The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (83 page)

However, that wasn’t the story that van Vogt had to tell. Instead, he wrote of a Yin-and-Yang universe of reciprocal maintenance. In the cosmos as presented in “The Seesaw,” there is no such thing as strict linear cause-and-effect. Rather, the whole universe is seen as existing through the mutual collaboration and support of its subordinate aspects, and the aspects as existing through the overallness of the whole. At least four obvious examples of fundamental interdependency can be seen in van Vogt’s short story:

First, there is the title and central metaphor—the seesaw. A teeter-totter in action is an instance familiar to everyone of a dynamic equilibrium that requires the active participation of two different parties.

Second, there is the interpenetration of 1941 
A.D.
and the year 4700 of the Isher Empire. Here we have a cross-connection of elements from very different eras, so that McAllister becomes a pivotal factor in the doings of time-to-come, and the slogan that the right to buy weapons is the right to be free—a message that most assuredly had a point for a democratic yet still nominally neutral United States in early 1941—becomes impressed upon the here-and-now.

Third, there is the symbiotic nature of the weapon shops and the Isher Empire. Though one party can be seen as standing for the force of determinism, authority and control, and the other for the power of free will, free thought and free action, the two appear to be absolutely necessary to each other.

And fourth, there is the chicken-and-egg question of which comes first, the universe that will produce McAllister, or the McAllister who will not witness but will cause the formation of the planets?

With all the intertwining, mutual dependence and reversal of temporal sequence here, how are we to say what is really a cause and what is an effect?

It is because of the Isher Empire’s attack on the weapon shops five thousand years from now that McAllister is snatched out of the year 1941 
A.D.
And it is for the purpose of defending themselves against the forces of the empress that the weapon shops send McAllister back through time again. And it is because of this joint effort by the Isher Empire and the weapon shops, and because of McAllister’s movements back and forth through time that a primal explosion will result which in due course will produce the conditions for McAllister, and subsequently the weapon shops and the Isher Empire, to come into existence. Somehow, through their own mutual yearning to be, 1941 
A.D.
and 4700 
I.E.
work together to call themselves into being.

But even this can’t be the whole story. It fails to take into account the counterweight on the other end of the seesaw. In order for McAllister to do his stuff, it seems essential for the great Isher machine to serve as a balancing force. And even though van Vogt may say nothing about the fate of the machine, imagination suggests to us that at the moment that McAllister is going bang at one end of existence, the great machine must necessarily be going
ka-boom
at the other.

By this reading, the various collaborations between the future and the present, the weapon shops and the Isher Empire, and McAllister and the Isher machine all add up to one crucial action-event that begins creation and also brings it to an end.

And were our perspective even broader, we might be able to see this as nothing exceptional. Perhaps as a result of collaborations just like these, the universe is created and destroyed at every instant.

Just this would be the case in van Vogt’s very next story, “Recruiting Station” (
Astounding,
Mar. 1942). Here it is said, “Every unfolding instant the Earth and its life, the universe and all its galaxies are re-created by the titanic energy that is time. . . . The rate of reproduction is approximately ten billion a second.”
⁶⁸⁴

In any case, it is clear that van Vogt had accomplished something quite significant in “The Seesaw.” In place of the old Village-centered orientation held for so long by the Western world, with its arrogant assumptions of self-importance alternating with tremulous fears of cosmic insignificance, van Vogt offered a universe in which man and the present moment were completely essential—but were not sufficient.

Shortly after van Vogt finished this potent little story, the conditions under which he was attempting to live and to write finally became too much for him. His wife Edna had needed operations in both 1939 and 1940. His monthly expenses continued to exceed his monthly income. The money the sale of
Slan
had brought in was all but gone. And the Canadian Department of National Defence wanted still more hours of work from him.

He says: “By April, 1941, they had me working my full day plus four evenings a week plus all day Saturday and every other Sunday, all without a raise in salary. And so, since I could no longer support the job by part-time writing (no part-time being available), I resigned.”
⁶⁸⁵

However, as much as van Vogt may have been pushed toward this decision by his lack of income, we shouldn’t underestimate the part that was played by the inner need he felt to write more science fiction. Ultimately, that may have been his most compelling reason for resigning.

As he would say about this inner drive:

I write on the basis of uneasiness. I should be working is my feeling, and so, when that reaches a certain level, I’m working. If it doesn’t, I’m not. This has nothing to do with whether or not I am completely solvent right now. I feel as if I should be working all the time, and if I’ve been wasting time in some way too much, then this feeling intensifies. It’s like a feedback system. It reaches a certain point and I’m at work, and that’s all.
⁶⁸⁶

When this inner urgency was on him, van Vogt
had
to write stories, even if he didn’t consciously know why:

I was being swept along in an entirely compulsive situation—fundamentally a compulsive situation. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t know why I was interested in it. I
was
interested; I enjoyed it. I got fun out of it. I read my stories, when they were published, with interest: “Did I write that?”
⁶⁸⁷

As long as he was still permitted to have a few minutes every now and then in which to write, van Vogt could continue to go on working at the Canadian Department of National Defence. But when he saw his last precious moments of writing time about to be snatched away from him, he
had
to resign.

And once again, he was served by his uncanny sense of timing. If van Vogt had resolved to try to stick it out for even a few more months, he would have been frozen in place for the duration of the war. His request to resign would have been denied, no matter how impossible his personal living circumstances.

As it was, van Vogt was set free: Free from the demands of a grinding and unfulfilling job. Free from the burden of somehow managing to pay each month for his over-expensive apartment. Free from the close confines of the city of Ottawa. Free to pause for a long moment and catch his breath. Most of all, however, free once again to satisfy the compulsion he felt to write science fiction.

