The Politics of Science Fiction

...Attack would mean destruction-and no Bolshevik will risk survival in a war he is not convinced he can win...

...Moscow is demolished...

...Herman Kahn is the obvious prototype of Groteschele, who comes nearest to being the villian of the piece...

...What escapes the authors is that the main danger of accidental war, to the extent that it is a danger and not an abstract possibility, is the occurrence of the unforeseen in the behavior of men...

...were to disarm unilaterally out of fear that a mechanical accident will set off war...

...In fact, any failure in the communications system would automatically prevent the sending of such a message...

...This fact is of enormous significance both technically and politically...

...Kahn himself, on the basis of the alarm system which existed a few years ago, warned of the dangers of accident...

...Government when 15 million people are about to be incinerated...

...If the situation showed that all U.S...

...To the extent that this is believed, it is certain to encourage the appeasement of Nikita Khrushchev, portrayed by the authors as a man of noble character and profound thought...

...It is based on the elementary error of assuming that because something is not impossible, it is highly probable if not certain...

...His eyes flutter, he shudders, and to General Black, the hero of the book who has no use for Groteschele, the expression on the latter's face "seemed composed of apprehension, excitement, delight, and opportunity...

...4.95 Reviewed by SIDNEY HOOK Chairman, Graduate Department of Philosophy, New York University...

...Intelligent fear may be a preface to appropriate action, but hysterical fear blinds one to alternatives...

...As science fiction the book is not without merit...

...The American Government rightly prefers to assume that risk...

...But when we are dealing with an event which has never happened, although we cannot declare it impossible, we cannot give a numerical estimate to the chances of its occurring...

...And the standing orders in the control procedures of the U.S...

...We do know, from Secretary of Defense McNamara, that our planes around the world were readied for possible action during one of the days when the Soviets seemed about to move militarily against West Berlin, and within seconds after Moscow's intentions became clear they were alerted to stand down...

...For a moment he felt a pang of theoretical regret...

...Here Red Alert is by far the more intelligent book...

...At heart he is a sadist...

...To begin with, I wish to state as emphatically as I can that no system devised by man can ever be mechanically foolproof...

...To convince Khrushchev this was a genuine error and thus forestall all-out war, the President orders New York demolished...

...On the other hand, a position which ignores or scorns the truth, whether it be that of science or of history, is unworthy of responsible men...

...He is power-hungry, loves money more than women, is interested in his own career, and is indifferent to the welfare of mankind...

...Even worse than this legally privileged libel is the character of the argument Burdick and Wheeler put into the mouth of their Kahn caricature...

...There is a certain awkwardness about discussing the probability or improbability of unique events because it is difficult to place estimates upon them...

...In this idealization, no one will recognize the Khrushchev who served as Stalin's gang boss, who gave the orders for the execution of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, the construction of the Berlin Wall and other indignities against mankind...

...At the same time, Khrushchev might demand that the U.S...

...As for all of them breaking down at the same time-on the assumption that one can assign probabilities to such things-whatever the probability is of any one of them going haywire, it must be multiplied by the relatively independent probability of all the others acting the same way simultaneously...

...Nor can we logically prove that it is impossible for any particular man suddenly to become insane...

...On the basis of certain theoretical assumptions one can only say that this is low or high...

...It is far worse to exaggerate the risks involved in the defense of freedom to a degree that dwarfs in the minds of readers and viewers the much greater and more immediate danger confronting a free and peaceful world...

...By describing them as money-hungry monsters, their entire intellectual activity in behalf of a free society is called into question...

...If there were drastic cutbacks in military expenditures many businesses would be seriously affected A man who understood government and big political movements could make a comfortable living advising the threatened industries...

...At any rate, the probability of a mechanical failure in the defense system can be held and is now being held at so low a level that no accurate estimate of the probability of failure can be made...

...For the existing defense control procedures show that, far from being trigger-happy or indifferent to the possibility of accident, U.S...

...Today a new genre has developed which prides itself on its concern with important and grim truths underlying the fictional detail...

...Everyone knows that in many situations our tools and machines fail us less often than human beings...

...Or, as Burdick put it in a telephone interview with Norman Cousins, an accident of the kind described is "inevitable...

...second-strike forces remained in readiness in the event of such an accident, and the President indicated that we would help reconstruction of Moscow but would not countenance aggressive action against Western Europe, it is highly unlikely that Khrushchev would give the signal to attack...

