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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 2, whole no. 11, Summer 1945
Page 4
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tabus, finds frequent occasions to satirize modern big business and industrialism amd in addition shows sharply the less pleasant features of living under a dictatorship. The earlier portion of Starmaker in describing the world of life analogous to our own certainly leaves one a clear picture of Dr. Stapledon's likes and dislikes as related to present-day society. Nearly any fantasy by S. Fowler Wright contains a noticeable amount of propagandizing against the machine age, especially life of Elizabethan England. In none of these instances do we find the stories damaged by these intrusions--in most cases, indeed, these additions enhance the overall excellence of the novel in question--because the author in questoin has tried, first and foremost, to write a good, entertaining story. John Cowper Powys' Morwyn, on the other hand, is a prime example of a tremendously powerful atmospheric fantasy virtually ruined by a lack of restraint in handling of the non-entertainment residue. The anti-vivisection propaganda descends virtually to the level of incoherent raving, and its frequent recurrence seriously interferes with the flow of the story, to say nothing of irritating the reader by its excessive intemperence. The handling of the non-entertainment residue is unquestionably one of the most revealingi ndications of an author's ability as a writer. Whenever he touches on it, he is jitter-bugging on eggs, and very few ineptnesses here will ruin an otherwise acceptable story. At this point, it might be well to interject a statement that in many types of science-fiction the non-entertainment residue is the crux of the entire book. It certainly is legitimate, for example, for an author to attempt to show his interpretation of what life reasonably like "if" something happened. He may do so as S. Fowler Wright in The New Gods Lead, and attempt to show the end results if certain present-day trends are carried to their logical conclusions. Brown and Serpell, in Loss of Eden (Faber & Faber, 1940), wrote of a Britain which had made a negotiated peace with Hitler. George Allan England made in The Golden Blight an attempt to show the reactions of a powerful oligarchy confronted with the complete erasure of the basis of their financial structure. The thoughtful reader can doubtless call to mind scores of similar examples. In any of these cases, the author cannot well show the results of his "if" without reflecting strongly his own beliefs and philosophy concerning the matter. Indeed, without this non-entertainment residue, the work will lose severely in plausibility and strength. A case in point is Woman Alive by Susan Ertz. This story deaks with the destruction of virtually all female life through the military use of a potent virus. One woman is finally found alive, and the denouement deals with the conflicts and actions incidental to her becoming the Mother of the Race. The author's apparently complete lack of convictions along sociological lines results in a lifeless, almost mechanical narrative; a faint shadow of what we would have had if Wright or Huxley had handled this theme. Pure fantasy and weird fiction cannot, in the opinion of this writer, contain any noticeable amount of non-entertainment residue and still retain any claim to attention. The outstanding examples of its erroneous inclusion may be found in the vast body of so-called "occult" fiction, in which the chief aim, apparently, is to "prove" the existence of ghosts, table-rappings, spirit communications, and all the other psychic phenomena beloved of mediums and cranks. A well-known writer of this type of story is L. Adams Beck, who is responsible for several volumes of moderately well-written short stories. (This field is also notorious for the extremely cheap type of writing generally found in it, and one's judgement is apt to be colored by this intrinsic lack of quality.) In the tales contained in Beck's The Opener of the --4--
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tabus, finds frequent occasions to satirize modern big business and industrialism amd in addition shows sharply the less pleasant features of living under a dictatorship. The earlier portion of Starmaker in describing the world of life analogous to our own certainly leaves one a clear picture of Dr. Stapledon's likes and dislikes as related to present-day society. Nearly any fantasy by S. Fowler Wright contains a noticeable amount of propagandizing against the machine age, especially life of Elizabethan England. In none of these instances do we find the stories damaged by these intrusions--in most cases, indeed, these additions enhance the overall excellence of the novel in question--because the author in questoin has tried, first and foremost, to write a good, entertaining story. John Cowper Powys' Morwyn, on the other hand, is a prime example of a tremendously powerful atmospheric fantasy virtually ruined by a lack of restraint in handling of the non-entertainment residue. The anti-vivisection propaganda descends virtually to the level of incoherent raving, and its frequent recurrence seriously interferes with the flow of the story, to say nothing of irritating the reader by its excessive intemperence. The handling of the non-entertainment residue is unquestionably one of the most revealingi ndications of an author's ability as a writer. Whenever he touches on it, he is jitter-bugging on eggs, and very few ineptnesses here will ruin an otherwise acceptable story. At this point, it might be well to interject a statement that in many types of science-fiction the non-entertainment residue is the crux of the entire book. It certainly is legitimate, for example, for an author to attempt to show his interpretation of what life reasonably like "if" something happened. He may do so as S. Fowler Wright in The New Gods Lead, and attempt to show the end results if certain present-day trends are carried to their logical conclusions. Brown and Serpell, in Loss of Eden (Faber & Faber, 1940), wrote of a Britain which had made a negotiated peace with Hitler. George Allan England made in The Golden Blight an attempt to show the reactions of a powerful oligarchy confronted with the complete erasure of the basis of their financial structure. The thoughtful reader can doubtless call to mind scores of similar examples. In any of these cases, the author cannot well show the results of his "if" without reflecting strongly his own beliefs and philosophy concerning the matter. Indeed, without this non-entertainment residue, the work will lose severely in plausibility and strength. A case in point is Woman Alive by Susan Ertz. This story deaks with the destruction of virtually all female life through the military use of a potent virus. One woman is finally found alive, and the denouement deals with the conflicts and actions incidental to her becoming the Mother of the Race. The author's apparently complete lack of convictions along sociological lines results in a lifeless, almost mechanical narrative; a faint shadow of what we would have had if Wright or Huxley had handled this theme. Pure fantasy and weird fiction cannot, in the opinion of this writer, contain any noticeable amount of non-entertainment residue and still retain any claim to attention. The outstanding examples of its erroneous inclusion may be found in the vast body of so-called "occult" fiction, in which the chief aim, apparently, is to "prove" the existence of ghosts, table-rappings, spirit communications, and all the other psychic phenomena beloved of mediums and cranks. A well-known writer of this type of story is L. Adams Beck, who is responsible for several volumes of moderately well-written short stories. (This field is also notorious for the extremely cheap type of writing generally found in it, and one's judgement is apt to be colored by this intrinsic lack of quality.) In the tales contained in Beck's The Opener of the --4--
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