Expanded Universe Part 46

One would think that a "prophet" unable to score higher than 66% after 30 years have elapsed on 50-year predictions would have the humility (or the caution) to refrain from repeating his folly. But I've never been very humble, and the motto of my prime vocation has always been: "L'audace! Toujours l'audace!"

So the culprit returns to his crime. Or see PROVERBS XXVI, 11. And hang on to your hats!

I shot an error into the air.

It's still going.. . everywhere.

LLong THE HAPPY DAYS AHEAD.

"It does not pay a prophet to be too specific."

-L. Sprague de Camp "You never get rich peddling gloom."

-William Lindsay Gresham

The late Bill Gresham was, before consumption forced him into fiction writing, a carnie mentalist of great skill. He could give a cold reading that would scare the pants off a marble statue. In six words he summarized the secret of success as a fortuneteller. Always tell the mark what he wants to hear. He will love you for it, happily pay you, then forgive and forget when your cheerful prediction fails to come true-and always come back for more.

Stockbrokers stay in business this way; their tips are no better than guesses but they are not peddling dividends; they are peddling happiness. Millions of priests and preachers have used this formula, promising eternal bliss in exchange for following, or at least giving lip service to, some short and tolerable rules, plus a variable cash fee not too steep for the customer's purse .. . and have continued to make this formula work without ever in all the years producing even one client who had actually received the promised prize.

Then how do churches stay in business? Because, in talking about "Pie in the Sky, By and By," they offer happiness and peace of mind right here on Earth. When Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opium of the people," he was not being cynical or sarcastic; he was being correctly descriptive. In the middle nineteenth century opium was the only relief from intolerable pain; Karl Marx was stating that faith in a happy religion made the lives of the people of the abyss tolerable.

Sprague de Camp is Grand Master of practically everything and probably the most learned of all living pract.i.tioners of science fiction and fantasy. I heard those words of wisdom from him before I wrote the 1950 version of PANDORA'S BOX. So why didn't Illsten? Three reasons: 1) money; 2) money; and 3) I thought I could get away with it during my lifetime for predictions attributed to 2000 A.D. I never expected to live that long; I had strong reasons to expect to die young. But I seem to have more lives than a cat; it may be necessary to kill me by driving a steak through my heart (sirloin by choice), then bury me at a crossroads.

Still, I could have gotten away with it if I had stuck to predictions that could not mature before 2000 A.D. Take the two where I really flopped, #5 and #16. In both cases I named a specific year short of 2000 A.D. Had I not ignored Mr. de Camp's warning, I could look bland and murmur, "Wait and see.

Don't be impatient," on all in which the prediction does not look as promising in 1980 as it did in 1950.

Had I heeded a wise man on 2 out of 191 could today, by sheer bra.s.s, claim to be batting a thousand.

I have made some successful predictions. One is "The Crazy Years." (Take a look out your window. Or at your morning paper.) Another is the water bed. Some joker tried to patent the water bed to shut out compet.i.tion, and discovered that he could not because it was in the public domain, having been described in detail in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. It had been mentioned in stories of mine as far back as 1941 and several times after that, but not until STRANGER did the mechanics of a scene requirc describing how it worked.

It was not the first man to build water beds who tried to patent it. The first man in the field knew where it came from; he sent me one, free and freight prepaid, with a telegram naming his firm as the "Share-Water Bed Company." Q.E.D.

Our house has no place to set up a water bed. None. So that bed is still in storage a couple of hundred yards from our main house. I've owned a water bed from the time they first came on market-but have never slept in one.

I designed the water bed during years as a bed patient in the middle thirties: a pump to control waterlevel, side supports to permit one to float rather than simply lying on a not-very-soft water-filled mattress, thermostatic control of temperature, safety interfaces to avoid all possibility of electrical shock, waterproof box to make a leak no more important than a leaky hot water bottle rather than a domestic disaster, calculation of floor loads (important!), internal rubber mattress, and lighting, reading, and eating arrangements-an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too d.a.m.ned much time in hospita! beds.