...If, however, U.S...

...Its suspense is sustained and it presents a considerable amount of information, gleaned from civilian writings on thermonuclear war, that will convey to the unwary reader a semblance of plausibility...

...One can devise a great number of systems capable of reporting instantly the malfunction of any machine...

...When word is received that New York is to be destroyed to convince Khrushchev that an error had been made, it is clear that the world will now disarm and that there will be no market for experts on thermonuclear war: "Groteschele when he first heard the President's words thought first of his family, but only briefly Then having done his duty toward his family, Groteschele thought of his future Surely the great powers would disarm to a point below the level where such an accident could be repeated...

...One would imagine that a "truthful" piece of science fiction would at least take cognizance of this...

...The Communist regime will not initiate an all-out nuclear war unless it feels assured that it can survive...

...Because of guilt feelings about what "no one is responsible for," he probably would get away with the occupation of Western Europe and a huge indemnity...

...Government or working for the RAND Corporation than in writing sensational hysteria-mongering science fiction...

...President adopted to convince the Soviet ruler that an error had been made), Khrushchev would probably move against Westem Europe-trading Moscow for the hegemony of all Europe, and banking on the unwillingness of the United States to destroy the people of Western Europe...

...Fail-Safe is also morally objectionable because of the colors in which it portrays the civilian experts on how to defend a free society against war, and how to survive war if it is forced on us...

...Khrushchev would most probably do one of two things...

...accidental nuclear war may not come as a result of a faulty condenser, but "ultimately it will occur...

...But even Americans are intelligent enough in such a situation to send the appeal in the voice of someone the Russians could not mimic, for example, the authentic voice of an airman's wife or friend giving information the Russians could not possibly have...

...Groteschele is a lew, an outsider to the Establishment who makes good by virtue of his cleverness and ruthlessness...

...When we are dealing with a historical personage, however, even in science fiction the relevant facts must exercise some veto on the treatment...

...Largely as a result of his and other analyses, the system of safeguards has been improved to the point where, according to good authority, there is serious doubt whether contracts for research on "How Accidental Wars Can Start" are likely to be fruitful...

...Had the authors created an imaginary statesman from an imaginary country, it would be wrong to hold them to account for their interpretation...

...This pretension exacts a correspondingly great intellectual and moral responsibility to avoid fomenting hysteria...

...Nonetheless, they attribute to Groteschele the view that the control system is "perfect," "foolproof," that "the chance of war by mechanical failure is next to zero...

...It overlooks the fact that we are not dealing with an indeterminately large slice of time, that improvements in the safeguards against accident are continually being made, and that the existence of the balance of nuclear terror is more likely to lead to peace through multilateral disarmament than if the U.S...

...Furthermore, according to this "true" story, once American bombers reach the "fail-safe" point at which they must return or go on, if a red bulb lights up at the top of the Fail-Safe Box and is accompanied by a coded message, this is the signal for attack...

...In all the literature on the subject I have read, and not Kahn's writings alone, I have never come across this assertion...

...When the evidence flashes on the screen that the six bombers have flown irrevocably to their fatal mission, the authors tell us that for a moment Groteschele drops the mask...

...The contrary absurdity that war by mechanical failure is inevitable-the authors' own view-is much more common...

...author, "The Paradoxes of Freedom" By now, everyone who is au courant with best-sellers knows the theme of Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler: A defective condenser in an "activation machine" that controls the American retaliatory bombing system sets off a nuclear attack against Moscow by a wing of six U.S...

...In the case of a series of events where a certain proportion has a particular property called accidental, we can calculate the probability of the next event being an accident, or of the proportion of accidents in the future series...

...Within the bounds of psychological plausibility, any character creation in fiction is esthetically legitimate...

...Government are that unless a bomber at the fail-safe point receives a positive command to attack from the highest American authority, it must automatically return...

...But if on the basis of past Communist action and current theory one were to predict Khrushchev's behavior in a situation like that envisaged by the authors, it would be far different from what they describe...

...It was a sound idea and Groteschele tucked it away in his mind with a sense of reassurance.' (Italics mine, S. H.) These are the thoughts which are supposed to run through the minds of advisers to the U.S...

...It is an emotionally surcharged political tract designed to prove that the greatest danger to the survival of free institutions in the world today is our defense system...

