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Reading a fascinating conversation between Fred Pohl and Alfred Bester, that took place in Newcastle upon Tyne, 26 June 1978, (published in Rob Jackson’s Inca 5), and was amused by their comments on John Campbell during his Dianetics phase.   Right after that they had a brief exchange on a psychological study of SF writers:

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Fred Pohl: Some years ago two  psychologists decided they wanted to find out what  science fiction writers were like.  They sent out a  questionnaire to a bunch of science fiction writers  and asked them to answer the sort of questions  you get on psychological testing papers.  How do  you feel about your mother and this and that.  And  from these they prepared a group psychological  profile of science fiction writers.  They compared it  with a similar group profile for some other kind of  writers and for a third group of people.  They  found out that the science fiction writers were in  many ways similar to most human beings! There  were a couple of differences, and one was in what  is called “aggressive” versus “withdrawn”  cyclothymia.

Alfred Bester:  What is cyclothymia?

Fred Pohl: It’s a kind of lunacy.   But the question was not whether you had it, but if you had it which way you  would go.  Withdrawn cyclothymic people are  more or less passive and tend to let things go, and  overlook something that is wrong.  The people who  tend the other way are stubborn and won’t take nothing from nobody, and have their own opinions which you’re not going to change with an axe!  And  science fiction writers were like that – the  stubbornest, most difficult human beings alive!

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This dialog reminded me of a joke piece that I wrote for CusFussing in 1979 called Science Fiction Brains.  You can see the published illustration for that article above.  I distinctly remember drawing it on a scrap of greenish colored bond paper that I found somebody’s office in Phoenix that summer.   But never before published is a related sketch (complete with characteristic coffee stain), and an explanation of the “lobes of the brain,” which was probably the idea behind the story if the first place.   Somehow the explanation of the lobes got lost in both the inked version of the sketch and the story.  But here it is, for posterity.

Yes, it’s been a strange week!  But thanks to the Mr. Door Tree and his nice posting of Basil Wolverton classics, I think I’ve got my brain back in place.

If only we could… but the beach is either thousands of miles, or many months away right now.    Pretending the subway is a beach just doesn’t do it for me.   In Japan, maybe this subway maneuver works, but in Boston all we have these days are a bunch of  Homeland Security workers blowing “perfectly safe” gases and particulates through the tunnels.    No need to be alarmed, says the Boston Globe.   Which is enough to make me worry that this testing will “go live,”   and then I’ll be diving to get out of the train…

Missed the premiere broadcast of Lloyd Dangle’s live streaming video feed last week, but somehow managed to tune in to the wrap up of this week’s “Big Ass Sarah Palin Episode.”    And well worth it!

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What a fitting discovery while badgering through the mountain of cheap book carts at Brattle Book Shop, when I happened across a fine copy of Jorrock’s Jaunts and Jollities.  Originally published in 1838, this farcical book on fox-hunting and gad-about adventures, was written by Robert S. Surtees, who is an amusing stylist, to say the least.  The overall tone of the book is very reminiscent of its predecessor picaresques, such as Humphrey Clinker, and it’s followers, for example Jerome’s Three Men On a Bummel… in which a cast of characters go off on a jaunt that allows the author to skewer them and the societies they are escaping from or escaping into.

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