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Alchemist, v. 1, issue 4, December 1940

Page 39

ALCHEMIST
39

OLD FAN MAG REPRINT

TRUE THOUGHT VARIANTS*

Donald A. Wollheim.

"Astounding Stories" has been presenting stories now and then which they label "thought-variants". They are called so because their theme contains something supposedly never used before in an stf yarn. However, it is the writer's contention that they are not truly thought-variants in the most correct and exact sense. I refine a thought-variant as story which sets a new pattern, opens a new field of science-fiction. Not as merely a yarn---interplanetary, time-travel, microcosmos, etc.---in which there is a new twist. The very definitions "interplanetary," "time-travel", etc., convey what I mean. The first story of travel between the planets was a true thought-variant. It was something never used before, it opened a field in which innumerable tales could follow. There has, at a cursory glance, been only one true 

*((Reprinted from The Science Fiction Fan, September 1936, Volume One, Number Three, by special permission of Olon F. Wiggins, Editor.))

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ALCHEMIST 39 OLD FAN MAG REPRINT TRUE THOUGHT VARIANTS* Donald A. Wollheim. "Astounding Stories" has been presenting stories now and then which they label "thought-variants". They are called so because their theme contains something supposedly never used before in an stf yarn. However, it is the writer's contention that they are not truly thought-variants in the most correct and exact sense. I refine a thought-variant as story which sets a new pattern, opens a new field of science-fiction. Not as merely a yarn---interplanetary, time-travel, microcosmos, etc.---in which there is a new twist. The very definitions "interplanetary," "time-travel", etc., convey what I mean. The first story of travel between the planets was a true thought-variant. It was something never used before, it opened a field in which innumerable tales could follow. There has, at a cursory glance, been only one true *((Reprinted from The Science Fiction Fan, September 1936, Volume One, Number Three, by special permission of Olon F. Wiggins, Editor.))