Transcribe
Translate
Fanfare, v. 2, issue 1, whole no. 7, August 1941
Page 19
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
fanfare ix ii Whew! Let's call a halt. The answer to the space hound problem which appeared in the #5 PLUTO is: Having flown (?) for two hours, the spacehound traversed a total distance of ten billion miles. And so, while whispering in your ear that E. Waldo Hunter is Theodore Sturgeon and Jane Rice is possibly one or both of the book writing Lerimers, I end this section, with an invitation to any possible readers of this column to send in the names of anyone they want to put on the griddle and if possible to send along a little of their fat to fry them in. Understand? Yours, The Goatherd # # # # # # # # # # AS IF IT MATTERED which similarly interfered in his own day) as he was in his own time. Genius is genius. Today, some of these stories might not have been written in exactly the same manner. But they would be written, and they would be classics. There are outstanding stories being written today; there were five years ago, and again ten years ago. Today, fans are beginning to be certain what these classics of five and ten years ago were. The test is simple: you merely take any of the applicants, and if, in addition to being a whiz of a story, well-characterized, and so on, it reads as if it might have been written yesterday, then it is a classic. It's as simple as all that. (Of course, that little "and so on" I added, covers more than lies in some people's philosophy!) Personally, I wish some fans would get together and honestly rate the old classics as well as the newer stuff. If they could do this, forgetting names and magazines, and the oodles of little irrelevant things with result in one's rating a story higher than one actually knows it is, then the results might be something of an eye-opener. Mind! I'm not out to "debunk" those stories of past decades which were really immortal. By no means. But I do very definitely protest against this worship of the old days and concomitant underestimation of today's output. The one argument that the "reminiscers" have which is sound, is that today, there's such a deluge of magazines, it's virtually impossible for all fans to get all the magazines and thus pick out the pearls. However, that can be overcome by means of service departments instigated by fans. So, that is what this somewhat incoherent mess leads up to: we need, today, a reading and selecting bureau in fandom. We already have indexes published annually. Excellent. But not enough. We need an index, compiled through polls among fans, of all stories published through a given period, from the classics to the drivel. It would be of inestimable aid, not only to the fans and readers, who want to read the best, but are unable to buy every issue of every magazine, but to editors, and writers, who also can benefit from such wisdom. As if it mattered, I suggest that some fans, who are interested in selfless service to stf and fandom, rather than personal advancement in the field, tackle this task. finis # # # # # # # # # #
Saving...
prev
next
fanfare ix ii Whew! Let's call a halt. The answer to the space hound problem which appeared in the #5 PLUTO is: Having flown (?) for two hours, the spacehound traversed a total distance of ten billion miles. And so, while whispering in your ear that E. Waldo Hunter is Theodore Sturgeon and Jane Rice is possibly one or both of the book writing Lerimers, I end this section, with an invitation to any possible readers of this column to send in the names of anyone they want to put on the griddle and if possible to send along a little of their fat to fry them in. Understand? Yours, The Goatherd # # # # # # # # # # AS IF IT MATTERED which similarly interfered in his own day) as he was in his own time. Genius is genius. Today, some of these stories might not have been written in exactly the same manner. But they would be written, and they would be classics. There are outstanding stories being written today; there were five years ago, and again ten years ago. Today, fans are beginning to be certain what these classics of five and ten years ago were. The test is simple: you merely take any of the applicants, and if, in addition to being a whiz of a story, well-characterized, and so on, it reads as if it might have been written yesterday, then it is a classic. It's as simple as all that. (Of course, that little "and so on" I added, covers more than lies in some people's philosophy!) Personally, I wish some fans would get together and honestly rate the old classics as well as the newer stuff. If they could do this, forgetting names and magazines, and the oodles of little irrelevant things with result in one's rating a story higher than one actually knows it is, then the results might be something of an eye-opener. Mind! I'm not out to "debunk" those stories of past decades which were really immortal. By no means. But I do very definitely protest against this worship of the old days and concomitant underestimation of today's output. The one argument that the "reminiscers" have which is sound, is that today, there's such a deluge of magazines, it's virtually impossible for all fans to get all the magazines and thus pick out the pearls. However, that can be overcome by means of service departments instigated by fans. So, that is what this somewhat incoherent mess leads up to: we need, today, a reading and selecting bureau in fandom. We already have indexes published annually. Excellent. But not enough. We need an index, compiled through polls among fans, of all stories published through a given period, from the classics to the drivel. It would be of inestimable aid, not only to the fans and readers, who want to read the best, but are unable to buy every issue of every magazine, but to editors, and writers, who also can benefit from such wisdom. As if it mattered, I suggest that some fans, who are interested in selfless service to stf and fandom, rather than personal advancement in the field, tackle this task. finis # # # # # # # # # #
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar