'IN OUR HANDS, THE STARS'

Many Sci-Fi(Speculative-Fic?)in the 50's through the 80's in the US were of a distincly well informed political sensibility. Numerous of these individuals were Europeans and 1st or 2nd generation immigrants from Europe, many of whose families had fled Hitler and the Germans; many that fled the communist Russians and Stalin. The era in which they began their educations and writing careers in America was one of explosive growth in both Secondary and post secondary education. Here in the US there was a decided tilt then, toward obtaining a liberal eduction. (Liberal education meaning "well rounded",not politically liberal , at all!)A college student was expected to know as much art, history, psychology and sociology as well as math, biology or physics and engineering. The result was that many of the best American writers in the English language, in the tradition of Joseph Conrad(a polish immigrant),were among the finest, as well as the most well informed, politically astute writers and also were immigrants. This was long before the writing of science fiction was at all considered a legitimate form of literature. Rather, It was often ridiculed and treated as a resident of the literary ghetto where labored the writers of comic books or pornography. As a result the publishers who would deal with them at all, in the 50's and early 60's, ruthlessly took advantage of them. In the most barbarous manner, which few of today's writers remember, numerous serious Sci-Fi works were edited and cut up. A virtual gang -rape of a literary class too small, too disorganized and too despised by "mainstream writers" to effectively defend itself and it's practitioners. Phillip Dick, in many cases, sold novels, written in days to meet arbitrary deadlines and had to sell them for a few hundred dollars,just to eat. Like others, never retaining subsidiary rights to their own material. Nevertheless, these writers were very well informed intellectually and politically as well as being extremely talented. This Poul Anderson novel, published in the 70's: "The Daleth Effect"(Daleth is the Hebrew letter equivalent of the English "d".) is an example of much of the era's better writing by Sci-Fi authors. The story begins with an explosion at an advanced physics research lab in Israel. The individual whose work was responsible for the explosion, aware of the what the accidental explosion proved, walks through the giant hole in the lab walls caused by the explosion, coughing and brushing off the debris, but clutching all his papers and relevant data to prtevent them from getting into anyone elses hands. Returning home, he takes his passport and almost in a sort of creative daze, takes a flight to Denmark where heasks for political asylum as a citizen or former citizen of Denmark. It turns out that he has have made a revolutionary discovery that could change the balance of power and terror in the world. He does not trust the Israel