In those years, Ignatius was happy. He had enough to eat, a clean room to sleep in, and books to count and feel, touch, lift, pack, wrap, and distribute on shelves. He had no ambitions and would have been content with his job except for authors. They became worse and worse.
One day he overheard two of the girls talking. An author had just come in with the manuscript of a book and it had to be published. Business was bad, and the girls said that this book was going to lose money.
“Why are authors?” one of them asked.
This question struck Ignatz Bulganov’s mind.
Over and over again that night in his room in the Y.M.C.A. he fondled his books and asked himself the question: “Why are authors?”
The next morning, as he was taking his cold shower, he asked himself why couldn’t there be books, without authors.
Here was food for thought. And he nourished his higher faculties on this food.
That day at work, he idly went to a desk where there was an adding machine. He punched numbers on the machine and pulled out slips of paper. And there were numbers all added up correctly. He remembered how he had never been able to do anything like that in the little red school-house. Just think of it, he had been whammed and whipped because he had not been able to add. And look at that machine. It added and never made a mistake.
Thus, Ignatius Bulganov Worthington acquired even more rich and highly nutritious food for thought.
Soon afterwards I.B.W. went to the free night school, a youth seeking knowledge and opportunity. He had digested his rich nutritious food for thought and something had happened to him. He had become ambitious.
Well, the rest of the story is familiar to every schoolboy. Ignatius studied machines, machinery, arithmetic, statistics, engineering, and draftsmanship. And he worked on machines. And he invented the machine that revolutionized the life of mankind. He invented the Worthy Worthington Writing Machine. People thought him crazy. He was laughed at and jeered. But he triumphed. Just as once he had been able to add correctly by pushing buttons on an adding machine, so now he could write a book by pushing buttons on a Worthy Worthington.
Of course, the first years were hard, and it took time for him to get his machine accepted. But he had perseverance and stick-to-itiveness. So, his machine was introduced into publishing houses, magazine offices, and newspaper editorial rooms. One machine, working an eight-hour day, could shed four books. And none of the books was gloomy. The policeman could read them without making an arrest and this saved the taxpayer’s money, because the police were no longer needed to seize books, and to arrest booksellers, authors, and publishers. The clergymen were grateful because they no longer had to write sermons about immoral books and could speak from the pulpit of God and Goodness.
And of course the publishers were happy. They had to take no authors to lunch, and they had to pay no royalties except a very small one to Ignatius Bulganov for the use of one of his Worthy Worthingtons. Their machines never erred and never produced an immoral or sad book. They whirred out works of joy and hope at a cost of ten cents a copy. Books became the cheapest commodity on the market. There was a tremendous boom in books. The publishers became millionaires. The nation became inspired. Joy and goodness reigned as though in the celestial spheres. And there were no more authors to cause trouble, to disillusion people, to lose money on bad books. The authors all went mad or became useful citizens. And Worthy Worthington married the girl who asked the question:
“Why are authors?”
He lived to a ripe age, left a fortune and a legacy of sunshine after him and was eternally revered for having found a means to eliminate authors and to enrich the material and spiritual life of his country and his times. His remains lie in a marble tomb ten feet high, and on the door of this tomb, these words are graven.
here lies worthy worthington
in
eternal repose
remembered
honored
loved
by
his grateful countrymen
. . . And speaking of overspecialization, I have not yet made reference to The Categories.
“Science fiction” has about the same utility as a label, by now, as “beatnik” does. To the majority of readers, both words describe something exotic, ultramodern, oddball, egghead, and probably unwashed. To the respective and only slightly overlapping in-groups, the labels have a proud, bold, modern feel, full of truth, beauty, and the Keatsian assurance of “all ye know, and all ye need to know.”
Certainly, to the “outsider” majority, and sometimes even to the “ins,” both words are definable more in terms of costume than anything else . . . unless the something else is status. No one calls Picasso a “beatnik,” and it is not just the absence of beard that sets him apart from other wearers of sandals and turtlenecks.
Most publishers use “categories” to determine costume—or “packaging,” as the trade calls it. Science fiction, like fantasy, crime, suspense, Westerns, doctor and nurse stories, sex, love, war, is a “category.” And then there are “novels”—the non-category category, where subject does not matter, because either the book or the author is considered serious or literary or popular. (1984 and The Disappearance were serious books; The Lord of the Flies and Brave New World were literary; Fail Safe and Earth Abides popular; More Than Human and A Canticle for Liebowitz were science fiction: the latter in spite— or perhaps because?—of the publisher’s overfervent denials.)
I don’t mean it is impossible for an author to step out of his “category.” Just almost impossible. And sometimes it is as hard to break into the ghetto as out of it—
“Benefactor” was first published in 1958—but its first sale was in 1964, to Francesca van der Ling of SSI, who found it in a 1959 issue of the Indian magazine Thought—which had reprinted it from a 1958 U.S. edition of the Socialist Call-where it had been published originally without payment.
Now, James T. Farrell’s place among twentieth-century American authors has long survived both the shocked gasps of the thirties at the “realism” of Studs Lonigan, and the horror of the forties at the “leftist” politics of the thirties.
But this time he had stepped out of character: out of his specialty. Hollywood is not the only American scene where typecasting prevails.
And believe me, Isaac Asimov would have as much trouble selling a realistic novel (no matter how good) about the Chicago Irish as James Farrell had with “Benefactor.”
SYNCHROMOCRACY
Hap Cawood
Synchromocracy, the newest concept in Total Democracy, was hailed by the President as “the answer to peace and the pure voice of majority rule” shortly before the chief executive was replaced by an IBM-Computer-Center today.
Synchromocracy was achieved by advances in the computer field along with the discovery of the D-3 solution, the first drug proved to “definitely cause democracy.” D-3 solutions were put in all known world water supplies last week.
In the U.S., IBM-Registers were distributed among the population to relay public opinion to state and national consoles where they are converted instantaneously into policy.
The American governmental machinery has run smoothly, despite difficulties in approaching the first foreign-policy problems. Overseas countries, although 98.4% democratic, are without register-computers and unable to achieve a consensus. Committees could be organized, but individuals are unable to call them without consent of the majority. There is also some question as to how many constitute a majority, but this cannot be answered without a quorum.