Takeoff!
Authors: Randall Garrett
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction; American, #Parodies
Takeoff
By Randall Garrett
Copyright © 1979
Cover illustration by Phil Foglio
Interior illustrations by Kelly Freas
Edited by Polly and Kelly Freas
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Jerry Moore, without whose indefatigable research it would not have been possible.
Table of Contents
DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE
ISAAC ASIMOV’S “THE CAVES OF STEEL”
ALFRED BESTER’S “THE DEMOLISHED MAN”
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP’S “LEST DARKNESS FALL”
POUL ANDERSON’S “THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS”
JOHN W. CAMBELL’S “WHO GOES THERE?”
THE ADVENTURES OF “LITTLE WILLIE”
INTRODUCTION TO BENEDICT BREADFRUIT
THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH BENEDICT BREADFRUIT
INTRODUCTION
By A. E. van Vogt
In my opinion, the author of
Takeoff
should have been under official surveillance from the day he was conceived. At some distant future time, when we really know how to do things right, such as Randall Garrett will be watched closely from a very early age.
Why?
About 10 years ago I read a new work by the famous Russian psychologist, A. R. Luria (whose book
The Nature of Human Conflicts
made him world famous many decades earlier). The new work, possibly Luria’s last, was about a man with the “greatest” memory in all of Russia.
Well! ...I don’t know whether Randall Garrett has in his time possessed the greatest memory in North America, or if he still possesses it. But I am sure that he has been right up there with the finalists.
I cannot recall anyone ever mentioning Randall’s super ability. No American Luria sought him out, tested him periodically, and finally wrote him up as a case history of eidetic recall.
Actually, the Luria account of the Russian memory wizard was not up to the standard of this scientist’s earlier work—from my point of view. It gave the numerous tests and their results. It described to a small extent some of the memory aids the Russian had worked out all by himself. (There were some elements in these of the Roth memory-by-association system.) But it failed to describe any of the commonplaces of, or the side effects of the ability on, the man’s daily life. The commonplaces of Randall’s life shall come under closer scrutiny—let me assure you—right here in these pages. Though neither I nor anyone else has apparently ever received direct replies from him on basic aspects of his life. When was Randall born? The only printed clue I have been able to find is given in the editor’s introduction to the original magazine version of Masters of
the Metropolis,
as follows:
“Randall Garrett and Lin Carter had not been born when Hugo Gernsback created RALPH 124C 41+. To stress their youth further (for one can, like me, be far from young and still have been born after the first appearance of RALPH in Modern Electrics), they had not even been born when Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first all-science-fiction magazine….”
Yet, sitting across from me and my Russian princess at the L,A. airport Mariott Hotel Capriccio Restaurant recently, Randall made the statement that he had known me for 30 years.
He is the one with the eidetic memory. So, since Gernsback founded Amazing in 1926 (and Randall wasn’t born by then), and thirty years ago was 1948, we can put two and one together into twenty-one, or two and zero together into twenty.
Randall, did you emerge into this cruel world in 1927.? Or was that strange party you gave in the spring of 1978 a celebration of half a hundred years of life?
Where was I in 1948 that our paths crossed? I have many memories of Randall over the years. But that ‘48 meeting is a blur to a memory-mine-that cannot even recall the title of Luria’s book on Russia’s greatest observed rememberer.
(Alas, I bought the book. Read it. Gave it as a gift to a friend. And have never been able to locate another copy.)
Are Randall’s parents still alive? Where was Randall born? Where did he go to school’? What was the title of his first published work? Does he have brothers and sisters? Was he born a Catholic? Or did he convert?
These last two, particularly, are relevant questions, Because Randall for ten years (after his initial foray into SF) attended seminary training, and became a Catholic priest.
Did his Russian alter ego experience some similar moral concern? There is no record of such details in Luria’s work.
It is interesting that the Russian with the supermemory was a newspaper reporter when Luria first met him. I mean, both men—Randall and the Russian—became writers automatically. Since Luria does not mention it, and because newspapermen do not normally have their works collected, we cannot examine the writings of the Russian mental marvel for clues about his personal life.
Fortunately, that is not our problem with Randall. He has a body of literature to his credit. Of which you, dear reader, hold a portion in your hands. And a very revealing portion it is.
