The Tongue Unfolds
Smokeclown; or, The Fire That Fizzled
by The Editor
I have finished reading a most frustrating book, for when one reads a totally
bad book possessing no merits whatsoever, one feels no regrets, except possibly
for the time wasted on the thing. But when one reads a book which shows a
great deal of potentiality, but fails to live up to it, this is tragic -- and
frustrating. Michael Moorcock's The Fireclown is such a book.
The society of 2095 which Moorcock deals with is nothing new to sf; but certain
aspects of it are highly probable, and others are existent today. In brief,
disarmament has been achieved; world peace and a democratic world government
has existed for a hundred years; the thought of atomic warfare is unthinkable
and men are probably less capable of dealing with the possibility than we
currently are since we're living under the threat of it. Although intercourse
exists with other worlds of the solar system, the problem of Earth is one of
stagnation, of men becoming herd-like and unindividualized in their huge
cities. (For example, the capital of the world, Switzerland, is virtually an
entire city with 17 levels underground.)
The problem Moorcock presents is similar to that presented by Asimov in his
Caves of Steeel and The Naked Sun, but Moorcock's Fireclown, contrasted against
the stagnant, artificial world Moorcock has depicted, communicates the problem
more personally to the reader -- perhaps because the Fireclown has such an
engaging personality. Asimov's presentation, on the other hand, is rather
general and impersonal.
The Fireclown is a fiery, enigmatic creature, full of spirited laughter and
uninhibited naturalness. He's appealing as is the Ticktockman in Harlan
Ellison's story, and dangerous for exactly the same reason: his wild
individuality presents a threat to the mechanical conformity that makes a
smoothly running society. In reality, the Fireclown's enemies are not the
higher-ups running the pasture for the cows' own good; his enemies are the
inertia and artificiality of the masses, a condition present today and more
likely to increase in the future. This is a more probable future, certainly,
than the radicality of Ellison's postulated society which amounts to certain
aspects of our own society being enlarged and distorted for the sake of impact
and warning. Ellison's story is more an example of a parable than one of
realism.
Ironically, and tragically, the Fireclown isn't dangerous for the reasons he
should be dangerous -- his ideas (much for the same reasons Thoreau was such a
dangerous writer and thinker). Those ideas would have turned society
upsidedown, and men's lives too, to something deeper, richer and more human.
Or, at least, one would like to think so.
"I want you only to become aware! You can change your physical environment,
certainly. But first you must change your mental attitude. Study the words
you are using today. Study them and you will find them meaningless. You have
emotions -- you have words. But the words you have do not describe your
emotions. Try to think of words that will! Then you will be strong. Then you
will have no need for your stupid, over-vaunted so-called 'intelligence',"
speaks the Fireclown (pg. 38).
The Fireclown does gain a mass of followers, but not for the reason Helen
Curtis suggests when she says, "...in his naive and simple manner, he has
reawakened mankind's spirit!" Actually the Fireclown's interest lay in an
inward-looking vision, a self awareness, not in an outward looking one. But
the masses, willing to be swayed by him in such mindlessly large numbers,
showed exactly the latter, not the former, and the Fireclown himself realized
it was hopeless, especially when the masses resorted to mob action and
demonstrations.
The hopelessness of the situation was demonstrated in the mob's vacillation
from pro-Fireclown/pro-Helen Curtis/anti-Simon Powys to violently anti-
Fireclown/anti-Helen Curtis/pro-Simon Powys back to pro-Fireclown..., swayed
continually by rumor, TV propaganda and mass fear. Faced with uniform
conformity and lack of real individualized thot, this is to be expected. The
resultant mob violence scenes are maddening enough, but by no means as
destructive as the real thing was during the Detroit and similar riots a year
ago.
This is one instance where Moorcock may be underestimating the violence
possible in these artificial human-massed conditions; and I don't remember
Asimov treating of them at all in his Caves of Steel, unless he mentioned it
just in passing.
