The mask in science fiction.

Fritz Leiber wrote a science fiction story called "Coming Attraction" that was published in the November 1950 issue of Galaxy. It is considered a classic. It's a lousy story. But it was an important one at the time.

Science fiction had been easing into the public consciousness for decades, and was generally associated with wonder, with the E. E. "Doc" Smith-type galactic visions of discovery and survival and ray guns and aliens and triumph. You even get a feel for that from the cover of the issue.

The reason I call "Coming Attraction" a lousy story is that it is all exposition, functioning like propaganda. "You think your future is going to be great? Ha! The atomic war with the Soviet Union continues, half of New York is uninhabitable, and everyone behaves like a total bastard! There's your future!" There's barely any plot; just a look at this mess, and this mess, and this horror here, which the ironic title of the story indicates we will get. You can read the story here, or a summary at its Wikipedia page.

The atomic bomb, one of the most shocking things man had ever devised, developed in secret, unleashed at once, was a traumatic event in culture, as we are reminded looking back at this story. It turned science fiction into the most depressing genre of them all, and it has never really cheered up. Maybe books about serial killers and other horrors are more depressing, but I never read that stuff in my youth. I read stories like this, and was convinced the world would be blown to smithereens before I was thirty. No wonder I drank.

Leiber was born in Chicago, but by making Turner, his hero in this story, a foreigner, and one from a country that in 1950 was still rebuilding from the horrors of World War II, he can spit on American culture and corruption while poking the reader in the ribs to say You think your cities will be safe in the next war?

Thank God Leiber's predictions did not come true. But one sort of seems true now. In the New York of his story, mask wearing is not only common, it is required, but not because of disease. Here's the section concerning masks, told by Turner:

"I suppose the masks give you some trouble," I observed. "Over in England we've been reading about your new crop of masked female bandits."
     "Those things get exaggerated," the first policeman assured me. "It's the men masking as women that really mix us up. But, brother, when we nab them, we jump on them with both feet."
     "And you get so you can spot women almost as well as if they had naked faces," the second policeman volunteered. "You know, hands and all that."
     "Especially all that," the first agreed with a chuckle. "Say, is it true that some girls don't mask over in England?"
     "A number of them have picked up the fashion," I told him. "Only a few, though—the ones who always adopt the latest style, however extreme."
     "They're usually masked in the British newscasts."
     "I imagine it's arranged that way out of deference to American taste," I confessed. "Actually, not very many do mask."
     The second policeman considered that. "Girls going down the street bare from the neck up." It was not clear whether he viewed the prospect with relish or moral distaste. Likely both.
     "A few members keep trying to persuade Parliament to enact a law forbidding all masking," I continued, talking perhaps a bit too much.
     The second policeman shook his head. "What an idea. You know, masks are a pretty good thing, brother. Couple of years more and I'm going to make my wife wear hers around the house."
     The first policeman shrugged. "If women were to stop wearing masks, in six weeks you wouldn't know the difference. You get used to anything, if enough people do or don't do it."
     I agreed, rather regretfully, and left them. I turned north on Broadway (old Tenth Avenue, I believe) and walked rapidly until I was beyond Inferno. Passing such an area of undecontaminated radioactivity always makes a person queasy. I thanked God there weren't any such in England, as yet.
     The street was almost empty, though I was accosted by a couple of beggars with faces tunneled by H-bomb scars, whether real or of makeup putty, I couldn't tell. A fat woman held out a baby with webbed fingers and toes. I told myself it would have been deformed anyway and that she was only capitalizing on our fear of bomb-induced mutations. Still, I gave her a seven-and-a-half-cent piece. Her mask made me feel I was paying tribute to an African fetish.
     "May all your children be blessed with one head and two eyes, sir."
     "Thanks," I said, shuddering, and hurried past her.
     "... There's only trash behind the mask, so turn your head, stick to your task: Stay away, stay away—from—the—girls!"
     This last was the end of an anti-sex song being sung by some religionists half a block from the circle-and-cross insignia of a femalist temple. They reminded me only faintly of our small tribe of British monastics. Above their heads was a jumble of billboards advertising predigested foods, wrestling instruction, radio handies and the like.
     I stared at the hysterical slogans with disagreeable fascination. Since the female face and form have been banned on American signs, the very letters of the advertiser's alphabet have begun to crawl with sex—the fat-bellied, big-breasted capital B, the lascivious double O. However, I reminded myself, it is chiefly the mask that so strangely accents sex in America.
     A British anthropologist has pointed out, that, while it took more than 5,000 years to shift the chief point of sexual interest from the hips to the breasts, the next transition to the face has taken less than 50 years. Comparing the American style with Moslem tradition is not valid; Moslem women are compelled to wear veils, the purpose of which is concealment, while American women have only the compulsion of fashion and use masks to create mystery.
     Theory aside, the actual origins of the trend are to be found in the anti-radiation clothing of World War III, which led to masked wrestling, now a fantastically popular sport, and that in turn led to the current female fashion. Only a wild style at first, masks quickly became as necessary as brassieres and lipsticks had been earlier in the century.

So this was the SF of 1950, the carefree postwar era of the American decade.

When I was a kid, Leiber was best known for his fantasy works, particularly the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I read a couple of them, and I didn't like them, either. I hate to pick on a guy who's been dead for almost thirty years, but I sure am glad not to be a character in any of his stories.

At least we can say that, however crappy things may be today, they aren't at all like he predicted in "Coming Attraction."