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Ad Astra, v. 1, issue 2, July 1939
Page 4
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Page #4 AD ASTRA Continuing:- WHERE'S HAWK CARSE! by Clifford D. Simak What I have said of him, I beleive, applies to all the others. The creator of Hawk, I'm sure, if he reads this, will agree with all I've said. When Hawk Carse was read and loved most of the characters in science fiction yarns were without distinguishing marks... just men and women of rather pallid cast used to carry forward the action of the story. For in those days the action of the story was enough to turn the trick. To-day, no reader is going to get excited over a mere trip to the Moon or a little jaunt back into time. There has to be more than that to a story now. But that was exactly what many of the first stories were. . . . mere journals of point-less adventure, tomes of weighty scientific text-book stuff and paragraphs of description concerning alien peoples and conditions. In claiming that little attention was paid to characterization and the other niceties of story writing in the old days, I'm not casting a blanket indictment without including myself. A few of my stories were published then and my characters were just mouthpieces to explain scientific apparatus and scientific theory. There were exceptions, of course, but most of us who wrote then were guilty of the things that I have pointed out. The development from those early days to the present has been gradual. Some outstanding authors have gone ahead to blaze the trail and the rest have followed. By this I do not mean the authors imitated one another. What I mean is that one man opens a new avenue along which science fiction may be developed; others follow and help develop it. Perhaps one author will do this once in a life time. Perhaps an exceptional author will do it several times. Most of us will never do it, but we can follow where the others lead. The classic example, of course, is Weinbaum. But many stories have been accused of imitating him, so much so, it has been said by some one, that were not alive today, he could not sell a story. This is rank libel. To my knowledge, not more than two or three stories have ever deliberately imitated Weinbaum. Though many stories and many writers have been influenced by him. Today, the science fiction story stands on its own feet as a legitimate story. It has all the essentials of a story in any other field. It has characterization, human interest, humor, deeper insight into the fundamentals of humanity and the scientific world. One would naturally believe the more stories that are written, the narrower the field would become as the ideas are used up. Curiously, this is untrue. The very fact that many of the old ideas have been exhausted forces the author to seek either new angles to old ideas, brand new ideas or new approaches to telling of the story; all of which spells better science fiction. The development still continues. I believe it will continue. With all of ((over))
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Page #4 AD ASTRA Continuing:- WHERE'S HAWK CARSE! by Clifford D. Simak What I have said of him, I beleive, applies to all the others. The creator of Hawk, I'm sure, if he reads this, will agree with all I've said. When Hawk Carse was read and loved most of the characters in science fiction yarns were without distinguishing marks... just men and women of rather pallid cast used to carry forward the action of the story. For in those days the action of the story was enough to turn the trick. To-day, no reader is going to get excited over a mere trip to the Moon or a little jaunt back into time. There has to be more than that to a story now. But that was exactly what many of the first stories were. . . . mere journals of point-less adventure, tomes of weighty scientific text-book stuff and paragraphs of description concerning alien peoples and conditions. In claiming that little attention was paid to characterization and the other niceties of story writing in the old days, I'm not casting a blanket indictment without including myself. A few of my stories were published then and my characters were just mouthpieces to explain scientific apparatus and scientific theory. There were exceptions, of course, but most of us who wrote then were guilty of the things that I have pointed out. The development from those early days to the present has been gradual. Some outstanding authors have gone ahead to blaze the trail and the rest have followed. By this I do not mean the authors imitated one another. What I mean is that one man opens a new avenue along which science fiction may be developed; others follow and help develop it. Perhaps one author will do this once in a life time. Perhaps an exceptional author will do it several times. Most of us will never do it, but we can follow where the others lead. The classic example, of course, is Weinbaum. But many stories have been accused of imitating him, so much so, it has been said by some one, that were not alive today, he could not sell a story. This is rank libel. To my knowledge, not more than two or three stories have ever deliberately imitated Weinbaum. Though many stories and many writers have been influenced by him. Today, the science fiction story stands on its own feet as a legitimate story. It has all the essentials of a story in any other field. It has characterization, human interest, humor, deeper insight into the fundamentals of humanity and the scientific world. One would naturally believe the more stories that are written, the narrower the field would become as the ideas are used up. Curiously, this is untrue. The very fact that many of the old ideas have been exhausted forces the author to seek either new angles to old ideas, brand new ideas or new approaches to telling of the story; all of which spells better science fiction. The development still continues. I believe it will continue. With all of ((over))
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