A Fourth of July treat: Poul Anderson on ‘Science Fiction and Freedom’

Introduction: Poul Anderson  (1926-2001) was a major American science  fiction writer. He won the Hugo Award seven times and won the Nebula Award three  times. He also won the Prometheus Award once (for The Stars Are Also Fire), the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award four times and also received our Special Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Anderson delivered this speech March 19, 1978, at the banquet of Leprecon, a science fiction convention in Phoenix. The speech was then printed in the May 1978 issue of New Libertarian, Volume Four, Number Three. It is reprinted here with the permission of Astrid  Bear, Poul Anderson’s daughter, and is copyright The Trigonier Trust.

The Prometheus Blog is reprinting his speech here because Anderson, one of the most recognized sf/fantasy authors in the history of science fiction and of the Prometheus Awards, had something important to say then about freedom and science fiction – something still valuable to ponder today.

Science Fiction and Freedom

By  Poul Anderson

Madame Toastmistress, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen:

First I would like to thank all of you for your hospitality, your many kindnesses, and the warmth of your welcome to Karen and myself. Although we had never before visited your lovely area, you have made this a homecoming for us. Not only have we long been fond of the Southwest in general — more importantly, here we are among friends. No matter that it is our first acquaintance with many of  you. Friendship is not identical to acquaintance, and it does not necessarily require much time to grow. Besides, even without having met, we have long shared the freemasonry of science fiction, which means a great deal.

How good, then, that we can go beyond it, that we can actually mingle as individual persons. From here, Karen and I are proceeding to Seattle, where we also have people dear to  us (Frank Herbert). In the course of the following months, we expect to travel quite a bit, always with a welcome awaiting us.

How wonderful to live in a world where that is possible — in fact, where it is quick and easy. That’s a very new situation in history, you know. It did not obtain until quite recent times. It does not yet obtain in most of the world, whether because of backwardness, poverty, war or tyranny. We could lose it ourselves, here in America. I am not thinking so much of material comfort and convenience as I am of capability: for instance, the capability of travel, with everything that that means for letting us realize ourselves fully as human beings. All of us here today wish to keep what we have, improve it, and pass it on to our children and grandchildren. Moreover, we wish to help our less fortunate kindred around the globe share in it.

So if you will indulge me, I would like to offer a few suggestions about that.

THE BASIS OF CIVILIZATION

Specifically, I would like to discuss the material basis of the civilization we have, and then go on to some words about the one thing which gives real meaning to all the rest. That one thing is freedom.

Some of you may have heard remarks of mine before on this same subject, perhaps even in quite similar words. If so, please bear with the repetition. True, the universe is full of other topics, and indeed I have dealt with several of them too upon occasion. They are equally fascinating, and a few of them may even be equally important. But none is more so than freedom.

You don’t want a heavy lecture, not do I want to deliver one. I’ll keep  it fairly brief, and also avoid the vertical pronoun as much as possible. After all, it would be silly to stand here defending myself against my literary critics. Everybody knows that any writer’s idea of a good criticism is five thousand words of carefully reasoned adulation. On the other hand, an idea of a more general kind can be considered strictly on its merits. And one thing that science fiction people have in common is an especially strong interest in ideas.

These mostly relate to the real world. They have to. The world outside our heads is the source of almost everything inside them, knowledge, thought, love, inspiration, hopes, horrors, mysteries. At least, it is if we are healthy and sensible. Several forms of mental disorder amount to  an obsession of the patient with himself, to the exclusion of outside awareness. In a lighter vein, we can recall the final exam in the philosophy class, which consisted of a single question: “Why?” You got an A if  you answered, “Why not?” You got a B if you answered, “Because.” Any other answer got a C.

