Disappearing Act, by Alfred Bester

This short story was first published in 1953, and is part of the collection in Virtual Unrealities. The situation is that there is a war going on, and everything — literally everything — is geared to the war effort. It’s very much tongue-in-cheek, but what struck me on reading it is passages like this one:

This reminded me of the insistence for at least the past decade on the importance of churning out experts in computer programming. I’ve never been wholly convinced of this view, believing that more people stand to benefit from being digitally literate than being able to write code or think like a systems analyst. I further believe that most companies would benefit more from a digitally literate workforce than a workforce of computer programmers.

I especially worry about the displacement of subjects like art, drama, music, history and geography, all of which are vitally important but which seem to be treated as the poor cousins in the curriculum. Yes, STEAM is better than STEM, but it’s not enough.

Back in 2012 I visited a company specialising in 3D and augmented reality. In my report of the visit I wrote:

Indeed, I remember making a mental note of the fact that the computer programmers in the company were very much in the minority, being outnumbered by graphic artists, psychologists and assorted others.

So, back to Disappearing Act — and here I should repeat my warning of spoiler alert. Soldiers suffering from what today we would recognise as PTST start to disappear from their locked and guarded hospital ward. When they reappear, and are questioned about where they’d been, they relate meetings with historical figures. As well as that being impossible, their accounts are even more impossible, involving meetings with several people at the same time, none of whom actually lived at the same time.

The conclusion drawn was that the soldiers had somehow travelled to a time and place that existed only in their imagination, not one that had ever existed in fact. The next conclusion drawn was that the only kind of people who might be able to understand what was going on would be poets, because poets already half live in their own imaginations. The story ends like this:

Taken literally, the story is bonkers of course. But I do believe that as an allegory it is incisive, and very prescient. We treat subjects like art and music as if they have little bearing on the cutting edge of technological innovation and economic prosperity. But, even aside from their intrinsic value, learning music can help you learn maths, and learning about art and literature can help you develop a different, and probably more holistic perspective, on problems which would benefit from a technological solution.

As for economic prosperity, I wrote in my article Big News Which Isn't News: Writers' Earnings Are Down (June 2019):

I definitely think that, if you look beyond the impossible situation and the humour, nearly seventy years ago Alfred Bester was on to something.

The lit crit bit

The first thing to note about the story is its irony. They are fighting for the American Dream, for poetry and the finer things in life. Just before the speech about the hordes of barbarism, America has dropped 10,000 H bombs on its enemy, who have in turn reciprocated. American cities have been reduced to rubble, and are being rebuilt underground — hence the need for sanitation experts and so on.

Secondly, the way the story has been written is quite humorous. General Carpenter picks up the phone and asks for thousands of experts in a particular discipline, and these are immediately delivered. Apart from the impossibility of conjuring up all these people in no time at all, note the language: they are “delivered”. It’s exactly the same language as is used by the Department for Education, who regularly promise to deliver new resources and even new teachers. Who knew that the postal service could be so efficient?

Thirdly, there’s the irony that the one thing that can’t be “delivered” is poets, yet poetry is what they are supposed to be fighting for.

And there’s also, of course, the clever (and mocking) repetition of the phrase “hardened and sharpened experts”.

What’s also noteworthy is that this was published in 1953, a time when satirising the American Dream or the brinkmanship of the Cold War was likely to get you accused of being anti-American. I don’t know if McCarthy read science fiction. Probably not, as I’m not aware of his coming to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

This story is a fine example of why good science fiction can really shine a light on societal issues, in perhaps a safe (for the writer) way. That’s because the story can be set in a different time or on a different planet or in an alternative present. Sometimes, the underlying premise of the story can be so intriguing that it doesn’t even matter that much if the story is not especially well-written from a literary point of view. I have to say that I don’t think that’s the case here. I think Alfred Bester was a great storyteller, and I hope the extracts I’ve cited convince you of the same.

Discussion points

1. Is there too much emphasis (by governments mainly) on Maths and Computing at the expense of the creative arts subjects?

2. If so, does it matter?