Part 34 (1/2)

The last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora's Box was Hope-without which men die.

The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science change everything. Long after the first star s.h.i.+p leaves for parts unknown, there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in Texas, and-no doubt-the English will still stop for tea.

Afterthoughts, fifteen years later-(1965) I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the numbered affirmative ones. They are all conceivably possible; they are all wildly unlikely by year 2000. Some of them are debatable if the terms are defined to suit the affirmative side-definitions of ”life” and ”manlike,” for example. Let it stand that I am not talking about an amino acid in one case, or a machine that plays chess in the other.

Today the forerunners of synthesists are already at work in many places. Their t.i.tles may be anything; their degrees may be in anything-or they may have no degrees. Today they are called ”operations researchers,” or sometimes ”systems development engineers,” or other interim tags. But they are all interdisciplinary people, generalists, not specialists- the new Renaissance Man. The very explosion of data which forced most scholars to specialize very narrowly created the necessity which evoked this new non-specialist. So far, this ”unspecialty” is in its infancy; its methodology is inchoate, the results are sometimes trivial, and no one knows how to train to become such a man. But the results are often spectacularly brilliant, too-this new man may yet save all of us.

I'm an optimist. I have great confidence in h.o.m.o sapiens.

We have rough times ahead-but when didn't we? Things have always been ”tough all over.”

H-bombs, Communism, race riots, water shortage-all nasty problems. But not basic problems, merely current ones.

We have three basic and continuing problems: The problem of population explosion; the problem of data explosion; and the problem of government.

Population problems have a horrid way of solving themselves when they are not solved rationally; the Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride. The data explosion is now being solved, mostly by cybernetics and electronics men rather than by librarians-and if the solutions are less than perfect, at least they are better than what Grandpa had to work with. The problem of government has not been solved either by the ”Western Democracies” or the ”Peoples' Democracies,” as of now. (Anyone who thinks the people of the United States have solved the problem of government is using too short a time scale.) The peoples of the world are now engaged in a long, long struggle with no end in sight, testing whether one concept works better than another; in that conflict millions have already died and it is possible that hundreds of millions will die in it before year 2000. But not all.

I hold both opinions and preferences as to the outcome. But my personal preference for a maximum of looseness is irrelevant; what we are experiencing is an evolutionary process in which personal preference matters, at most, only statistically. Biologists, ecologists in particular, are working around to the idea that natural selection and survival of the fittest is a notion that applies more to groups and how they are structured than it does to individuals. The present problem will solve itself in the cold terms of evolutionary survival, and in the course of it both sides will make changes in group structure. The system that survives might be called ”Communism” or it might be called ”Democracy” (the latter is my guess)-but one thing we can be certain of: it will not resemble very closely what either Marx or Jefferson had in mind. Or it might be called by some equally inappropriate neologism; political tags are rarely logical.

For Man is rarely logical. But I have great confidence in Man, based on his past record. He is mean, ornery, cantankerous, illogical, emotional- and amazingly hard to kill. Religious leaders have faith in the spiritual redemption of Man; humanist leaders subscribe to a belief in the perfectibility of Man through his own efforts; but I am not discussing either of these two viewpoints. My confidence in our species lies in its past history and is founded quite as much on Man's so-called vices as on his so-called vir tues. When the chips are down, quarrelsomeness and selfishness can be as useful to the survival of the human race as is altruism, and pig-headedness can be a trait superior to sweet reasonableness. If this were not true, these ”vices” would have died out through the early deaths of their hosts, at least a half million years back.

I have a deep and abiding confidence in Man as he is, imperfect and often unlovable-plus still greater confidence in his potential. No matter how tough things are, Man copes. He comes up with adequate answers from illogical reasons. But the answers work.

Last to come out of Pandora's Box was a gleaming, beautiful thing-eternal Hope.

(1980-I see no point in saying more. R.A.H.)

If It's Sinful, It's More Fun.

FOREWORD.

The editor who disliked science fiction (and me) but liked my sales grumbled to me, on my delivering my annual boys' novel, that she did wish that someone would write girls' stories. I answered, ”Very well, I'll write a story for girls. When do you want it?”

She was simultaneously astonished, offended, and amused at the ridiculous and arrogant notion that a mere man could write stories for girls. So that's how Puddin' was born: I started writing first-person-female-adolescent stories-but not for that old harridan.

Since this is not the first of the Puddin' stories, let me introduce her.' 1-icr name is Maureen, her nickname derives from her weight problem. She is eternally an undergraduate omi a small campus in Somewhere, U.S.A., iihere her father teaches anthropology smokes his pipe, (01(1 ie(u/~--uii('iyns I1t~ niothier 1~ (I Re;iai~oiice 1'foi who does everything. Maureen has an unbearable younger brother (all younger brothers are unbearable; I should know, I was one).

