centre foreground) and indirectly

through the fish tanks that line the sides.

Nearly a kilometre in length, the farm

would also be inhabited by rabbits and

some 3,000 cattle. Since moisture,

sunlight and heat conditions could be

controlled, the farm would yield far more

than a farm of comparable size on Earth.

In developing their designs for space

habitats, scientists seem to be out-doing

the science fiction writers in their ex¬

ploration of the fantastic. Yet these

designs are serious, science based pro¬

jects and to many experts they appear no

more fantastic, and just as feasible, as

did the project of landing on the Moon

thirty-five years ago.

Photo © Science Photo Library, London

Photo © APN, Paris

Seieme fiction in the classroom

by Christo Boutzev

©

o

o

s.

££ «ytlRST, of necessity, come

thought, fantasy and fable.

-*- Then follow the scientificcalculations. Finally, thought is crown¬

ed by achievement". This is how

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

(1857-1935), one of the pioneers of

space travel, defined the basic relation¬

ship that exists between science fiction

and scientific and technological

development.

In its wider sense of the creative, im¬

aginative dreaming that foreshadows

scientific achievement, science fiction,

like myth, reflects the ambition to

dominate nature which is as old as

mankind.

Indeed, dream and rational thought,

imagination and precise calculations,

are interwoven in the creation of even

the simplest tools or techniques, and it

is not always easy to know where one

ends and the other begins. For in¬

stance, those prehistoric cave drawings

whose force and realism excite our ad¬

miration can be interpreted in different

ways. Perhaps they were only fanciful

dreams, primitive "science fiction"

created by the imagination of pre¬

historic artists; perhaps they were

projects or plansfor the manufacture

of hunters' snares drawn up by

prehistoric engineers.

A project is often classed as science

fiction simply because its achievement

22

Illustration by Joe Petagno from Brad¬

bury's The Silver Locusts.

demands a higher level of technological

advance than society has attained.

Leonardo da Vinci designed a pro¬

totype flying machine four hundred

years before the first aeroplanes ap¬

peared. His contemporaries treated his

project as no more than a technical fan¬

tasy. Nobody could explain how the

propeller of this remote ancestor of the

helicopter would be driven, for -the

motor was not invented until much

later.

Until a few decades ago, this was true

of space flight. Because technological

development was not advanced

enough, it was impossible to produce

rockets possessing the requisite pro¬

pulsive power. But science fiction had

already foreseen the decisive role of the

rocket. Jules Verne had equipped his

moon ship with several auxiliary

rockets.

One of the major objectives of

technological development is, of

course, to perfect the means of produc¬

tion in order to increase productivity,

and at first sight this seems to be a pure¬

ly practical aim which has nothing to

do with fantasy or the imagination. But

this is a superficial view. In every

technical achievement there is an initial

stage of capital importance: the stage at

which, drawing on the maximum

available information, every, possible

solution is sought to a given problem,

thus allowing ideas to take form. At

this stage intuition, imagination and

fantasy are even more important than

purely technical competence. This kind

of imaginative freedom was exercised

in the invention of the wheel just as in

the construction of the Egyptian

pyramids or the first supersonic

aeroplane, and it will be equally

necessary for the manufacture of

tomorrow's micro-computers.

In the engineering sciences, the in¬

ventive process is much closer to the

procedure used in science fiction than is

generally realized. They are two similar

forms of human activity, each applied

to the search for new solutions

although, of course, in different con¬

texts and perspectives. The history of

technological progress includes many

examples where imagination, combin¬

ed with scientific knowledge, provided

the seeds of new ideas and original con¬

cepts. Analysis shows that to produce

any kind of machine that is to be com¬

mercially successful one must begin by

examining at least fifty to sixty original

ideas.

This is where science fiction can play

a decisive part in technological creativi¬

ty. Its essential role is not so much to

provide specific ideas or concrete solu¬

tions drawn from the author's imagina¬

tion, as to stimulate scientists and

CONTINUED PAGE 24

Famed for his many works of science fic¬

tion, including notably The Martian

Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and

Fahrenheit 451, and an acknowledged

master of the short story form, Ray

Bradbury fell in love with poetry at the

age of ten and has been writing it ever

since. Of his poems he says that they are

the outcome of "ideas, large and small,

that tripped me up and felled me into my

typewriter. I did not write them. They

wrote me."

'Of what is past, or passing, or to come'

by Ray Bradbury

Of what is past, or passing, or to come,

These things I sense and sing, and try to sum.

The apeman with his cave in need offire,

The tiger to be slain, his next desire.

The mammoth on the hoof a banquet seems,

How bring the mammoth down fills apeman's dreams.

How taunt the sabretooth and pull his bite?

How cadge the flame to end an endless night?

All this the apeman sketches on his cave

In coward's arts that teach him to be brave.

So beasts and fire that live beyond his lair

Are drawn in science fictions everywhere.

The walls are full of schemes that sum and teach,

To help the apeman reach beyond his reach.

While all his ape-companions laugh and shout:

"What are those stupid blueprints all about?

Give up your science fictions, clean the cave!"

But apeman knows his sketching chalk can save,

And knowing, learning, moves him to rehearse

True actions in the world to death reverse.

