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Voice of the Imagination (VOM), v. 1, issue 4, December 1939
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VOICE OF THE IMAGI-NATION 9 ones like yours while others are the kind you buy at newsstands. They're all awfully fascinating. I've read so many since I came here on a vacation that my poor brain is just spinning around n round day in day out. He isn't a fan himself, he says, but likes to look them over — they belong to a cousin of his, I think. We both go delirious with delight over Finlay's drawings and love that new fellow Harry Pennant too. How do U like that newest fellow, Bok?) It's funny about that spelling that the lads use. If I saw it anywhere else, I'd think the poor fellows were just ignorant, hut it just seems to fit in right here. Sort of futuristic and exciting, do you suppose people will be spelling like that after a hundred years or so? "I'm afraid I can't make any intelligent remarks about all these things the other fans are fighting about. Only I was really impressed with your editorial. I guess if I become a fan, I'll have to take sides — can't be neutral because then both sides will walk all over you. So I'll give a big cheer for the democratic side and hiss the villains who are trying to be little dictators. I don't know what this michelism thing is all about but if it's important enough for the dictators to suppress then I'm for it. Guess I'll have to tell you what I think about the magazines. Mustn't send only half a page the first time. I like the letters in Amazing Stories and the drawings but I don't care very much for the stories. But, boo-hoo, other magazines I've seen have such nice letter departments. And then Amazing Stories hasn't any serials and what's a magazine say I without suspense? Sooo, I'll have to buy two because I like the stories in Astounding best. Why don't you fans make up a lobby and get the editor of Astounding to answer letters he prints the way the editor of Amazing does. Then I'd only have to buy one magazine a month, because two a month is too much of a muchness for me. I'd never come down to earth at all if I bought all the science fiction magazines. Goody goody, here's the end of the page. I'll bet you're glad, too. Well, I'll be seeing you. Who knows, I may even have to subscribe to your magazine if I can't read it here. I guess you won't be sorry about that. Or have you so many subscribers that one more doesn't make any difference! (Is he pulling our leg?) You know, sometimes I think it won't be half as much fun living in the future when all these things have happened as it is now when we're just imagining them. thanks for listening," DONALD WOLLHEIM: "Dear VoM : - A brief comment on Paul Freehafer's letter anent the Speer 'history'. I rather doubt that the work will help anyone understand Wollheim better — I rather think it will help confuse people more about what sort of egg I am. But I think this whole business of trying to pin science-fiction around the life or doings of one person is so much ridiculous nonsense. Science-fiction, like everything else, is subject to the trends and forces of social and world currents, and no individual can do any more that either go along with them hastening them or else fight them and disappear. I should like to say here and now that the so-called Wollheim-every- body else feuds are for the most part misnamed and based upon superficial misunderstandings. The correct terms for those feuds should be Sykora-Clark, Sykora-Kirshenblit, Sykora-Schwartz and n̲o̲t̲ mine. I did achieve some prominence in each because, as a friend of Sykora, I naturally took his side and since I was more in the fan world's eye, I was mistaken for the chief antagonist. But it was always Sykora who first engineered those squalls and carried them on. I doubt that they were really turning points at all, as a rule it was easy to judge when one of the protagonists is due for a short stay in fandom. Everybody in New York (including those on his side) knew, for instance, that G.G. Clark was never more than a passing faddist. He would have left fandom regardless of what events occurred to him. The feud may merely have hastened a certain departure... Fans should be careful to avoid taking the Speer work seriously. The view it presents is wholly unrealistic. Speer's insistence that all the michelists ought to talk as one man is a bit unAmerican, don't you think? If America gets into this war (and we've got no business there), it will be the end of science-fiction as we know it. Let's keep our heads. Let's KEEP AMERICA OUT OF WAR!"
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VOICE OF THE IMAGI-NATION 9 ones like yours while others are the kind you buy at newsstands. They're all awfully fascinating. I've read so many since I came here on a vacation that my poor brain is just spinning around n round day in day out. He isn't a fan himself, he says, but likes to look them over — they belong to a cousin of his, I think. We both go delirious with delight over Finlay's drawings and love that new fellow Harry Pennant too. How do U like that newest fellow, Bok?) It's funny about that spelling that the lads use. If I saw it anywhere else, I'd think the poor fellows were just ignorant, hut it just seems to fit in right here. Sort of futuristic and exciting, do you suppose people will be spelling like that after a hundred years or so? "I'm afraid I can't make any intelligent remarks about all these things the other fans are fighting about. Only I was really impressed with your editorial. I guess if I become a fan, I'll have to take sides — can't be neutral because then both sides will walk all over you. So I'll give a big cheer for the democratic side and hiss the villains who are trying to be little dictators. I don't know what this michelism thing is all about but if it's important enough for the dictators to suppress then I'm for it. Guess I'll have to tell you what I think about the magazines. Mustn't send only half a page the first time. I like the letters in Amazing Stories and the drawings but I don't care very much for the stories. But, boo-hoo, other magazines I've seen have such nice letter departments. And then Amazing Stories hasn't any serials and what's a magazine say I without suspense? Sooo, I'll have to buy two because I like the stories in Astounding best. Why don't you fans make up a lobby and get the editor of Astounding to answer letters he prints the way the editor of Amazing does. Then I'd only have to buy one magazine a month, because two a month is too much of a muchness for me. I'd never come down to earth at all if I bought all the science fiction magazines. Goody goody, here's the end of the page. I'll bet you're glad, too. Well, I'll be seeing you. Who knows, I may even have to subscribe to your magazine if I can't read it here. I guess you won't be sorry about that. Or have you so many subscribers that one more doesn't make any difference! (Is he pulling our leg?) You know, sometimes I think it won't be half as much fun living in the future when all these things have happened as it is now when we're just imagining them. thanks for listening," DONALD WOLLHEIM: "Dear VoM : - A brief comment on Paul Freehafer's letter anent the Speer 'history'. I rather doubt that the work will help anyone understand Wollheim better — I rather think it will help confuse people more about what sort of egg I am. But I think this whole business of trying to pin science-fiction around the life or doings of one person is so much ridiculous nonsense. Science-fiction, like everything else, is subject to the trends and forces of social and world currents, and no individual can do any more that either go along with them hastening them or else fight them and disappear. I should like to say here and now that the so-called Wollheim-every- body else feuds are for the most part misnamed and based upon superficial misunderstandings. The correct terms for those feuds should be Sykora-Clark, Sykora-Kirshenblit, Sykora-Schwartz and n̲o̲t̲ mine. I did achieve some prominence in each because, as a friend of Sykora, I naturally took his side and since I was more in the fan world's eye, I was mistaken for the chief antagonist. But it was always Sykora who first engineered those squalls and carried them on. I doubt that they were really turning points at all, as a rule it was easy to judge when one of the protagonists is due for a short stay in fandom. Everybody in New York (including those on his side) knew, for instance, that G.G. Clark was never more than a passing faddist. He would have left fandom regardless of what events occurred to him. The feud may merely have hastened a certain departure... Fans should be careful to avoid taking the Speer work seriously. The view it presents is wholly unrealistic. Speer's insistence that all the michelists ought to talk as one man is a bit unAmerican, don't you think? If America gets into this war (and we've got no business there), it will be the end of science-fiction as we know it. Let's keep our heads. Let's KEEP AMERICA OUT OF WAR!"
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