Apropos to the results of humans being packed together in megatropolian cities,
there was an article in the July-August issue of Fact magazine giving the
results of an experiment conducted by Dr. John B. Calhoun of the National
Institute of Mental Health in which rats were subjected to conditions
equivalent to our congested cities. Although rats are not men, "both... are
mammals and have many fundamental biological similarities. ...they do not
always react to harmful forces in precisely the same way, but anything that
damages rats can also be suspected of damaging men." The results of the
experiment:
"As the pens became increasingly congested, mothers began to neglect their
nests and often abandoned their young, leaving the brood behind to perish of
neglect and starvation. In time many rats wandered around aimlessly like
somnabulists -- dazed and utterly disoriented. Other rats turned to
homosexuality and curious sexual aberrations. Still others became cannibals,
and despite the availablity of food, devoured the carcasses of starved rodent
pups abandoned by their mothers. After several months of congestion, the death
rate of the rat metropolis soared to enormous proportions, surpassing 90% of
all live births in the more congested pens. ...To quote Dr. Calhoun, the
'social stress' produced by a high population density completely upset the
'behavioral repertory with which the Norway rat has emerged from the trials of
evolution.' In 16 months the rats had regressed to a state where their
extinction was assured... Although thus far urban man has not been destroyed
by the social stresses that doom simpler animals like rats, we have every
reason to believe that these stresses are extremeely harmful to his physical
and mental health."
In addition, the statement made by one looter in Detroit is pertinent to this
mob violence: "We're taking what we don't have and others have." The have-
nots, the slightly-educated knowing of just enough to hope, yet having those
hopes frustrated; easy prey to TV, radio or magazine advertisements to the
effect of: own this and you'll find happiness and fulfillment. As is to be
expected, they want to believe in those advertisements, so they resort to force
to get what they have-not, little realizing that one who is slave to the
sickness of possession must continually have more possessions, none of which
ever satisfy that ever distant goal of happiness and fulfillment.
The people in Moorcock's Switzerland of 2095 seem to have what they need
materially, so maybe this is why Moorcock doesn't have them react as violently
as recent events show mobs do. And it might seem that due to the difference of
these conditions that Moorcock's treatment is accidentally correct.
However, Moorcock's masses are still convinced that they are have-nots, the
having-not in this case being fredom. They little realize that the Fireclown
means internal freedom of spirit, not any outward allowance for development of
this potentiality, which, government-wise, at least, is as possible at that
time as it's ever been. So even in their mobbish cries for freedom they miss
the whole possibility of what they are wanting -- as frustrating as the pursuit
of happiness thru status symbols of name of car, suburban house, brand of
perfume, etc. And believing they are have-nots, their reactions should have
been more violent and destructive than Moorcock portrayed.
This is, in fact, a great problem facing us, though Moorcock just touches on
it. If there does exist in humankind some natural vitality which must break
out, and if cities, in their artificiality, are really going to have the effect
of creating more and more madness, disorder, lawlessness, destruction -- what
is to be done in an overcrowded situation where population increases make
anything but packed-humans impossible? And furthermore, if somehow mankind
does adjust, becoming less "natural" (or biological) living and more
"artificial" (or mechanistic) living, is this MAN any longer? This theme rates
quite a bit of probing and focussing upon, particularly under conditions of us
not expanding into space.
Thruout the first half of the book the promise is great: a society in large
part probable, the rest possible, and the problems relevant today since their
seeds have already begun sprouting. Thrown against this artificial, conforming
mass is the Fireclown's outrageous vitality and spontaneity, necessarily
sparking off all manner of fires -- most of them warped and misinterpreted
because of the mass's own internal faults, those very faults he's trying to
correct.
Then comes the melodrama.
I have nothing against melodrama. I like melodrama -- in its place; but not in
the place of drama where the situation rates a more significant and meaningful
treatment.
The accusation that the Fireclown had made and stockpiled atomic bombs enough
to blow up the world, and, in fact, had that intent (he had preached that the
world would end in fire, made his appearances beneath a blazing orb of fire and
claimed "I am your phoenix, awash with the flames of life! I am your
salvation!") began the melodramatics. The bomb threat is unnecessary; the
Fireclown's real threat is much more significant for it's upon the minds of
men, either thru realization of what he's saying and applying it in actuality
or thru misinterpreting what he says and applying that misinterpretation. The
melodrama destroys the real drama potential to the situation.
One becomes a bit reconciled to the bomb bit when it's explained that the bombs
are remainders from the period of disarmament, many of them existing in black
market sources still untracked down by the government, secreted originally by
countries which were doubtful about the success of world peace and workable
world government. It's possible, under the circumstances, and Moorcock picks
up a bit in a direction of recovery with bits of Alan Powys's search for values
in this world. But it's only bits, no more: the beginnings of an awareness
and formulation of the problem; and more than this is essential to the book,
for here we have a human being in understanding and comprehending contact with
the Fireclown's message. The Fireclown himself is, even tho he's a man, alien.
