Constitutions Like Dust
I was reading a review of Isaac Asimov’s STARS LIKE DUST, his second published novel. The reviewer had this tidbit as the central paragraph of the review:
The main flaw with the book is the inclusion of the silly search for a mysterious document from Earth’s past which will utterly revolutionize the Galaxy. The document, in the end, turns out to be the Constitution of the United States. This subplot was added to the book at the insistence of Horace Gold, who was scheduled to serialize the novel in Galaxy. Asimov wanted to remove it from the hardcover publication, but his editor at Doubleday, Walter Bradbury, objected. As a result, Asimov lost all real interest in what was probably not one of his better stories to begin with. He finished it mostly to get it out of the way, and his disinterest shows. (As he points out, the idea that the Constitution should be amenable to governing large portions of the Galaxy seems ridiculous—particularly after the 2000 Presidential election and its exercise in the vagaries of the Electoral College.)
Speaking as a lawyer, patriot, and a Constitutional scholar, let me just answer that parenthetical comment once I clean the coffee from my Danny Kaye spit-take off my computer monitor.
But let me first, as a gentleman should, compliment the reviewer on the love and care he brought to the task of putting together a site to honor Isaac Asimov, one of the Big Three Luminaries of the science fiction field. Every Asimov novel and short story is reviewed there, and the love and admiration of a fan of Asimov is a pleasure to see. I salute his knowledge of Asimov even while I criticize his knowledge of the Constitution. I hope any harsh words I have for this fellow’s lack of legal perspicuity are ameliorated by the fondness I have for a fellow fan of Asimov. Any reviewer who can make you want to go back and reread an old favorite has done his work.
The purpose of the Electoral College is to ensure that large, populous states do not, merely by dint of their numerical size, overwhelm and render meaningless the votes of the states smaller but no less sovereign. The purposes of the Constitution were fulfilled rather than diminished by the election result on 2000. Those of you who think this nation is or ought to be a direct democracy after the fashion of ancient Athens or revolutionary French are living in the wrong country, and maybe even on the wrong planet, but in either case, you have not bothered to read or gasp what the Founding Fathers intended.
The purpose of the Electoral College is not to elect Democrat party hacks and quacks like Al Gore to office. The purpose is to preserve the smaller states against the tyranny of the majority. It is not one of the vagaries of the system that the urbane Democrats on the East and West coast cannot outvote fly-over country. It is not a bug, it is a feature.
Now I find it not just alarming, but morbid, like finding a wound turning gangrenous, that folk of any walk of life could casually mention the Electoral College as if it were a symbol or example that the US Constitution is absurd, outdated, or ridiculous.
It strikes me as grotesque that contempt for the Constitution is now a commonplace sentiment, particularly among those circles who claim that their dissent is a form of patriotism.
These people are not our enemies—certainly not some conscientious science fiction fan who reviews the same books I like—but this idea is an enemy idea.
It is a diseased idea, a combination of arrogance and historical illiteracy and “the grass must be greener in other fields beyond our sight” syndrome called Utopianism. It is also, in this particular case, a type of infantile petulance. The Democrats lost the 2000 election fair and square, and after squawking and squalling to the umpire, now they want to take their ball and go home, tear up the Constitution more, and declare Democracy a failure. Well, that is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy: a democracy where one of the factions is not willing to abide by the outcome of any elections their candidates do not win is indeed a failure.
Turning from the general to the particular, I am not just astonished at Asimov, but disappointed that he should dare say such a thing in public.
Let me tell you what I recall about Stars Like Dust. It is a forgettable book, with one redeeming feature.
The story is about a number of planets, all of whom are ruled by one form or another of oligarchy. In the book it is expressly said that because the colony planets have a low population level, the worlds failed to practice and soon forgot the painful lessons of Earth history, and the art and science of political economics, which is the art that aims are establishing as much peace as is consonant with order, and as much order as is consonant with peace. The political evolution on Earth eventually discovered the system of government, based on a sound knowledge of human nature and human history, that maximized liberty while minimizing the danger from domestic insurrection or foreign invasion. The McGuffin that all the spies and counterspies in the book seek for is an ancient document that embodies this wisdom—the US Constitution.