THE LOVE OF WISDOM

Of course, philosophy — literally,   the love of wisdom — is something we not only must have, but we inevitably do have. Everybody thinks and lives according to some philosophical scheme, whether he knows it or not. My point is simply that the valuable, vigorous philosophies have been those which were directed toward the real universe, the public as well as the private, the nonhuman as well as the human, and were always eager to learn from that reality. The same for literatures. A literature which turns its back on the outside world soon becomes a mere set of exercises in omphaloscopy — which is Ritz for finding cosmic significance in one’s bellybutton; at best, that’s what it does. Oftener it loses even this little bit of creativity, and degenerates into mechanical, sterile self-imitation.

Far from being an escape into Never-Never Land, science fiction has generally been reality-oriented. However high his imagination soars, Clifford Simak has drawn strength from his native Midwestern earth, and in fact when he deals directly with it he’s among our best regional writers.

Gordon Dickson and Joe Haldeman have in their stories tackled the monstrous problem of war with courage and intelligence. Harry Harrison has not hesitated to ask the basic question: “Where is the next meal coming from?” William Tenn has held up the mirror of satire to the world he sees everywhere around him.

Even in earlier, less permissive days, Lester del Rey never hesitated to cope with such gut matters as religion and sex, besides wild fantasies like nuclear power plants. The same, obviously, for Philip Jose Farmer, Theodore Sturgeon, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Naturally, I don’t mean that these writers are narrow specialists. On the contrary, they handle other themes just as brilliantly, precisely because they are interested in reality and therefore have the whole range of it for inspiration. And needless to say, they are not the only examples.

We could also name Robert Heinlein, James Gunn, Frederik Pohl, and on and on. Even when science fiction seems to be at its most remote from our existing world, for instance on one of Hal Clement’s gorgeously visualized imaginary planets, still it’s concerned with reality — in such cases, the reality which science opens up to us, or history, or psychological insight.

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE FICTION

The mud around our feet is real, but so is the stars over our heads.

True, the mud is right here, in the form not only of individual failings and miseries, but in mass tragedy, grisly clear and present dangers, and our own bewilderment amidst them. Yes, there are stars above, but just now the mire is mighty thick, the night is mighty dark. Bear with me for a little, please, while I say something about our immediate reality, and then suggest what humble role science fiction can play in helping. We’ll get on from there to the stars, I promise you.

Recite the devilish list in your mind: Tyranny. Terrorism. Wars on a scale which would once have been called great, now a commonplace. The ever-present threat of uncontrollable nuclear war. Mankind  crowded itself off the earth, famine and plague imminent. Species after species going down into extinction, land after land turning into desert. The entire biosphere menaced by industrial recklessness — in all countries, so that changing our socioeconomic system would be of no use in itself. The exhaustion of resources, including energy sources — which would be a  hell of a way to solve the pollution problem, wouldn’t it?

Here  in America, still  the most advanced country in the world, the country on the cutting edge of the future, or so we once thought: here in America, tumerously overgrown government, extortionate taxation which nowadays buys us hardly a thing worth having that we couldn’t better provide for ourselves, inflation undermining that entire system of cooperation we call the economy and by which we live, crime rampant in high places as well as low, a so-called war on poverty turned into a war on the poor, schools which grind forth functional illiterates, our own destruction of our own environment, and in addition the crumbling of our last outposts and alliances abroad, yes, the betrayal of these — is it any wonder that people have lost faith, that they feel  helplessly adrift in seas where the storm is rising?

Now basically this kind of situation is nothing unique in history: though it is small consolation to reflect that “Today the Roman and his trouble/Are ashes under Uricon.” In fact, our current troubles are just the latest in a long row. To borrow a remark from a friend of mine, older than me: “My entire life has been an unbroken series of public catastrophes, every one of which could have been prevented.”

PROBLEMS HAVE SOLUTIONS

We do keep trying. Mostly we thresh around blindly. Or, to use a different metaphor, let me quote a recently statement by the prime minister of a certain emergent country: “Last year we stood on the brink of an abyss. This year we have made a great leap forward.”