With axe he knocks the tiger's smile to dust,

Then runs to slay the mammoth with spear thrust;

The hairy mountain falls, the forests quake,

Then fire is swiped to cook a mammoth steak.

Three problems thus are solved by art on wall:

The tiger, mammoth, fire, the one, the all.

So these first science fictions circled thought

And then strode forth and all the real facts sought,

And then on wall new science fictions drew,

That run through history and end with... you.

Text © Random House Inc. 1982

* "^rffe.

These 15,000-year-old drawings, found

on the walls of a cave in the Rhone val¬

ley, are thought to be designs for the

construction of traps for snaring mam

moth, bison, reindeer and other game.

They may well be the oldest existing

technical blueprints in the world.

23

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22

engineers in the search for truly

original solutions.

Unfortunately, insufficient attention

is given at all levels of education to the

need to develop the spirit of invention

and innovation. Perhaps one of the

most serious gaps in many education

systems is this undervaluation of im¬

agination and fantasy in the educa¬

tional process. The result is that pupils'

creative capacities are not sufficiently

encouraged at an age when the per¬

sonality is being formed. Worst of all,

some educational activities are so

organized that these capacities are

brutally stifled at birth.

Would it not be a good idea,

therefore, to introduce science fiction

into school programmes, thus giving

young minds an opportunity to become

familiar with the masterpieces of this

branch of literature in a systematic

way? It could also be introduced in an

appropriate form into schools of

engineering, especially since the time-

lag between science fiction and

technological reality is now being con¬

siderably reduced.

It should not be forgotten that works

of science fiction have often played a

prophetic role in technological

developments. The word "robot" was

coined in 1921 by the Czech writer

Karel Capek (1890-1938). Today

robots have moved out of the sphere of

science fiction and are operating entire

factories. Improving them exercises the

minds of science fiction writers as well

as of engineers. The same is true of

lasers. These all-powerful beams were

one of the favourite themes of science

fiction writers twenty years ago, and

they were still a mystery until quite

recently. Now, they are being used in

medicine and telecommunications.

Again, laboratories and research sta¬

tions, even technical workshops, are

now being installed in outer space

another subject beloved of science fic¬

tion. The heroes of the cosmos are no

ROBOTS

The term "robot", derived from the Czech

robota (work), was coined by the Czech

playwright Karel Capek in his play R.U.R.

(Rossum's Universal Robots), first perfor¬

med in Prague in 1921. The scene is set

in the future on a island where robots are

manufactured and sold as workers, ser¬

vants and soldiers. The word came to be

applied to any piece of apparatus which

was capable of some limited "thought"

process and could perform simple, re¬

petitive tasks previously undertaken by

humans.

Initially, science fiction writers' treatment

of the theme of robots reflected society's

unease, fear even, of rapid technological

advance. The early robots were often

depicted as menacing monsters that ten¬

ded to get out of their inventor's control

and go rampaging around in an orgy of

mindless killing. As society became more

accustomed to technological progress (the

first automatic traffic lights were originally

referred to as robots), so robots began to

be more sympathetically portrayed. This

change was reflected in American author

Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of

Robotics: (1) A robot may not injure a

human being or, through inaction, allow

a human being to come to harm. (2) A

robot must obey the orders given it by

human beings except where such orders

would conflict with the First Law. (3) A

robot must protect its own existence as

long as such protection does not conflict

with the First or Second Law.

In the real world robots have become

incredibly sophisticated, taking over from

longer characters out of science fiction

but scientists and engineers working in

the new space technologies.

But this does not mean that

everything predicted in science fiction

has already come to pass, or will

necessarily come true in the future.

Besides, such prophecies must not be

confused with scientific predictions

based on exact laws such as, for in¬

stance, the prediction of Dmitri

Ivanovich Mendeleyev (1834-1907)

concerning unknown chemical

elements, or the discovery in 1930 by

Clyde Tombaugh of the planet Pluto,

whose existence and position had been

forecast some fifty years earlier by the

American astronomer Percival Lowell.

Sometimes, scientific and tech¬

nological progress is so rapid that

science fiction can neither foresee nor

even keep up with the resultant tech¬

nical revolution, as was the case for in¬

formatics. Although the latter is

already operating in the service of

24

humans a wide range of monotonous,

repetitive, dirty or dangerous tasks. Bot¬

tom right, robots at work in a fully auto¬

mated automobile assembly plant in the

Federal Republic of Germany. Photos

right, close encounters of an educational

kind children meet robots face to face at

The Robot Exhibit: History, Fantasy and

Reality, an exhibition held earlier this year

at the American Craft Museum, II, New

York.

In more recent science fiction the introduc¬

tion of robots offers writers the opportu¬

nity to examine the practical, philosophi¬

cal and moral implications of artificial intel¬

ligence. In one of Asimov's stories, two

robots left unused on a shelf pass the time

in philosophical debate. They finally con¬

clude that robots conform more closely to

the definition of the word "man" than do

men themselves.