Even with the tendency towards ruining what he's begun with the bombs and war
threat, the story could have stayed at the level of superficial political
shilly-shallying; but then the melodramatic crap gets deeper, for the Fireclown
comes back from a journey beyond the solar system, which he embarked upon to
discover "what good... pure consciousness achieves". He returns intent upon
destroying humanity by his control of "cronons -- atoms of Time." "I have
perfected a kind of fire -- Time Fire, call it -- which will burn away the
minds of those it strikes without consuming them in body. My Time Fire will
destroy the ability to think because thought takes time." So sure enough, the
hero, Alan Powys, must save the world and foil the mad scheme of the Fireclown.
He does so in short order, thereby, somehow, solving the problems which had
been plaguing him shortly before he saved the world: problems of faith, of
concern with the stupidity of human nature, questions about why people needed
heroes ("What was wrong in people that they could not find what they needed
within themselves?") and questions about artificiality vs. naturalness and his
own place amongst it all. What his answers were, we don't know, and one doubts
that he did either, but lo and behold! the problems were all solved!
The most blatant part of the melodramatic menace was the fact that the
portrayal of the Fireclown's attempt to destroy humanity was fully
contradictory to all his values as they had been delineated up to this point.
For just previous to the Time Fire threats he'd said, "Consciousness is content
to exist as it exists, to be what it is and nothing more" and consciousness is
what the Fireclown follows, not intelligence, that "blot on the cosmos."
Consistent with this was his leavetaking of Earth and his attitude there-
towards. People had wanted a savior, "pointing the direction for the world to
go," but he'd been simply what he was -- the Fireclown, acting according to
some inner drive, interested in problems which most men could probably see no
lgic or point in solving. He'd left Earth, seeing his message didn't have the
effect it was meant to have, and later said, "I've no axe to grind. Whatever
takes place on Earth has no importance for me now. I tried to tell the people
something, but it's obvious I didn't get through to them."
Later yet, "Why is intelligence so esteemed? There is no need for it. It
cannot change the structure of the universe -- it can only meddle and spoil it.
Awareness -- now, that's different. Nature is aware of itself, but that is all
-- it is content. Are we content? No! ...we are at the centre of the galaxy.
Here things exist. They are beautiful but their beauty has no purpose. It is
beauty -- it is enough...
"Why ascribe meaning to all this? The further away from the fundamentals of
life we go, the more we quest for their meaning. There is no meaning. It is
here. It has always been here in some state. It will always be here. That is
all we can ever know. It is all we should want to know."
The Fireclown is an engaging, mystifying character. In fact, he's the only
real character in the book. (None of the others come off. Alan Powys had
possibility, but he needed much more development.) And all of this is thrown
away for the stereotyped mad-scientist ploy, although that trite-ism is
contradictory to the Fireclown's disinterest in and detachment from mankind.
This is a major flaw in the book, and it breaks its force, causing all the
potent fire in the character of the Fireclown to fizzle. He just isn't the
kind of menace the end of the book portrays him as. And his suicide is
likewise out of character, even though it is into the flaming sun, the fire
which he proclaims is life. This is not consciousnes being content to exist as
it exists.
The book is doubly disappointing because it comes from the man who is the
editor of NEW WORLDS, the man who has served as a dynamic force behind the "New
Wave" science-fiction in England. Perhaps he tackled more than he could handle
at the time. Perhaps he had to get the book out to make money. Perhaps it
never would have sold without the grade Z pulpism of the last half. Perhaps
towards the end he got confused and thought he was "Edward P. Bradbury" --
writing for average fifteen year old mentalities. And perhaps, Mike Moorcock,
you betrayed us.
There is one interesting touch I'd like to mention, and it too is just a
mentioning in the book. It is the religious Order of St. Rene Lafayette, which
practices a form of "scientific mysticism." The monks were considered
crackpottily harmless and their monastery was an abandoned space station.
Monks tried to become Auditors and we hear talk about "casting forth engrams"
and "The Spirit of the Eight Dynamics," and becoming "clear." Founded in 1950,
the true name of the inspired founder is a secret to almost all! It's in-
groupish, but a nice touch.
The above is a rather trivial note to end this on, but apropos, somehow, to the
pat and simplistic letdown of the ending Moorcock patches onto The Fireclown.
[-- Norman E. Masters]
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Henry Kuttner was my pen-name."
--Newman Gottksi
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[pp. 5 - 14, 67 - 70, NO-EYED MONSTER #15, Spring 1969]
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