In these pages you will find...pastiches. Stories written in the styles of other writers. Here you will find E. E. Smith, Ph.D. and H. P. Lovecraft and Eric Frank Russell as if returned from the dead, etc. Randall remembers each author’s style exactly. In the case of the E. E. Smith “takeoff’ he actually, after more than thirty years, repeated an entire paragraph of E. E. Smith’s without having seen the story in the interim. Since he had made no conscious effort to memorize the story at the time he read it, he subsequently realized by vivid recall what he had done, and rewrote the offending item. Rewrote it because there are unknowing people who would have considered it plagiarism if it had ever come to light.
The pastiche, though not called such, is a well-known phenomenon of the Hollywood film game. It is an act of paralleling someone else’s work, using a new concept. So far as I know, no psychologist has ever made a serious study of the TV writers—particularly—who do this well. (Do they also have exceptional memories?)
Each week these men and women write the exact same format for a continuing series, but with a different story. If you think this is easy, try it some time. (The writers who find such paralleling sheer agony are the ones you hear screaming about TV censorship. The others collect their $10,000 or so for an hour script without a peep of protest. And in fact they seem to wonder what all the fuss is about.)
Randall is a mimic in voice, also. Like an actor, he can duplicate the way other people talk, and imitate the exact intonation of a foreign language. I am personally, currently, in process of learning 200 languages, and, not being the mimic type, am learning them on the hearing level only, to start. As a consequence of this study, I have observed that less than 5% of the populace are mimics.
One of the first things to notice about a Randall Garrett story, pastiche or otherwise, is the elegance of his style. The beauty of his imagery. The easy insertion of difficult technical information. No matter what he writes, the style flows poetically.
Which reminds me that in England, until recently, students were required to memorize thousands of lines of poetry during a school year. Shakespeare, in the days of Elizabeth I, had to do the same. Virtually all the men and women who gave England such a rich poetic heritage were forced memorizers.
So it is interesting that we find our Randall of the marvelous natural memory writing his reviews in poetic form. Entire novels are condensed, and commented on-poetically. Think about that. And when you read the reviews in this collection bear in mind that no one ever told Randall to do it that way.
Undoubtedly, perfect memory has its drawbacks. For example’ one is bound to recall—perfectly—the unpleasant along with the pleasant. Once again, Luria—from whom we could have learned so much that would be useful-fails us. He does not mention that aspect of the greatest memory in all the Russias.
Indeed, toward the end of his book we suddenly find him referring to the man as having died several years before. How did he die? From what? Was the death memory-related? Not a mention of such in Luria’s work.
At this point let me apologize slightly for these criticisms of the great Russian psychologist. I believe he was over eighty years old when he wrote this final book. Also, we have to credit him with having done anything at all. So far as I know, it is the only work of its kind ever published by a psychologist.
But it’s true, alas, that he has no advice for Randall as to what to watch out for as he grows into his second half century.
I do have one comment. It is significant that Randall, when he drinks, takes his liquor straight—no water, no 7-Up, no dilution with ice. What is significant about this is that liquor is the one thing that can temporarily dim vivid unpleasant memory images.
We live in an intermediate stage of history. The great scientific millennium is still ahead of us. When that millennium arrives, both special and unspecial—an even more difficult type to evaluate or help-people will be noticed early for what they are, or are capable of.
And the correct action will be taken.
Until then, here’s Randall who, in doing the best he could on his own with a perfect memory, has given us a few glimpses of that strange, wonderful world of the human mind. Question: is it possible that all people with good memories have a need to write pastiches?
Which brings us back to what I said earlier: somebody in authority should be looking into Randall Garrett. And maybe even looking after him.
FOREWORD
By
Randall Garrett
In the first chapter of Tolkien’s Fellowship of
the
Ring, the venerable Bilbo Baggins makes a speech at the party he is giving to celebrate his eleventy-first birthday. In that speech, he tells the assembled hobbits that he does not know half of them as well as he should like, and he likes less than half of them half as well as they deserve.
Most of his guests sit around trying to work it out and see if it comes out a compliment.
I am still doing exactly the same thing with Van’s introduction to this book.
Van vastly underrates his own memory and even more vastly overrates mine. I remember our first meeting well, but
Why should A. E. Van Vogt, who has been a glittering star in the science fiction firmament since 1939, remember an unimpressive, awestruck fan who had one very minor story published under another name four years before? That summer of 1948, I found his name in the L.A. phone book and trepidatingly called him up. I must have said something right, for he invited me to his home.