Some highly sophisticated programs now

being developed for computers seem to be

approaching the level of artificial intelli¬

gence. Left, Soviet chess grandmaster

Raphael Vaganian (second from right)

plays chess with a computer. Watching

him (extreme left) is Guillermo García,

chess champion of Cuba, who is waiting

to take on the winner. Trickery and clever

showmanship were the secret of Baron

Wolfgang von Kempelen's unbeatable

chess-playing automaton (above left)

which caused a sensation in Europe in

Napoleon's day. The complicated visible

mechanism was operated by an expert

chess-playing dwarf hidden inside the

machine.

science and technology, the themes it

suggests have not been exploited to any

great degree by authors of science

fiction.

This leap forward lends a certain

fantasy to the achievements of tech¬

nology. At the same time it reduces

futuristic literature to a level that is

closer to reality. Thus it is becoming in¬

creasingly difficult for the authors of

such works to find themes which depart

from known scientific and techno¬

logical facts. On the contrary, they

derive their inspiration increasingly

from these facts.

CHRISTO BOUTZEV, of Bulgaria, is a pro¬

gramme specialist in Unesco's Division of

Technological Research and Higher Educa¬

tion. A former professor of electro-technology

at the University of Sofia, he was for many

years senior specialist at the Bulgarian

Ministry of Education. He has published a

number of studies on educational problems. .

25

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1) A bearded ancient

hauls the space-craft In

A Trip to the Moon

(1902).

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26

2; Metropolis f7$2fij

Fantastic voyages in film

THE cinema established its unique

capacity to bring to life the

dreams and visions of science

fiction as long ago as the beginning of the

century, and from then until the mind-

bending computer-created images of to¬

day's intergalactic epics film-makers

developed a dazzling array of camera

tricks and special effects to bemuse the

public.

Space travel was brought to the screen

by the French pioneer Georges Meliès.

The filmic imagination was given free

rein in his version of Jules Verne's A Trip

to the Moon (1 ), depicting a Moon where

giant mushrooms unfurled from the ex¬

plorers' umbrellas and contrasting with

the documentary realism with which

Moon trips would be presented in such

later films as Destination Moon (US,

1950) made when space flight had

become a real possibility. By 1916 no

less than three films had been made of

Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues

under the Sea and his novels with their

mixture of fantasy and precise detail

have ever since continued to provide

film-makers with tempting fare.

Two classics of the genre were made

in the 1920s and 1930s. Fritz Lang's

Metropolis (1926) presented a grim

vision of the future complete with terrify¬

ing machines and a robot-woman (2)

which were still influencing science fic¬

tion films four decades later. Things to

Come (3) resulted from collaboration bet¬

ween H.G. Wells and the Hungarian-born

producer Alexander Korda. In it a global

holocaust is followed by the rise of a

gleaming glass and steel civilization

capable of sending men to the Moon. As

in Jules Verne's Moon flight, a gun was

used to project the space vessel,

although by that time scientists knew

that the rocket was the only practicable

solution.

A boom in science fiction films began

in the 1950s, with space exploration as

a prominent theme. Earthlings ranged

further and further afield, as in the Soviet

Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet, a

meticulous narration of a journey to

Venus. But the traffic was not all one¬

way, and Earth had some strange visitors

from other planets. The Invasion of the

Body Snatchers (1956) treated the

theme of alien intelligence taking over

human bodies, and was described by one

critic as "occasionally difficult to follow

due to the strangeness of its scientific

premise". Another favourite theme is the

journey through time or other dimen¬

sions, with perhaps the most unusual

variation being depicted in Fantastic

Voyage (5) in which five scientists are

shrunk to microscopic size and injected

into the blood stream of another scientist

who has a blood clot inaccessible to

surgery.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (6) with

its hero becoming smaller and increasing¬

ly alien in his own world is, like the situa¬

tion in Fantastic Voyage, literally incred¬

ible. As a sceptical scientist has pointed

out, a mouse-sized man "would suffer

from a mouse's metabolic problems.

With a surface area many times greater in

proportion to his mass, he loses heat that

much faster and would need to eat

furiously simply to keep warm. A mouse

needs to eat about a quarter of its own

weight of food each day to survive..."

Misgivings about the harmful potential

of technology, the fallibility of men and

3) Things to Come

(1936)

4) Planet-roving

vehicle in

Voyage to a

Prehistoric

Planet (1964).

27

5) Fantastic Voyage (1966).

6) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

A radioactive mist causes the hero to

shrink until he is dwarfed by a mouse¬

trap anda morsel of cheese seems the

size of a boulder.

7) Going round in circles in 2001: A

Space Odyssey (1968)

machines, also find expression in a

number of "prophetic" films about the

future of mankind. Alphaville (1965) is

set in a futuristic city run by an electronic

brain which is finally destroyed when it is

fed with poetry, a medium it cannot

understand. HAL, the homicidal com¬

puter in 2001: A Space Odyssey also

echoes fears about a computer-

dominated society.

The real stars in modern science fiction

films are the special effects, some of

them spectacular setpieces such as scaly

monsters and spaceships but others the

kind that no one would notice. For Close

Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

about a hundred paintings on glass were

blended into the scenes. Such tech¬

niques and the blending of miniatures in¬

to live-action backgrounds were already

being used in Things to Come. A widely

used optical effect is the matte or mask

which blanks out a part of the screen

which can be filled in later. In Star Wars

a few hundred extras were turned into

thousands by being photographed three

times at different distances from the

camera; the three shots were combined,

and side ranks of men were painted in.

