It’s a fun book - I read it last year. Some of the characterization of Asimov seemed a bit off to me, but it’s still neat to see how Malmont puts all the pieces together.
As is any form of historical determinism. But, bear in mind that many great thinkers have embraced such systems over the ages.
IIRC, something along those lines was used in the Wild Cards series (at least one character who seemed on the surface to be a super-scientist inventor was actually making nonsensical contraptions work with his own Wild Card superpower).
True…
Hieronymus machines were actually patented. But, those were machines made of parts, not Campbell’s schematics.
BTW, it was mentioned in the editorial in IASFM either this month or last month, which was about sf stories set in Philadelphia.
It can be convincingly argued that Heinlein was only a Libertarian to the Libertarians who came to adore him for his Libertarian natterings. His politics were much more complex than that and changed little over the course of his life. It was politics and political culture that changed around him from era to era.
I love Asimov’s summary of JWC: “If you ever meet someone who, on finding out you are a molecular biologist, proceeds to bully you into a corner and lecture you about molecular biology all night, getting all of it wrong… you’ve met John Campbell.”
Ah yes. I keep a copy of that around to illustrate the point that font does indeed matter; most editions are set in Friz Quadrata, a lovely if dated display face that is in no way suitable for text. Reading it tears at your eyes with little meathooks.
True that. It was also the economic system depicted in Beyond This Horizon, one of the many reasons I would have liked to have lived in that particular fictional world. (Apart from men wearing fingernail polish, that is)
True, Golden Age SF writers were surrounded by and often embraced some of the weirdest stuff imaginable, Dianetics being only one shining example of complete lunacy. (But Hubbard was right and won his bet with Campbell: ya wanna make a million bucks, found a religion) James Blish was also a devotee of Oswald Spengler. Cities in Flight was structured around Spengler’s theories of empire and collapse. Why not? In the Forties and Fifties, *anything *looked possible. We’d split the atom (and destroyed two cities proving it). We’d begun to reach out into space. There were enormous strides made in medical tech and knowledge. Goofy stuff like the Dean Drive and psionics and anything that looked even remotely possible was touted as “the Next Big Thing.” We thought we could do anything in those days or at least we thought that it was possible. I suspect it led directly to America’s current “exceptionalism” mind-set. It certainly helped set the stage for the culture of conspicuous consumption and consumerism.
As for Veblen and technocracy: yes and no. I’ve read him. I’m not sure I either understand completely or agree but I do confess a bias in favor of technology and intelligent, well-educated people. Yes, there have been many times that I’ve concluded that a social scientist should be running this country and not some damn lawyer/business major. (Obama excepted. He may be a lawyer but I’m not sure he’d be a good one) Yes, I do believe that technology and well-educated people are the only things that will save this planet and our species.
But as the well-educated idiots of the Golden Age have demonstrated, you don’t have to be an ignoramus to believe the most unbelievable crap imaginable.
I have a little insight into the Hieronymus Machine and Campbell. I was at WorldCon53, attending a panel with Ellison, Silverberg and Pohl. They talked about “difficult” editors of the Golden Age. (you would have laughed yourself sick over some of the things they said about Horace Gold!) Someone in the audience asked about Campbell and the Hieronymus Machine. Silverberg told this hilarious story about the time he and his wife were invited to dinner by Campbell. Campbell mentioned the Machine and asked the Silverbergs if they’d like to see it. They said sure, he took them downstairs to his shop and showed them this little wooden box with a crank handle on the side. Campbell told Silverberg’s wife to turn the crank and stroke the top of the box. She did so and Campbell asked her if it felt progressively “stickier.” She shrugged and said, “I guess so.” Campbell beamed like a proud papa and opened the box to show her a folded piece of paper inside with an electronic circuit drawn on it. She looked at it and said, “Well, that’s very interesting.” (Silverberg’s wife was an electrical engineer for GE at the time). Then it was time for dinner, so they went back upstairs. As they were going up the stairs, Silverberg’s wife whispered to Bob: “Do you think he’s…alright?” (roar of laughter from audience) They sat down for dinner, which happened to be baked ham. (small gasp from the audience) Campbell asked the Silverbergs if ham was acceptable and, ever-gracious, they both nodded and said, “Oh, that’s fine.” Silverberg added, with a completely straight face: “We just stroked it until it turned into beef.” The audience went nuts. I laughed until the tears ran down my face.
