The American Century: Literature since 1945 737deeper forms of community – and gives them a new twist. This is a new siting of a
series of classic tropes. So is another novel, Childhood’s End (1954), by an equally
influential science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008). This is a story about
the end of the world due, not to some humanly produced catastrophe, but because
the human race achieves a total breakthrough into pure mind. It is experienced by
all the children under 10, who suddenly cease to be individuals and become a vast
group endowed with extraordinary powers. Jan, the last man on earth and observer
of its final hours, watches the children; “their faces,” he comments, “were merging
into a common mold” as they serve and merge into what is called here the Overmind.
The whole trajectory of the narrative, with its driving impulse of life disentangling
itself from the flesh to become pure intelligence, is in fact distinctly transcendentalist:
Overmind, after all, seems to echo the Emersonian notion of the Over-soul. This is
another story that rewrites old American stories in new forms.
Apocalypse of a very different kind occurs in the Dune series of Frank Herbert
(1920–1986). Dune (1965), one of the most successful science fiction novels ever, is
a complex story of intrigue, mysticism, and ecological theory. Its messianic hero,
Paul Atreides, known as Maud’dib’, is descended from a line of space migrants who
have been guided by the simple precept “thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” Creating
an alien, elaborate, but credible environment, Herbert combines action with
speculation. As the human species struggles for survival against terrible odds, the
narrative invites the reader to consider questions of social control, free will and
determinism, and the relation between human nature, nature, and technology. In
the sequels to Dune, Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976), the perils of
the messianic impulse are explored. “We’re locked into forms, of government, of
belief and behavior which draw us to keep repeating ourselves,” Herbert has said.
“That’s one of the points I wanted to make in Dune.” He does so by showing the
universe explode in violence, in a “jihad” or holy war: as the vision of Maud’dib’ is
debased by a theocratic bureaucracy and the messiah himself departs for the
wilderness leaving his children to inherit the burden. With an ambition equal to that
of Herbert, Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) explored the nature of human history in his
Foundation series: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), Second
Foundation (1953), Foundation’s Edge (1982), and Foundation and Earth (1986).
Asimov was also prodigiously productive. He published his first science fiction tale
in Amazing Stories in 1938; by the time of his death, he had published 470 titles in
science fiction and a number of other forms and genres.
Ray Bradbury (1920–) published numerous short stories before establishing his
reputation with The Martian Chronicles (1950). It describes the first attempts of
Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, the thwarting of their efforts by the
gentle, telepathic Martians, the eventual colonization and the eventual effect on
the Martian settlers of a nuclear war on Earth. As much a work of social criticism
as anything, the novel explores some of the prevailing anxieties of the 1950s
and beyond: the fear of war, the longing for a simpler life, the resistance to racism
and censorship. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is also a cautionary tale that uses an
imagined future to critique the present. The title refers to the temperature at whichGGray_c05.indd 737ray_c 05 .indd 737 8 8/1/2011 7:31:42 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 42 PM