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Voice of the Imagination (VOM), whole no. 6, April 1940
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Science Fiction is Escape Literature (Note: So imprest [sic] were your editors, upon reading the following article by Milton A Rothman in the March -- #1 -- Milty's Mag, that, presuming its circulation woud be limited to 50 -- the FAPA -- we wrote for, & rcvd, permission to republish it here.) There was a guy who used to read science fiction. He used to read stories of the future. The future was wonderful. Everybody was scientists, and everybody had jobs, and all the world was one nation in which everybody lived peacefully together in cooperation instead of competition, and everything was done logically and scientific, and there weren't separate nations, and there weren't laws, and nobody cared much whether he made a lot of money, but the only thing important in life was living and advancing knowledge. Gee, the guy would say everytime he read a story about a wonderful world of the future like that, it would be swell to live in a place like that. Then some dope came around and said how about all us guys who read science fiction putting ourselves on record as being in favor of a scientific, socialistic world state. Communism, the guy said. It can't work. You can't do it. I'm not talking about whether you can do it, the dope said. I'm talking about whether or not we are in favor of it. It's against human nature the guy said. Then this same guy who used to read science fiction would read some stories in which the earth was tyrannically controlled by a dictator, and there was a revolution and the hero set the world free and married the heroine. Always in the future the world was a dictatorship. How the dictatorship happened the story didn't explain, but the hero would awake, or arrive in the future a just the right time to lead the revolution. He read Power, by Harl Vincent, and it was all the rotten capitalists suppressing the hard-working workers. Gee the guy said. He read The Contest of the Planets, by John W. Campbell, and it was the same thing. He read It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, and that was different, because it showed how dictatorship came. Gee the guy said, and moved uncomfortably around in his seat, because his foot had fallen asleep. He read If This Goes On, by Robert Heinlein, and said, gee, what would Father Coughlin say if he read this, and say, doesn't this sound like the Christian Front. There was some noise outside, and he closed the window, because the was too interested in reading his magazine, and the noise bothered him. Then one day all the newspapers carried was Buck Rogers, and there was swing music on the radio all day, and no newsbroadcasts or Information Please, and a guy in a tin hat came around and beat this guy on the head and stuck a gun in his hands and said go on over there and lick those dirty reds and don't talk back or you'll get what that guy Moskowitz got and he pointed to a thing lying in the street with a bloody mess for a face. And the guy laying in the trenches, and just as the shells were raining around him and he was beginning to explode little by little and the gas was beginning to turn his lungs into one mass of liquid puke he thought of Power and the Contest of the Planets and If This Goes On and Exiles of the Moon and Metropolis and The Revolt of the Scientists and The Final War and Enslaved Brains and he said how did all this happen and why didn't somebody warn us who have forseen all this why don't people tell me these things. Science Fiction is Escape Literature.
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Science Fiction is Escape Literature (Note: So imprest [sic] were your editors, upon reading the following article by Milton A Rothman in the March -- #1 -- Milty's Mag, that, presuming its circulation woud be limited to 50 -- the FAPA -- we wrote for, & rcvd, permission to republish it here.) There was a guy who used to read science fiction. He used to read stories of the future. The future was wonderful. Everybody was scientists, and everybody had jobs, and all the world was one nation in which everybody lived peacefully together in cooperation instead of competition, and everything was done logically and scientific, and there weren't separate nations, and there weren't laws, and nobody cared much whether he made a lot of money, but the only thing important in life was living and advancing knowledge. Gee, the guy would say everytime he read a story about a wonderful world of the future like that, it would be swell to live in a place like that. Then some dope came around and said how about all us guys who read science fiction putting ourselves on record as being in favor of a scientific, socialistic world state. Communism, the guy said. It can't work. You can't do it. I'm not talking about whether you can do it, the dope said. I'm talking about whether or not we are in favor of it. It's against human nature the guy said. Then this same guy who used to read science fiction would read some stories in which the earth was tyrannically controlled by a dictator, and there was a revolution and the hero set the world free and married the heroine. Always in the future the world was a dictatorship. How the dictatorship happened the story didn't explain, but the hero would awake, or arrive in the future a just the right time to lead the revolution. He read Power, by Harl Vincent, and it was all the rotten capitalists suppressing the hard-working workers. Gee the guy said. He read The Contest of the Planets, by John W. Campbell, and it was the same thing. He read It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, and that was different, because it showed how dictatorship came. Gee the guy said, and moved uncomfortably around in his seat, because his foot had fallen asleep. He read If This Goes On, by Robert Heinlein, and said, gee, what would Father Coughlin say if he read this, and say, doesn't this sound like the Christian Front. There was some noise outside, and he closed the window, because the was too interested in reading his magazine, and the noise bothered him. Then one day all the newspapers carried was Buck Rogers, and there was swing music on the radio all day, and no newsbroadcasts or Information Please, and a guy in a tin hat came around and beat this guy on the head and stuck a gun in his hands and said go on over there and lick those dirty reds and don't talk back or you'll get what that guy Moskowitz got and he pointed to a thing lying in the street with a bloody mess for a face. And the guy laying in the trenches, and just as the shells were raining around him and he was beginning to explode little by little and the gas was beginning to turn his lungs into one mass of liquid puke he thought of Power and the Contest of the Planets and If This Goes On and Exiles of the Moon and Metropolis and The Revolt of the Scientists and The Final War and Enslaved Brains and he said how did all this happen and why didn't somebody warn us who have forseen all this why don't people tell me these things. Science Fiction is Escape Literature.
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