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Sun Spots, v. 5, issue 3, whole no. 19, August 1941
Page 4
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Page 4 SUN SPOTS WHY SCIENCE FICTION? By Joseph J. Millard People are continually getting bewildered and perplexed about Science Fiction. People who don't read it, I mean. What is it? Why does anyone read it? Why are SF fans? Why do I write it? Have I ever consulted a sympathetic doctor or a good psychiatrist? It is hard for non-reader to understand. Some of the fans themselves don't seem to do much better with the questions. Yet the more I see of both readers and writers of Science Fiction, the more firmly convinced I am that there are sound reasons for the existence and support of such a field. I think I know what those reasons are. Before there can be any reality, there must be a dream. Some man had to imagine the airplane, the automobile and the left-handed monkey wrench before he or anyone else could try to construct such articles. Until they were imagined, those utilitarian items were impossible. It was the composite of thousands of men that enabled the Wright Brothers to fly a heavier-than-air vehicle at Kitty Hawk that memorable day. After airplanes really began to fly, fiction stories began to appear dealing with flying. Those stories, coupled with harder facts, fired men's imaginations, filled them with an urge to fly. Before long so many men wanted wings that the result was inevitably the boom in aviation that brought us up to today's miracles of flight. But men had to dream of flying, had to imagine themselves in a future world where flying was common, to bring about the reality of aviation. In science fiction, men dream of a still more distant future and share their dreams with one another and with a vast aggregation of thinking readers. Some of those dreams are turning into reality before our eyes, forcing us to reach still further ahead for fantasy. Atomic power, through U235, crystalized out of one of those dreams. When it finally becomes generally usable, it will be men with the imagination and the spirit of science fiction readers who will harness it. In other words, I think the readers and writers of Science Fiction are creating tomorrow. They are stirring man's imagination toward dreams of universal conquest. When that first step is made, science fiction readers will be among the first to jump in and do things with the new-found fields of conquest. I confidently believe that I shall live long enough to see man walking on the surface of the moon, beginning the foundation of his bases from which to explore the Solar System and, some day, the Universe. I believe that sincerely. And I believe that when that occurs, some of the first men to land on the moon will be readers of Science Fiction who learned to dream of reaching the moon by sharing that dream with other fans. But I see Science Fiction doing another good in this world. Over in Europe, and pretty much all over the world right now, men are spending a few hundred billion dollars to see which can create the most devastating methods for destroying the oth [er. ?] Hundreds of billions of dollars invested in destruction. Think about that for a moment. (Continued on page 5)
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Page 4 SUN SPOTS WHY SCIENCE FICTION? By Joseph J. Millard People are continually getting bewildered and perplexed about Science Fiction. People who don't read it, I mean. What is it? Why does anyone read it? Why are SF fans? Why do I write it? Have I ever consulted a sympathetic doctor or a good psychiatrist? It is hard for non-reader to understand. Some of the fans themselves don't seem to do much better with the questions. Yet the more I see of both readers and writers of Science Fiction, the more firmly convinced I am that there are sound reasons for the existence and support of such a field. I think I know what those reasons are. Before there can be any reality, there must be a dream. Some man had to imagine the airplane, the automobile and the left-handed monkey wrench before he or anyone else could try to construct such articles. Until they were imagined, those utilitarian items were impossible. It was the composite of thousands of men that enabled the Wright Brothers to fly a heavier-than-air vehicle at Kitty Hawk that memorable day. After airplanes really began to fly, fiction stories began to appear dealing with flying. Those stories, coupled with harder facts, fired men's imaginations, filled them with an urge to fly. Before long so many men wanted wings that the result was inevitably the boom in aviation that brought us up to today's miracles of flight. But men had to dream of flying, had to imagine themselves in a future world where flying was common, to bring about the reality of aviation. In science fiction, men dream of a still more distant future and share their dreams with one another and with a vast aggregation of thinking readers. Some of those dreams are turning into reality before our eyes, forcing us to reach still further ahead for fantasy. Atomic power, through U235, crystalized out of one of those dreams. When it finally becomes generally usable, it will be men with the imagination and the spirit of science fiction readers who will harness it. In other words, I think the readers and writers of Science Fiction are creating tomorrow. They are stirring man's imagination toward dreams of universal conquest. When that first step is made, science fiction readers will be among the first to jump in and do things with the new-found fields of conquest. I confidently believe that I shall live long enough to see man walking on the surface of the moon, beginning the foundation of his bases from which to explore the Solar System and, some day, the Universe. I believe that sincerely. And I believe that when that occurs, some of the first men to land on the moon will be readers of Science Fiction who learned to dream of reaching the moon by sharing that dream with other fans. But I see Science Fiction doing another good in this world. Over in Europe, and pretty much all over the world right now, men are spending a few hundred billion dollars to see which can create the most devastating methods for destroying the oth [er. ?] Hundreds of billions of dollars invested in destruction. Think about that for a moment. (Continued on page 5)
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