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Fantascience Digest, v. 2, issue 3, March-April 1939
Page 15
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FANTASCIENCE DIGEST Page15 had a message to deliver -- although even to them it was a queer sort of message they HAD to get off their chests, no matter how it hurt their reputations as writers. Burroughs didn't start it. he popularized it. "Tarzan of the Apes" was an incident in a growing chain of incidents which made a small section of the reading world suddenly aware of books by Jules Verne, and goofy stories by Edgar Allan Poe, heretofore read in attics, and best forgotten afterward. Why,these new-fangled stream-lined yarns can't hold a candle to the ones the old boys used to pen purely for theit own hair-raising amusement or slack-jawed amazement, wondering even as they wrote why it was they continued to dash off such utter tripe. Those fellows just had imagination and hunches. They didn't know a space-warp from a rocket-jet; they didn't dimly comprehend infinity as it is so casually introduced by our present ink-slingers; they didn't whiz past planets in their faster-than-light machines -- if they did any planetary touring at all they did it naturally; in slow, plodding vehicles which acted quite normally and took a reasonably long time to get anywhere. The world of these budding scientifiction authors wasn't always being threatened by extinction from other worlds, cometary side-swipers, or mad scientists bent on conquest. It was a normal world -- until George Allan England wrote "Darkness and Dawn." He never bothered to explain the exact chemical content of his gas which extinguished life like a blown-out candle flame. He just stick in the gas as an explanation, and it was twice as forceful as any of these modern gases so frequently mentioned nowadays, which are taken apart, molecule by molecule, for the edification of the readers. Gosh, what do WE care how the gas is manufactured, or what it's composed of? We're not taking a course in post-graduate chemistry or physics or what-do-you -call-it -- we want to know what the gas does! n Be that as it may, England very neatly wiped out humanity -- ah, all except the man and woman, that is! Personally, his dexterity was childishly delightful, but it gave rise to the fanciest gases -- which he never DREAMED of, himself. And then there was "The Sea Demons" by Victor Rousseau. We'd hate to count the revamps that have been taken from that plot. And his "Draft of Eternity," followed by J. U. Giesy's "Palos" trilogy, had people plunging thru trances to other planets and times for the next twenty years. "Palos of the Dog-Star Pack" remains one of my mot prized possessions, both in physical for and in my reminiscences. Take "The Moon Pool". Oh, you will? People will be imitating the style employed in that story for years to come. Why can't the present authors imitate it any better? Why, because they've got to contend with a bunch of people who demand that the Shining One be dissected and explained by modern scientific possibilities, and that this or that invention be plausibly put together. "The Ship of Ishtar" wasn't scientifiction any more than was "The Face in the Abyss," so we will skip them. But "The Metal Monster" was, and because Merritt suddenly acquired a feeling that he must have reasonable scientific explanations with his plots, it was dull and plodding, nere for a second approaching "The Moon Pool." Austin Hall and Home Eon Flint co-authored "The Blind Spot," and made history. It was an
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FANTASCIENCE DIGEST Page15 had a message to deliver -- although even to them it was a queer sort of message they HAD to get off their chests, no matter how it hurt their reputations as writers. Burroughs didn't start it. he popularized it. "Tarzan of the Apes" was an incident in a growing chain of incidents which made a small section of the reading world suddenly aware of books by Jules Verne, and goofy stories by Edgar Allan Poe, heretofore read in attics, and best forgotten afterward. Why,these new-fangled stream-lined yarns can't hold a candle to the ones the old boys used to pen purely for theit own hair-raising amusement or slack-jawed amazement, wondering even as they wrote why it was they continued to dash off such utter tripe. Those fellows just had imagination and hunches. They didn't know a space-warp from a rocket-jet; they didn't dimly comprehend infinity as it is so casually introduced by our present ink-slingers; they didn't whiz past planets in their faster-than-light machines -- if they did any planetary touring at all they did it naturally; in slow, plodding vehicles which acted quite normally and took a reasonably long time to get anywhere. The world of these budding scientifiction authors wasn't always being threatened by extinction from other worlds, cometary side-swipers, or mad scientists bent on conquest. It was a normal world -- until George Allan England wrote "Darkness and Dawn." He never bothered to explain the exact chemical content of his gas which extinguished life like a blown-out candle flame. He just stick in the gas as an explanation, and it was twice as forceful as any of these modern gases so frequently mentioned nowadays, which are taken apart, molecule by molecule, for the edification of the readers. Gosh, what do WE care how the gas is manufactured, or what it's composed of? We're not taking a course in post-graduate chemistry or physics or what-do-you -call-it -- we want to know what the gas does! n Be that as it may, England very neatly wiped out humanity -- ah, all except the man and woman, that is! Personally, his dexterity was childishly delightful, but it gave rise to the fanciest gases -- which he never DREAMED of, himself. And then there was "The Sea Demons" by Victor Rousseau. We'd hate to count the revamps that have been taken from that plot. And his "Draft of Eternity," followed by J. U. Giesy's "Palos" trilogy, had people plunging thru trances to other planets and times for the next twenty years. "Palos of the Dog-Star Pack" remains one of my mot prized possessions, both in physical for and in my reminiscences. Take "The Moon Pool". Oh, you will? People will be imitating the style employed in that story for years to come. Why can't the present authors imitate it any better? Why, because they've got to contend with a bunch of people who demand that the Shining One be dissected and explained by modern scientific possibilities, and that this or that invention be plausibly put together. "The Ship of Ishtar" wasn't scientifiction any more than was "The Face in the Abyss," so we will skip them. But "The Metal Monster" was, and because Merritt suddenly acquired a feeling that he must have reasonable scientific explanations with his plots, it was dull and plodding, nere for a second approaching "The Moon Pool." Austin Hall and Home Eon Flint co-authored "The Blind Spot," and made history. It was an
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