...and it is perfectly feasible to set up six machines so that a malfunction in any one of them will be registered and checked with the speed of an electric impulse by the other five...

...bombers...

...This does not mean that the system is perfect...

...He really would have liked to see the thermonuclear war fought out along the lines he had debated, expounded and contemplated...

...There was a time when the themes of science fiction in novel and cinema were pure fantasies...

...The only result a communications breakdown could have, in other words, would be to prevent the American forces from making a retaliatory attack even if the President wanted to order them on...

...supporting planes had been withdrawn from the skies, that no ICBM'S had been mounted for delivery and no alarm sounded (the measures the U.S...

...Naturally, the airmen conclude that this is an enemy ruse...

...In the story, the machine that breaks down is one of six...

...We became prisoners of our machines, our suspicions, and our belief in logic...

...If Burdick and Wheeler do not owe a debt of acknowledgement to Bryant, the index of coincidental plot detail in science fiction must be high...

...The President's voice is so easy to mimic and they have been warned against precisely that trick...

...Finally, the degree of political stupidity the authors attribute to the Americans is illustrated by the key incident in which the airmen, just before they reach Moscow, hear the voice of the President urging them to return to their bases and explaining that an error had been made...

...This is not to express a hope that humans will behave like machines, or a preference for machines over people, but simply a desire to rely on machines and not merely human beings in certain areas of experience where a mistake may prove disastrous...

...Most of what they know about the balance of terror and the complexities of defense against an ideologically fanatical opponent they have learned from Kahn and men like him...

...They cannot therefore be unaware of Kahn's position...

...Consequently, in the improbable event that the kind of accident Burdick and Wheeler believe is certain to happen did occur, the bombers would actually turn back...

...All efforts to recall or destroy them fail...

...But Fail-Safe is not merely a piece of science fiction...

...But to assume, as the authors do, that a failure in a single computer can lead to an unauthorized nuclear attack, that the failure cannot be traced to its sources and identified for several hours, that multiple efforts to recall the flight crews or abort their machines are unsuccessful, that two bombers can penetrate the entire system of Soviet defense-to assume all this is to compound a series of unrelated improbabilities to the point where they transcend the sober limits of scientific credibility...

...It would be commonly admitted that it is cruel to write a piece of science fiction or produce a film which, by distorting the facts, scares people witless about the incidence of some dread disease, thus making them gullible to fraudulent claims of cure...

...pay the costs of reconstructing Moscow, and that a government sympathetic to the USSR be entrusted with the destinies of the American nation...

...It is also better written than Peter Bryant's Red Alert, published in 1958, which, while based on a different type of accident, contains an amazing number of similar details, including the possible death swap of cities...

...The sober truth is that there is less money in advising the U.S...

...In the climactic scene Khrushchev says: "At some point in the last ten years we went beyond rationality in politics...

...The Burdick and Wheeler view that full-scale accidental nuclear war as a result of a mechanical failure is "inevitable" is therefore intellectually scandalous...

...Two get through...

...The truth may hurt, but that does not make it less true...

...The political heart of the book is the portrait of Khrushchev...

...The danger of accidental war, he also maintained, in a telecast, is "critical...

...He leaves the stage a philosopher pledged to reasonable compromise...

...Perhaps this is why the authors do not clearly explain what triggered off the attack, although one is left with the distinct impression it is a small condenser in a single machine...

...The authors present Khrushchev as a man of tragic dimensions, more sinned against than sinning, reluctant to demand a cruel and gratuitous price for an accident which he agrees is no one's fault, a humanist and a reflective critic of Bolshevik Leninism...

...We shall never build a machine which we can logically prove will never fail...

...Then Groteschele swung his attention to what his future work would be...

...Of course, the peripheral psychological or political consequences of a position have no bearing upon the question of its truth...

...Let us therefore examine the situation described by the authors in the light of this criterion...

...Even the most primitive methods, such as using two machines that cross check each other, go a long way toward eliminating the type of mistake around which the book is built...

...But the authors' contention that a go-ahead order and coded message can be transmitted because of a condenser becoming defective is absurd...

...cautions have been developed to a point where there is far more justification for believing there are too many safeguards, rather than too few...

...In their preface, the authors seriously claim that they are not really writing fiction but are relating a "true" story...