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FMS Digest, v. 1, issues 1-5, February - July 1941
v.1:no.5: Page 3
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F M Z DIGEST Page 3 ARTICLE By Milty Rothman Condensed from THE SOUTHERN STAR June, 1941 There was once a guy who got sore everytime people spoke about science fiction being escape literature. Read science fiction merely for relaxation and dreaming? he said. Foolishness. There is nothing more invigorating and stimulating to doing things than science fiction. Then this fellow studied a little psychology, and he found some wonderful things in the psychology book. So he learned the difference between sensation and perception. Sensation is just feeling things. But perception means relating the seeing to some previously learned experience. And everybody has a different background of experience so nobody percieves things in exactly the same light. So one guy says science fiction is escape literature, and another guy says no it's not. Let's try to see why. The two guys are different, that's the first thing. They both started out with dreaming. They both saw big clouds in the sky and wanted to have them. there were three main things they might have seen. They saw a rise in the powers of science. They saw a world that was better in all ways. Or perhaps they saw an ominous warning that the world was not going to be better because of the powers of evil that would triumph over the powers of good. In the last case they saw that to make the world good would require a mighty struggle against that evil. So the two guys dreamt and wanted and hoped. One of them got stuck. For some reason he could never become a scientist, so he became a shirt salesman, but he still dreamed, and that is as far as he got. So science fiction was still dreams to him. The other guy was different. he dreamt, too, but the dreams meant something different. For he was going to be one of those people int he stories; a scientist. Science fiction was not escape literature to him. it was a stimulus to become as good as any of the superior heroes he read about. The science fiction was not the push. The push had to come from the person, and science fiction was only the goal post. The guy to whom science fiction was not escape literature could never forget his science. There was another guy who found that he could never be a scientist for various reasons, but he had a push in him, and that push came out in a curious way. Science fiction was not escape literature for him. It kept sticking this dream of a better world before his eyes and the push within him kept him on the job of trying to get a better world despite the hopelessness of the task. What was that push? The Gernsback Theory said the science fiction itself was the push. That is not true, for lots of guys who read science fiction don't have that push. In the guy who was going to be a scientist the push was an inferiority complex. The Gernsback Theory apparently applied to him because he already had the push, and science fiction made him jealous so that his push had something to work on. But whatever it was, science fiction was escape literature to the guys without the push, and it was simulation literature to the guys with the push. Liebig said: "To one man science is a sacred goddess to whose service he is happy to devote his life; to another she is a cow who provides him with butter." DEFINITION OF A STFAN By L R Chauvenet From SARDONYX FAPA, Summer, 1941 We have a private definition of a science fiction fan: "A sf. fan is a guy who could toss a ball into the air and not be surprised if it just hung there and didn't fall down again."
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F M Z DIGEST Page 3 ARTICLE By Milty Rothman Condensed from THE SOUTHERN STAR June, 1941 There was once a guy who got sore everytime people spoke about science fiction being escape literature. Read science fiction merely for relaxation and dreaming? he said. Foolishness. There is nothing more invigorating and stimulating to doing things than science fiction. Then this fellow studied a little psychology, and he found some wonderful things in the psychology book. So he learned the difference between sensation and perception. Sensation is just feeling things. But perception means relating the seeing to some previously learned experience. And everybody has a different background of experience so nobody percieves things in exactly the same light. So one guy says science fiction is escape literature, and another guy says no it's not. Let's try to see why. The two guys are different, that's the first thing. They both started out with dreaming. They both saw big clouds in the sky and wanted to have them. there were three main things they might have seen. They saw a rise in the powers of science. They saw a world that was better in all ways. Or perhaps they saw an ominous warning that the world was not going to be better because of the powers of evil that would triumph over the powers of good. In the last case they saw that to make the world good would require a mighty struggle against that evil. So the two guys dreamt and wanted and hoped. One of them got stuck. For some reason he could never become a scientist, so he became a shirt salesman, but he still dreamed, and that is as far as he got. So science fiction was still dreams to him. The other guy was different. he dreamt, too, but the dreams meant something different. For he was going to be one of those people int he stories; a scientist. Science fiction was not escape literature to him. it was a stimulus to become as good as any of the superior heroes he read about. The science fiction was not the push. The push had to come from the person, and science fiction was only the goal post. The guy to whom science fiction was not escape literature could never forget his science. There was another guy who found that he could never be a scientist for various reasons, but he had a push in him, and that push came out in a curious way. Science fiction was not escape literature for him. It kept sticking this dream of a better world before his eyes and the push within him kept him on the job of trying to get a better world despite the hopelessness of the task. What was that push? The Gernsback Theory said the science fiction itself was the push. That is not true, for lots of guys who read science fiction don't have that push. In the guy who was going to be a scientist the push was an inferiority complex. The Gernsback Theory apparently applied to him because he already had the push, and science fiction made him jealous so that his push had something to work on. But whatever it was, science fiction was escape literature to the guys without the push, and it was simulation literature to the guys with the push. Liebig said: "To one man science is a sacred goddess to whose service he is happy to devote his life; to another she is a cow who provides him with butter." DEFINITION OF A STFAN By L R Chauvenet From SARDONYX FAPA, Summer, 1941 We have a private definition of a science fiction fan: "A sf. fan is a guy who could toss a ball into the air and not be surprised if it just hung there and didn't fall down again."
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