Nothing about it was eligible for patent-nothing new-unless a sharp patent lawyer could persuade the examiners that a working a.s.semblage enabling a person to sleep on water involved that-how does the law describe it?-"flash of inspiration" transcending former art. But I never thought of trying; I simply wanted to build one-but at that time I could not have afforded a custom-made soapbox.

But I know exactly where I got the idea. In 1931, a few days after the radio-compa.s.s incident described in the afterword to SEARCHLIGHT, I was ordered to Fort Clayton, Ca.n.a.l Zone, to fire in Fleet Rifle & Pistol Matches. During that vacation-with-pay I often re turned from Panama City after taps, when all was quiet. There was a large swimming pool near the post gate used by the Navy and our camp was well separated from the Army regiment barracked there.

I would stop, strip naked, and have a swim-nonreg (no life guards) but no one around, and regulations are made to be broken.

Full moon occurred about the middle of Fleet Matches-and I am one of those oddies who cannot sink, even in fresh water (which this was). The water was blood warm, there was no noise louder than night jungle sounds, the Moon blazed overhead, and I would lie back with every muscle relaxed and stare at it-fall into it-wonder whether we would get there in my lifetime. Sometimes I dozed off.

Eventually I would climb out, wipe my feet dry with a hanky, pull on shoes, hang clothes over my arm, and walk to my tent in the dark. I don't recall ever meeting anyone but it couldn't matter-dark, all male, surrounded by armed sentries, and responsible myself only to a Marine Corps officer junior to me but my TDY boss as team captain-and he did not give a hoot what I did as long as I racked a high score on the range (and I did, largely because my coach was a small wiry Marine sergeant nicknamed "Deacon"-who reappears as survival teacher in TUNNEL IN THE SKY).

Some years later, bothered by bed sores and with every joint aching no matter what position I twisted into, I thought often of the Sybaritic comfort of floating in blood-warm water at night in Panama-and wished that it could be done for bed patients.. . and eventually figured out how to do it, all details, long before I was well enough to make working drawings.

But 1) I never expected one to be built; 2) never thought of them (except for myself) other than as hospital beds; 3) never expected them to be widely used by a fair percentage of the public; 4) and never dreamed that they would someday be advertised by motels for romantic-exotic-erotic weekends along with X-rated films on closed-circuit TV.

By stacking the cards, I'm about to follow the advice of both Bill Gresham and Sprague de Camp.

First, I will paint a gloomy picture of what our future may be. Second, I'll offer a cheerful scenario of how wonderful it could be. I can afford to be specific as each scenario will deny everything said in the other one (de Camp), and I can risk great gloom in the first because I'll play you out with music at the end (Gresham).

GLOOM, WOE, AND DISASTER-There are increasing pathological trends in our culture that show us headed down the chute to self-destruction. These trends do not require that we be conquered-wait a bit and we will fall into the lap of whichever power cares to occupy us. I'll list some of these trends and ill.u.s.trate (rather than prove) what I mean. But it would be tediously depressing to pile up convincing proof-I'm not running for office. I do have proof, on file right in this room. I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.

Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

A few years ago I was visited by an astronomer, young and quite brilliant. He claimed to be a longtime reader of my fiction and his conversation proved it. I was telling him about a time I needed a synergistic orbit from Earth to a 24-hour station; I told him what story it was in, he was familiar with the scene, mentioned having read the book in grammar school.

This...o...b..t is similar in appearance to cometary interplanet transfer but is in fact a series of compromises in order to arrive in step with the s.p.a.ce station; elapsed time is an unsmooth integral not to be found in Hudson's Manual but it can be solved by the methods used on Siacci empiricals for atmosphere ballistics: numerical integration.

I'm married to a woman who knows more math, history, and languages than I do. This should teach me humility (and sometimes does, for a few minutes). Her brain is a great help to me professionally. I was telling this young scientist how we obtained yards of butcher paper, then each of us worked three days, independently, solved the problem and checked each other- then the answer disappeared into one line of one paragraph (s.p.a.cE CADET) but the effort had been worthwhile as it controlled what I could do dramatically in that sequence.

Doctor Whoosis said, "But why didn't you just shove it through a computer?"