The use of "travelling mattes" which

change position, size and shape from

frame to frame can create such effects as

the "flying" of Superman. He was shot

in front of a blue screen and a shape cor¬

responding to his outline was cut out of

a skyline scene and his body fitted into

the gap. One way of tricking the au¬

dience used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001:

A Space Odyssey was based on the

viewer's assumption that the camera is

static. The stewardess in photo 7 carries

a tray and appears to walk through 360

degrees. In fact she was standing on a

treadmill and the camera and the entire

set rotated together. Today the use of

computerized camera systems and

computer-created images in such films

as fron (opposite page) are creating

astonishing aesthetic effects whose

possibilities are only just beginning to be

exploited.

Colour page opposite

Above, scene from the highly popular

space exploration series Star Trek,

which began showing on US television

in 1966, ran to 78 episodes until 1969,

and has been repeated many times

since. The United States space shuttle

Enterprise was named after the show's

space craft, and a Star Trek film was

released in 1979. Below, computer-

generated images were used in the Walt

Disney film Tron to evoke a programmed

world inside a computer.

28

rv

The Dream of the Professor of Architecture (1844). Pen and

brush workby the English architect Charles Robert Cockerell

(1788-1863).

'In the Age ofOne World'A Chinese Utopia

by Kang You wei

A utopia (from the Greek words ou and topos, meaning no

place) is an imaginary land where everything is perfect. Uto¬

pian thought has been a feature of Western intellectual life

for centuries: one of the first books to describe a utopia was

Plato's Republic, and other utopias include those created

later by Thomas More in the 16th century and Samuel Butler

in the 19th. In China, unlike the West, a utopianizing tradi¬

tion scarcely exists, and the text published below is therefore

a historical rarity. It is an extract from the Ta Tung Shu or

One World Book written in the late 19th century by the

Chinese thinker Kang You wei (1858-1927). In this long work

of over 150,000 Chinese characters, the author develops a

visionary conception of a world in the future in which the

sufferings of mankind would be ended and age-old barriers

between man and man, group and group, would be done

away with. The expression Ta Tung, here translated into

English as "one world", denotes an ideal state of society and

of human nature and has also been rendered in other ways

including "the great commonwealth", "the great unity",

and "the era of 'world brotherhood'".

Colour page

Contemplating the Horizon, 13th-century painting on silk, by Chu Huai Ching.

31

IN the beginnings of man he suffered

because of hunger, and so he

sought the fruit of the grasses and

trees, and the flesh of birds and beasts,

to fill himself. If he could not get flesh

and fruit, then he suffered. If he got

and ate them, filled up on them,

satiated himself with them, then he was

happy. He suffered because the wind

and rain and mist attacked his body,

and so he wrapped himself in the bark

of grasses and trees, and wove hemp

and ge (a plant of the bean family with

fibres from which cloth is woven) into

garments to cover his body. If he could

not get them, then he suffered. If he got

and wore them, then he was happy. He

suffered because he did not obtain

satisfaction of his human desire and so

he sought a mate to embrace. If he

could not get a mate, then he suffered.

If he got one, then he was happy.

Later, there were wise ones who "in

pursuing affairs added refinements" to

the old ways. Taking food, they cooked

it, roasted it, mixed it and so increased

men's happiness. Taking clothing, they

used silk material, made it gay with the

"five colours and the six hues", devis¬

ed gowns, caps, and sandals, and so in¬

creased men's happiness. (Similarly,

with dwellings, and with gratification

of sexual desire.)

The increase of happiness is caused

by that which more suits and better ac¬

cords with man's spiritual soul and

bodily soul, which heightens and ex¬

pands man's enjoyment and pleasure.

The inability to attain this happiness is

suffering. Suffering is the spirit

knotted-up, the body wounded, the

soul melancholy and downcast. The

capacity for increased happiness is

limitless; the capacity for increased suf¬

fering is also limitless. The two are

related faculties. Daily to bend our

thoughts more earnestly to means of

seeking happiness and avoiding suffer¬

ing: this is to progress.

This is what all the sages have had as

their purpose, with all their material in¬

ventions and social techniques. We

may judge them by the one criterion of

the extent to which they have increased

human happiness and decreased

human suffering. Their methods must

also be judged as valuable or not, ac¬

cording to the times and the

environment.

In One World everyone will live in

public housing. Outside of their regular

rooms at their place of work,

everywhere they will find great hotels,

whose beautiful and pleasant accom¬

modations defy description. They will

be of several grades, according to the

money the guest wishes to spend. There

will be four better kinds: "movable

rooms" (i.e. electrically powered cars

that run on tracks), "flying rooms", or

flying ships" and "marine" ships.

The people of this age will love to

travel. The grasses and trees are the

most stupid, and therefore flourish but

do not move about. The sheep and

swine are not so stupid as the grass and

trees, and are able to move about, but

cannot go far. As for the great peng-

bird and the yellow ku-bird, they fly a

thousand // with a single movement of

their wings. In antiquity, men aged and

died without leaving their native

village; thus they were like the grass

and trees. In the Middle Age, men

travelled about like sheep and swine

(i.e. only short distances). In the Age of

Complete Peace-and-Equality, then

they will be like the great peng-bird and

the yellow ku-bird.

