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Fanfare, v. 2, issue 1, whole no. 7, August 1941
Page 15
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fanfare sv As If It Mattered by dee lowndes . . . . . . . . . . Ever since I first started reading fan magazines, I've been alternately annoyed and amused by various types of articles, the summation of which was "Isn't science fiction in a ghastly mess now?" and--"Oh, for the good old days of whenever-it-was-when-they-published-you-know-what stories." The latest example of this is an article called "A Collector Reminisces" by Fred W. Fischer. Not that I have anything against Mr. Fischer, whose articles have interested me for some time now, but that it all becomes more and more irritating as time goes on. You see, I started readng science fiction and fantasy somewhat later than the real oldtimers; I started in the initial Science Wonder Stories days and didn't get around to reading the Argosy serials until THE SPOT OF LIFE finally brought me to my senses. (I'd heard so damned much about the BLIND SPOT, how could I resist what was orviously a sequel?) That was followed in close order by PIRATES OF VENUS, BURN,WITCH, BURN, SWORDSMEN OF MARS, etc. Eventually I got my clutches upon the old Amazings, and some of those raved-about Weird Tales yarns and Argosy serials. So what? They were good, some of them; they were outstanding, some of them; I'm not sorry I went to the trouble. But the current science fiction and fantasy was still tops. About a year ago, the Munsey reprints started appearing, bringing along with them a number of tales I hadn't seen before. The original MOON POOL, RADIO MAN stories, etc. But Astounding, Unknown, and an occasional tale elsewhere still kept the standards up. The approach is different these days; the development is different. There's a hell of a lot more stf available than any of we oldtime fans at one time believed could be possible; the precentage of readable stories may not be as high, but the real first class stuff is better than the old classics. That statement is going to bring a lot of rebuttals, I can see. Think it over, fans. The writers of today, most of them, are writers who have had a solid schooling in stf; most of them have read the old classics., read the range of stf and fantasy output for the past five or ten years. They know stf; they can write, for the most part. The oldtimers were the explorers; some of them had new and startling ideas; some of them could write rather will---some outstandingly well. But they stood alone, they were groping their way, and, with few exceptions, their work shows it. As Fred Pohl once remarked in an article written back in 1930: "There were giants in the old days, but they thought and moved and wrote with the clumsiness of giants." That isn't an exact quotation, but it carries the thought the sentence expressed. The trouble is that fans, as a whole, seem to lack the quality of being able to distinguish. They take a few exceptions as symptomatic of the whole; they seem to be unable to grasp the fact that it is entirely coincidental that a genius, or a writer with outstanding ability, writes at one period rather than another. Merritt, the early Cummings, and a few others would have been the same at any time. They and their stories would be just as brilliant were they written in 1941 as they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Edgar Allen Poe would have been just as great a man today (barring circumstances, (continued on p. 19)
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fanfare sv As If It Mattered by dee lowndes . . . . . . . . . . Ever since I first started reading fan magazines, I've been alternately annoyed and amused by various types of articles, the summation of which was "Isn't science fiction in a ghastly mess now?" and--"Oh, for the good old days of whenever-it-was-when-they-published-you-know-what stories." The latest example of this is an article called "A Collector Reminisces" by Fred W. Fischer. Not that I have anything against Mr. Fischer, whose articles have interested me for some time now, but that it all becomes more and more irritating as time goes on. You see, I started readng science fiction and fantasy somewhat later than the real oldtimers; I started in the initial Science Wonder Stories days and didn't get around to reading the Argosy serials until THE SPOT OF LIFE finally brought me to my senses. (I'd heard so damned much about the BLIND SPOT, how could I resist what was orviously a sequel?) That was followed in close order by PIRATES OF VENUS, BURN,WITCH, BURN, SWORDSMEN OF MARS, etc. Eventually I got my clutches upon the old Amazings, and some of those raved-about Weird Tales yarns and Argosy serials. So what? They were good, some of them; they were outstanding, some of them; I'm not sorry I went to the trouble. But the current science fiction and fantasy was still tops. About a year ago, the Munsey reprints started appearing, bringing along with them a number of tales I hadn't seen before. The original MOON POOL, RADIO MAN stories, etc. But Astounding, Unknown, and an occasional tale elsewhere still kept the standards up. The approach is different these days; the development is different. There's a hell of a lot more stf available than any of we oldtime fans at one time believed could be possible; the precentage of readable stories may not be as high, but the real first class stuff is better than the old classics. That statement is going to bring a lot of rebuttals, I can see. Think it over, fans. The writers of today, most of them, are writers who have had a solid schooling in stf; most of them have read the old classics., read the range of stf and fantasy output for the past five or ten years. They know stf; they can write, for the most part. The oldtimers were the explorers; some of them had new and startling ideas; some of them could write rather will---some outstandingly well. But they stood alone, they were groping their way, and, with few exceptions, their work shows it. As Fred Pohl once remarked in an article written back in 1930: "There were giants in the old days, but they thought and moved and wrote with the clumsiness of giants." That isn't an exact quotation, but it carries the thought the sentence expressed. The trouble is that fans, as a whole, seem to lack the quality of being able to distinguish. They take a few exceptions as symptomatic of the whole; they seem to be unable to grasp the fact that it is entirely coincidental that a genius, or a writer with outstanding ability, writes at one period rather than another. Merritt, the early Cummings, and a few others would have been the same at any time. They and their stories would be just as brilliant were they written in 1941 as they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Edgar Allen Poe would have been just as great a man today (barring circumstances, (continued on p. 19)
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