I grew so fond of Maureen that I helped her to get rid of that excess weight, changed her name to ”Podkayne,” and moved her to Mars (along with her unbearable kid brother). And now and again she turns up under other names in other science fiction stories.

Nevertheless Maureen still attends cla.s.ses on this campus in Never-Neverland. I had intended to do a full book of Puddin' short stories under the t.i.tle MEN ARE EXASPERATING. I have enough stories for a fat volume hut a.s vet I have not writ/en au of them down. One in i~'~ i'n~ it )//J R -~ L) / 111 4 1 141. k 1, GDO4I) &~n~ i,~Ji,i~ O( ~'1~ tH n'itl it --~-~I /10/thIef lii 11, 0 lithe

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And vet . . . amid vet- Is t'uddin total/v obsolete? This campus never has riots. The girls are not ”on the Pill.” (Or if they are, the subject is not mentioned.) There is no drug problem. In short, I have described college life of a bygone day.

But don't misunderstand me. My teens were the Torrid Twenties and exactly the same things went on then as now.. . but were kept under cover. When I was a freshman in college, the nearest connection for marijuana was a drugstore a hundred yards off campus; for H or C it was necessary to walk another block. But bootleg liquor (taxfree) would be delivered on or off campus at any hour.

Did I avail myself of any of these amenities? None of your business, Buster!

As for s.e.x, each generation thinks it invented s.e.x,' each generation is total/v mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victo~'ia mi Engla nd, the diff~re;ices lie only in the degree of coi ci up-if any.

I may never publish the book MEN ARE EXASPERATING; I'm not sure it has a market and, at my age, there are more stories that I want to write (and are certain of publication) than I can possibly write before the black camel kneels at my door.

I hope you like Puddin'.

CLIFF AND THE CALORIES.

According to Daddy, I'll eat anything standing still or even moving slowly. But Mother said nonsense, I simply have a high metabolic rate.

Daddy answered, ”You haven't had it checked, so how do you know? Puddin', stand sideways and let me look at you.”

Junior said, ”She hasn't got a 'sideways,' ” and let loose a perfectly horrible laugh that is supposed to sound like Woody Woodp.e.c.k.e.r and does, only worse. Of what use is the male of the species between the ages of two and sixteen? Later on, they are bearable, even indispensable-at least I would find it difficult to dispense with Cliff, although Junior may never be an a.s.set.

That's how I went on a diet.

It started with Cliff-most things do. I am going to marry Cliff, only I haven't told him yet. I have never had any cause to doubt the sincerity of Cliff's devotion, but I have sometimes wondered what it was he found most attractive about me: my character, disposition, and true worth, or my so-to-speak physical attributes.

The bathroom scales were beginning to make me think it was the former. Perhaps that should have made me happy, but I have yet to find the girl who would swap a twenty-one-inch waist and a good silhouette for sterling merit. Not that I could hope to be a raving beauty, but a few wolf whistles never did any harm and are good for the morale.'

I had just had a chance to test Cliff's point of view. A girl showed up at school who was exactly my size; we compared measurements. The point is, on Clarice it looked good-cursive and bountiful but good. Maureen, I told myself, here is a chance to get an honest opinion out of Cliff.

I saw to it that he got a good look at her at tennis practice. As we left I said craftily, ”That new girl, Clarice-she has a lovely figure.”

Cliff looked over his shoulder and replied. ”Oh, sure-from her ankles down.”

I had my answer and I didn't like it. Cliff didn't care for my type of figure; divorced from my personality it did not appeal to him. I should have felt a warm glow, knowing it for true love. I didn't; I felt terrible.

It was when I refused a second helping of potatoes that evening that the subject of my metabolism came up.

I went to the library next day and looked into this matter of diet. I hadn't known there were so many books about it. Finally I found one that made sense: Eat and Grow Slender. That struck me as an excellent idea.

I took it home to study. I got a few crackers and some cheese and ate them absent-mindedly while I thumbed through the book. There was a plan for losing ten pounds in ten days; the menus looked pretty skimpy. There was another for losing ten pounds in a month. That's for me, I said; no need to be fanatic.

There was a chapter about calories. They make it so simple: one ice-cream cone, one hundred and fifty calories; three dates, eighty-four calories.

My eye lit on ”soda crackers”; I knew they wouldn't count much and they didn't-only twenty-one calories apiece. Then I looked up ”cheese.”