All public buildings and residences

will have to pass the inspection of the

health authorities. Public hotels will be

equipped with air-conditioning, elec¬

trical heating, massaging machines.

There will be fast, electrically propelled

ships on the water, equipped with every

comfort and pleasure even to

gardens and many people will live on

these ships. On land there will be

automobiles. These will be developed

to the point that they will seat perhaps

several hundred persons, and will go at

great speeds. Perhaps they will be elec¬

trically powered; or it may be that they

will be powered by some new fuel.

Horse-drawn carriages will be used on¬

ly for hauling short distances, or they

may be entirely replaced by the elec¬

trical vehicles. Therefore, at the begin¬

ning of One World, people will live on

mountain tops; at the middle period of

that age, they will live on the sea; later,

they will live in the air.

There being no private homes,

everyone will dine together, like a great

convention. There will be no slaves or

servants, but their functions will be

performed by machines, shaped like

birds and beasts. One will order by

telephone, and food will be conveyed

by mechanical devices possibly a

table will rise up from the kitchen

below, through a hole in the floor. On

the four walls will be lifelike, "pro¬

truding paintings"; music will be play¬

ing, and there will be dancing. All this

will stimulate the appetite. In all these

things there will be refinement and

moral uplift.

Below, illustration ofSir Thomas Mote's

ideal island-State of Utopia. Published in

1516, Utopia (the word was coined by

More) is an indictment of the social and

economic conditions prevailing in the

Europe of his day which are contrasted

with those ofan imaginary ideal society

located on an island off the coast of the

New World.

VTOPIAE INSVLAE HGVRÄ

32

At this time, people will eat their

food in a liquid form the essences ex¬

tracted from solid matter. These essen¬

tial juices will be more easily absorbed

by the body than are the solids. There

will be vapours which will be inhaled to

give a joyful intoxication, but without

harm to the body. By imbibing only the

essences of foods, man's life will be

prolonged.

There will be three stages within the

Age of Complete Peace-and-Equality

itself: The Age of Disorder, in which

meat will still be eaten; the Age of In¬

creasing Peace-and-Equality, in which

the flesh of birds and animals will no

longer be eaten; the Age of Complete

Peace-and-Equality, in which even in¬

sects and fish will no longer be eaten,

and in which all forms of life possessed

of cognition will be equal. Equality will

not extend to the vegetable kingdom,

for man must eat to preserve himself,

and because these forms of life are not

possessed of the cognitive faculty, and

hence are not to be included in the do¬

main of Ren*.

Clothing in this time will be made of

materials and patterns suitable to

weather conditions and to working

* Ren is an important Chinese philosophical con¬

cept which is difficult to translate but could,

perhaps, be summed up in the words

"compassion-attraction-empathy" Editor.

Rivers and Mountains as Far as the Eye

Can See, a painting by an anonymous

12th-century Chinese artist.

comfort. They will have great variety

and beauty, but will indicate no distinc¬

tions between people, except for the

badges of honour for Ren or

knowledge. There will be constant pro¬

gress in the use of all kinds of im¬

plements to advance civilization. Music

will play a great part in all phases of

human life. People will shave off all

hair except for that in the nose which

fulfils the function of straining dust

and impurities from the air. This is on

the ground that the nearer we are to the

beasts, the hairier; the more civilized

we become, the less hirsute. Further¬

more, lack of hair contributes to

cleanliness.

Men and women will bathe several

times daily, in water which will leave

them fragrantly scented. This is not a

matter of perfuming in the present

manner, so that a woman will be more

attractive as a sexual plaything. Rather

it is like the matter of hair: thereby

humans are farther elevated above the

filthy, foul-smelling beasts. "The

beauties of the present age will still not

equal the ugly of the Age of Complete

Peace-and-Equality". Even the toilet

facilities of that time will be made plea

sant with music and fragrant odours

and mechanical contrivances for

flushing away the filth. For the time

when people go to the toilet is the time

when they are most tranquil and

withdrawn from the hubbub of the

world. If there is that whereby to lift

their thoughts above this world [literal¬

ly, move their thoughts of abandoning

the world], to inspire their imagina¬

tions beyond the mundane [literally,

ideas of discarding forms], then their

souls will of themselves rise far above

the wordly level.

Everyone will receive a daily medical

check-up. All phases of life will be

under the supervision of the medical

authorities. Contagious diseases will be

eradicated. The whole earth will be

made clean and healthful. About the

only ailments remaining will be exter¬

nal ones, easily treated with medicines.

Thus, although there will be public

hospitals, they will be almost empty;

the sick will comprise only those who

are about to die of old age. In the case

of the latter, should their sufferings be

acute, and the doctors agree that there

is no hope of improvement, then they

may be mercifully put out of their

agony by electrocution. . . People of this-

time will attain to longevity of from a

hundred or two hundred, to over a

thousand years, due to progress in

medical science, clothing, and diet.

