(The following words are, with some revisions, the informal remarks I made at the event listed above to commemorate Charles Harness's recognition as an SFWA Author of Distinction. I have made some effort to note my sources, but this should not be confused with a properly documented article.)
When Catherine Mintz asked if I would say a few words at this event about SFWA Distinguished Author Charles L. Harness, I said to myself, "who?" Now, don't get me wrong, this is a generational thing. I figured he must be one of those old rocket scientist type science fiction writers, the kind who grew up with a slide rule clenched in their teeth, the kind who whipped up home brew explosives by following the directions in chemistry textbooks, or who, poverty-stricken yet handy with tools, could assemble a working radio transmitter using bear skins, stone tools, and Ford auto parts. You know the kind.
As the oldest Gen Xer you'll ever meet (or the youngest boomer, on even-numbered days, take your pick) I'm not going to apologize for wondering who this Charles L. Harness guy is. It turns out he did indeed assemble a radio as a youth, and a transmitter to boot — one that broadcast on the entire electromagnetic spectrum, if such a thing is possible. Forgive my ignorance — where Charles was encouraged to plug cast-off electronic gear together in fun new configurations I was, many decades later, encouraged to do dangerous things with role-playing game systems.
Naturally there's an older brother with a stock of early genre literature magazines in the mix, a reasonably technical career path, one that Harness stuck to, unlike many of his contemporary rocket scientist type writers who turned pro. The upshot of that last detail is Harness's lifetime output is notable but not overwhelming, especially since the fellow has lived nearly as long as that guy Williamson — making his output seem thinner than it is, because it is spread over nearly six decades.
Anyway, there I was, sitting at my dayjob desk, staring at this email from Catherine, thinking I should say "no, thanks" because I know this Harness and his work from a hole in the ground, when there's a knock at my door and in walks this young guy — mid to late twenties, nice enough guy except maybe I didn't invite him in, but there he is, smiling, and he says "so, get that email from Mintz yet?"
Now, let me be the first to tell you, if I'd known then what I know now, I would have said "Mint? You want a mint? Sure, got one right here, buddy," and when he reached for the cute little tin they come in I would have socked him a good one and run for the hills, because believe you me the last two weeks have been anything but smooth sailing for me.
But if nothing else I play the straight man in life, so I say "how did you know that?" and he says "because I'm Charles Harness, and I don't want you to say no. Like you're about to do."
Well. That set me back, as you can imagine. The first thing I thought was "this guy looks pretty young to be getting this award from SFWA." But I ended up saying the second thing, which was "Hey, I heard you couldn't make it to this event. You look plenty healthy to me!"
He grinned and smiled and said "Well now that would be my elder self. I'm visiting from after the war. World War II, that is. Guy I work with invented time travel. But that's not the main issue here..."
I interrupted. Wouldn't you, right about now? "Hold on," I said. "Time travel?" Harness plowed right on.
"Like I said, time travel isn't the main issue here. The main thing is you have to go to Philadelphia in a few weeks and talk me up a bit. So say yes to Catherine Mintz. I'll help with the rest."
I looked at my computer screen. There was the email. I looked back at this guy. He was dressed a bit funny. Wide lapels. Dorky shoes. Glasses with lenses so big they could focus enough sunlight to fry an egg. So if he's a loon, he's done some homework, and he's hacked my system. Or he's Charles Harness the younger, time traveler, science fiction writer, and as I would find out later, patent attorney, father, husband, SFWA Author of Distinction.
"OK," I said. "Lets say you're not some loon the guys have dreamed up as a practical joke. What's so important about me speaking about you in Philadelphia?"
"Just write back that you'll do it, say you're pleased she thought of you, and so on, and so forth."
"Why?" I insisted, leaning back in my chair. That's what saved me, folks. Harness pulled out a shiny gadget with gleaming lights at the business end and said "forget it, I'll send it for you and get you caught up later." He zaps me, but I'm already on my way to the floor, the chair has pulled one of its little con games on me. I feel numb from the forehead up and can't talk for a minute or two as I stumble to my feet and wobble, caught in a fit of the dizzies like you wouldn't believe.
"Good, good," he tells me, "you just sit here." With admirable typing technique, aside from the fact he's hammering my keyboard like, well, like it was a typewriter, he fires off a reply to the Mintz email. I'm too numb to speak, although inside my head there is a little voice yammering away, panic, fear, panic, call it what you like.
After he was done he gave me the scoop, just like any James Bond villain does. Time travel, it turns out, has very limited application to one's native reality. Harness had tried time and time again to find a way to make a buck using his colleague's device, but it appeared that any time he tried to bring back something useful it went wrong. Harness tried learning the results of the World Series — but when he tried betting on the teams he's seen win in the future, they'd lose miserably, or even worse, not make it to the series at all. "Those damn Cubs," he said, shaking his head.
"I was busy as a beaver for quite awhile, to no avail. Finally I had it figured: it was multiple universes I was traveling to. There was some kind of safety mechanism that kept me from changing the future from my perspective. But, it turns out, you can alter the future from the perspective of the future. Hasn't happened yet, or something. Y'know, some critics of my work say the science is soft. I can't help but think big, though, so you can't blame me. And once things slow down I'll take a course or two in new fields. Wait, I've already done that. Yes, that's already happened. Look me up, you'll see. Check out that Locus interview, for example."
