"It is an old and honorable practice in the science fiction and fantasy fields that, when a writer has published a story with a good, original idea in it, one or more others will explore the motif further. Thus, for example, Robert Heinlein told of a dictatorship masquerading as a church and invoking 'supernatural' powers that were actually superscientific. Fritz Leiber, then, with equal brilliance, proposed that the underground opposition to such a pseudo-church might adopt the name and trappings of witchcraft.
"Mr Heinlein also wrote a fantasy, 'Magic, Inc.,' - set in a world that is much like ours, except that magic works - and is treated quite matter-of-factly, as a set of technologies. There were many more possibilities in that concept. Since he didn't choose to deal with them, at last I ventured to try. Therefore I took the liberty of dedicating my book to him and his wife. He replied in a gracious and witty letter that still lies in my file copy. Recently Harry Turtledove has, just as legitimately, given the theme an excellent treatment of his own.
"Actually, Operation Chaos evolved gradually, from four separate tales. The first pair were done in rapid succession and the third came about three years later, but then ten years went by. I couldn't think of anything fresh and didn't want to repeat myself. What finally sparked me again were events during the 1960's - that 'low dishonest decade,' to borrow W. H. Auden's phrase for the '30s. Of course, I didn't issue a political tract, simply spun a yarn for entertainment. Yet all fiction, even the lightest fantasy, grows out of this real world where we live.
"Poul Anderson, 1995"
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I am flattered that a casual comment of mind inspired you to copy here Anderson's introduction to the 1995 Severn House edition of OPERATION CHAOS. Many thanks--and that spares me the need of buying a copy of that edition!
And I absolutely agree with Anderson's contempt for the 1960's, which was indeed a "low, dishonest decade." Paul Johnson in his MODERN TIMES, described the Sixties and Seventies as the time when the US tried to commit suicide. Largely because of the follies and disastrous ideas and policies of the left.
I'm reminded of that chapter in THERE WILL BE TIME that you strongly disliked, considering it a parody of the left. I commented that many people, both then and since, DO truly speak and think in the ways described in that fictional pamphlet.
Ad astra! Sean
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