33

1 * " OK ^J>,1-

3Í^H V?

nor ivr+jt* ^ir^*W'iri*t+^

x

©

co

Í

The search for longevity, for the art

of becoming a spirit or immortal (shen

xian) may be carried on only by those

who have returned with twenty years of

service the twenty years of support and

education received from the public.

Those who wish to retire from the

world to carry on these practices may,

therefore, do so after the age of forty.

These capabilities will be the highest at¬

tainment of One World. But they may

not interfere with the public service

owed by everyone, or else the work of

the world might be neglected, and

civilization retrogress.

Therefore in the Age of One World

only the studies of the art of becoming

a spirit or immortal, and of becoming

a buddha, will be widely practised. For

One World is the ultimate Law of this

world; but the study of immortality, of

longevity without death, is even an ex¬

tension of the ultimate Law of this

world. The study of buddhahood, a

state without birth or death, implies

not merely a setting apart from the

world, but an actual going out of this

world; still more, it is a going out of

One World. If we go this far, then we

abandon the human sphere and enter

the sphere of immortals and buddhas.

Hereupon, the study of immortality

and buddhahood then begins. Compar¬

ing the two, the study of immortality is

too crude, its subtle words and pro¬

found principles are not many, and its

ability to intoxicate men's minds is

limited. As for the universality and

subtlety of the study of buddhahood, it

extends to the point where the speaking

of words is discontinued, and the ac¬

tivities of the mind are terminated.

Although having sage-wisdom, not to

move a hand [i.e. to remain quiescent]:

such self-containment is yet more pro¬

found. And further, there are also the

mysterious arts of the Five Van-

quishings and the Three Brilliants, the

application of their supernatural

powers is still more singular.

Therefore after One World there will

first be the study of immortality. After

that there will be the study of bud¬

dhahood. The inferior knowledge is the

study of immortality; the superior

knowledge is the study of buddhahood.

After the studies of immortality and

buddhahood will come the study of

roaming through the heavens. I have

another book on that subject.

The German architect Wenzel August

Hablik (1881-1934) invented "a new

architecture as the basis for a new reli¬

gion and world view". In 1924 he pub¬

lished a series of engravings entitled

Utopian Architectural Cycle to which this

Free-Standing Dome Construction

belongs. Inscription at top of engraving

reads: "This cupola can be built on the

largest scale with reinforced concrete ".

34

*A voyage to the centre of

JULES YERNE

by Albert Ducrocq

READ again today, most scientific

works published in the last

century seem distinctly old-

fashioned. Both the theories propound¬

ed at that time and the terminology in

which they were expressed appear out¬

dated. The laboratory equipment used

then looks to us archaic, almost

grotesque.

But Jules Verne remains eternally

young. A century after they were writ¬

ten his books are still best-sellers, not

only in France but all over the world;

only the Bible, Shakespeare and Lenin

outstrip them. Today Verne's work is

more popular than ever, and not only

among young people.

What is his secret? Above all else he

was a novelist to his fingertips, adept at

fascinating his readers with descriptions

in which poetry vies with fantasy and

captivating them with the twists and

turns of excellent plots full of adven¬

tures and mysteries prefiguring the

modern whodunit.

Jules Verne is one of the masters of

the art of suspense, which he sometimes

prolongs into severai volumes. When

you have finished Twenty Thousand

Leagues under the Sea you still do not

know the identity of the mysterious

Captain Nemo. This is only revealed in

a later book, The Mysterious Island.

The dénouement often contains a

scientific message. Here appears

another of Jules Verne's talents: he was

a consummate teacher of the kind who

stimulates the interest and enthusiasm

of his pupils by amusing and intriguing

them.

He excels at presenting abstract ideas

in attractive form. One example is the

difference of a day in calculating the

length of a trip round the world. This

discovery was made, not by Jules

Verne, but by the Portuguese explorer

Ferdinand Magellan and his crew who

were astonished to find that the date

when they reached Sanlucar was Satur¬

day 6 September 1522 whereas accor¬

ding to their logbook that day should

have been Friday the 5th; by voyaging

westwards they had "lost" a day.

Verne's novel Around the World in

Eighty Days is constructed around this

phenomenon which has not occurred to

the hero, Phileas Fogg. He thinks he has

lost his bet after being held up in Great

Britain near the end of his journey.

Then, as he looks at a newspaper, he

suddenly realizes that by travelling

eastwards he has gained a day. He had

seen the sun rise once more than people

who had stayed in England. The few

minutes he had lost here and there dur¬

ing his journey as he periodically ad¬

justed his watch to solar time had gain¬

ed him twenty-four hours.

In other cases, the solution of a prob¬

lem is purely and simply imagined by

the astonishingly inventive mind of

Jules Verne. Thus the explorers in The

Fur Country should have observed a

total eclipse of the Sun but in fact they

only observe a partial eclipse. Does this

mean that an error has slipped into the

calculation of the ephemerids? No, this

is absolutely inconceivable in view of

the degree of precision with which the

movement of the Moon is known. The

only possible explanation is that the ex- .

plorers are no longer where they think

they are because their island has become

a raft.