As a child, when I read the ending lines of Stars Like Dust, which were also the opening lines of the Constitution, a tear came to my eye. Since I was a rather dry-eyed and unsentimental youth, this was quite an accomplishment.
I thought then, and still do, that the image of a man under the light of some far sun, in years yet unknown, facing countless enemies and insurmountable odds, struggling to resurrect that same dream of human liberty that we all love and serve, a dream both forgotten in his time and threatened in our own, is as moving as discovering some beautiful bride, thought dead and lying in her white gown in her coffin, was but enchanted, trapped in ageless sleep, but now is recovered, as if from the kiss of a prince, or, in this case, a patriot who loves her. It is a deeply beautiful and powerful image.
Because in the book the United States, and most of the surface of the Earth, is a radioactive wasteland, how fragile and how precious our liberties and institutions truly are is emphasized. Men of other worlds yet unnamed may look back at the glory of America as we look back at the Republic of Rome, the Democracy of Athens, the splendor of Nineveh and Tyre. It was a sobering thought to me as a child, and is not a frivolous thought to adults. Some say that the difference between child and adult is the knowledge of one’s own mortality. The difference between mature and immature politics is the knowledge that one’s beloved polis is mortal also.
So having the memory of the US Constitution be the driving force behind the plot is brilliant and poignant. And it is the only thing worth remembering in the whole book. The editor, Gold, knew what he was doing, and the author, Asimov, simply did not.
Take out that McGuffin and you got nuthin’.
In Stars Like Dust, Asimov’s rather forgettable characters (I can recall the name of not one of them) run around the Horsehead Nebula, sabotaging hypermotors and getting shot and gasping out secret coordinates with a dying breath and leading villains astray to empty star systems and pretending to be timid collaborators or pretending to be idiots to avoid the paranoid wrath of a group of tyrants (called, with surprisingly unsubtle directness, the Tyranni), and in all this sound and fury not much of any import happens, and no scenes that I can recall except the ending.
I do recall that in addition to the Khan of the Tyranni, the other planets are ruled by the Lord Rancher of Widemos, the Director of Rhodia, the Autarch of Lingane … and not a democracy among them.
In the meanwhile, unmentioned and offstage, Trantor is a rising power that will soon spread (with the slow inevitability of an equation by Hari Seldon) to rule a Galactic Empire where the liberty and freedom of Man is never once mentioned, not in any story by this author in his remaining volumes of future history.
The idea of self-government is not derided or dismissed in Asimov’s other works, it just does not come up at all, no more than romance or eroticism or race relations comes up. Some things just were not on the radar for authors in the 1950’s who had no interest in being controversial or challenging convention. Constitutional Democracy simply was not an issue Asimov addressed in any of his books, except, apparently against his will, in this one.
As best I can tell, this was a rule and not an exception for science fiction of that day and age. Indeed, I can recall not a single book before Robert Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress that addressed the topic of Democracy at all.
In fact, let me propose a simple and entirely unscientific test. List for yourself the most famous or best remembered Sci-Fi books from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and see if you can recall what the political system the imagineers of the future foretold, and see if any of them had anything good to say about Constitutional Democracy.
Relying on nothing but my fading memory of books and stories I read decades ago, I will start the ball rolling by compiling a list
- The Mule by Isaac Asimov [1945] — A Foundation story, where all parties are attempting to found the next galactic empire. Terminus is run by a Mayor with unlimited powers, Kalgan by a warlord, and the Second Foundation by an oligarchy of psionic scientists. The main characters start as rebels and free traders, but their role in history, or in psychohistory, is to lead to the Second Empire.
