Read Online The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook by Paul Pipkin - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul Pipkin
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specific inputs that had framed my notions, memory returned of hours spent fishing
worn covers from high, dark bookshelves in an old library as spooky and exciting to a boy’s eye as anything dreamed by Ray
Bradbury. Also, the garish covers of old paperbacks and pulp magazines, purchased for a few cents in used bookshops, logically
had to have been from even earlier decades than the hardbounds I recalled. As I recovered bit after bit, the old Halloween
thrill returned to quicken my fifty-year-old heart.
In
The Door into Summer,
Robert Heinlein entertained, then dismissed, the “old” notion of branching time streams. The trick was in the word “old.”
A
notion
might well be old, as old as the fairies in their paraworld beyond the hollow hills, but Heinlein gave one to believe that
he was arguing against a scientific theory. His story was in print months
before
the publication of the theory he had referenced. That was among the mildest of the contradictions.
I had soon begun to go well beyond my own personal time in the pursuit of the research. I didn’t know what my associates thought
of my lowered productivity, as I would sign out into the field, then bury myself in more modern libraries. I’d turned out
to be a really very good labor representative, in spite of burnout from watching unjust spectacles, such as lifetime employees
being sacked while dull and impotent union organizations did nothing. For what little good I’d accomplished, I did not want
to be considered as having gone over the top.
A rep may function quite well being thought of as a playlike lawyer, corrupter of public morals, or even as a goon, but “airhead”
is
not
an appropriate image. That simply would not do! However, as with many of the workers I’d helped with problems on the job,
my position had “downsizing” clearly scrawled all over it. I knew the job wouldn’t last much longer, so I seized the opportunity
to plunge bodily into the questions raised by the developing “temporal anomaly” I was uncovering among writers’ memoirs and
publication dates.
Not alone economic struggle, but life itself seems to decree against discovering that anything our secret hearts long to believe
just might turn out to be the case. We teach our children the “hard facts of life”—not facts unless they kick you back, right?
There is no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy and, along these lines, your narrator hardly had opportunity to so fantasize.
What I’d expected and hoped to find was that, “somewhere in time,” an esoteric tradition embracing the plurality of worlds
had existed in the physical community, as physicists refer to their collective self. I thought that its notions might have
been processed through the literati until science fiction writers rendered them into print. This had seemed highly possible
in Britain, where the genre was not ghettoized, set apart from literature, as in America.
————————
“R EADING HARD SCIENCE FICTION IS A POOR WAY TO LEARN SCIENCE …. The reader of science fiction… may ‘know’ many things that are not so, if only through the process of osmosis.” 8
From a standpoint of rigorously proven experimental facts, this caveat should be well taken. However, science fiction fandom
has never really shared this perception. Much as they may deny it, the fans have always wished to believe that science fiction
has presented them with deeper, profounder truths than it was possible to access otherwise. This was even more the case for
those of us who grew up on the old science fiction twenty-five to fifty years ago.
In my quest for information on the many-worlds, I’d turned often to Joe’s resources. A research chemist at a prestigious foundation,
he also happens to be a lifelong science fiction fan. His broad literacy includes the cybernetic, unlike your low-tech narrator,
and he also possesses near photographic recall of anything he’s ever read.
worn covers from high, dark bookshelves in an old library as spooky and exciting to a boy’s eye as anything dreamed by Ray
Bradbury. Also, the garish covers of old paperbacks and pulp magazines, purchased for a few cents in used bookshops, logically
had to have been from even earlier decades than the hardbounds I recalled. As I recovered bit after bit, the old Halloween
thrill returned to quicken my fifty-year-old heart.
In
The Door into Summer,
Robert Heinlein entertained, then dismissed, the “old” notion of branching time streams. The trick was in the word “old.”
A
notion
might well be old, as old as the fairies in their paraworld beyond the hollow hills, but Heinlein gave one to believe that
he was arguing against a scientific theory. His story was in print months
before
the publication of the theory he had referenced. That was among the mildest of the contradictions.
I had soon begun to go well beyond my own personal time in the pursuit of the research. I didn’t know what my associates thought
of my lowered productivity, as I would sign out into the field, then bury myself in more modern libraries. I’d turned out
to be a really very good labor representative, in spite of burnout from watching unjust spectacles, such as lifetime employees
being sacked while dull and impotent union organizations did nothing. For what little good I’d accomplished, I did not want
to be considered as having gone over the top.
A rep may function quite well being thought of as a playlike lawyer, corrupter of public morals, or even as a goon, but “airhead”
is
not
an appropriate image. That simply would not do! However, as with many of the workers I’d helped with problems on the job,
my position had “downsizing” clearly scrawled all over it. I knew the job wouldn’t last much longer, so I seized the opportunity
to plunge bodily into the questions raised by the developing “temporal anomaly” I was uncovering among writers’ memoirs and
publication dates.
Not alone economic struggle, but life itself seems to decree against discovering that anything our secret hearts long to believe
just might turn out to be the case. We teach our children the “hard facts of life”—not facts unless they kick you back, right?
There is no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy and, along these lines, your narrator hardly had opportunity to so fantasize.
What I’d expected and hoped to find was that, “somewhere in time,” an esoteric tradition embracing the plurality of worlds
had existed in the physical community, as physicists refer to their collective self. I thought that its notions might have
been processed through the literati until science fiction writers rendered them into print. This had seemed highly possible
in Britain, where the genre was not ghettoized, set apart from literature, as in America.
————————
“R EADING HARD SCIENCE FICTION IS A POOR WAY TO LEARN SCIENCE …. The reader of science fiction… may ‘know’ many things that are not so, if only through the process of osmosis.” 8
From a standpoint of rigorously proven experimental facts, this caveat should be well taken. However, science fiction fandom
has never really shared this perception. Much as they may deny it, the fans have always wished to believe that science fiction
has presented them with deeper, profounder truths than it was possible to access otherwise. This was even more the case for
those of us who grew up on the old science fiction twenty-five to fifty years ago.
In my quest for information on the many-worlds, I’d turned often to Joe’s resources. A research chemist at a prestigious foundation,
he also happens to be a lifelong science fiction fan. His broad literacy includes the cybernetic, unlike your low-tech narrator,
and he also possesses near photographic recall of anything he’s ever read.
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