Folks who enjoy classic science fiction might enjoy, as I do, the X Minus One podcast. X Minus One was, apparently, a science fiction radio broadcast that ran between 1955 and 1958.
Having been born in 1978, I missed out on the so-called Golden Age of SF, but thanks to the nostalgic impulses of at least a few computer-literate people, I can now plumb the archives of the retrofuturist treasure trove that is early short sf.
Granted I've been reading a lot of similar stuff (mostly in mouldering old anthologies from libraries and flea markets and basements) since primary school, and there are even some X Minus One stories I know I've read (such as some of the awesome Ray Bradbury material). But until recently I'd had no idea of the number of delightfully melodramatic audio renditions of some of the sf work from the 1940s - 1960s.
And in that regard, X Minus One is an excellent means to genre delights aplenty.
I recently listened to a story that almost had me on the floor laughing, though somehow I doubt the author intended the story to be funny. Frankly it was funny because of how utterly ridiculous it was. It was not one of the better episodes from a writing or plotting standpoint -- if I didn't know better I'd almost have guessed it a parody of the kinds of adolescent boy wish-fulfillment fantasies characterizing a certain percentage of oldschool sf. But no, it seems to have been written in earnest.
Called Honeymoon in Hell, the plot revolved around an Actual Rocket Scientist, a HAL-like supercomputer, and a world in peril. Male babies are no longer being born -- meaning that the world will first be overrun with women (oh, those incomprehensible creatures!), and then the whole population will of course die out within a few generations.
Of course, it turns out that the gender imbalance is due to "some kind of radiation". An experiment is henceforth proposed -- send a man and woman to the moon, have them get busy, and see if they can conceive a boy.
Of course our fearless protagonist is recruited as the male half of the couple, and he gets "married" to a hot, smart (but not smarter than him!) Russian pilot.
The two of them depart to the moon with, I kid you not, cases of Scotch and vodka, and a directive to "go get acquainted".
Then there's some stuff about blobby green aliens, and a daring escape...or so it seems. This is of course followed by the protagonists Saving The World through drunken, hypnotized mating. On the Moon. International cooperation follows.
Again, I kid you not.
And then we find out that the whole thing - spoiler alert! - was orchestrated by the two biggest most complicated supercomputers in the world, which just happened to be located in the USA and in Russia.
Well.
There are some literary gems on X Minus One, don't get me wrong. But stories like Honeymoon in Hell are fascinating because, well, they're terrible. Hilariously terrible. To the point where I am immensely glad someone took the time to preserve the audio, because let me tell you, it is incredibly instructive for modern folks like me and my fellow nerdlings to get a nice whack over the head now and then with the fact that science fiction is not about the future, but about the present.
The future we are actually living in is not one, thank goodness, in which women are relegated to Moon Womb status. So while I love science fiction dearly, and while there are assuredly some modern works whose speculative worlds (as seen through the lens of today) are more thoughtful and less ridiculous, I definitely try to keep in mind when reading the fact that the "lens of today" is a permanent feature of every today that ever was and ever will be.
This is not, however, a sad limitation -- just something that ought to be understood and acknowledged in one's explorations of literature that can be at once fun, fantastic, and yes, even ridiculous to the point where you don't know whether to laugh or count your blessings that things didn't turn out according to the author's speculations.
10 comments:
Well, that sounds like a better situation for a woman than becoming a "bridesicle."
Better than being shot in the head or stabbed with a frozen trout, too, but that doesn't even begin to place it (Moon Wombing) on my wish list. :P
In fairness to the story, however, it does show the Russian woman trained in a difficult technological skill and emotionally composed. Apparently American SF in that era had less of a problem attributing competence and efficiency to foreign women than to American ones.
Mark Plus said: In fairness to the story, however, it does show the Russian woman trained in a difficult technological skill and emotionally composed.
This is true. I was thankful that they at least made her something cool like a pilot.
Also, what you bring up re. foreign women reminds me of how alien women in Star Trek (especially Vulcan and Klingon) were often permitted to operate outside expected the female stereotypes that human women were often held to.
science fiction is not about the future, but about the present
Definitely. At its best, science fiction describes situations where the present-day society is in need of improvement, and it inspires people to make real-life changes.
As for its worst -- well, I think your post has that covered (still laughing).
abfh: Indeed. And one thing I forgot to say in my post as well was that not only can science fiction written in any given time be considered a comment on the present, but science fiction of the sort one may find in old radio archives and books is most certainly a comment about the past.
It's just an amazing and fascinating feeling to read a story written "about the future" written long before I was born, and to be able to look around and see how differently things turned out, and how in some ways both technological and social "predictions" were either way underambitious or way overambitious, or even just along some bizarre vector that humans didn't actually end up following.
In that sense, classic science fiction can be really interesting in a similar way to retrofuturist writings one digs up in old magazines (such as the one I wrote about in The Domed, Evenly Climatized Cities of 2008.)
Speaking of the retrofuture in old magazines, one of them ran a story about Robert Heinlein's attempt to build a "futuristic" house for himself and his wife in Colorado Springs in the 1950's.
Recommend it to anyone.
Search-and-destroy Antispyware is the best scan that I have used to keep my PC clean and working like new. It’s a great scanner that finds all the same bugs that other scans such as Norton can find. What’s even better is that it cost less than many of the other options. I found the antispyware solution from Search-and-destroy at http://www.Search-and-destroy.com and decided to give it a try. That was one of the best decisions I ever made. I’m very happy with this scanner and would recommend it to anyone that wants to protect and care for their PC so it will last as long as possible.
Post a Comment