Yes, we can go under, victims of ourselves. But we don’t have to. We can only lose all hope by giving up all hope.

Our problems have solutions. Many are being worked on at this moment. For instance, there is any number of promising alternatives to fossil fuels and fissionables. Controlled fusion with net energy release is at the point of being demonstrated in the laboratory. Solar energy is enormous and free; my favorite way of collecting it, by mirrors in Earth orbit, is on the drawing boards. Methane and alcohol generators, and biological fuel cells, can give us power in the course of purifying wastes. The winds and the temperature differentials in the oceans are two other safe and potent sources. All in all, forget the current hysteria about an energy crisis. What we may have to live with for awhile is an inconvenient energy shortage — nothing worse, if we keep our heads, and even this may turn out to be largely avoidable.

SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT

Environment? Well, for example, some 25 years ago San Francisco Bay was a biological desert because of pollution. A dozen years ago, it had been cleaned up enough to support excellent sport fishing and, incidentally, a population of marine worms that sank a houseboat which Jack Vance, Frank Herbert and I were building. (How we raised her again is an epic of men against the sea that would have been worthy of the pen of Joseph Conrad, if Joseph Conrad has written slapstick.) The Bay still has a distance to go; however, at the present rate of improvement, in a few more years it should be safe to recommence commercial growing of oysters.

As another example, there is no denying that radioactive wastes from fission reactors pose a hazard we underrated until today. But its seriousness has now been recognized, and a variety of ideas are coming forth to deal with it. To name a single such possibility, with space technology now under development we could shoot all of that trash out of the Solar System, in fail-safe containers, and thereby add less than 1/2% to our electric bills.

What of the harm we are wreaking on our soil, air, and waters in other ways? Certainly we have done and are doing some horrible things. However, man has always ravaged nature. Stone Age hunters probably exterminated most of the great mammals of the Pleistocene. Peasants with wooden plows certainly spoiled the once-Fertile Crescent in the Near East. Aristotle himself commented on soil erosion as a result of deforestation in Greece. And on and on. For that matter, nature herself never heard of a balanced ecology. There have always been more extinct species than live ones. The natural environment has always been changing, and what benefits one life form will harm or destroy another.

THE DIFFERENCE OF TECHNOLOGY

The difference today from the past is twofold. First, modern technology has enabled man to wreck parts of his world much faster, on a much larger scale, than ever happened before. But second, this same technology — still more, the science that gave birth to it — has at last enabled him to see what he’s been doing, and has given him the means to make restoration.

Regardless of sentimental myths about American Indians or whoever else, this is unique in time. Our awareness and our capability, the first in any human society ever, are thanks to our being the first society to practice the scientific method. Thus we have garnered more knowledge about nature in the past hundred years than humanity and pre-humanity learned in the earlier five million years. We actually have a potentiality of creating something nature never did — a truly balanced ecology, that can last as long as the sun does.

These are an almost random selection out of countless optimistic examples. I’ll sum up the idea in this claim: That every single one of our difficulties in the material world, the world which our bodies inhabit and use, every single one of our difficulties there can have a technological solution … if we will develop and apply it.

A CRISIS POINT?

Aye, there’s the rub. Can we pull ourselves together? Have we the resolution, the common sense, and the public spirit to do what is necessary? Have our institutions not already proved themselves in adequate to the task?

With militant passion, many people answer, “Yes!” They believe we must overthrow our old establishments overnight, and create something bright and new. The scenario goes about like this. A Communist government takes  over the whole of North Africa, for instance, and announces its intention of reclaiming the Sahara Desert. It creates a huge organization for this purpose, too. For fifty years afterward, nothing happens. Then there is a shortage of sand.

Don’t worry, I shan’t preach right-wing politics at you. Actually, I quite agree that  under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it is the exact reverse.

I do in complete seriousness agree that we have reached a crisis point — a real crisis, not a phony one, a point where we simply cannot go on much longer as we have been going, but must find a new direction if our society is to survive.

