What was happening at the beginning of the 1960's?
I've long been a fan of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy books, so when I found the Kindle version of Randall Garrett: The Ultimate Collection for 99 cents, I leapt at the chance to read some of his other stories. Nothing so far has come close to the Lord Darcy books in quality, but they've mostly been fun to read.
Recently I read The Highest Treason. It's short, under 23,000 words, and was originally published in the January 1961 issue of the magazine Analog Science Fact and Fiction. You can find a public domain version at Project Gutenberg.
The Highest Treason deals with a subject familiar to me, one I first encountered in Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, first published in October 1961, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. That one is much shorter, only 2200 words, and can be found here in pdf form.
C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Proposes a Toast was next—and my favorite. You can read it here, in the December 19, 1959 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. I don't have a word count, but it is also quite short.
December 1959, January 1961, October 1961. Three stories written as the 1950's passed into the 1960's.
All three have as their premise the consequences of a culture of mediocrity, in which excellence in anything—beauty, art, sport, thinking, work, character—is abolished for the sake of making everyone "equal." There must have been something going on at that time period to make it a concern for at least three such varied authors.
What would they think today? From the demise of ability grouping in elementary schools, to "participation trophies," to branding as racist and unacceptable the idea that employment and leadership positions should be awarded on the basis of merit and accomplishment, we have come a long way down this path since 1960.
Here's hoping it doesn't take near-annihilation by space aliens—or the flames of hell—to wake us up.
It may have been the euphoria of the post-WWII period. We won; no more wars; families together again - women back in the home where they belonged! There was a contented glow that lasted all the way until the "flower children" rebelled in the 60s. And a few wise men, particularly in the Science and Science Fiction communities saw the golden glow for the dream it was, a passing phase that would inevitably crash and burn as the world returned to something closer to a reality where life wasn't perfect.
