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Scientifictionist, issue 2, 1945

Page 3

out", "I trained these men!", "Free Offer for False Teeth". ... I have quoted here a few random captions from advertisements in the Fall 1945 STARTLING STORIES. Oddly enough, this issue contains no advertisements for matrimonial agencies! These advertisements are printed in these magazines because they bring in the returns. Sucker-bait stuff of this nature has appeared in the pulp Stfzines for twenty years. Draw your own conclusions as to the kind of people who make up the bulk of this "literature's" public!
     No, anything of a literate nature gets into the pulps simply because there is no other periodical medium for fantasy of any kind. To quasi-quote E. Hoffman Price, a well-known writer of magazine fiction, most fantasy stories accepted by mundane magazines are accepted in spite of their fantasy content rather than because of it. With nearly two decades of successful magazine writing behind him, including nearly a hundred fantasies, Price knows what he is talking about. 
      The pulp fantasy magazines are just that -- pulp magazines. They do not enjoy the prestige or circulation of the major pulps: western, adventure, detective, and love. It is niece to know that they do occasionally contain stories far above the usual low level of this cheap writing, but it is questionable if any case could be made for the premise that all pulp Stf is worth reading. At the moment we have one magazine which occasionally gives us something worthwhile 
-- ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION -- and it is the opinion of this writer that ASF has not averaged more than one first class story per issue for the past year and a half or two years. (The best of all current magazines, FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, can scarcely be considered in a discussion of pulp Stf, since it consists almost exclusively of reprinted books.) Or survey 19 years of pulp Stfzines. AMAZING, apart from the Wells and Verne reprints in the early issues, and perhaps a dozen originals of Munsey reprints, contains literally nothing of genuine worth. WONDER, particularly in the years 1931-33 contains probably 30 stories of value, at least half of them by Clark Ashton Smith. ASTOUNDING is the one outstanding exception -- not only do the Tremaine issues (1933-38) average one good story per issue, but in the first few years of the Campbell regime, the golden age of 1938-1942, we have, apart from the Heinlein's and earlier van Vogt's all of which are of book quality, at least one story per issue which would fit suitably into any anthology. A few ASTOUNDING rejects make the Norton twins and MARVEL of some interest, and of course the freshness of the amateur fiction in the Wollheim-Lowdnes magazines is a point in their favor. STARTLING has managed to be of fair value, both through the occasionally excellent book-lengths and the reprints of some of the outstanding WONDER shorts.
     That sounds like a lot of value to come out of the pulp field in not quite twenty years. Yet this good stuff could be excerpted and bound into volumes requiring not more than five feet of shelf space, as compared with the 60 to 70 feet occupied by the unbound magazines.
     Perhaps I am speaking too harshly. Nevertheless, my remarks are based on a personal collection which is complete with the excerption of the Ziff-Davis magazines, two Sloane quaterlies, two 1934 ASTOUNDING, and about 12 Claytons. They are based on a reading and/or skimming of this entire file, a chore which I undertook in order to furnish preliminary recommendations to McComas and Heally, editors of Random House's forthcoming Stf anthology.
      Magazine writers are doubly hampered. Except in ASTOUNDING, they are forced to write to the low levels represented by most pulp readers -- they dare not display anything remotely resembling subtlety, characterization, realism, originality; for such attempts would be far over the heads of their prospective public. Best they stick to the tried and true Noble Hero, Beautiful Maiden, and BEM. The rigid editorial tabus of the pulps preclude any mention of sex; except in the peculiarly cheapened and disgusting manner employed by the "racy" maga-

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out", "I trained these men!", "Free Offer for False Teeth". ... I have quoted here a few random captions from advertisements in the Fall 1945 STARTLING STORIES. Oddly enough, this issue contains no advertisements for matrimonial agencies! These advertisements are printed in these magazines because they bring in the returns. Sucker-bait stuff of this nature has appeared in the pulp Stfzines for twenty years. Draw your own conclusions as to the kind of people who make up the bulk of this "literature's" public! No, anything of a literate nature gets into the pulps simply because there is no other periodical medium for fantasy of any kind. To quasi-quote E. Hoffman Price, a well-known writer of magazine fiction, most fantasy stories accepted by mundane magazines are accepted in spite of their fantasy content rather than because of it. With nearly two decades of successful magazine writing behind him, including nearly a hundred fantasies, Price knows what he is talking about. The pulp fantasy magazines are just that -- pulp magazines. They do not enjoy the prestige or circulation of the major pulps: western, adventure, detective, and love. It is niece to know that they do occasionally contain stories far above the usual low level of this cheap writing, but it is questionable if any case could be made for the premise that all pulp Stf is worth reading. At the moment we have one magazine which occasionally gives us something worthwhile -- ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION -- and it is the opinion of this writer that ASF has not averaged more than one first class story per issue for the past year and a half or two years. (The best of all current magazines, FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, can scarcely be considered in a discussion of pulp Stf, since it consists almost exclusively of reprinted books.) Or survey 19 years of pulp Stfzines. AMAZING, apart from the Wells and Verne reprints in the early issues, and perhaps a dozen originals of Munsey reprints, contains literally nothing of genuine worth. WONDER, particularly in the years 1931-33 contains probably 30 stories of value, at least half of them by Clark Ashton Smith. ASTOUNDING is the one outstanding exception -- not only do the Tremaine issues (1933-38) average one good story per issue, but in the first few years of the Campbell regime, the golden age of 1938-1942, we have, apart from the Heinlein's and earlier van Vogt's all of which are of book quality, at least one story per issue which would fit suitably into any anthology. A few ASTOUNDING rejects make the Norton twins and MARVEL of some interest, and of course the freshness of the amateur fiction in the Wollheim-Lowdnes magazines is a point in their favor. STARTLING has managed to be of fair value, both through the occasionally excellent book-lengths and the reprints of some of the outstanding WONDER shorts. That sounds like a lot of value to come out of the pulp field in not quite twenty years. Yet this good stuff could be excerpted and bound into volumes requiring not more than five feet of shelf space, as compared with the 60 to 70 feet occupied by the unbound magazines. Perhaps I am speaking too harshly. Nevertheless, my remarks are based on a personal collection which is complete with the excerption of the Ziff-Davis magazines, two Sloane quaterlies, two 1934 ASTOUNDING, and about 12 Claytons. They are based on a reading and/or skimming of this entire file, a chore which I undertook in order to furnish preliminary recommendations to McComas and Heally, editors of Random House's forthcoming Stf anthology. Magazine writers are doubly hampered. Except in ASTOUNDING, they are forced to write to the low levels represented by most pulp readers -- they dare not display anything remotely resembling subtlety, characterization, realism, originality; for such attempts would be far over the heads of their prospective public. Best they stick to the tried and true Noble Hero, Beautiful Maiden, and BEM. The rigid editorial tabus of the pulps preclude any mention of sex; except in the peculiarly cheapened and disgusting manner employed by the "racy" maga- page 3