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Fantasia, v. 1, issue 3, July 1941
Page 16
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16 FANTASIA Discarding that thoroughly discredited premise, there still remains the fact that the early "traditional" types of scientifiction were, with very rare exceptions, concerned entirely with building stories around the physical sciences. Chiefly chemistry, astronomy and physics; this trio is undoubtedly still deeply associated by many fans with not only the original, but the only basis for scientifiction. This early trend produced the "heavy-science" yarns. For the most part, these were wildly pretentious in the extreme, but they did not contain science in the well-known tamale ratio: one-chicken-to-one-horse. Point is, that some sort of scientific explanation was at the bottom of it all. I think the very best examples of this type are Campbell's stories, such as Solarite, and Taine's, such as Seeds of Life. Down through the years the "heavy-science" story has evolved, and the latest refinement appears to be the type Rocklynne's "problem-yarns". In Men and the Mirror and And Then There Was One, the story is fashioned around a framework of unadorned physical law, and very nicely, too, as I see it. But the militant attackers of Final Blackout can't establish this type as a criterion. Not one out of a hundred modern scientifiction stories could qualify by these rigid standards. If they complain about a lack of science in Final Blackout, they obviously don't mean real science, as found in the "problem-yarns". You can probably recall that the early stories went on and on and on and on explaining in meticulous detail how the rocket-ship was built, fueled, provisioned, launched, piloted and landed at its destination. Nowadays the rocket-ship is taken for granted. The presence of a rocket-ship in a story cannot by any stretch of the most jaded imagination be considered as supplying the science element in a story. As it is, no rocket-ship, explained or unexplained, will be scientific until rocket-ships are accomplished facts. Yet this is undoubtedly the very reasoning on which the fans who object about Final Blackout proceed. They have come to accept, unconsciously I trust, rocket-ships and ray-guns and time-machines as scientific achievements! And therefore they will readily classify any stories in which those problematical devices appear as true scientifiction, but a yarn unencumbered with the conventional fallacious doodads is approached with grave suspicions. So while "heavy-science" yarns, which do contain elements of fact, cannot comprise more than one per cent of that which passes for scientifiction, the other ninety-nine per cent appears to be without any appreciable practical foundation in scientific fact. In my judgement, this leaves the objectors to Final Blackout high and dry on the bitter reefs of their own unthinking prejudice. To face the facts bluntly, the prefix science- in science-fiction has always been a terrible and outrageous overstatement. Perhaps rocket-ships or time-machines would have satisfied the fans, had they appeared in Final Blackout, but there would still have been no science in the story. There have been tremendous inroads made in the field by stories of psychological and social significance (Don't get me wrong on that last one; I'm not a Party member or even a parlor-pinkie). Take Asimov's Trends or Van Vogt's Slan or almost any of Heinlein's stories. The wind was bound to blow that way, once scientifiction got over its infantile stage; and I'm fully convinced that the strictly-pseudo-science stage was not alone infantile, but downright pre-natal. These are straws in the wind, and Final Blackout is one of them. It's quite all right to keep that science- prefix tacked on; but plenty of fans must soon come to the bitter realization that rocket-ships and Martians as essential fixtures are passe. Scientifiction has been wagged by its title for a long time, but it has actually been nothing more than imaginative projection. It's becoming more sophisticated, branching out. We mustn't be afraid to call it simply imaginative fiction; a name much bigger and much better than stilted, blue-nose scientifiction. It's outgrown its after-jets, and its future is greater than you think.
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16 FANTASIA Discarding that thoroughly discredited premise, there still remains the fact that the early "traditional" types of scientifiction were, with very rare exceptions, concerned entirely with building stories around the physical sciences. Chiefly chemistry, astronomy and physics; this trio is undoubtedly still deeply associated by many fans with not only the original, but the only basis for scientifiction. This early trend produced the "heavy-science" yarns. For the most part, these were wildly pretentious in the extreme, but they did not contain science in the well-known tamale ratio: one-chicken-to-one-horse. Point is, that some sort of scientific explanation was at the bottom of it all. I think the very best examples of this type are Campbell's stories, such as Solarite, and Taine's, such as Seeds of Life. Down through the years the "heavy-science" story has evolved, and the latest refinement appears to be the type Rocklynne's "problem-yarns". In Men and the Mirror and And Then There Was One, the story is fashioned around a framework of unadorned physical law, and very nicely, too, as I see it. But the militant attackers of Final Blackout can't establish this type as a criterion. Not one out of a hundred modern scientifiction stories could qualify by these rigid standards. If they complain about a lack of science in Final Blackout, they obviously don't mean real science, as found in the "problem-yarns". You can probably recall that the early stories went on and on and on and on explaining in meticulous detail how the rocket-ship was built, fueled, provisioned, launched, piloted and landed at its destination. Nowadays the rocket-ship is taken for granted. The presence of a rocket-ship in a story cannot by any stretch of the most jaded imagination be considered as supplying the science element in a story. As it is, no rocket-ship, explained or unexplained, will be scientific until rocket-ships are accomplished facts. Yet this is undoubtedly the very reasoning on which the fans who object about Final Blackout proceed. They have come to accept, unconsciously I trust, rocket-ships and ray-guns and time-machines as scientific achievements! And therefore they will readily classify any stories in which those problematical devices appear as true scientifiction, but a yarn unencumbered with the conventional fallacious doodads is approached with grave suspicions. So while "heavy-science" yarns, which do contain elements of fact, cannot comprise more than one per cent of that which passes for scientifiction, the other ninety-nine per cent appears to be without any appreciable practical foundation in scientific fact. In my judgement, this leaves the objectors to Final Blackout high and dry on the bitter reefs of their own unthinking prejudice. To face the facts bluntly, the prefix science- in science-fiction has always been a terrible and outrageous overstatement. Perhaps rocket-ships or time-machines would have satisfied the fans, had they appeared in Final Blackout, but there would still have been no science in the story. There have been tremendous inroads made in the field by stories of psychological and social significance (Don't get me wrong on that last one; I'm not a Party member or even a parlor-pinkie). Take Asimov's Trends or Van Vogt's Slan or almost any of Heinlein's stories. The wind was bound to blow that way, once scientifiction got over its infantile stage; and I'm fully convinced that the strictly-pseudo-science stage was not alone infantile, but downright pre-natal. These are straws in the wind, and Final Blackout is one of them. It's quite all right to keep that science- prefix tacked on; but plenty of fans must soon come to the bitter realization that rocket-ships and Martians as essential fixtures are passe. Scientifiction has been wagged by its title for a long time, but it has actually been nothing more than imaginative projection. It's becoming more sophisticated, branching out. We mustn't be afraid to call it simply imaginative fiction; a name much bigger and much better than stilted, blue-nose scientifiction. It's outgrown its after-jets, and its future is greater than you think.
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