American history has known such times before. The Revolution represented such a change in response to a stern challenge. Likewise, a bit later, did the Constitution. Our worst failure thus far occurred in the 1850s, when we did not solve the problems of sectionalism and slavery in time to prevent civil war. Nevertheless the Union endured, and eventually became the leader of the world.

Now too, our foreign wars which gain us no peace, our domestic upheavals and debacles, our toppling quality of environment and of life — all these, worsening throughout the past several decades, must likewise result from the breakdown of institutions. Our social machinery and our accustomed ways of using it have become flat-out unsuitable. In fact, they have become a major part of the problem.

But what are those accepted institutions and procedures? How are they failing and why? What else can we create and use that might work? I  think these are the heart questions of our age.

SCIENCE FICTION’S PERSPECTIVE

And I think that you, with your science fiction perspective and imagination, could come up with some very interesting ideas.

I have my notions, of course. But  you have my promise not to read you a long polemic. So let me simply toss this out at you, quite briefly, for whatever it may be worth to your own thinking.

Our principal institution today is government. It operates in partnership with capital and organized labor, but it is by far the senior partner. Its methods include war abroad, compulsion at home, cartelization of companies and unions alike, regulation of everything from the center, ever-growing taxes and deficits, and ever narrower choice for each of us in our private lives. This might perhaps be bearable if it worked. But it  isn’t working. The United States government is  rapidly approaching the characterization of the government of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, namely “Despotism tempered by incompetence.”

Why don’t we give freedom a chance? It never failed us; we failed it. Well, maybe it’s too new and radical an idea for most people to understand. Collectivism, under whatever name, is as old as the neolithic god-kings; while it was a mere two centuries ago that Thomas Jefferson wrote of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as being human rights.

I like to think the hour is not too late, that we can still establish freedom and thereby save ourselves. It won’t be easy. In spite of various evangelists, I don’t believe we yet know how to attain a truly free society or what precise form it might take. We’ll have to grope our way forward. In the field of civil liberties, we’ve been doing that for awhile, and have seen how many are the mistakes we make and, often, how high the cost can be. Sometimes we’ve enjoyed a certain success, but been surprised at the form it took. Nevertheless, we have made progress, and I feel sure everybody here will agree that we should continue advancing — a slow, difficult, sometimes grotesquely misdirected advance, but toward a noble goal.

LIBERTY VERSUS EQUALITY

It isn’t enough, however. Liberty means far more than equality. And today we are in danger of making equality mean subservience. We won’t free the energies of the people to attack their problems until we have freed the people themselves, gotten Big Brother off their backs, done away with his absurdities  and tyrannies.

This won’t be simple. For  one thing, one man’s absurdity or tyranny is another’s social service or means of livelihood. Here, for example, is a partial list of what I myself would like to get rid of: tariffs, production quotas, fair trade laws, licensing requirements, closed shops, hiring quotas, subsidies to any business, all drug prohibitions for adults, rate regulations, the federal post office, the Federal Reserve, monopoly franchises, government borrowing, the Social Security fraud, conscription, income tax, public schools — Well, if I haven’t kicked at least one sacred cow of everybody here, I’ll be disappointed.

Of course, my attitude is less revolutionary than it sounds. I realize we can’t do all this overnight, and maybe some of it should not be done at all. Careful experiment will show us, provided we are willing to experiment. I conceive of the wholly free society not as an absolute good we can have instantly for all time and free of any cost, but as a goal to strive toward, a direction for us to take.

If we do take it, my bet is that soon we will begin to see an explosive release of creativity — and common sense — which will bring us a future more bright than we can now imagine.

You may well disagree. But because you are science fiction people, I feel certain you are prepared to consider this suggestion the same as you would any other idea. For my part, I’ll be happy to consider whatever suggestions you may put forward. Just be sure to tell me if you want to keep them for a story you plan to write yourself!

