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Horizons, v. 2, issue 4, June 1941

Page 7

HORIZONS
7

A YEAR OF REPRINTS

FFM: April, 1940. Cover: Just as bad as Finlay's, but more obviously an attempt to draw a cover than Virgil's work. THE DEVIL OF THE WESTERN SEA: 3. This time our complaint is that it was trying to dress a pauper up in a price's clothes. The writing and the way the story was told were much too dramatic. If the there had been the destruction of a world, or the unleashing of atomic power, the intense narration might have fitted. it reminds of the way some composers dress nice little folk tunes up into symphonic compositions when they're obviously meant to be heard and hummed and not developed. THE BEAST PLANTS: 2. Much the same complaint as about "A Place of Monsters". Mobile [illegible] and carnivorous tulips, have never seemed very exciting to me. After you've read one story of that sort, you've read them all, and this one story is rarely good. THE CONQUEST OF THE MOON POOL, 5. We're a sucker for Merritt, a terrible sucker, even though his work is hacky. His heroes are more or less the same, Larry of the Moon Pool and Graydon of The Abyss and Snake Mother could be the same, for instance. The theme is usually pretty much the same: two rival sects or races or somethings in a lost world somewhere with two lovely women at the head of each mob, as in Snake Mother, Conquest at the Moon Pool, Face in the Abyss, and so forth. Such things are true of hack stories; a writer usually finds his favorite situations and spends the rest of his career disguising and naming them over and over. It's surprising that Merritt can do the things he does with the hack situation. Think what the stories would be like with real originality! We do not agree that Merritt's works are literature, if you take that word as meaning the accepted-by-the-most-intelligent-people stories that are the best. We do think, however, that Merritt has it in him to write literature, and that no other living author whose works are appearing in the stf and fantasy prozines possesses the potentialities. Merritt wrote these stories to sell to Argosy; now he has no time to write stuff that might be literature. This is one of the few stories we read twice in 1940. FIRE GAS: 3. Miss Gnaedinger can pick the darndest stories as good examples of contemporary science fiction! STAR-FACTS: 2. Uninspired though the concept was undoubtedly new nearly thirty years ago. WEIRD TRAVEL TALES are again best forgotten, the autobiographical sketch indicates a person we'd give a lot to know or have known. Letters are notable in that almost all their writers are more or less active fans. Yarns in order: Conquest of the Moon Pool, Devil of the Western Sea, Fire Gas, Beast Plants.

FFM: May-June, 1940. Cover: 3. They were gradually getting better. SUNKEN CITIES: [illegible] We can't think of anything very appropriate to be said about this. Our memory of it isn't any too good, either, but pleasant things come to mind in glancing over the pages. THREE LINES OF OLD FRENCH, 5, and it would be 50. We consider this Merritt's closest approach to literature as defined above, and just simply the best short story of the year, new and reprinted. Sooner or later it will get the national recognition it deserves; we almost wish we were extravagant enough to have bought the recording of the radio dramatization of it. RAIDERS OF THE AIR: 1. Things like this are inevitable, and it's no use getting excited about them. PEGASUS: 5, this being the only issue of any magazine during the year in which we gave two items 5. We heard somewhere that this was copied after Denet's work which Kuttner much admires; we didn't think it resembled Stephen Vincent's fantasies we know. Does anyone wish to dispute our claim that this story would come closer to inclusion in an anthology of best short stories of 1940 than any other yarn in the prozines published that year? A WORLD OF INDEXED NUMBERS: 3. This is a good example of a perfectly fine story, but one not too much enjoyed because it doesn't stand out from the present-day pen of fantasy. Maybe it should be noteworthy because of this, since it was ahead of its time, but reading the pros doesn't make you think that. FINIS: 2. Another piece of "pretty" writing that fizzled. The editorial was nice, Merritt autobiography sufficient, the [illegible] spoiled by the trite caption and ridiculous airplane at the top, and the letter section quite good for a change. We liked best Three Lines of Old French, the Pegasus, Sunken Cities, A World of Indexed Numbers, Finis, and Raiders of the Air. For once, little doubt about their order of worth.

