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Fantasite, v. 2, issue 5, whole 11, May-June 1943
Page 15
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THE FANTASITE ...... 15 VIEWPOINT This paper is not a criticism or a condemnation of all science-fiction-fantasy fans, but it is a criticism of a great many of them. Youth, lack of maturity may account for part of their attitude; no doubt the present condition of this torn-asunder world plays another part. But taking fandom as a whole, I have come to the conclusion that a good fifty percent of it needs a few lessons in the craft of fiction writing. I am quite aware that during the last few decades or so creative writing has cast aside many of the shackles which governed it for so long. A few years ago a reader could pick up a story, read it, and accept it for what it was. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had characters and a background, and the characters moved across the stage until their mission was fulfilled when they quietly departed. Furthermore, a story was judged for its skill in writing, in suspense, in development. Characters might have been "typed" to a certain extent, but at least they were sincere, and whereas diction and syntax may have been flowery, studden with Stevensonian rhythm, still it was good diction. Today, one might say writing has paralleled the development of art. Who hasn't gone to a modern art gallery, see some horrible painted monstrosity with armless hands, rectangular flowers or fruit and caricature faces and heard or read later that it was "the soul of the thing, not limited to a photographic outline of the thought itself"? But just as cubism and its related types have passed into the limbo with all other trickster methods, so too has the new writing front advanced toward an acceptance of the methods of the masters. To draw another parallel: Some of the early music composers were ridiculed when their compositions were first presented to an uneducated public. The fact remains, however, that these composers removed though they were from the fields of their predecessors, did not violate the accepted laws of harmony. What has all this to do with science-fiction? Perhaps not a great deal. But the point I'm trying to illustrate is that an off-trail story in itself does not constitute a valuable piece of creative writing. Nor does a badly told yarn with a theme that has the universe as its scope rate a world of praise as so many fans apparently think it does. Science-fiction is unfortunate in that it must satisfy two thirsts: the one for reading entertainment, the other for technical truisms. If you are an amateur or professional geologist, for example, and you detect an error in a certain story and you forthwith condemn it, you are being unfair. For just as most geologists are not scribes, neither are most writers geologists. The writer is attempting first of all to capture your eye and hold it for the half hour or hour it requires to read his written words. If he succeeds in doing that, he has accomplished the greater part of his mission. This brings forward the obvious statement that there are two types of writing, "commercial", and what for lack of a better term we might call (next page) BY CARL JACOBI
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THE FANTASITE ...... 15 VIEWPOINT This paper is not a criticism or a condemnation of all science-fiction-fantasy fans, but it is a criticism of a great many of them. Youth, lack of maturity may account for part of their attitude; no doubt the present condition of this torn-asunder world plays another part. But taking fandom as a whole, I have come to the conclusion that a good fifty percent of it needs a few lessons in the craft of fiction writing. I am quite aware that during the last few decades or so creative writing has cast aside many of the shackles which governed it for so long. A few years ago a reader could pick up a story, read it, and accept it for what it was. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had characters and a background, and the characters moved across the stage until their mission was fulfilled when they quietly departed. Furthermore, a story was judged for its skill in writing, in suspense, in development. Characters might have been "typed" to a certain extent, but at least they were sincere, and whereas diction and syntax may have been flowery, studden with Stevensonian rhythm, still it was good diction. Today, one might say writing has paralleled the development of art. Who hasn't gone to a modern art gallery, see some horrible painted monstrosity with armless hands, rectangular flowers or fruit and caricature faces and heard or read later that it was "the soul of the thing, not limited to a photographic outline of the thought itself"? But just as cubism and its related types have passed into the limbo with all other trickster methods, so too has the new writing front advanced toward an acceptance of the methods of the masters. To draw another parallel: Some of the early music composers were ridiculed when their compositions were first presented to an uneducated public. The fact remains, however, that these composers removed though they were from the fields of their predecessors, did not violate the accepted laws of harmony. What has all this to do with science-fiction? Perhaps not a great deal. But the point I'm trying to illustrate is that an off-trail story in itself does not constitute a valuable piece of creative writing. Nor does a badly told yarn with a theme that has the universe as its scope rate a world of praise as so many fans apparently think it does. Science-fiction is unfortunate in that it must satisfy two thirsts: the one for reading entertainment, the other for technical truisms. If you are an amateur or professional geologist, for example, and you detect an error in a certain story and you forthwith condemn it, you are being unfair. For just as most geologists are not scribes, neither are most writers geologists. The writer is attempting first of all to capture your eye and hold it for the half hour or hour it requires to read his written words. If he succeeds in doing that, he has accomplished the greater part of his mission. This brings forward the obvious statement that there are two types of writing, "commercial", and what for lack of a better term we might call (next page) BY CARL JACOBI
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