With this incident Jules Verne

thought up nothing less than the space

sextant which was tested by Thomas

Professor Aronnax, the narra¬

tor and one of the heroes of

Jules Verne's novel Twenty

Thousand Leagues under the

Sea (1870). In this novel Verne

created an extraordinary pre¬

cursor of the modern subma¬

rine in the Nautilus, comman¬

ded by Captain Nemo. The

illustrator has depicted Profes¬

sor Aronnax with the features

ofJules Verne, then in his early

forties.

35

An illustration from Jules Verne 's novel

Around the Moon (1870). The travellers

in the projectile hurtling towards the

Moon suddenly float weightlessly.

Mattingly and Henry Hartsfield on the

fourth mission of the space shuttle Col¬

umbia in the summer of 1982. This in¬

strument works on the principle of tak¬

ing account of the Moon's position in

relation to the Sun in order to locate

one's position.

These prophetic insights are all the

more astonishing since Jules Verne was

not a scientist; he had studied to be a

notary. But paradoxically his lack of

scientific training was useful to him in

the sense that it encouraged him to ex¬

press himself in language accessible to

the layman whom he wished to initiate

in scientific subjects just as he had

learned by questioning the scientists he

knew.

At Verne's request, a mathematician

friend of his calculated the speed a body

must attain in order to escape the attrac¬

tion of the earth. This speed is 11.2 km

per second, a figure that today's space

missions have made familiar. Jules

Verne was the first person to reveal it.

His two books From the Earth to the

Moon and Around the Moon were writ¬

ten on the basis of this piece of scientific

data.

Does this mean that everything is

rigorously exact in Jules Verne? Far

from it. It is astonishing that he did not

think of rockets as a means of reaching

this speed of 1 1 .2 km per second. It was

not that he knew nothing of rockets, but

he only assigned them a secondary role

as a means of braking the lunar projec¬

tile. Doubtless the nineteenth century

believed most strongly in the future of

artillery and thought of the rocket as a

' vestige of the past.

The EPCOT Center, which opened at

Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida

(USA) in 1982 is a realization of Walt Dis¬

ney's dream of creating what he called

an "Experimental Prototype Community

of Tomorrow". A voyage through time

and space worthy of Jules Verne, the

Center is a showcase for the latest tech¬

nological developments and takes its

visitors to all the continents. Left,

"Spaceship Earth", a 55-metre-high

geosphere, dominates the entrance to

"Future World", a group of futuristic

pavilions, one of which is largely de¬

voted to a presentation of ways of life in

the 21st century

36

future thanks to the resources of

technology he foresaw. This is why he is

so much admired.

The essential message of his work, a

message whose full importance can be

gauged in the age of electronics and

robots, is this conviction that mankind

which through science has the power to

reorganize nature as it wishes, is the sole

creator of its future, a future with

extraordinary perspectives.

Some would like to claim that the

future holds in store a world in which

man will be dominated by the machine,

reduced to the state of a robot. We

know that is absurd. Robots are only

the agents of our will. It is we who take

the decisions. The thinking and the in¬

itiative are ours. The reality is simpler;

only yesterday man had to devote much

of his time to non-creative physical or

intellectual tasks. Today he is freed

from these tasks for reflection and

decision-making.

Jules Verne's great achievement is

that he announced that this would come

about in a masterly series of works writ¬

ten a century ago.

ALBERT DUCROCQ, French engineer,

writer, broadcaster and journalist with the

French daily newspaper Le Figaro, is a

specialist in cosmology and space matters and

was also one of the pioneers of cybernetics in

France. The most recent of his many books. Le

Futur Aujourd'hui, has just been published by

Les presses de la Cité, Paris.

The launching of the European rocket

Ariane III atKourou (French Guiana) on

4 August 1984. The rocket set two tele¬

communications satellites in orbit.

It also seems amazing that Verne did

not grasp, using the laws of ballistics,

that a state of weightlessness would exist

in his machine all through the space

flight. He simply thought that there

would be a point near the Moon where

the pull of the two planets would

neutralize each other so that passengers

and objects would float in the cabin of

the lunar projectile, a situation depicted

in an illustration which became famous.

Some would claim that one of

Verne's novels is based entirely on a

full-scale scientific heresy: Journey to

the Centre of the Earth. The pressure at

the centre of the planet is so high that

matter as we know it on the Earth's sur¬

face cannot exist. It would therefore be

inconceivable to send a man there.

But there is no reason not to imagine

that another planet in the solar system

may not conceal in its midst an immense

"ocean" similar to that which Verne

' 'And so I do not think I am going too far

when I say that there will soon be trains

ofprojectiles in which the journey from

the Earth to the Moon will be comfortably

effected," says the Jules Verne hero

Michel Ardan in From the Earth to the

Moon (1865) from which this illustration

is taken.

imagined at the centre of the Earth. This

could be the case, for example, of

Enceladus, a satellite of Saturn whose

inner mysteries may one day be ex¬

plored by man.

For there can be no doubt that the

human adventure is only just beginning

and that it has very far to take us. It was

perhaps Jules Verne's greatest merit

that he understood this. In addition to

being a novelist and a teacher Jules

Verne was above all a man who had

faith in mankind, whose fantastic

37

Some further reading

Titles of science fiction stories and novels are in italics; titles

of non-fiction books are in Roman type.