Just as soon as it was possible, the van Vogts sublet their apartment and moved up the Gatineau River into Quebec, where they rented a summer cottage five miles beyond the end of the nearest paved road. Van Vogt let Campbell know that he had quit his job and would now have more writing time available, and set to work on a short novel.

Then, in September 1941, while van Vogt was still up on the Gatineau, he got a letter from Campbell saying that Robert Heinlein had it in mind to retire. And even though the editor had not totally given up hope of seeing further stories from Heinlein, it was evident that he would be needing a high quality writer to take his place as a reliable regular supplier of material. If van Vogt was willing to have a try at it, Campbell declared himself ready to accept what amounted to 20,000 to 25,000 words of material a month from him for the two magazines,
Astounding
and
Unknown.

What a splendid opportunity this was! Van Vogt had never previously had the chance to be a full-time science fiction writer. And after all the days he had spent trying to survive on $81 a month take-home pay, the prospect of an income of two or three hundred dollars every month was truly welcome.

But also, what a challenge it was! Over the space of three full years, van Vogt had only managed to contribute one novel and seven pieces of short fiction to Campbell—a total of about 140,000 words. But now he was being asked to deliver quite a bit more than this every year—an average of a short story and a novelet, or a short novel, or an installment of a serial, each and every month.

Van Vogt was still a painfully slow writer, but nonetheless he decided to accept Campbell’s offer. What others seemed to be able to do with speed and ease, he would attempt to accomplish by method and by diligent persistence.

As he would come to say: “In order to produce what I was producing, I worked from the time I got up until eleven o’clock at night, every day, seven days a week, for years.”
⁶⁸⁸

No wonder van Vogt could speak of having been in the grip of a compulsion!

The first eight stories that van Vogt turned out after quitting his job would see publication in
Astounding
between March 1942 and January 1943. Not only would several of these rank among his all-time best, but in this initial burst of work as a full-time science fiction writer, he would confirm, consolidate and extend the special lines of thought he had begun to set forth and explore in his earlier fiction.

Taken as a whole, these stories would declare that we live in a responsive universe with different levels of being and consciousness. They would assert again and again the necessity for cooperation among sentient creatures. And they would suggest that the natural business of truly superior beings must be to serve as the guardians and protectors of lesser entities.

The moral responsiveness of the universe can be seen most clearly stated in “Secret Unattainable” (
Astounding,
July 1942), a novelet that may in part have been van Vogt’s self-justification for having given up on his war effort. The story is in the form of a file of documents brought to the United States after World War II which charts the beginning and end of a secret German scientific project.

It seems that in 1937 a scientist named Kenrube proposed the construction of a machine capable of bridging hyper-space and extracting limitless quantities of raw materials from distant planets to serve the purposes of the Fuehrer and the German Reich.

Professor Kenrube is another holist. He is reported as believing in “the singleness of organism that is a galactic system”
⁶⁸⁹
and that “all the matter in the universe conjoins according to a rigid mathematical pattern.”
⁶⁹⁰

Kenrube’s conclusions seem doubtful to more orthodox scientists. And he is by no means trusted by the regime, his brother having been executed in 1934 for opposing the National Socialists. But his machine is of such potential usefulness to Hitler’s plans for world conquest that Kenrube’s project is given official approval and funding.

The Nazis take every precaution they can think of to guard against any treachery that Kenrube may have in mind. And they are pleased and excited when the model machine that he builds works exactly as anticipated—except for an eventual unfortunate accident in the professor’s absence that destroys the test model and kills an assistant who has been set to spy on Kenrube.

Indeed, so promising are the results of the project that the Nazis are encouraged to act upon their lust for power and launch World War II. And just as soon as a full-scale machine is completed and successfully tested in the spring of 1941, Professor Kenrube is placed under arrest and thrown into prison under constant guard.

However, at the formal demonstration of the hyper-space machine for the benefit of the assembled Nazi hierarchy, there is a great disaster. The machine is completely destroyed, many notables are killed, and the Fuehrer himself only narrowly escapes death.

More than this—it seems that Kenrube himself mysteriously escaped from confinement on this very same day, managed somehow to appear hours earlier at the scene of the disaster even as it was unfolding, and then disappeared for good. From statements he made to his guards just before he vanished, and from a further declaration made at the site of the demonstration, it becomes apparent that the entire project has been an elaborate plot of revenge by Kenrube for the death of his beloved brother.

Kenrube has successfully turned the greed and power-hunger of the Nazis against them. He has lured them into launching a war that they must inevitably come to lose by promising them a secret weapon that they are inherently incapable of putting to use.

As he says to his guards just before his disappearance from his cell: “My invention does not fit into our civilization. It’s
the next,
the coming age of man. Just as modern science could not develop in ancient Egypt because the whole mental, emotional and physical attitude was wrong, so my machine cannot be used until the thought structure of man changes.”
⁶⁹¹

And to those assembled for the demonstration of the hyper-space machine, he says:

“Here is your machine. It is all yours to use for any purpose—provided you first change your mode of thinking to conform to the reality of the relationship between matter and life.

“I have no doubt you can build a thousand duplicates, but beware—every machine will be a Frankenstein monster. Some of them will distort time, as seems to have happened in the time of my arrival here. Others will feed you raw material that will vanish even as you reach forth to seize it. Still others will pour obscene things into our green earth; and others will blaze with terrible energies, but you will never know what is coming, you will never satisfy a single desire. . . .

“It is not that the machine has will. It reacts to laws, which you must learn, and in the learning it will reshape your minds, your outlook on life. It will change the world. Long before that, of course, the Nazis will be destroyed. They have taken irrevocable steps that will insure their destruction.”
⁶⁹²