I blinked at him. Then said slowly, gently, "My dear boy-" (I don't usually call Ph.D.'s in hardcore sciences "My dear boy"-they impress me. But this was a special case.) "My dear boy . . . this was 1947."

It took him some seconds to get it, then he blushed.

Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin. This young man was (is) brilliant, skilled in mathematics, had picked German and Russian for his doctorate. At the time I met him he seemed to lack feeling for historical span . . . but, if true, I suspect that it began to itch him and he made up that lack either formally or by reading. Come to think of it, much of my own knowledge of history derives not from history courses but from history of astronomy, of war and military art, and of mathematics, as my formal history study stopped with Alexander and resumed with Prince Henry the Navigator. But to understand the history of those three subjects, you must branch out into general history.

Span of time-the Decline of Education My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2-year academy roughly a.n.a.logous to junior college today, except that it was very small- had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.

Here are some of the subjects he studied in backcountry 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.

Twenty-eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wis.h.i.+ng comprehensive history could take (each a one-year 5-hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American history-and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each.

I've had to repair what I missed with a combination of travel and private study.. . and must admit that I did not tackle Chinese history in depth until this year. My training in history was so spotty that it was not until I went to the Naval Academy and saw captured battle flags that I learned that we fought Korea some eighty years earlier than the mess we are still trying to clean up.

From my father's textbook I know that the world history course he studied was not detailed (how could it be?) but at least it treated the world as round; it did not ignore three fourths of our planet.

Now, let me report what I've seen, heard, looked up, clipped out of newspapers and elsewhere, and read in books such as WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, etc.

Colorado Springs, our home until 1965, in 1960 offered first-year Latin-but that was all. Caesar, Cicero, Virgil-Who dat?

Latin is not taught in the high schools of Santa Cruz County. From oral reports and clippings I note that it is not taught in most high schools across the country.

"Why this emphasis on Latin? It's a dead language!" Brother, as with jazz, in the words of a great artist, "If you have to ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." A person who knows only his own language does not even know his own language; epistemology necessitates knowing more than one human language. Besides that sharp edge, Latin is a giant help in all the sciences-and so is Greek, so I studied it on my own.

A friend of mine, now a dean in a state university, was a tenured professor of history-but got riffed when history was eliminated from the required subjects for a bachelor's degree. His courses (American history) are still offered but the one or two who sign up, he tutors; the overhead of a cla.s.sroom cannot be justified.

A recent Wall Street Journal story described the bloodthirsty job hunting that goes on at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages a.s.sociation; modern languages-even English-are being deemphasized right across the country; there are more professors in MLA than there are jobs.

I mentioned elsewhere the straight-A student on a scholars.h.i.+p who did not know the relations between weeks, months, and years. This is not uncommon; high school and college students in this country usually can't do simple arithmetic without using a pocket calculator. (I mean with pencil on paper; to ask one to do mental arithmetic causes jaws to drop-say 17 x 34, done mentally. How? Answer: Chuck away the 34 but remember it. (10 + 7)2 is 289, obviously. Double it: 2(300 - 11), or 578.

But my father would have given the answer at once, as his country grammar school a century ago required perfect memorizing of multiplication tables through 20 x 20 = 400 . . . so his ciphering the above would have been merely the doubling of a number already known (289)-or 578. He might have done it again by another route to check it: (68 + 510)-but his hesitation would not have been noticeable.

Was my father a mathematician? Not at all. Am I? h.e.l.l, no! This is the simplest sort of kitchen arithmetic, the sort that high school students can no longerdo- at least in Santa Cruz.

If they don't study math and languages and history, what do they study? (Nota Bene! Any student can learn the truly tough subjects on almost any campus if he/she wishes-the professors and books and labs are there. But the student must want to.) But if that student does not want to learn anything requiring brain sweat, most U.S. campuses will babysit him 4 years, then hand him a baccalaureate for not burning down the library. That girl in Colorado Springs who studied Latin-but no cla.s.sic Latin-got a "general" bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in 1964. I attended her graduation, asked what she had majored in. No major.

What had she studied? Nothing, really, it turned out-and, sure enough, she's as ignorant today as she was in high school.

