Books: Schizophrenic SF?

Is science fiction off its rocket? Definitely, says Cleveland's Robert Plank, a psychiatric social worker, in a current medical journal. Argues Plank (in International Record of Medicine and General Practice Clinics): many science-fiction plots betray "schizophrenic manifestations" in the minds of their authors, who work out their fantasies by literary catharsis. Similarly, he concludes, readers release the steam from their own unconscious by reading the fantasies.

"Episodes of space travel are by no means rare in the imaginings of the mentally ill," says Plank. Equally symptomatic is the "last man" motif, in which all mankind has been annihilated save for one...