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Spaceways, v. 3 issue 3, whole no. 19, March 1941

Page 23

SPACEWAYS     23
THE READERS ALWAYS WRITE

Five Best Stories of 1940: First of all, a word about procedure. Stories were tabulated on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis. Everything was listed as sent, including a few 1939 yarns which crept in, and several stories from Argosy which magazine wasn't included in the request for your choice, but not specifically banned. No one forgot and mentioned a reprint, and split choices are indicated by fractions.
The ten best of the year with their votes are: Slan, 67 2-3; Final Blackout, 39 2-3; Fear, 31 2-3; Vault of the Beast, 14; Fruit of Knowledge, Darker Than You Think, and It tied with 11; Farewell to the Master and Quietus tied at 10, and Mathematics of Magic, 9. In all, 47 yarns or series were mentioned, and it'd be useless to list them. However, the following got from 5 to 8 votes: If This Goes on--, Gray Lensman, Coventry, and the Minions of the... series in Argosy, including one who listed Minions of Mercury separately, received 6. The remaining 33 received less than 5 points. (20 sets of votes were received.)
A glance at those results indicates several interesting points. For one thing, it's doubtful that in any other past year three stories could have so completely dominated the remainder, getting nearly half of the total points. Furthermore, two of these three meet none of the accepted standards of stf and fantasy, and the other--Slan--is utterly different from previous superman yarns. This apparently means the fans like "different" yarns, but it may be deeper than that: their differentness may have merely made them stand out in memory. In one respect this poll is utterly inaccurate: few remembered the final part of Gray Lensman appeared in Jan. 1940, few mentioned it, and so there's no way of telling how it would have ended up. Greatest discrepency of opinion on Final Blackout and Quietus: the former w s mentioned by only ten, the latter by only two, both of whom gave it first place. Slan was mentioned by most: all but two and oddly enough those were the same two who went overboard on Quietus. Coventry was the only yarn which got one first-place vote and no others. In all these appear to be the general choice of the fans. Only yarn one might expect to have done better than it did was Kuttner's Pegasus, which no one mentioned, possibly forgetting that it wasn't a reprint despite its publication in FFM.

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SPACEWAYS 23 THE READERS ALWAYS WRITE Five Best Stories of 1940: First of all, a word about procedure. Stories were tabulated on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis. Everything was listed as sent, including a few 1939 yarns which crept in, and several stories from Argosy which magazine wasn't included in the request for your choice, but not specifically banned. No one forgot and mentioned a reprint, and split choices are indicated by fractions. The ten best of the year with their votes are: Slan, 67 2-3; Final Blackout, 39 2-3; Fear, 31 2-3; Vault of the Beast, 14; Fruit of Knowledge, Darker Than You Think, and It tied with 11; Farewell to the Master and Quietus tied at 10, and Mathematics of Magic, 9. In all, 47 yarns or series were mentioned, and it'd be useless to list them. However, the following got from 5 to 8 votes: If This Goes on--, Gray Lensman, Coventry, and the Minions of the... series in Argosy, including one who listed Minions of Mercury separately, received 6. The remaining 33 received less than 5 points. (20 sets of votes were received.) A glance at those results indicates several interesting points. For one thing, it's doubtful that in any other past year three stories could have so completely dominated the remainder, getting nearly half of the total points. Furthermore, two of these three meet none of the accepted standards of stf and fantasy, and the other--Slan--is utterly different from previous superman yarns. This apparently means the fans like "different" yarns, but it may be deeper than that: their differentness may have merely made them stand out in memory. In one respect this poll is utterly inaccurate: few remembered the final part of Gray Lensman appeared in Jan. 1940, few mentioned it, and so there's no way of telling how it would have ended up. Greatest discrepency of opinion on Final Blackout and Quietus: the former w s mentioned by only ten, the latter by only two, both of whom gave it first place. Slan was mentioned by most: all but two and oddly enough those were the same two who went overboard on Quietus. Coventry was the only yarn which got one first-place vote and no others. In all these appear to be the general choice of the fans. Only yarn one might expect to have done better than it did was Kuttner's Pegasus, which no one mentioned, possibly forgetting that it wasn't a reprint despite its publication in FFM.