Santa Cruz has an enormous, lavish 2-year college and also a campus of the University of California, degree granting through Ph.D. level. But, since math and languages and history are not required, let's see how they fill the other cla.s.srooms.

The University of California (all campuses) is cla.s.sed as a "tough school." It is paralleled by a State University system with lower entrance requirements, and this is paralleled by local junior colleges (never called "junior") that accept any warm body.

UCSC was planned as an elite school ("The Oxford of the West") but falling enrollment made it necessary to accept any applicant who can qualify for the University of California as a whole; therefore UCSC now typifies the "statewide campus." Entrance can be by examination (usually College Entrance Examination Boards) or by high school certificate. Either way, admission requires a certain spread-2 years of math, 2 of a modern language, 1 of a natural science, 1 of American history, 3 years of English-and a level of performance that translates as B+. There are two additional requirements: English composition, and American History and Inst.i.tutions. The second requirement acknowledges that some high schools do not require American history; UCSC permits an otherwise acceptable applicant to make up this deficiency (with credit) after admission.

The first additional requirement, English composition, can be met by written examination such as CEEB, or by transferring college credits considered equivalent, or, lacking either of these, by pa.s.sing an examination given at UCSC at the start of each quarter.

The above looks middlin' good on the surface. College requirements from high school have been watered down somewhat (or more than somewhat) but that B+ average as a requirement looks good if high schools are teaching what they taught two and three generations ago. The rules limit admission to the upper 8% of California high school graduates (out-ofstate applicants must meet slightly higher requirements).

8%- So 92% fall by the wayside. These 8% are the intellectual elite of young adults of the biggest, richest, and most lavishly educated state in the Union.

Those examinations for the English-composition requirement: How can anyone fail who has had 3 years of high school English and averages B+ across the board?

If he fails to qualify, he may enter but must take at once (no credit) "Subject A"-better known as "Bonehead English."

"Bonehead English" must be repeated, if necessary, until pa.s.sed. To be forced to take this no-credit course does not mean that the victim splits an occasional infinitive, sometimes has a dangling modifier, or a failure in agreement or case-he can even get away with such atrocities as "-like I say-."

It means that he has reached the Groves of Academe unable to express himself by writing in the English language.

It means that his command of his native language does not equal that of a 12-year-old country grammar school graduate of ninety years ago. It means that he verges on subliterate but that his record is such in other ways that the University will tutor him (no credit and for a fee) rather than turn him away.

But, since these students are the upper 8% and each has had not less than three years of high school English, it follows that only the exceptionally unfortunate student needs "Bonehead English." That's right, isn't it? Each one is eighteen years old, old enough to vote, old enough to contract or to marry without consulting parents, old enough to hang for murder, old enough to have children (and some do); all have had 12 years of schooling including 11 years of English, 3 of them in high school.

(Stipulated: California has special cases to whom English is not native language. But such a person who winds up in that upper 8% is usually-I'm tempted to say "always"-fully literate in English.) So here we have the cream of California's young adults; each has learned to read and write and spell and has been taught the basics of English during eight years in grammar school, and has polished this by not less than three years of English in high school-and also has had at least two years of a second language, a drill that vastly illuminates the subject of grammar even though grasp of the second language may be imperfect.

It stands to reason that very few applicants need "Bonehead English." Yes?

No!

I have just checked. The new cla.s.s at UCSC is "about 50%" in Bonehead English-and this is normal-normal right across California-and California is no worse than most of the states.

8% off the top- Half of this elite 8% must take "Bonehead English."

The prosecution rests.

This scandal must be charged to grammar and high school teachers . . . many of whom are not themselves literate (I know!)-but are not personally to blame, as we are now in the second generation of illiteracy. The blind lead the blind.

But what happens after this child (sorry-young adult citizen) enters UCSC?

I TELL YOU THREE TIMES I TELL YOU THREE TIMES I TELL YOU THREE TIMES: A.

student who wants an education can get one at UCSC in a number of very difficult subjects, plus a broad general education.

I ask you never to forget this while we see how one can slide through, never do any real work, never learn anything solid, and still receive a bachelor of arts degree from the prestigious University of California. Although I offer examples from the campus I know best, I a.s.sume conclusively that this can be done throughout the state, as it is one statewide university operating under one set of rules.

