BEN BOVA: Sometimes even science fiction can be ahead of its time

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BEN BOVA: Sometimes even science fiction can be ahead of its time
October 16, 2010
Ben Bova
Naplesnews.com

have published 124 books, and while you may think that’s a lot, I’m a piker compared to some.

According to Trivia-Library.com, South African author Mary Faulkner (1903-1973) has 904 books to her credit, most of them romance novels.

The redoubtable Alexandre Dumas, pere, author of “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” is credited with 277 books — which puts him next to last on the list of the 20 most-prolific authors.

My first published book came out in 1959. But the one I wrote before that — which was never published — is a much more interesting story.

I started writing it in 1949, on a rented portable typewriter resting literally on an orange crate in the basement of my parents’ house, in which I lived. I was 17 years old, just graduated from high school and on my way to college.

I was thoroughly absorbed by science fiction, so I wrote about the first man to set foot on the moon. What else?

The background of my novel sprang from the fact that Soviet Russia had just exploded its first atomic bomb, many years earlier than most American intelligence analysts thought they would. The Cold War suddenly got very dangerous.

So I wrote a novel in which Soviet Russia goes into space before the Americans do, catching us by surprise. The U.S. launches a desperate program to get Americans to the moon before the Russians get there.

A crazy plot. Nobody believed it. Nobody wanted to buy my novel.

I sent my novel to every publishing house in New York. In those days before Internet communications, it took months for a publisher to bounce the manuscript back to me with a rejection note. Years went by as I stubbornly continued to mail out the tattered pile of paper. No sale. Not even a nibble.

In desperation, I sent the manuscript to a publishing house in Philadelphia, where I lived. They published science fiction for young adult readers.

Lo and behold! I received a letter from the editor, inviting me to his office to discuss the matter. I zoomed up there as fast as a trolley car could take me.

The editor was a kindly gentleman who told me, near as I can remember his words:

“Look, kid. This novel of yours isn’t as bad as some of the things we do publish. But you’ve got this weird plot: the Russians going into space before we do. Nobody’s going to believe that.”

So much for literary quality.

“Besides,” the editor went on, “there’s this guy in Washington, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who’s searching for communists all over the country. If we published a novel that even hinted that the Russians were smarter than we are, he’d make our lives miserable.”

I was dumbfounded to think that a publisher would allow politics to interfere with art.

“So forget this novel,” he went on. “Dump it. Go home and write another novel that’s set so far in the future that nobody can connect it with today’s politics.”

I left his office awash with conflicting emotions. I was overjoyed that he thought my writing was good enough to be published. I was also furious that they wouldn’t publish my masterpiece because of some politician.

It took me a long time to realize that the man was inviting me to write a novel for publication. A very long time. Years.

And during those years my unpublished novel became history. The Russians did stun the world with Sputnik in 1957. The U.S. did indeed launch a crash program called Apollo to get Americans to the moon before the Russians got there.

I finally wised up enough to take the editor’s advice. Hoping that he still wanted to hear from me, I took the biography of Alexander the Great and cast it into an interstellar space opera. Earth was being menaced by an empire of evil reptilian creatures who had conquered just about the entire Milky Way galaxy. But the plucky Earthlings take on the big guys and smash them flat. Just the way Alexander’s Macedonians knocked out the Persian empire.

That they bought. My first published novel, “The Star Conquerors,” came out in 1959. The first of 124.

And counting.