Actually, I got more of a Technocracy vibe from BTH. (Possibly RAH’s worst published book pre-senility, BTW.)
I hereby apologize profusely for my bafflement. My first reading of the above told me you were at World-Con in '53! :eek:
Then I sobered up a bit and realized that neither Ellison nor Silverberg would have been on a panel in 1953. :smack:
I would never hazard a guess at the age of a lady, even if she didn’t know I was doing so. My apologies.
Too bad we live in an era when being intelligent, educated and technoliterate make you lose elections as an “elitist.” As someone said the last time elitist labels were being tossed around - it might have been 2008 - “Who do you *want *running things, the morons”?
And they all embraced the clockwork universe until we learned better. Some learn earlier than others.
Patents don’t need to work to be awarded
I thought for a moment that I was in that audience too - I went to the Glasgow Worldcon - but I’m remembering a different panel either in Anaheim or Denver, where Silverberg recited a non-overlapping set of weird Campbell stories.
My best Glasgow story needs to be told at length, probably in Master Wang-Ka’s voice, but the short version goes like this:
I was moderating a panel. The con staff gathered us in the green room and marched us over to the prestigious big room. Really big. They normally held rock concerts in it. We stood outside an open door waiting for the previous session to end. Unfortunately, it was Terry Pratchett being Terry to 5000 riotous adulators. When they finally cut it off, late, every single one of those 5000 people walked out right past us. I could watch the life force drain out of the members of my panel, which included a couple of fairly big names and a couple of hot newcomers. When the room finally emptied, it was empty. We may have outnumbered the audience. We couldn’t tell, because the panels were being broadcast so the TV lights made the seats unseeable and the acoustics were so bad that one end of the panel literally couldn’t hear the other, so no panel interaction was possible, and only the person holding the one microphone monologued to the invisible audience. They said interesting things, not that it mattered. There’s recognition and there’s FAME, and the gulf between the two is Heinleinesque.
LOL. 1953 predates me somewhat, yes. But I was WRONG! :smack: WorldCon53 actually was in Glasgow in 1995 and it was WorldCon54, also designated LAConIII (now that I’ve checked my old badge. Yes, I save all of them) that I attended in 1996. It was in Anaheim at the Hilton and the Convention Center, just across the parking lots from Disneyland. Forgive my goofy mistake, please. I apologize for confusing some of you.
I was also in San Francisco for WorldCon51 in 1993. I live in Oregon and don’t travel much, so it has to be West Coast or I don’t go. (sigh) I sometimes envy you globe-trotters who can afford to fly to Scotland (I have both Scottish and Irish heritage) or other exotic places for SF conventions and other frabjous events.
Didn’t Gold believe whatever screwball economic…um…theory was behind Pohl’s brilliant parody “The Midas Plague”? I’m sure I remember a story about how Gold lectured Pohl on it over and over and Pohl wrote the story to show how damn silly it was…but I can’t find a cite.
I recall one of Isaac Asimov’s stories from (IIRC) his autobiography where he describes his encounter with the contraption. A bit apprehensive about dealing with one of Campbell’s woo-woo enthusiasms, he obediently stroked the top of the box. He noticed it getting a bit slick (which he attributed to nervous sweat), and said so (leaving out the explanation) Campbell duly recorded this observation as “negative stickiness”. Asimov summed up the incident: “And thus are great discoveries in nonsense made.”
And also in his published novel, Beyond This Horizon.
See post #71.