Some guidelines apply to any campus: Don't pick a medical school or an engineering school. Don't pick a natural science that requires difficult mathematics. (A subject called "science" that does not require difficult mathematics usually is "science" in the sense that "Christian Science" is science-in its widest sense "science" simply means "knowledge" and anyone may use the word for any subject. . . but shun the subjects that can't be understood without mind-stretching math.) Try to get a stupid but good-natured adviser. There are plenty around, especially in subjects in which to get a no-sweat degree; Sturgeon's Law applies to professors as well as to other categories.

For a bachelor's degree: 1) You must spend the equivalent of one academic year in acquiring "breadth"-but wait till you see the goodies!

2) You must take the equivalent of one full academic year in your major subject in upperdivision courses, plus prerequisite lower division courses. Your 4-year program you must rationalize to your adviser as making sense for your major ("Doctor, I picked that course because it is so far from my major-for perspective. I was getting too narrow." He'll beam approvingly.. or you had better look for a stupider adviser).

3) Quite a lot of time will be spent off campus but counted toward your degree. This should be fun, but it can range from hard labor at sea, to counting noses and asking snoopy questions of "ethnics"

(excuse, please!), to time in Europe or Hong Kong, et al., where you are in danger of learning something new and useful even if you don't try.

4) You will be encouraged to take interdisciplinary majors and are invited (urged) to invent and justify unheard-of new lines of study. For this you need the talent of a used-car salesman as any aggregation of courses can be sold as a logical pattern if your "new" subject considers the many complex relations.h.i.+ps between three or four or more old and orthodox fields. Careful here! If you are smart enough to put this over, you may find yourself not only earning a baccalaureate but in fact doing original work worthy of a Ph.D. (You won't get it.) 5) You must have at least one upper-division seminar. Pick one in which the staff leader likes your body odor and you like his. ("I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell-") But you've at least two years in which to learn which professors in your subject are simpatico, and which ones to avoid at any cost.

6) You must write a 10,000 word thesis on your chosen nonsubject and may have to defend it orally.

If you can't write 10,000 words of bull on a bull subject, you've made a mistake-you may have to work for a living.

The rules above allow plenty of elbowroom; at least three out of four courses can be elective and the re mainder elective in part, from a long menu. We are still talking solely about nonmathematical subjects. If you are after a Ph.D. in astronomy, UCSC is a wonderful place to get one . . but you will start by getting a degree in physics including the toughest of mathematics, and will study also chemistry, geology, technical photography, computer science-and will resent any time not leading toward the ultra-interdisciplinary subject lumped under the deceptively simple word "astronomy."

Breadth-the humanities, natural science, and social science-1/3 in each, total 3/3 or one academic year, but spread as suits you over the years. Cla.s.sically "the humanities" are defined as literature, philosophy, and art-but history has been added since it stopped being required in college and became "social studies" in secondary schools. "Natural science" does not necessarily mean what it says-it can be a "nonalcoholic gin"; see below. "Social science" means that grab bag of studies in which answers are matters of opinion.

Courses satisfying "breadth" requirements Humanities Literature and Politics-political & moral choices in literature Philosophy of the Self Philosophy of History in the Prose and Poetry of W. B. Yeats Art and the Perceptual Process The Fortunes of Faust Science and the American Culture (satisfies both the Humanities requirement and the American History and Inst.i.tutions requirement without teaching any science or any basic American History. A companion course, Science and Pressure Politics, satisfies both the Social Sciences requirement and the American History and Inst.i.tutions requirement while teaching still less; it concentrates on post-World-War-TI period and concerns scientists as lobbyists and their own inter- actions ~rows~ with Congress and the President. Highly recommended as a way to avoid learning American history or very much social "science.") American Country Music-Whee! You don't play it, you listen.

Man and the Cosmos-philosophy, sorta. Not science.

Science Fiction (I refrain from comment.) The Visual Arts-"What, if any, are the critical and artistic foundations for judgment in the visual arts?"-exact quotation from catalog.

Mysticism-that's what it says.