Some Dreams are Nightmares
by James Gunn[ Science Fiction ]
These stories share a common concept: man has dreamed for centuries about space flight, about happiness, about immortality. If only I could fly to the moon, he has told himself, if only I could find true happiness, if only I could live forever ... then I would be like a god. These stories, however, go on to demonstrate that every dream come true brings unforeseen consequences. The power of man to dream and make his dreams come true is unlimited, but each step forward must be paid for, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and some dreams are nightmares.
THE CAVE OF NIGHT
The phrase was first used by a poet disguised in the cynical hide of a newspaper reporter. It appeared on the first day and was widely reprinted. He wrote:
"At eight o'clock, after the Sun has set and the sky is darkening, look up! There's a man up there where no man has ever been.
"He is lost in the cave of night..."
The headlines demanded something short, vigorous and descriptive. That was it. It was inaccurate, but it stuck.
If anybody was in a cave, it was the rest of humanity. Painfully, triumphantly, one man had climbed out. Now he couldn't find his way back into the cave with the rest of us.
What goes up doesn't always come back down.
That was the first day. After it came twenty-nine days of agonized suspense.
The cave of night. I wish the phrase had been mine.
That was it, the tag, the symbol. It was the first thing a man saw when he glanced at the newspaper. It was the way people talked about it: "What's the latest about the cave?" It summed it all up, the drama, the anxiety, the hope.
Maybe it was the Floyd Collins influence. The papers dug up their files on that old tragedy, reminiscing, comparing; and they remembered the little girl--Kathy Fiscus, wasn't it?--who was trapped in that abandoned, California drain pipe; and a number of others.
Periodically, it happens, a sequence of events so accidentally dramatic that men lose their hatreds, their terrors, their shynesses, their inadequacies, and the human race momentarily recognizes its kinship.
The essential ingredients are these: A person must be in unusual and desperate peril. The peril must have duration. There must be proof that the person is still alive. Rescue attempts must be made. Publicity must be widespread.
One could probably be constructed artificially, but if the world ever discovered the fraud, it would never forgive.
Like many others, I have tried to analyze what makes a niggling, squabbling, callous race of beings suddenly share that most human emotion of sympathy, and, like them, I have not succeeded. Suddenly a distant stranger will mean more than their own comfort. Every waking moment, they pray: Live, Floyd! Live, Kathy! Live, Rev!
We pass on the street, we who would not have nodded, and ask, "Will they get there in time?"
Optimists and pessimists alike, we hope so. We all hope so.
