Preventing Tomorrows: Harry Harrison and the Most Dangerous Sea

We all try to project our thoughts into the future, using special portions of our brains called prefrontal lobes to mentally probe the murky realm ahead. These tiny neural organs let us envision, fantasize and explore possible consequences of our actions, sometimes even noticing some errors and evading some mistakes.

Humans have had these mysterious nubs of gray matter -- sometimes called the "lamps on our brows" -- since before the Neolithic. What has changed lately is how we use them, devoting a large fraction of the modern economy to predicting, forecasting, planning, investing, making bets, or just preparing for times to come. Which variety of seer you listen to is just a matter of style. (Some prefer horoscopes, while others like to hear consultants in Armani suits present a convincing "business case.") Each of us hopes to prepare for what's coming in the years ahead. This may be the chief distinction between humanity and other denizens of the planet, helping explain our mastery over the world.

Among all these would-be prophets, science fiction authors have been credited with a few forecasting coups. And yet, many of us find all this frenetic passion to predict somewhat quaint. We shrug when asked what to "expect". Like seasoned explorers, we know that a great many more things might happen than actually do. There are infinitely more plausabilities than likelihoods.

All of which leads naturally to honoring Harry Harrison, one of our greatest and most daring explorers, a writer who looks and acts the part of a grizzled eighteenth century sea captain -- perhaps even a pirate! -- while carrying his passengers on adventures beyond reach of any mundane navigator.

The Sea of Plausability never saw a greater buccaneer.

Is that enough? For most writers, it's plenty... helping readers escape the here and now on rafts of wonder. With unquenchable verve and adrenaline -- and often with hilarity -- Harry has delivered this service over and over. And yet, like all ambitious fellows, he hungers to do more than just spin engaging tales. Why not use the same tools to divert fate a bit? Is it too much to ask, along the way, to maybe change the world and help make it a better place?

Fiction can do this, if it hits the right target at the right time, resonating with those ever-vigilant lamps on our brows. For example, one of the most powerful novels of all time, published fifty years ago, foresaw a dark future that never came to pass. That we escaped the destiny portrayed in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, may be owed in part to the way his chilling tale affected millions, who then girded themselves to fight "Big Brother" to their last breath.

In other words, Orwell may have helped make his own scenario not come true.

Since then, many other "self-preventing prophecies" rocked the public's conscience or awareness, perhaps helping us deflect disaster.Who can doubt that films like Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach, and Fail-Safe helped caution us against dangers of inadvertent nuclear war? The China Syndrome, The Hot Zone -- and even Das Kapital -- arguably fit in this genre of works whose credibility and worrisome vividness help prevent their own scenarios from coming true. (I'm sure Karl Marx would not appreciate my view of his true role, as possibly the greatest science fiction author of all time. But his works had more long-lasting positive effects in the West, where they were seen as plausible dystopic failure modes, frightening millions into pushing for social reform, than in the East where they were followed blindly as pseudo-religious prescriptions.)

The self-preventing prophecy may, indeed, be more powerful than anyone has hitherto credited. Many serious scientists feel we would now have a barren world, if we had continued to ignore environmental abuse the way earlier generations did -- a mistake we may have somewhat averted thanks to warnings like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Harry Harrison's Soylent Green. (Yes, Harry, I know how you feel about the movie. We've argued before about whether an author must accept half a loaf, when dealing with Hollywood -- as I learned with Kevin Costner's addled but big-hearted Postman film. Nevertheless, Soylent Green's chilling beauty and horrific warning help turn millions toward environmentalism... and the brightest of them went on to read Make Room! Make Room!)

Like many of his peers -- including George Orwell -- Harry often punctuated his action-packed stories with serious messages, helping show us the pitfalls awaiting civilization, if we combine panic with technology and the dark, cynical tradition of tyranny. These myths have ironically helped to arm and gird us, instilling a rebel image deep within our shared imaginations. Unlike the sheeplike citizens of Nineteen Eighty-Four, we've become a rambunctious lot, in part because role models like Harry have refused to let us be anything else.

No conceivable power center -- from governments and corporations to criminal and techno-elites -- can escape penetrating scrutiny by a fellow whose very soul rumbles with suspicion toward authority.

If Giordano Bruno, Edmund Halley and Benjamin Franklin could be brought back to life, I feel sure they'd go bar-hopping with Harry Harrison,

Suspicion toward authority, yet. But also an abhorrence of cliches! Thus, Harry rejects the gloomy pessimism that seems so fashionable these days, among those who wear tedious black all the time and sneer stylish nihilism as if they invented it. Above all, he despises the dour mantra that children must repeat the mistakes of their parents. When this odious message found home in a series of anthologies that revelled in combat themes -- predicting that there will always be war -- it was Harry Harrison who courageously stood up to denounce the whole premise as vile.

Worse, (from a science fictional point of view), it was horribly unimaginative. In response, he has striven (with much success) to show that lively adventures may take place in a context of human improvement and progress. We had better hope he's right. Or else, why have children in the first place?

Perhaps this points to something bigger and more important than mere fiction. Our civilization's success depends at least as much on the mistakes we avoid as successes we plan. Sadly, no one compiles lists of these narrow escapes, which somehow seem less interesting than each week's fashionable crisis. People can point to a few species saved from extinction... and our good fortune at avoiding nuclear war. That's about it for famous near-misses. But once you start listing them, it turns out we have had quite an impressive roll call of dodged bullets and lucky breaks. Hope glimmers. It may even be growing. Shall we credit this, in part, to those daring bards who cry out danger as they peer just a little way ahead of us, into the murky future?

If so, future generations will surely sing about Harry, as we do now. What a guy.