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Fantasite, v. 2, issue 2, May-June 1942

Page 18

18 THE FANTASITE

perfect sort of drawing for lithographing, for one thing--I don't know enough about art to give technical explanation of what I mean, but the contrast, and the way everything draws the eye toward one point, are peculiarly effective to the litho process. I didn't know Morrie had it in him. The mimeophotos show promise--is the process very expensive or complicated?--and the few I've seen outside of fandom were no better than these. But that page of photographs! They're so miraculously clear and distinct; words fail me. Interior material: well there's so much that I could waste three or four sheets of paper commenting at length on everything. I'll spare you that, and say only the things that come first to mind. The Incredible Years: at least one thousandth of one per cent of Rothman's history of the future as told in prozines is now complete. This is by coincidence a very nice strong argument against Jacobi's stf stories of the future. For one thing, the mere presence of a definite outline for all stories to follow wouldn't make the yarns better or worse in itself, I'm sure. Heinlein, Bond, and Kummer all have their own futures, and their stories built around them are excellent, fair, and awful, respectively. Then, too, such a definite future would about ruin the time-travel field, except for stories in which everything cancels out, like "By His Bootstraps". Imagine the suicide rate among hack authors when they found they couldn't write stories in which history is changed by a time traveler! And suppose a writer wanted to have a nice war between Mars and Earth, destroying a couple of large cities. He'd have to tidy up everything before the story ended, and somehow get the cities rebuilt, so they'd be there for the other stories in the magazines; it would be as bad as a restaurant which made you wash your dishes after the meal. No one could destroy the solar system or any of the planets; all new inventions not in that handbook would have to be invented on some planet in a far corner of the universe so that they wouldn't mess up the plan, and so forth. The only way authors could use their ingenuity and write stories of the kind they write today would be by setting them far away from earth, in some place or time the handbook would forget to tell about, in which case we'd be for all practical purposes right where we are now. And, of course, the best argument against such a plan is the bad effect it would have on whatever originality the writer might possess. Cliff Simak's Critique echoes what Doc Smith said in Nova very well. I try to say as best I can why I like or dislike something, but it's infinitely harder to do than most people think. Chapman's article is on a theme that's becoming rather worn, but he makes it very interesting. Two stories I think would make swell pictures: "The Second Deluge" and "Rebirth". The former lacks a hero and a heroine, but the neo-Noah is a wonderful character. The latter would give a few Hollywood he-men and glamour girls even better chances to show off than in South Sea Island films. Norman Stanley says that there's a tabu in Hollywood against invasions of this country's territory in movies (too fantastic!), so that rules out a lot of potential plots. Fanzine Fatigue good enough. Martin's Recollections chiefly important for the news that the first Skylark story started with so much wordage that was cut. I just can't conceive of it beginning anywhere except with the X flying out through Seaton's laboratory window; that seems the inevitable starting point. Gilbert's habit of starting articles in the third or fourth paragraph becomes rather annoying sometimes; but this one is still good. Sienkiewicz' story the better of the two; Wells has done much better, this seeming to be something of a practice effort. I like the book reviews (I've not read any of the three but have two of them on hand, or at least think I do; one of the two is in tabloid form, the supplement to a Sunday newspaper, and it may have disappeared as so many of those things mysteriously do). You'll probably find that those who read the prozines themselves approve of "Among the Hams and Pros". and those who pride themselves for not bothering about pulp magazines

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18 THE FANTASITE perfect sort of drawing for lithographing, for one thing--I don't know enough about art to give technical explanation of what I mean, but the contrast, and the way everything draws the eye toward one point, are peculiarly effective to the litho process. I didn't know Morrie had it in him. The mimeophotos show promise--is the process very expensive or complicated?--and the few I've seen outside of fandom were no better than these. But that page of photographs! They're so miraculously clear and distinct; words fail me. Interior material: well there's so much that I could waste three or four sheets of paper commenting at length on everything. I'll spare you that, and say only the things that come first to mind. The Incredible Years: at least one thousandth of one per cent of Rothman's history of the future as told in prozines is now complete. This is by coincidence a very nice strong argument against Jacobi's stf stories of the future. For one thing, the mere presence of a definite outline for all stories to follow wouldn't make the yarns better or worse in itself, I'm sure. Heinlein, Bond, and Kummer all have their own futures, and their stories built around them are excellent, fair, and awful, respectively. Then, too, such a definite future would about ruin the time-travel field, except for stories in which everything cancels out, like "By His Bootstraps". Imagine the suicide rate among hack authors when they found they couldn't write stories in which history is changed by a time traveler! And suppose a writer wanted to have a nice war between Mars and Earth, destroying a couple of large cities. He'd have to tidy up everything before the story ended, and somehow get the cities rebuilt, so they'd be there for the other stories in the magazines; it would be as bad as a restaurant which made you wash your dishes after the meal. No one could destroy the solar system or any of the planets; all new inventions not in that handbook would have to be invented on some planet in a far corner of the universe so that they wouldn't mess up the plan, and so forth. The only way authors could use their ingenuity and write stories of the kind they write today would be by setting them far away from earth, in some place or time the handbook would forget to tell about, in which case we'd be for all practical purposes right where we are now. And, of course, the best argument against such a plan is the bad effect it would have on whatever originality the writer might possess. Cliff Simak's Critique echoes what Doc Smith said in Nova very well. I try to say as best I can why I like or dislike something, but it's infinitely harder to do than most people think. Chapman's article is on a theme that's becoming rather worn, but he makes it very interesting. Two stories I think would make swell pictures: "The Second Deluge" and "Rebirth". The former lacks a hero and a heroine, but the neo-Noah is a wonderful character. The latter would give a few Hollywood he-men and glamour girls even better chances to show off than in South Sea Island films. Norman Stanley says that there's a tabu in Hollywood against invasions of this country's territory in movies (too fantastic!), so that rules out a lot of potential plots. Fanzine Fatigue good enough. Martin's Recollections chiefly important for the news that the first Skylark story started with so much wordage that was cut. I just can't conceive of it beginning anywhere except with the X flying out through Seaton's laboratory window; that seems the inevitable starting point. Gilbert's habit of starting articles in the third or fourth paragraph becomes rather annoying sometimes; but this one is still good. Sienkiewicz' story the better of the two; Wells has done much better, this seeming to be something of a practice effort. I like the book reviews (I've not read any of the three but have two of them on hand, or at least think I do; one of the two is in tabloid form, the supplement to a Sunday newspaper, and it may have disappeared as so many of those things mysteriously do). You'll probably find that those who read the prozines themselves approve of "Among the Hams and Pros". and those who pride themselves for not bothering about pulp magazines