Four years ago, on the day after Flying Saucer Day, I wrote about James E. Gunn and his novelette "The Listeners," originally in Galaxy Magazine in September 1968. Since then I have looked for the book version, which collects all of Mr. Gunn's stories in the series, originally published from 1968 to 1972. I finally found it this summer in one of my trips to Half-Price Books, a store that I hope stays in business forever. And this summer I read it.
First I should let you know that James E. Gunn died at the end of last year, on December 23, 2020. He was ninety-seven years old, another of that interwar generation who did so much, accomplished so much, overcame so much, even unto the end. We send condolences to his family and friends and I guess to the world of science fiction in general. James E. Gunn was born in the same year that Weird Tales began, 1923. Surely he was one of the last of the authors first published during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, 1938-1950. His first story was called "Communications" and it appeared in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories. Communications would seem to have been a theme in his work.
The Listeners is episodic. Like Mr. Gunn's life, it is spread over nine decades, from 2025 to 2118. It is set mostly in Puerto Rico, at the site of a great radio telescope, an ear directed at the heavens, waiting to hear words from on high. The main character is Robert MacDonald, a middle-aged (and older) administrator and head of the listening project. (Yes, his surname is Scottish and, yes, he is an engineer.) MacDonald is hanging on, hanging on, waiting for the communications he's sure must come. He carries the Project on the back of his faith.
James Gunn was completely conversant in the history and culture of Listening. In his book, he referred to Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Otto Struve, and other figures in the what is now called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He quoted from some of them, too, in his inter-chapter "Computer Run" compilations, which were, I think, new to the book version, first published in 1972. (They remind me of the "Newsreel" sections in John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy.) He and Dr. Sagan seem to have formed a mutual admiration society, in fact. Dr. Sagan's blurb on the cover of the Ballantine edition reads: "One of the very best fictional portrayals of contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence ever written!" In his turn, Carl Sagan seems to have lifted Mr. Gunn's religious leader straight out of The Listeners and plopped him into the movie Contact (1997). The radio message returned to Earth in order to get our attention is also seemingly from The Listeners.
The depiction of that religious leader is a flaw, I think, in Contact, less so in The Listeners. I don't know what things were like in 1968 or 1971-1972 when James Gunn first wrote, but his character Jeremiah (cute name) verges on stereotype. Carl Sagan called him Joseph and was far less understanding. I think what both authors failed to understand is that Christians are far more tolerant of the idea that there may be other people in the universe than are the Listeners that there are not. It is, after all, the core belief of Christianity that we are not alone. It would be intolerable for the Listener to learn that we are, though. As James Gunn wrote:
And then maybe Adams was right. Maybe nobody was there. Maybe nobody was sending signals because there was nobody to send signals. Maybe man was all alone in the universe. Alone with God. Or alone with himself, whichever was worse. (Ballantine, 1985, p. 3)
MacDonald may or may not be an atheist. I think only Jeremiah calls him that. I'm not sure that he ever thinks or speaks of these things himself. Curiously, his ghost seems to keep appearing to people after his death, curiously, that is, for a story that is otherwise what I would call hard science fiction and in which the tone is essentially agnostic.
I gather that James E. Gunn was a midcentury American liberal. As that and as an author of science fiction, he seems to have believed in progress, perhaps especially in material and scientific progress. His story is set in Puerto Rico, at the site of a radio telescope. In his version of the story, that radio telescope and the listening project go on for decades, far into the twenty-first century. In the real-life version of the story, the radio telescope at Arecibo came crashing down on December 1, 2020. You could take that as emblematic of a kind of decline and decay of the American and/or scientific project. Maybe it doesn't mean anything like that at all. Anyway, science fiction author James E. Gunn died three weeks and a day later. (3 x 7) + 1: prime numbers all.
Science fiction is not prediction. But here is an excerpt from The Listeners. Take as much or as little of it as prediction or extrapolation as you want. Remember that Mr. Gunn wrote this in the early 1970s.
It is 2028. MacDonald is talking to Andrew White, the first black president of the United States (who would of course be played by Morgan Freeman in the movie version):
"The function of government is 'to promote the general welfare,'" MacDonald said.
"It is also a deliberate policy. Poverty and injustice are evils, but they are endurable evils in a world where other problems are greater. They are not endurable in a complex, technological society where cooperation is essential, where violence and rioting can destroy a city, even civilization itself."
"Of course."
"So we turned ourselves around and set this nation to the task of eliminating poverty and injustice--and we have done it. We have established a stable social system where everyone has a guaranteed annual income and can do pretty much what he pleases except procreate without limit or harm others in other ways."
MacDonald nodded. "That has been the great accomplishment of the past few decades--the welfare movement."
"Except we don't call it welfare anymore," White said. "It's democracy, the system, the way things are, what people are entitled to. What makes you think that science is not part of the system?"
"It creates change," MacDonald said.
"Not if it is unsuccessful," White said. [. . .] "The important task of government, you see, is to keep conditions stable, to hold down disturbances and unrest, to maintain itself, and the best way to do that is to give everybody the opportunity to do what they want--except change things. [. . .]" (p. 149)
I don't want to hit you over the head with this, but it's plain that the people of 2028 and before have tried to construct a kind of Utopia. Welfare, entitlements, a guaranteed income, happiness, democracy, and zero population growth are features of their Utopia, but the ultimate purpose is stasis.
Futurism is prediction. Here is another excerpt, from one of the "Computer Run" sections of The Listeners:
The year 2000 conditions could produce a situation in which illusion, wishful thinking, even obviously irrational behavior could exist to a degree unheard of today. Such irrational and self-indulgent behavior is quite likely in a situation in which an individual is overprotective and has no systematic or objective contact with reality. For example, there are probably many people for whom work is the primary touch with reality. If work is removed, or if important functions are taken from work, the contact these people have with reality will be to some degree impaired. The results--minor or widespread--may become apparent in forms such as political disruption, disturbed families, and personal tragedies--or in pursuit of some "humanistic" values that many would think of as frivolous or even irrational.
Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Weiner, 1967 (p. 165)
Illusion, wishful thinking, obviously irrational behavior--Kahn and Weiner called it in the year before "The Listeners" went to print. Kahn was an atheist. Did that give him special insight into the problems of a future populated by non-believers?
One last excerpt. A second message comes from Capella in the year 2118. Before it is displayed for all to see, a short "Computer Run" section intervenes. From it, these lines of verse:
[. . .] somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
--William Butler Yeats, 1921
The imagery here, from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," stands powerfully on its own, but it also strikes me now as a counterpoint to Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias," about which I wrote last time. In "Ozymandias," the statue--and by extension the man and his power--lies in ruins. But in Yeats' vision, the statue, the power, the rough beast in the form of a half-man, awakens, moves, slouches to be born. In this vision, Apocalypse is our future.
Yet The Listeners ends in hope--hope at least for the Listeners.
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| The Listeners by James E. Gunn (1923-2020), published in 1985 by Ballantine Books, with cover art by Rick Sternbach. |
Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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