A MEDIUM FOR INVESTIGATION

For science fiction is a great medium for such investigations. As John Campbell once remarked, in a story you can take a social system and test it to destruction without actually killing anybody. True, this is not our sole means of thinking about tomorrow, especially nowadays when futurology and technological forecasting have become recognized  industries. But by showing the impact of change on individual characters, science fiction can help get these speculations down from the abstract to the human level, and so make them  more meaningful, actually more useful.

Science fiction also serves as a recruiting agent for the next generations of those who will bring disciplined imaginations to bear on their  own  world. It has been doing that for quite some time, in fact. I assure you from personal knowledge that many, many scientists and engineers, including some of the most  distinguished, got into those careers because, when they were young, science fiction made their subjects glamorous and opened their eyes to endless possibilities. I daresay the same is true of a lot of futurologists — and members of the general public. The science fiction mode of thinking, the realization that tomorrow will be different from today and will require new ways of going about things, becomes more and more pervasive. We can be proud that we helped  pioneer it. However, our pioneering is not done yet. It never  will be. Then let’s keep going.

Now more than ever, when  foundations are crumbling beneath us, we need to look for new ground to  build  on. And we don’t have to search in desperation, either. If walls which formerly sheltered us have fallen, well, suddenly we have a clear, fresh view of the horizon. Certainly this is true of science itself. Today our outlook reaches  from the DNA molecule, the very stuff of life, out beyond planets each of which is astonishing us, among black holes and  exploding galaxies and newborn suns, to the rim of the cosmos and beyond. Today some respectable scientists agree that things like faster-than-light travel, immortality, yes, time travel may after all be within our grasp. Lord, what an exciting time to be alive in! How  infinitely much to write about!

NEW HUMAN POSSIBILITIES

And this includes new human possibilities, new ways in which we might order our public affairs or, indeed, our private ones. Although I have mostly been talking about science fiction as it relates to the reality beyond our individual skins, still, being human, I know full well that what happens inside is equally real and equally worth writing about. H.G. Wells and Karel Capek did, in their day. It is good that some of our finest science fiction talents are doing it again.

In fact, we are very fortunate that there is so much diversity now, not only among writers, but also among editors, artists, and, most importantly, readers. We are not splitting up into a lot of wretched little subspecialties. No, what we are doing is exploring different territories, whatever  ones appear most important to us or simply strike our fancies. Then we come back, make rendezvous,  swap yarns, brag a lot, but also learn a lot. What we learn makes us able, individually, to explore still further next  time.

There has been tame, dull science fiction. There has been what I would call slave science fiction. But neither of  these kinds has ever been going anywhere. It’s stayed where it was, which is no place worth being. Meanwhile, the real, old-and-truly breed has always been adventuring elsewhere. It is a literature of freedom.

Let’s not close this on too  pompous a note. The first duty of any art is to entertain — to be, in some sense of the word, fun, no matter how profound the basic subject matter. Else why should anyone bother with it? Why come to conventions, either, unless you expect to enjoy yourselves? Therefore I’m going to stop talking and join you in the serious business of having fun among good friends. Thank you.

A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Poul Anderson was the first sf author to be honored with a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The award to the ailing author was accepted by his wife, Karen, at the 2001 LFScon (the first LFS mini-con) at Marcon, Ohio’s oldest and largest sf/fantasy convention.

Anderson won his first competitive Prometheus award for his novel Trader to the Stars, inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 1985.

He also wrote The Stars Are Also Fire (the 1995 Prometheus winner for Best Novel), “No Truce with Kings” (a story inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 2010) and “Sam Hall” (a story inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2020).

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:

* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.

* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.

* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page  for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.

* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction,  jointhe Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating innovation, peace, prosperity, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, individuality and human dignity.

Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, end slavery, reduce the threat of war, repeal or constrain other abuses of coercive power and achieve universal liberty, respect for human rights and a better world (perhaps ultimately, worlds) for all.