- The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt [1945] — A galactic empire (with the best name for a galactic empire ever ‘The Greatest Empire Ever to Exist in Time and Space’) is assaulting an anarchist utopia run by an informal group of detectives, who seem to be something like computer-appointed philosopher kings.
- That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis [1946] — Not sure what to make of this one. A divinely appointed King and Arthur-figure, Ransom, opposes a group of scheming scientific warlocks and bureaucrats in service to fallen angels. The baddies are clearly corrupting Western democracy.
- Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein [1950] — I don’t recall if the colonists had a democracy or not. Seem to recall the colonial authority pushing people around with typical authoritarian arrogance, and the rough and ready colonials getting their dander up–but I might be conflating this with Red Planet, which had a similar theme.
- Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov [1950] — Trantor is in charge, and their opposition is cardboard-cutout theocratic genocides called The Brotherhood.
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis [1950] — More divine kingship.
- First Lensman by Edward E. Smith [1950] — Aha! There is a clearly pro-democratic depiction of an election, and the attempts of reformers to clean up crooked machine politics, and the military authority remains subservient to the civilian authority. A noticeable stand out. The triumph of Civilization is here explicitly equated with democratic government and is the central concern of the book.
- The Dying Earth by Jack Vance [1950] — The senile earth is governed by sinister overcivilized wizards dabbling in the relics of forgotten lore.
- “Scanners Live in Vain” by Cordwainer Smith [1950] — The Instrumentality is running things, and, as far as I recall, they do not allow the scanners to vote.
- The Man Who Sold the Moon [1950] — Don’t recall if there was a democratic form of government in the background. I assume there was some sort of liberty, because the main character in the foreground is a free-wheeling Capitalist at his best. So, Heinlein and EE ‘Doc’ Smith seem to be the exceptions and stand outs.
- “The Helping Hand” by Poul Anderson [1950] — I don’t recall off hand if this was a ‘League’ story or an ‘Imperium’ story, but in either case, I do not recall that the meddling do-gooders in the tale were exemplars of the good points of democracy in action: but we can interpret this as a cautionary tale that favors the ‘keep your hands to yourself’ version of democracy Conservatives prefer.
- The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester [1951] — I simply do not recall. Were the telepathic policemen the governing body, or where they controlled by the voters? The main bad guy was an industrialist financier of some sort.
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury [1953] — As ringing a condemnation of a television-addicted, consumerist, anti-intellectual culture as has ever been penned. If the firemen are burning your books, the government, whether ruled by a tyrannous minority or a tyrannous majority, is not what we call a free or limited government. Also a cautionary tale, but (in my opinion) it is warning about a type of spiritual decay more sinister than mere censorship. It is not the simplistic moral of “Eek! Evil Republicans are coming to burn my porn!” that some simpletons take it to be.
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke [ 1953] — The earth is ruled by benevolent Overlords in order the aid the human race to a graceful extinction, in order that a higher order of being may be born among the children of men, psychic creatures willing and eager to be subsumed into the Cosmic Over-Mind. Sort of like The Midwich Cuckoos by Wyndham, except where the author is rooting for the cuckoos.
- The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov [ 1953] — I recall one scene in the overpopulated future where a father is instructing his son on proper etiquette to use in the lines leading to the public urinals. I don’t recall what form of government was in charge. Was it one of those typical Asimovian ‘World Coordinators’?
- Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein [1956] — The main character is an actor impersonating a politician who seek re-election. Best I can tell from the hints, it is another democracy, if perhaps a corrupt one.
