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Scientifictionist, v. 1, issue 5, June-July 1946
Page 13
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FOR 'EM AND AGIN 'EM Wherein the Reader Speaks Authors, Please Note! I trust your fanzine is coming along nicely and hope to see another issue shortly. Your last issue, No. 3, was excellent, as always. I wouldn't say it's substantially improved over the preceding issues, but still you've been maintaining a consistently high level from the start, and I think we'll see a great deal of further improvement once your circle of new writers have developed their individual styles a bit more. Right now I seem to find somewhat of a sameness about them, which seems to be due to the authors' restricting themselves to what is in large measure a mere outlining of their subjects, rather than a discursive consideration. Of course there are limitations on the space available for the expansion of a topic, and, too, general surveys have their usefulness to the new reader, but I'd still like to see some of your contributors dig into the fascinating fields they tell us about. Onderdonk's article on HPL recently in FC was a good example, not particularly for the Lovecraft angle but rather for the searching examination Onderdonk made into the philosophic bases of stefantasy. Not that I'm looking for such encyclopedic treatises in each 'n every issue of Stefictionist, but the requirement of brevity in such cases could be satisfied by the use of articles on more specialized topics, that is, dealing with some particular phase of science-fiction or its related subjects and going into this more thoroughly. That way you draw out more of the individual style and learning of the writer, who undoubtedly has his own special interests in the field, about which he can write more informatively and interestingly than he can on others. All of which is not intended by me to be severely critical of your articles, but rather as a rationalization of my feeling that you haven't yet begun to hit the pace your magazine is capable of. And of a confident expectation that future improvement will be rapid once your writers, who, I take it, are mostly newcomers to science fiction or to writing, get oriented in the field and start developing along the lines of their individual inclinations. -- Norman Stanley, 4 3-A Broad St., Rockland, Maine Commending Bridges First of all, I must commend Lynn Bridges very highly for his stand with "us pulp readers". He did find the right words to use that I couldn't think of. Not that I am against books, but "pulp" is better in more ways than one. First, the cost is less; and second, the "pulp" publishers generally get first chance at new stories. So in Astounding you get 4 times the number of stories for your dollar. And most books cost more than a dollar. I believe that most fans are Readers first, and Colectors second, and traders last of all. So Lynn was very modest when he said "One fan's opinion". (Should have been "Many fans' opinion") Scientifictionist is certainly doing fine. It is one of the few fanzines that I settle down to READ, not just glance thru. Bob Tucker did a swell job on The Best of Science Fiction. This is the kind of material that the neofan and Teen-ager can use more of. Walter Coslet does write for Scientifictionist, doesn't he? What happened to his IDEA CORNER? I really like it a lot. Flowers to Laney on his Classification of the Classics. He DOES have something there. I understand that Speer doesn't condescend to READ "pulp", or is it Fanzines? Pulp will always exist as long as the average reader likes to read pulp. 50,000 or many more readers CAN'T be wrong. The world is better educated now than it has never been before. BUT we all like COMICS, etc. (pulp). Andy Lyon had some good ideas in his letter. Joe Kennedy's was very good as usual. He is certainly right about Coslet. I hope to see Walter A. Coslet as one of the NFFF officers next year. (Vote for him this Fall, fellows). He is doing good work in the Mss. Bureau this year. Some darn good "thots" in your article, Slanry. It deserved page one. page 13
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FOR 'EM AND AGIN 'EM Wherein the Reader Speaks Authors, Please Note! I trust your fanzine is coming along nicely and hope to see another issue shortly. Your last issue, No. 3, was excellent, as always. I wouldn't say it's substantially improved over the preceding issues, but still you've been maintaining a consistently high level from the start, and I think we'll see a great deal of further improvement once your circle of new writers have developed their individual styles a bit more. Right now I seem to find somewhat of a sameness about them, which seems to be due to the authors' restricting themselves to what is in large measure a mere outlining of their subjects, rather than a discursive consideration. Of course there are limitations on the space available for the expansion of a topic, and, too, general surveys have their usefulness to the new reader, but I'd still like to see some of your contributors dig into the fascinating fields they tell us about. Onderdonk's article on HPL recently in FC was a good example, not particularly for the Lovecraft angle but rather for the searching examination Onderdonk made into the philosophic bases of stefantasy. Not that I'm looking for such encyclopedic treatises in each 'n every issue of Stefictionist, but the requirement of brevity in such cases could be satisfied by the use of articles on more specialized topics, that is, dealing with some particular phase of science-fiction or its related subjects and going into this more thoroughly. That way you draw out more of the individual style and learning of the writer, who undoubtedly has his own special interests in the field, about which he can write more informatively and interestingly than he can on others. All of which is not intended by me to be severely critical of your articles, but rather as a rationalization of my feeling that you haven't yet begun to hit the pace your magazine is capable of. And of a confident expectation that future improvement will be rapid once your writers, who, I take it, are mostly newcomers to science fiction or to writing, get oriented in the field and start developing along the lines of their individual inclinations. -- Norman Stanley, 4 3-A Broad St., Rockland, Maine Commending Bridges First of all, I must commend Lynn Bridges very highly for his stand with "us pulp readers". He did find the right words to use that I couldn't think of. Not that I am against books, but "pulp" is better in more ways than one. First, the cost is less; and second, the "pulp" publishers generally get first chance at new stories. So in Astounding you get 4 times the number of stories for your dollar. And most books cost more than a dollar. I believe that most fans are Readers first, and Colectors second, and traders last of all. So Lynn was very modest when he said "One fan's opinion". (Should have been "Many fans' opinion") Scientifictionist is certainly doing fine. It is one of the few fanzines that I settle down to READ, not just glance thru. Bob Tucker did a swell job on The Best of Science Fiction. This is the kind of material that the neofan and Teen-ager can use more of. Walter Coslet does write for Scientifictionist, doesn't he? What happened to his IDEA CORNER? I really like it a lot. Flowers to Laney on his Classification of the Classics. He DOES have something there. I understand that Speer doesn't condescend to READ "pulp", or is it Fanzines? Pulp will always exist as long as the average reader likes to read pulp. 50,000 or many more readers CAN'T be wrong. The world is better educated now than it has never been before. BUT we all like COMICS, etc. (pulp). Andy Lyon had some good ideas in his letter. Joe Kennedy's was very good as usual. He is certainly right about Coslet. I hope to see Walter A. Coslet as one of the NFFF officers next year. (Vote for him this Fall, fellows). He is doing good work in the Mss. Bureau this year. Some darn good "thots" in your article, Slanry. It deserved page one. page 13
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