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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 3, whole no. 7, Summer 1944
Page 17
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And these ratings which fan mags have published--what rot! A fair, impersonal display of discrimination, a detached attitude in making comparisons--that's splendid! But the belittling and disparaging, that's something else. I read a lot of stuff I consider sheer drivel. OK. But other readers think it's enchanting. The editor would be a goddamn fool if he ignored those readers and bore down on just what I like. Who am I to want a mag made up 100% to my taste? Am I buying up the entire edition? If so, then I'd be entitled to demand 100% of my pet yarn-styles. Why don't fans strive to become connoisseurs and quit being enthusiasts. I use enthusiast in its original sense: a person who is dizzy, hopped up, obsessed with some notion--and with the implication that he's reached the point of incoherence and irrationality. He feels exalted and prophetic, usually with little justification. I don't blame fans for being enthusiasts, understand. Any person of intense personality is bound to be an enthusiast, for a while. Finally he sobers up enough to become a connoisseur. After all, it is twenty years this coming week since I wrote my first weird yarn. Naturally enough,I am no longer the enthusiast I was in those days, when I literally could not write anything but a weird yarn. However, my enthusiasm did not drive me to writing belittling letters about the work of some weird writer whose approach was not to my taste. The hodge-podge of so-called "science" in science-fiction is certainly pathetic. I mean, taking it seriously is pathetic. Because there's no science, not a damn trace of real science, in a carload of s-f. Why not consider the stuff, honestly, frankly, as entertaining whimsy, some of it worth while and well done, some of it sheer tripe, and let it go at that--enjoy much of it, but not make a cult of any of it? And quit crapping yourself about "thought-variants" (a one-time shibboleth) and the science content--there ain't any. Not that I am a scientist--hell, I am merely a B.S., and they have Ph.D.'s writing for s-f mags. But I have a rudimentary acquaintance with science. I like a science-fiction yarn when it is a good yarn; I like it because it is well done as a piece of story-telling, and not just because it has a dribble of science-so-called. After all, i f I want some science, why not get a textbook on some branch of science and then sweat it out? Science-fiction, I think, is a hell of a lot more fun if you regard it frankly and honestly as make-believe, let's-play, just-suppose--the same way in which you read The Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland (a satire, by the way), or Candide. It'd seem silly to me to enter into ponderous scientific speculations about Alice's gambolings about, and try to devise some "law" of nature which "logically" permitted some of her experiences. Atmosphere unnecessary to a story? Hell, how can you do a yarn without atmosphere? You can do a composition having a plot and no atmosphere, but is it a story? The big fallacy lies in trying to dissect a yarn. A story is an entity. Take a lot of anatomical parts and assemble them; does that give you a human being? A Story is not simply so many parts plot, such-and-such percentage atmosphere, such-and-such amount of characterization, and so many percent theme. Any more than a strip-tease queen is summed up in such-and-such hip measure, such-and-such bust, etc. Atmosphere, characterization, mood, plot, theme are so inextricably linked that you can't separate them as an assayer breaks down an ore specimen. They are all aspects of the same entity. True, some yarns devote more space to atmosphere and less to plot, and so forth in -- 17 --
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And these ratings which fan mags have published--what rot! A fair, impersonal display of discrimination, a detached attitude in making comparisons--that's splendid! But the belittling and disparaging, that's something else. I read a lot of stuff I consider sheer drivel. OK. But other readers think it's enchanting. The editor would be a goddamn fool if he ignored those readers and bore down on just what I like. Who am I to want a mag made up 100% to my taste? Am I buying up the entire edition? If so, then I'd be entitled to demand 100% of my pet yarn-styles. Why don't fans strive to become connoisseurs and quit being enthusiasts. I use enthusiast in its original sense: a person who is dizzy, hopped up, obsessed with some notion--and with the implication that he's reached the point of incoherence and irrationality. He feels exalted and prophetic, usually with little justification. I don't blame fans for being enthusiasts, understand. Any person of intense personality is bound to be an enthusiast, for a while. Finally he sobers up enough to become a connoisseur. After all, it is twenty years this coming week since I wrote my first weird yarn. Naturally enough,I am no longer the enthusiast I was in those days, when I literally could not write anything but a weird yarn. However, my enthusiasm did not drive me to writing belittling letters about the work of some weird writer whose approach was not to my taste. The hodge-podge of so-called "science" in science-fiction is certainly pathetic. I mean, taking it seriously is pathetic. Because there's no science, not a damn trace of real science, in a carload of s-f. Why not consider the stuff, honestly, frankly, as entertaining whimsy, some of it worth while and well done, some of it sheer tripe, and let it go at that--enjoy much of it, but not make a cult of any of it? And quit crapping yourself about "thought-variants" (a one-time shibboleth) and the science content--there ain't any. Not that I am a scientist--hell, I am merely a B.S., and they have Ph.D.'s writing for s-f mags. But I have a rudimentary acquaintance with science. I like a science-fiction yarn when it is a good yarn; I like it because it is well done as a piece of story-telling, and not just because it has a dribble of science-so-called. After all, i f I want some science, why not get a textbook on some branch of science and then sweat it out? Science-fiction, I think, is a hell of a lot more fun if you regard it frankly and honestly as make-believe, let's-play, just-suppose--the same way in which you read The Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland (a satire, by the way), or Candide. It'd seem silly to me to enter into ponderous scientific speculations about Alice's gambolings about, and try to devise some "law" of nature which "logically" permitted some of her experiences. Atmosphere unnecessary to a story? Hell, how can you do a yarn without atmosphere? You can do a composition having a plot and no atmosphere, but is it a story? The big fallacy lies in trying to dissect a yarn. A story is an entity. Take a lot of anatomical parts and assemble them; does that give you a human being? A Story is not simply so many parts plot, such-and-such percentage atmosphere, such-and-such amount of characterization, and so many percent theme. Any more than a strip-tease queen is summed up in such-and-such hip measure, such-and-such bust, etc. Atmosphere, characterization, mood, plot, theme are so inextricably linked that you can't separate them as an assayer breaks down an ore specimen. They are all aspects of the same entity. True, some yarns devote more space to atmosphere and less to plot, and so forth in -- 17 --
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