- Have Spacesuit – Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein [1958]— Earth has some sort of democracy in charge; the aliens are run by a combination of machine and living being consensus. Their philosophy of government is to kill any race that may one day threaten them, which sounds like typical Heinlein common sense, until you stop and realize the allegedly advanced and enlightened alien consensus rules by means of a series of bloodthirsty genocides with even less excuse that Attila the Hun or Gharlane of Eddore provided. (It always strikes me as ironic that when people badmouth Heinlein’s politics, they hold up Starship Troopers as an example of fascism, even though it is clearly a democracy with limited government, independent judiciary, freedom of the press and all that jazz (differing only in that the right to vote must be earned my military or public service) but the badmouthers never mention the grotesquery of the Mother Thing’s People “kill-’em-now” philosophy in this book as an example of fascism.)
- “The Miracle-Workers” by Jack Vance [1958]— petty warlords rule armies of soldiers and a priesthood of hypnotists and voodoo workers. No democracy in sight.
- Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson [ 1959] — I simply cannot recall: I am under the vague impression that Dorsai is ruled by a military caste, the Friendly Worlds by a Church authority. I don’t recall who runs Earth or the Exotic worlds. The main character here is yet one more version of the 2nd-stage Lensman style breeding program to produce a genetic superman, the Kwisatz Haderach.
This are all winners of Hugos or Retro-Hugos, or nominated candidates. It is not a scientific poll by any means, merely a snapshot of what one era of science fiction fandom thought worthy of award and praise. The upshot of it is that, of the major writers, only the old fashioned pulp space operas writer EE Doc Smith seemed to go out of his way to portray Democracy as an unabashedly good thing. Heinlein’s books are more cautious, and seem to portray democracy was a (mostly) good engine that needed to be lubricated by the blood of patriots and tyrants to be kept running. Poul Andersen’s tales might fit in that cautious category as well. Heinlein in several of his juveniles portrayed overpopulation as the inevitable outcome and invincible foe of democracy: more than one book of his portrays liberty as a side effect of the elbow room of wide & wild frontiers.
But the vast majority of futures, at least those I can bring to mind, were run by benevolent science councils, malevolent military councils, Galactic emperors, genetic supermen, computers benevolent or otherwise, philosopher-kings benevolent or otherwise, and for variety there was the occasional nugget of anarchist utopia.
No one else writing in the 1950’s had too much to say about the issue. Sex and politics, the central concerns of the human race since roughly the Neolithic, were not central concerns in Golden Age science fiction.
From all this can we deduce what these authors think about Democracy versus other forms of government? Not unless your mind-reading Lens of Arisia is better polished than mine, dear reader.
Monarchies have a innate drama to them which Democracies lack. Rescuing a space princess has more inherent fairy-tale sentiment than rescuing the daughter of a powerful space senator or a wealthy space industrialist, or even the daughter of a virile yet slightly embarrassed space-Pope. Also, in terms of story telling, having the your hero at the last minute tell the Supreme Calculator of Mars (or whoever) that Prince Darkstorm von Kruel (or whoever) is the real traitor and that the fluffbunny folk of Phobos are innocent (or whoever) allows the author to have the Supremarch merely throw the wight into the disintegratron pit there and then, declare war on Jupiter, suspend the death sentence hanging the head of loyal sidekick Bigby Stockchum, and wrap things up in a paragraph. Having the Senate subcommittee on False Accusations put the villain on trial, then have the Congress debate the pros and cons of war, and the appeals court decide the fate of Bigby, while the Executive Cabinet debates and votes on the fluffbunny question, while it might be a good deal more democratic, takes up precious story telling time.
So merely because an author puts an autocrat into a tale does not mean he favors or fears that kind of system; and we science fiction fans want to hear about things in the future that are different from the present, not that are the same. If you live in a fairly well run democracy as in the United States circa 1950, your interest is more likely to the pulled toward the drama of ill-run democracies or non-democracies circa 1984 or circa 632 After Ford than to something no different from what is in your own town courthouse down the street.
I know not, dear reader, how you judge your father’s futures, but I hope any reader willing to smile at the Golden Age of SF for its innocence will also salute that age for producing stories that range from the memorable to the re-readable to the immortal.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