Aldiss, Brian. Non-Stop (1958);

Hothouse (1962); Billion Year Spree

(1973); Helliconia Spring (1982)

Anderson, Poul. The Snows of

Ganymede (1958); High Crusade

(1960); Tales of the Flying Mountains

(1970); Tau Zero (1970)

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation; Founda¬

tion and Empire (1952); Second Foun¬

dation (1953); The Gods Themselves

(1972); Extraterrestrial Civilizations

(1979); The Complete Robot (1982)

Ballard, J.G. The Drowned World

(1962); Crash (1952)

Bioy Casares, Adolfo. La Invención de

Morel (1940)

Bester, Alfred. The Demolished Man

(1952); The Stars My Destination

(1956)

Bradbury, Ray. The Martian

Chronicles (1950); The Illustrated Man

(1951); Fahrenheit 451 (1951); / Sing

the Body Electric (1969)

Britikov, A.F. Russkiy sovietskiy

nauchnofantastityeskiy roman (1970)

Brown, Fredric. What Mad Universe

(1949)

Brunner, John. Stand on Zanzibar

(1968)

Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Princess of

Mars (1912); At the Earth's Core

(1922); Pellucidar (1923)

Bulichev, C. Mission on the Dead

Planet (1979)

Clarke, Arthur C. The Sands of Mars

(1951); Islands in the Sky (1952); 2001:

A Space Odyssey (1968); Earthlight

(1955); Rendezvous with Rama (1973)

Delany, Samuel. The Ballad of Beta-2

(1965)

Disch, Thomas M. The Genocides

(1965)

Efremov, Ivan Andromeda (1957)

Farmer, Philip J. The Maker of

Universes (1965)

Galouye, Daniel. Simulacron 3 (1964)

Haldeman, Joe. The Forever War

(1974)

Harrison, Harry. Captive Universe

(1969)

Heinlein, Robert. The Man Who Sold

the Moon (1950); The Puppet Masters

(1951); Starship Troopers (1959);

Stranger in a Strange Land (1962); The

Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Herbert, Frank. Dune (1965); Dune

Messiah (1969); Children of Dune

(1969); God Emperor of Dune (1981)

Holdstock, Robert (ed). Encyclopaedia

of Science Fiction (1978)

Hoshi Shin'ichi. Bokko-Chan (1961)

Hoyle, Fred. The Black Cloud (1957);

The Intelligent Universe

Le Guin, Ursula. The Dispossessed

(1974); The Left Hand of Darkness

(1969)

Lovecraft, H.P. The Dunwich Horror

(1929); The Call of Cthulhu (1928);

The Shadow over Innsmouth (1942)

Lundwall, Sam J. Science Fiction: An

Illustrated History (1977)

Matheson, Richard. The Shrinking

Man (1956)

Moorcock, Michael. Behold the Man

(1969); The War Lord of the Air

(1971); The Hollow Lands (197'4)

Nicholls, Peter. The Science in Science

Fiction (1983)

Sadoul, Jacques. Histoire de la Science

Fiction Moderne (1973)

Sheckley, Robert. The Tenth Victim

(1969)

Silverberg, Robert. Downward to the

Earth (1970); The World Inside (1971);

Dying Inside (1972)

Simak, Clifford. Time and Again

(1951); Cosmic Engineers (1950)

Stapledon, Olaf. Last and First Men

(1930); Star Maker (1973); Sirius {1944)

Last Men in London (1932)

Strugatski, Arkadi and Boris. Hard to

be a God (1964)

Tenn, William. Of Men and Monsters

(1968)

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin. Beyond the

Planet Earth (1920)

Van Vogt, A.E. The Voyage of the

Space Beagle (1950); World of Null-A

(1948); Slan (1951); Universe Makers

(1953); The Anarchistic Colossus

(1978)

Verne, Jules. Five Weeks in a Balloon

(1863); A Journey to the Centre of the

Earth (1864); From the Earth to the

Moon (1865); Twenty Thousand

Leagues under the Sea (1870); Master

of the World (1904)

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse 5

(1969); Player Piano (1952); Cat's

Cradle (1963)

Watson, Ian. The Jonah Kit (1975);

Miracle Visitors (1978)

Wells, H.G. The Time Machine (1895);

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896); The

Invisible Man (1897); War of the

Worlds (1898); The First Men in the

Moon (1901); The World Set Free

(1914)

Wyndham, John. The Day of the Trif-

fids (1951); The Kraken Wakes (1953);

The Midwych Cuckoos (1957)

Zelazny, Roger. The Immortal (1966);

Lord ofLight (1967); To Die in Italbar

(1973)

5 J

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Scientific Forecasting

and Human Needs

Trends, Methods

and Message

Scientific For

and Human Needs

The essays in this volume

represent a variety of

approaches to scientific

forecasting, dealing with

methodological problems,

experiences of national and

international projects, and

trends in scientific and

technological development

and its impact on society.

They were presented at a

symposium held in Tbilisi,

USSR, as part of Unesco's

programme on Research

and Human Needs.

Co-published with Pergamon Press,

Oxford, UK, who hold exclusive sales

rights for the hardbound edition in

the United Kingdom

90 French francs, 204 pages

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