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Fantascience Digest, v. 2, issue 2, January-February 1939

Page 8

Page 8     FANTASCIENCE DIGEST

WHITHER SCIENCE FICTION
by FREDERIK POHL

Science Fiction is a glorious branch of literature. We all know that. "But why," we ask ourselves tearfully, "must our beloved and reverenced editors play hob with our finer sensibilities? Why must they substitute wishy-washy pastels for the blinding blues and glaring reds and ghastly greens we have come to love?"

We may not use just those words but this querulous query is always uppermost in our minds. Even the world-famous Brown has betrayed us. By actual count of the three latest covers which he has graciously consented to illustrate for his clamoring public, only two required smoked glasses to view. If this deplorable state of affairs continues to exist what will happen to the glass industry of our country, fair though it is? Statistics show that paintings of outer space colored black instead of the customary violet or brown (or in the case of ASTOUNDING, green) reduces the sale of ocular apparatus by a full twenty per cent among s-f fans.

Nor is that all. Our authors, whose reliability we had never previously questioned, have also sacrificed solid conventionality to a tawdry novelty. In a nation-wide survey conducted by the editors of FANTASCIENCE DIGEST, it was found that of six hundred and twenty-three writers interviewed, but six hundred and twelve used the cliche to the exclusion of other types of phraseology. Certain of the more subversive elements have repeatedly and without cause written lines...whole paragraphs even! in which the heroine (Toots to you) is not suddenly laid low by cancer or leprosy or cosmetic skin for which her male equivalent at the crucial moment developes an antitoxin.

These same elements with whose names it is best not to sully the purity of these pages, have bent every effort to twisting and distorting the well-defined paths of glory as pointed out by Messiah Gernsback in his late "Suggestions to Authors" into new and hideous roads.

This is indeed delorable. ARe we to be forced to endure new Plots? Is our beloved character of science fiction, the oviparous yet mammalian Martian princess, to be neglected to extinction? Are we no longer to read with baited breath of the exploits of space buccaneer extraordinary,Black Lem Gullible?

Shall we nevermore gasp in a vicarious struggle for breath as we follow the adventures of the hero condemned (unjustly) to extinction in space?

No! A thousand times, no!

In order to combat the rapid spread of this evil there has been formed an organization known as the Gay Pay Oo Tagenblatt Internationale. This really devine sorority was founded by a group of died-in-the-wool s-f fans for returning science fiction to its primordial state of completely hackneyed writing. (If any of you readers fail to see how a thing can be both primordial and hackneyed at the same time, just skip it. It's persons like you who stunt the growth of individualism.)

Are you with us? Then join the Gpoti. Remember, science fiction is teetering off the edge of a precipice. Our duty lies clear before us: GET BEHIND SCIENCE FICTION AND--------[[underline]]PUSH!!![[end underline]]

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Page 8 FANTASCIENCE DIGEST WHITHER SCIENCE FICTION by FREDERIK POHL Science Fiction is a glorious branch of literature. We all know that. "But why," we ask ourselves tearfully, "must our beloved and reverenced editors play hob with our finer sensibilities? Why must they substitute wishy-washy pastels for the blinding blues and glaring reds and ghastly greens we have come to love?" We may not use just those words but this querulous query is always uppermost in our minds. Even the world-famous Brown has betrayed us. By actual count of the three latest covers which he has graciously consented to illustrate for his clamoring public, only two required smoked glasses to view. If this deplorable state of affairs continues to exist what will happen to the glass industry of our country, fair though it is? Statistics show that paintings of outer space colored black instead of the customary violet or brown (or in the case of ASTOUNDING, green) reduces the sale of ocular apparatus by a full twenty per cent among s-f fans. Nor is that all. Our authors, whose reliability we had never previously questioned, have also sacrificed solid conventionality to a tawdry novelty. In a nation-wide survey conducted by the editors of FANTASCIENCE DIGEST, it was found that of six hundred and twenty-three writers interviewed, but six hundred and twelve used the cliche to the exclusion of other types of phraseology. Certain of the more subversive elements have repeatedly and without cause written lines...whole paragraphs even! in which the heroine (Toots to you) is not suddenly laid low by cancer or leprosy or cosmetic skin for which her male equivalent at the crucial moment developes an antitoxin. These same elements with whose names it is best not to sully the purity of these pages, have bent every effort to twisting and distorting the well-defined paths of glory as pointed out by Messiah Gernsback in his late "Suggestions to Authors" into new and hideous roads. This is indeed delorable. ARe we to be forced to endure new Plots? Is our beloved character of science fiction, the oviparous yet mammalian Martian princess, to be neglected to extinction? Are we no longer to read with baited breath of the exploits of space buccaneer extraordinary,Black Lem Gullible? Shall we nevermore gasp in a vicarious struggle for breath as we follow the adventures of the hero condemned (unjustly) to extinction in space? No! A thousand times, no! In order to combat the rapid spread of this evil there has been formed an organization known as the Gay Pay Oo Tagenblatt Internationale. This really devine sorority was founded by a group of died-in-the-wool s-f fans for returning science fiction to its primordial state of completely hackneyed writing. (If any of you readers fail to see how a thing can be both primordial and hackneyed at the same time, just skip it. It's persons like you who stunt the growth of individualism.) Are you with us? Then join the Gpoti. Remember, science fiction is teetering off the edge of a precipice. Our duty lies clear before us: GET BEHIND SCIENCE FICTION AND--------[[underline]]PUSH!!![[end underline]]