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successive generationsgives them an enormous evolutionary advantage, one that mustn’t be squandered. Then there’s the related concept of abstraction: when we see an event, we never see its essence, but abstract just a slice of the whole. In order to make use of this knowledge, the Count believed that one must be reeducated to process information with an open mind, with a minimum of unhealthy ego and in a spirit of cooperation, not competition. Although he suggests a number of different learning techniques, one of the most important tools was a discussion group that was part seminar and part group therapy. If you were lucky, the group leader was the Count himself.
    If this is starting to remind you of any number of human-potential movements that sprung up during the latter part of the twentieth century, it’s no accident. The editor of
Astounding Science Fiction
, John W. Campbell, the man whose vision ushered in the “golden age” of science fiction, was obsessed with the Nietzschean concept that called for a class of supermen at the top of the social hierarchy. When Campbell read Korzybski’s book, he envisioned Null-A training as the first step to some sort of actual über-mutancy, and urged his team of writers, including Robert Heinlein, Lester del Rey, L. Sprague de Camp and van Vogt, to work the concept into their stories. Another of his
Astounding
writers, L. Ron Hubbard, had an even better idea: he co-opted some of the Count’s more accessible ideas, threw in some basic Freud, and wrote
Dianetics
. In 1950, the charismatic Hubbard even convinced his old pal van Vogt to run his California Dianetics operation. The two pulp writers had a falling-out when Hubbard, dismayed by diminishing sales figures, sweetened the deal by coming up with Scientology, a fanciful, sci-fi religion.
    Many well-intentioned psychologists have acknowledged a debt to General Semantics: Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy, Esalen), Albert Ellis (cognitive therapy) and Neuro-Linguistic Programmers Richard Bandler and John Grinder were all heavy Korzybski-ites. So were Buckminster Fuller, S. I. Hayakawa, Alvin Toffler, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, philosopher Alan Watts, literary theorist Kenneth Burke, and the originator of
The
Tonight Show
, Steve Allen (
smock-smock!
). Additional science fiction writers who were influenced by General Semantics and/or A. E. van Vogt: Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick (very big on amnesiac mutants), Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Robert Anton Wilson, Poul Anderson, Philip José Farmer and many more. In recent years, a new generation of sci-fi writers has been exploring the latest pimp-my-human movement. It’s known as Transhumanism and has a logo every bit as snappy as Null-A: H+.
    After
Science and Sanity
became a runaway hit with the egghead crowd, in 1938 the Count established the Institute of General Semantics in Chicago (it moved to Connecticut in 1946). In attendance at his summer lecture series of 1939 was Harvard student William S. Burroughs, the future writer of
Junkie
,
Queer
,
Naked Lunch
and other works. Several of the core concepts that Burroughs would preach to his flock—the idea that language is a virus, the routine about the “IS of identity” and the “EITHER/OR” problem—certainly had their origins in General Semantics. So if we are alert to the fact that Burroughs was an idol of both J. G. Ballard and William Gibson, we can trace Null-A’s influence back through three generations of sci-fi greats.
    A note: In the mid-sixties, Burroughs joined the Church of Scientology and was a member until 1972 when, disgusted with Hubbard’s increasingly megalomaniacal statements and behavior, he moved on to higher ground, so to speak. Apparently, he was still quoting Korzybski through his last days.
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    I never did get the hang of that cortico-thalamic pause or grow golden tendrils out of my head like