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Southern Star, v. 1, issue 1, 1941
Page 5
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Adventures In Re- Reading by Harry Warner, Jr. -Maryland- -Article- During the years form 1935 to 1938, I was in a rather peculiar position. I was at that time discovering that The Open Road for Boys prematurely perhaps, and that even the more adult children's books, like those of Cornelia Meigs, which I obtained from the library, no longer quite satisfied me. Yet I wasn't quite old enough to enjoy most types of "grown-up" stuff: almost all of it concerned emotions and happenings with which I had no acquaintance and no interest in. Science-fiction, at that time, was about the only reading I had any liking for; when I wanted to read I turned to that. And the supply of it was meager, to say the least, during that period. No back issues were to be found in town anywhere, and I wasn't old enough to borrow books of that type from the adult section of the public library. To make matters worse, in the Spring of 1936 we moved into another part of town , a section where there were -- and are, in fact -- almost no children. This turned me more and more to reading. Lacking new stuff to read, there was only one thing to do: re-read issues which I had bought in the past few years. A few of the things I discovered during that time might be of interest. I kept no record of what I re-read and how often, nor did I go about it systematically. Once, I remember, I started to re-read my entire file or Amazing, but quickly got stuck. Except for that incident, I picked up a magazine as fancy dictated. But I did find the following things out: That the stories in Amazing, taken as a whole, stayed fresh after repeated readings longer than any others. (All this, of course, includes only issues from mid-1933 to 1937.) Why this was, I don't know. Possibly the reprints of Poe and Verne, which I enjoyed more each time I read them, helped in this respect; also I took great pleasure in reading a serial in as few sittings as possible and Amazing, you'll remember, published during those years two and three continued stories in parallell. However, I didn't read again any yarn so many times in Amazing as certain ones in Astounding and Wonder. (Also remember that at this time I didn't buy Weird Tales.) The story I re-read most often during this period was, I believe, either "A Martian Odyssey" or "Colossus". "Rebirth" was another of my favorites for going back on; ditto "Exiles of the Skies", "Today's Yesterday", "The Lost Language", "the Legion of Space", "Evolution Satellite", and a number of others. About the only other yarn in most of these, you'll notice, are serials, and so couldn't be re-read as quickly as "Colossus" or Weinbaum's first tale. No one type of story seems best for re-reading -- or at least none was best to me at the time. Now I'm inclined to think weird tales will stand up better than the rest, but at that time I hadn't any to try it out on. However, I do believe they then were my favorite type for first reading too.
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Adventures In Re- Reading by Harry Warner, Jr. -Maryland- -Article- During the years form 1935 to 1938, I was in a rather peculiar position. I was at that time discovering that The Open Road for Boys prematurely perhaps, and that even the more adult children's books, like those of Cornelia Meigs, which I obtained from the library, no longer quite satisfied me. Yet I wasn't quite old enough to enjoy most types of "grown-up" stuff: almost all of it concerned emotions and happenings with which I had no acquaintance and no interest in. Science-fiction, at that time, was about the only reading I had any liking for; when I wanted to read I turned to that. And the supply of it was meager, to say the least, during that period. No back issues were to be found in town anywhere, and I wasn't old enough to borrow books of that type from the adult section of the public library. To make matters worse, in the Spring of 1936 we moved into another part of town , a section where there were -- and are, in fact -- almost no children. This turned me more and more to reading. Lacking new stuff to read, there was only one thing to do: re-read issues which I had bought in the past few years. A few of the things I discovered during that time might be of interest. I kept no record of what I re-read and how often, nor did I go about it systematically. Once, I remember, I started to re-read my entire file or Amazing, but quickly got stuck. Except for that incident, I picked up a magazine as fancy dictated. But I did find the following things out: That the stories in Amazing, taken as a whole, stayed fresh after repeated readings longer than any others. (All this, of course, includes only issues from mid-1933 to 1937.) Why this was, I don't know. Possibly the reprints of Poe and Verne, which I enjoyed more each time I read them, helped in this respect; also I took great pleasure in reading a serial in as few sittings as possible and Amazing, you'll remember, published during those years two and three continued stories in parallell. However, I didn't read again any yarn so many times in Amazing as certain ones in Astounding and Wonder. (Also remember that at this time I didn't buy Weird Tales.) The story I re-read most often during this period was, I believe, either "A Martian Odyssey" or "Colossus". "Rebirth" was another of my favorites for going back on; ditto "Exiles of the Skies", "Today's Yesterday", "The Lost Language", "the Legion of Space", "Evolution Satellite", and a number of others. About the only other yarn in most of these, you'll notice, are serials, and so couldn't be re-read as quickly as "Colossus" or Weinbaum's first tale. No one type of story seems best for re-reading -- or at least none was best to me at the time. Now I'm inclined to think weird tales will stand up better than the rest, but at that time I hadn't any to try it out on. However, I do believe they then were my favorite type for first reading too.
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