All I could do was drool while he was saying this. At one point he held up the gizmo he'd used on me. "Child's toy, from a long way forward. When I'm done, you'll remember what I tell you to remember." He showed me the writing on the barrel: "HYPNOTIZER by Halliburton Electronics." "Would you believe they make toys in the future?"
"So why, I hear you asking, am I here? Well, that guy George Zebrowski has been writing about me in recent years. Likes my stuff. And he's almost onto me, so I need a distraction. The plan is almost complete. What plan? I'm work with patents, you take a guess what plan. This Zebrowski has spotted a pattern. I keep on getting rediscovered by the critics. Sure, every ten, fifteen years some guy gets the brilliant idea to call my work back on the scene...."
Had enough? What, you don't want to hear how I remember what I'm supposed to have forgotten, how I track Harness's evil plan using the Internet, how Harness is the world's richest man because of his inexplicable ownership (disguised via the use of shell companies) of patents key to modern industry? How Harness's corporate minions have been on my tail for the past few days, thrilling chases, femme fatales, shootouts, exploding cars, the works?
OK then, the straight scoop. George Zebrowski should be up here. The best I can do today is point you to his excellent articles on the work of Charles L. Harness. "Celebrating Charles L. Harness," and "Charles L. Harness: Wielder of Light" are but two of Zebrowski's written observations about the place and importance of Harness to the Science Fiction field.
Harness himself admits being influenced by A. E. Van Vogt, and it is obvious that Harness often writes a kind of wide-open, no-holds-barred sf that Brian W. Aldiss (as quoted by Zebrowski) terms "Widescreen Baroque," going on to say "They like a wide screen, with space and possibly time travel as props, and at least the whole solar system as their setting" (Celebrating). Aldiss suggests we consider The Stars My Destination and The Sirens of Titan to be in this category. I would add some of the works of Robert Reed, Ian M. Banks, and the "magic cookie" novels of C.J. Cherryh to this list, and I'm sure there are more. Zebrowski goes further to suggest that while Harness was clearly influenced by van Vogt, Harness in turn influenced the work of Bester, Dick, Vonnegut, and Simmons (Wielder).
A refreshing aspect of Harness, as observed in interviews he has granted over the years, is his willingness to disclose his literary inspirations. There's van Vogt, as noted, but also his brother, who died young of a brain tumor, Fred Hoyle, who provided the cosmic background of The Ring of Ritornel, Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Jean Cocteau's "The Eternal Return," Isaac Asimov, and so on (Wielder). Perhaps this is due to the fact Harness has never been a full time sf professional. Or perhaps it is something innate in his character. Whatever the cause, it is unusual in my experience to hear of a writer discussing such things in detail in a public forum.
Zebrowski also notes Harness to be "innocently unaware of the growing favorable opinion of his stories and novels, which presents him today as an established master of a certain kind of SF" (Wielder). We might suppose this to be a charming consequence of Harness's focus on his day job, though I suspect as the idea rolls around in my head as I write this the truth of the matter rests with Harness himself.
Far too few have had the pleasure of reading much Charles L. Harness. Zebrowski suggests the cause is the publishing industry's method of doing business, and I heartily agree. As the Lindholm/Hobb situation demonstrates, basing print runs and marketing efforts on sales histories is a conservative approach bound to marginalize the public's access to certain writers. Zebrowski notes that Harness's "out of print copies are sold and resold countless times, in both hardcover and paperback, and one wishes that more copies had been available and kept in print from the start." All too true for Harness and many other talented writers.
While we are unfortunate in some respects that Charles Harness had an active career as a patent lawyer to fill much of his working life, perhaps in a few ways we are fortunate he never had to rely on his writing career to pay all of his bills. Perhaps, had a time-traveling fan gone back to the 1940's and urged him to write full time, the many fine qualities of his fiction, Harness's mastery of what Aldiss calls "Widescreen Baroque," would have been remodeled by the commercial influence of the publishing field. In short, such a traveler might have returned to the here and now only to be dismayed at the body of work now resting on the shelf.
As history played out, Harness wrote what he wished, when he wished, though it is worth noting his first novel sprang from financial difficulties (Locus). In these later years of his writing career he's studied new fields of science, areas of scientific endeavor that literally didn't exist when he was younger. I suspect his literary accomplishments are sweet and innocent in a certain way just because this was so.
I don't mean to suggest that anyone who has enjoyed commercial success is less the writer for it. This is just a "what if" scenario, leading to my full agreement with Zebrowski: "If you are coming to read Harness for the first time, I have only one piece of advice. Pass on the beauty." I myself will be reading more of Charles L. Harness's work in the future. It is the right time in my reading life — when I was younger I found work like this too cosmic, to open-ended, too "Widescreen Baroque." Now works like The Stars My Destination, viewed in retrospect, are worth the time to contemplate them, along with the works of others who play in Aldiss's "wine-dark patch" of science fiction (Celebrating). In closing, I suggest you heed Zebrowski and Aldiss — taste the wine and pass the bottle.