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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945

Page 107

FANTASY COMMENTATOR
107

with the best visions of our "scientifiction" writers. This type of story in the past had always had a punch because it was so breathlessly futuristic: it related of times so far ahead that readers in this ordinary world were filled with heady inspirations and dazzling dreams of the great scientific Utopia to come. Now, the products of research bid fair to outstrip the finest imaginings of our visionaries in literature. Just one instance: we can no longer be expected to read wide-eyed about rocket trips to other planets when modern armies, in conducting military operations, are already on the very fringes of that stage of development. The fictional prophets have been vindicated, of course, but unfortunately they stand in danger of being superceded by the news items in our daily papers! Perhaps not immediately---today---but the shadows are on the horizon, and unless we discover a few new geniuses of the stature of the early H. G. Wells, it would appear that the writing of "scientifiction" will continue its steady decline. We are doomed to be progressively bored and annoyed by the stale rehashing of ideas that once seemed daring and eon-distant in the first quarter of this century, Of course, some may say: What of Olaf Stapledon? Unfortunately, in this writer's present estimation, Stapledon---at least in his two most significant works, Starmaker and Last and First Men---has not written fiction in any true sense of that word. These volumes are crammed with magnificent ideas and concepts, but they read like history texts---albeit very fantastic ones! They will undoubtedly be prime source-books for future writers; granting the emergence of new geniuses to elaborate portions of this material into colorful and dramatic story form, we may yet have a renaissance of science-fiction; let us all hope so! Incidentally, Stapledon's treatment of the superman theme in Odd John is excellent, and may well point the way towards future elaborations he intends to make of his master works. And Sirius, his latest novel, is an able delving into psychological subtleties from a most unexpected viewpoint. Stapledon may well tell the whole tale of cosmic history in readable form if given time.

Another dark portent in the minds of thinkers, however, is the beginning of a sad loss of faith in science as the final arbiter of human progress and welfare. Unless and until war and human greed are conquered, it does not seem that piling more and more gadgets and conveniences on us will help to cure the fundamental faults of human nature. We come inevitably to the distasteful conclusion that a man of the future subsisting on vitamin pellets, week-ending on Venus or Mars, and arming himself with atomic disintegrators or cosmic-ray guns would be even less pleasant to live with than a twentieth century human being unless there were a concurrent improvement in his cooperative abilities and basic nature. The present-day revelation of collectivism in all the horrors of its several forms makes us shrink from the vision of a scientific Utopia, a regimented bee-hive of civilization in which all life would be conducted on the latest principles of research, and wherein we would all have to live as supermen---whether we wanted to or not. Wells must bear a large share of the blame for attempting to foist this unpalatable concept of a brave new world upon us in his later works. The optimists, of course, brush all these doubts aside with lighthearted assurance that man will become better as his world becomes more and more scientifically controlled: but history has thus far not justified their faith. We have made the world infinitely smaller, but the main result has been to bring the other fellow just that much closer to our bomb-sights.

However that may be, in Lovecraft's view the decline and fall of old-time science-fiction seemed not too far distant. He revivified and rescued the best elements of it by marrying them to the older concepts of the supernatural and the weird, and today, of course, we recognize the resulting synthesis as the Lovecraftian attitude.

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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 107 with the best visions of our "scientifiction" writers. This type of story in the past had always had a punch because it was so breathlessly futuristic: it related of times so far ahead that readers in this ordinary world were filled with heady inspirations and dazzling dreams of the great scientific Utopia to come. Now, the products of research bid fair to outstrip the finest imaginings of our visionaries in literature. Just one instance: we can no longer be expected to read wide-eyed about rocket trips to other planets when modern armies, in conducting military operations, are already on the very fringes of that stage of development. The fictional prophets have been vindicated, of course, but unfortunately they stand in danger of being superceded by the news items in our daily papers! Perhaps not immediately---today---but the shadows are on the horizon, and unless we discover a few new geniuses of the stature of the early H. G. Wells, it would appear that the writing of "scientifiction" will continue its steady decline. We are doomed to be progressively bored and annoyed by the stale rehashing of ideas that once seemed daring and eon-distant in the first quarter of this century, Of course, some may say: What of Olaf Stapledon? Unfortunately, in this writer's present estimation, Stapledon---at least in his two most significant works, Starmaker and Last and First Men---has not written fiction in any true sense of that word. These volumes are crammed with magnificent ideas and concepts, but they read like history texts---albeit very fantastic ones! They will undoubtedly be prime source-books for future writers; granting the emergence of new geniuses to elaborate portions of this material into colorful and dramatic story form, we may yet have a renaissance of science-fiction; let us all hope so! Incidentally, Stapledon's treatment of the superman theme in Odd John is excellent, and may well point the way towards future elaborations he intends to make of his master works. And Sirius, his latest novel, is an able delving into psychological subtleties from a most unexpected viewpoint. Stapledon may well tell the whole tale of cosmic history in readable form if given time. Another dark portent in the minds of thinkers, however, is the beginning of a sad loss of faith in science as the final arbiter of human progress and welfare. Unless and until war and human greed are conquered, it does not seem that piling more and more gadgets and conveniences on us will help to cure the fundamental faults of human nature. We come inevitably to the distasteful conclusion that a man of the future subsisting on vitamin pellets, week-ending on Venus or Mars, and arming himself with atomic disintegrators or cosmic-ray guns would be even less pleasant to live with than a twentieth century human being unless there were a concurrent improvement in his cooperative abilities and basic nature. The present-day revelation of collectivism in all the horrors of its several forms makes us shrink from the vision of a scientific Utopia, a regimented bee-hive of civilization in which all life would be conducted on the latest principles of research, and wherein we would all have to live as supermen---whether we wanted to or not. Wells must bear a large share of the blame for attempting to foist this unpalatable concept of a brave new world upon us in his later works. The optimists, of course, brush all these doubts aside with lighthearted assurance that man will become better as his world becomes more and more scientifically controlled: but history has thus far not justified their faith. We have made the world infinitely smaller, but the main result has been to bring the other fellow just that much closer to our bomb-sights. However that may be, in Lovecraft's view the decline and fall of old-time science-fiction seemed not too far distant. He revivified and rescued the best elements of it by marrying them to the older concepts of the supernatural and the weird, and today, of course, we recognize the resulting synthesis as the Lovecraftian attitude.