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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 6, January 1946
Page 17
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17. unsteady creatures who oppose Flash Gordon are easily equal to the Hippogriff. Along with the use of mythological plot and symbol have come new intuitive cosmologies and philosophies. All futuristic publications show these motifs, but the number of pulp magazines is too large, and their selections too varied, for a complete study to be made of all of them. Astounding Science-Fiction stories can serve as examples for other pulp, as well as for movie, radio, and comic strip adaptations of the mythological. Astounding Science-Fiction, a monthly publication of Street and Smith, is one of the best written, most widely read and praised magazines of its type. The plots of the stories are lifted from the banal by means of spacebelts and rocket ships, by scientific conversations and digressions on theory. We meet a strange people who smoke cigarettes (a commonplace the futurians do not seem to be able to give up), who move under some of the same natural impulses that we feel today, but who live in entirely different worlds. As in the older myths, a central motivating force is desire for power; whether it be for inter-planetary, inter-spacial, or astral control. Combines of forces fight for the domination of the earth, led by scientific muster-minds, and a united earth fights off invaders from other planets. Love is tempered by psychological adjustments which turn it on or off as the patient chooses, but hate and fear and envy are still uncontrollable. Lessons of morality and justice are given in much the same manner as in the older type of myth-travel fiction. The future man of Astounding Science-Fiction often hears arguments and condemnations of the world reminiscent of Zadig, Gulliver's Travels, and Alice in Wonderland. Allegory and personification are no more lacking than in the Bible, whether used consciously or unconsciously. In the huge world of the future, men, no longer cramped into conforming with local social law, are clearly good or bad. Just as the personifications of the Bible and mythology are usually put in another world, so in futuristic fiction the
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17. unsteady creatures who oppose Flash Gordon are easily equal to the Hippogriff. Along with the use of mythological plot and symbol have come new intuitive cosmologies and philosophies. All futuristic publications show these motifs, but the number of pulp magazines is too large, and their selections too varied, for a complete study to be made of all of them. Astounding Science-Fiction stories can serve as examples for other pulp, as well as for movie, radio, and comic strip adaptations of the mythological. Astounding Science-Fiction, a monthly publication of Street and Smith, is one of the best written, most widely read and praised magazines of its type. The plots of the stories are lifted from the banal by means of spacebelts and rocket ships, by scientific conversations and digressions on theory. We meet a strange people who smoke cigarettes (a commonplace the futurians do not seem to be able to give up), who move under some of the same natural impulses that we feel today, but who live in entirely different worlds. As in the older myths, a central motivating force is desire for power; whether it be for inter-planetary, inter-spacial, or astral control. Combines of forces fight for the domination of the earth, led by scientific muster-minds, and a united earth fights off invaders from other planets. Love is tempered by psychological adjustments which turn it on or off as the patient chooses, but hate and fear and envy are still uncontrollable. Lessons of morality and justice are given in much the same manner as in the older type of myth-travel fiction. The future man of Astounding Science-Fiction often hears arguments and condemnations of the world reminiscent of Zadig, Gulliver's Travels, and Alice in Wonderland. Allegory and personification are no more lacking than in the Bible, whether used consciously or unconsciously. In the huge world of the future, men, no longer cramped into conforming with local social law, are clearly good or bad. Just as the personifications of the Bible and mythology are usually put in another world, so in futuristic fiction the
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