The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/When Genres Collide

Written by
Michael L. Shuman

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Abstract: Norman Mailer’s first treatment of science fiction, “The Last Night,” appeared at an important point in the development of modern speculative fiction, and in many ways demonstrates both the early condition of the genre and how a great author may combine traditional literature’s considerations of the human heart with the cosmic implications of science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Andre Norton, producing a medium of revelation and prophecy. “The Last Night” helps to merge science fiction with mainstream literature, two genres colliding in Campbell’s era, into a single form capable of informing a technological culture. The motifs of the generational starship carrying passengers from a dying earth may have developed in the mid-century science fiction context, but Mailer excels in using the conventions of the genre to present a prescient recognition of mankind’s essential misjudgment and treachery, against his fellows and ultimately against the planet that gave us birth. The suspect science of Mailer’s treatment, along with the indeterminate time of the story’s setting, contributes to the aura of myth and heroism that transforms the work into a document of prophecy.

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John W. Campbell, editor of the magazine Astounding and its later incarnation, Analog, was perhaps the dominant voice in the science fiction community as the genre endeavored to attain legitimacy. For more than three decades, between 1937 and his death in 1971, Campbell offered an aspirational venue for writers who wanted to combine speculative inquiry into scientific and technological advances with fictional plots that were engaging enough to command a paying audience. Campbell’s editorial policy, maintained by providing plot ideas to prospective authors and the liberal use of his editorial authority to suggest revisions, demanded that fiction should be grounded in scientifically plausible developments that would withstand an engineer’s close examination. “As an editor,” writes Alec Nevala-Lee, “he wanted good writing, accurate science, believable characters, and stories that logically accounted for multiple variables.” The era of popular fast-paced adventure stories, emphasizing ray guns and action, was nearing its end. The approach worked, attracting an extensive readership of technical professionals. One legend common within the science fiction community maintains that, in the early 1940s, Campbell could tell that some grand scientific project was underway as his office received a rush of change-of- address forms with a post office box in Santa Fe—near Los Alamos—as the new address. The tale may well be apocryphal, but Nevala-Lee’s account of the rumor does much to affirm Campbell’s attention to his subscribers as well as his readership of scientists and engineers.

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Works Cited

• Nevala-Lee, Alec (2018). Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. HarperCollins.