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HORIZONS 7 A YEAR OF REPRINTS FFM: April, 1940. Cover: Just as bad as Finlay's, but more obviously an attempt to draw a cover than Virgil's work. THE DEVIL OF THE WESTERN SEA: 3. This time our complaint is that it was trying to dress a pauper up in a price's clothes. The writing and the way the story was told were much too dramatic. If the there had been the destruction of a world, or the unleashing of atomic power, the intense narration might have fitted. it reminds of the way some composers dress nice little folk tunes up into symphonic compositions when they're obviously meant to be heard and hummed and not developed. THE BEAST PLANTS: 2. Much the same complaint as about "A Place of Monsters". Mobile [illegible] and carnivorous tulips, have never seemed very exciting to me. After you've read one story of that sort, you've read them all, and this one story is rarely good. THE CONQUEST OF THE MOON POOL, 5. We're a sucker for Merritt, a terrible sucker, even though his work is hacky. His heroes are more or less the same, Larry of the Moon Pool and Graydon of The Abyss and Snake Mother could be the same, for instance. The theme is usually pretty much the same: two rival sects or races or somethings in a lost world somewhere with two lovely women at the head of each mob, as in Snake Mother, Conquest at the Moon Pool, Face in the Abyss, and so forth. Such things are true of hack stories; a writer usually finds his favorite situations and spends the rest of his career disguising and naming them over and over. It's surprising that Merritt can do the things he does with the hack situation. Think what the stories would be like with real originality! We do not agree that Merritt's works are literature, if you take that word as meaning the accepted-by-the-most-intelligent-people stories that are the best. We do think, however, that Merritt has it in him to write literature, and that no other living author whose works are appearing in the stf and fantasy prozines possesses the potentialities. Merritt wrote these stories to sell to Argosy; now he has no time to write stuff that might be literature. This is one of the few stories we read twice in 1940. FIRE GAS: 3. Miss Gnaedinger can pick the darndest stories as good examples of contemporary science fiction! STAR-FACTS: 2. Uninspired though the concept was undoubtedly new nearly thirty years ago. WEIRD TRAVEL TALES are again best forgotten, the autobiographical sketch indicates a person we'd give a lot to know or have known. Letters are notable in that almost all their writers are more or less active fans. Yarns in order: Conquest of the Moon Pool, Devil of the Western Sea, Fire Gas, Beast Plants. FFM: May-June, 1940. Cover: 3. They were gradually getting better. SUNKEN CITIES: [illegible] We can't think of anything very appropriate to be said about this. Our memory of it isn't any too good, either, but pleasant things come to mind in glancing over the pages. THREE LINES OF OLD FRENCH, 5, and it would be 50. We consider this Merritt's closest approach to literature as defined above, and just simply the best short story of the year, new and reprinted. Sooner or later it will get the national recognition it deserves; we almost wish we were extravagant enough to have bought the recording of the radio dramatization of it. RAIDERS OF THE AIR: 1. Things like this are inevitable, and it's no use getting excited about them. PEGASUS: 5, this being the only issue of any magazine during the year in which we gave two items 5. We heard somewhere that this was copied after Denet's work which Kuttner much admires; we didn't think it resembled Stephen Vincent's fantasies we know. Does anyone wish to dispute our claim that this story would come closer to inclusion in an anthology of best short stories of 1940 than any other yarn in the prozines published that year? A WORLD OF INDEXED NUMBERS: 3. This is a good example of a perfectly fine story, but one not too much enjoyed because it doesn't stand out from the present-day pen of fantasy. Maybe it should be noteworthy because of this, since it was ahead of its time, but reading the pros doesn't make you think that. FINIS: 2. Another piece of "pretty" writing that fizzled. The editorial was nice, Merritt autobiography sufficient, the [illegible] spoiled by the trite caption and ridiculous airplane at the top, and the letter section quite good for a change. We liked best Three Lines of Old French, the Pegasus, Sunken Cities, A World of Indexed Numbers, Finis, and Raiders of the Air. For once, little doubt about their order of worth.