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Voice of the Imagination, issue 50, July 1947

Page 4

attempting to blow up and block the tunnel, only succeeded in scattering themselves in unpleasant death along its length? Think I know now what it would be like to stand in a crater on the Moon. At one spot as you approach the Matterhorn via the Aosta Valley there are 3 gigantic rock-mountains in a row, upflung into jagged horns & sharp peaks, dead gray, utterly bare of vegetation and littered with volcanic rubble, and to the pigmy me who stood in the valley and gazed it was one of those "Imaginary Landscape on the Moon" illustrations of my astronomical books grown enormously into three dimensions.  Except that the sky would be black instead of intensely blue, I've no doubt that it was almost exactly the first view of the Moon one would get on stepping out of a lunar spaceship.

Could any fantastic "rose-red city, half as old as time" be more picturesque than the tiny fairy-like town of San Marino perched like a Disney castle on the very summit of a great rock peak; or the minarets & domes of the Arab city of Takrouna, in the desert, also on a lone rocky height; or Venice, a city of colored floating bubbles in green water? That's Dunsany for you.  As for Lovecraft and his ancient forgotten cities and haunted mausoleums: the silent streets of Pompeii -- a time trip back some 2000 years; or the Colosseum at El Djein in the Tunisian desert, better preserved than the one in Rome, a huge bulk of masonry standing quite solitary & forgotten -- "Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless & bare, The lone & level sands stretch far away"; or the tombs of Egypt.

As Mr Wells knows, the ruins of "Everytown" in THINGS TO COME stand in London today.  Which reminds me that all these books I'm looking at in the room once, in 1940, disappeared together with their shelves under the collapsed ceiling when a bomb landed at the end of the garden, and had to be dug out and cleaned patiently one by one.  Which in turn reminds me of the time when one of the earliest bombs to fall in London fell near "George" Medhurst's house, and a lone bomb-splinter came in through the window and of all his collection of some 500 books of stf. & fantasy chose THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME in which to embed itself.

Far away seemed the war when I stood above the clouds 11,000 feet up on a glacier on Pian Rosa, where the Swiss, Italian & French Alps meet & join, the most wonderful spectacle I've ever seen: in every direction, range upon range, the countless snow-veined summits stood up, and it wasn't hard to imagine that through one of those high & lonely passes one might, by a geographical accident, stumble upon Shangri-la or the Country of the Blind. The Atomic Bomb of THE WORLD SET FREE has come right out of the pages with a bang, together with atomic power and a shower of rockets of all sizes -- I first met rockets coming the wrong way in Tunisia, in bunches of six at a time and with vampire howls -- we called them the "Sobbing Sisters." And talking of vampires, what Transylvanian roost could be more grim & foreboding than the Castle of Malatestiano in North Italy, the best-preserved medieaval castle in Europe? I had stood in that room over the drawbridge where Francesca da Rimini & Paolo were slain by the half-insane Conte (an episode which inspired a tone poem from Tchaikovsky and a drama from Dante), The torture chamber, in the dungeon, with all its original ingenious fittings, is from the Poe of "The Pit & the Pendulum." and there is a Pit too, from which the bones of scores of murdered victims are still being extracted. In one of the gloomy halls hang the original portraits of two of the Conte's wives: he strangled one and poisoned the other.  Dracula had better take a back seat.

Yes, fantasy has grown more factual since I was last in this den.  And yet, you know, these old romantic symbols, the very stuff of which it is woven, still hold their magic. These wanderings have if anything strengthened the fabric, given substance to smoke, made vantage points of possibility upon which credulity might stand.  Which reflection inclines my eye to a newcomer on these shelves, JULES VERNE by Kenneth Allott. It is so much more than just a biography of Verne.  It's also an analysis of the 19th century birth of science and the romantic literature which inspired Verne, by someone who knows what s tf. & fantasy mean & what they're made of. He lumps them together as "romanticism", as against the dry factual "classicism" of reason. And shows that, as always, the poets were in the vanguard. This exposition is mainly in a fascinating last chapter entitled "The Future of a Sentiment", the Sentiment being "romanticism." Herewith a taste of it":--

"The poets woke up from the anaesthetic of rationalism to cultivate their senses. They sought refreshment from the commonsense & good taste of the coffee houses in the noisiest waterfalls, the most precipitous cliffs, the most wind-tortured trees. They followed nature ecstatically and

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attempting to blow up and block the tunnel, only succeeded in scattering themselves in unpleasant death along its length? Think I know now what it would be like to stand in a crater on the Moon. At one spot as you approach the Matterhorn via the Aosta Valley there are 3 gigantic rock-mountains in a row, upflung into jagged horns & sharp peaks, dead gray, utterly bare of vegetation and littered with volcanic rubble, and to the pigmy me who stood in the valley and gazed it was one of those "Imaginary Landscape on the Moon" illustrations of my astronomical books grown enormously into three dimensions. Except that the sky would be black instead of intensely blue, I've no doubt that it was almost exactly the first view of the Moon one would get on stepping out of a lunar spaceship. Could any fantastic "rose-red city, half as old as time" be more picturesque than the tiny fairy-like town of San Marino perched like a Disney castle on the very summit of a great rock peak; or the minarets & domes of the Arab city of Takrouna, in the desert, also on a lone rocky height; or Venice, a city of colored floating bubbles in green water? That's Dunsany for you. As for Lovecraft and his ancient forgotten cities and haunted mausoleums: the silent streets of Pompeii -- a time trip back some 2000 years; or the Colosseum at El Djein in the Tunisian desert, better preserved than the one in Rome, a huge bulk of masonry standing quite solitary & forgotten -- "Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless & bare, The lone & level sands stretch far away"; or the tombs of Egypt. As Mr Wells knows, the ruins of "Everytown" in THINGS TO COME stand in London today. Which reminds me that all these books I'm looking at in the room once, in 1940, disappeared together with their shelves under the collapsed ceiling when a bomb landed at the end of the garden, and had to be dug out and cleaned patiently one by one. Which in turn reminds me of the time when one of the earliest bombs to fall in London fell near "George" Medhurst's house, and a lone bomb-splinter came in through the window and of all his collection of some 500 books of stf. & fantasy chose THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME in which to embed itself. Far away seemed the war when I stood above the clouds 11,000 feet up on a glacier on Pian Rosa, where the Swiss, Italian & French Alps meet & join, the most wonderful spectacle I've ever seen: in every direction, range upon range, the countless snow-veined summits stood up, and it wasn't hard to imagine that through one of those high & lonely passes one might, by a geographical accident, stumble upon Shangri-la or the Country of the Blind. The Atomic Bomb of THE WORLD SET FREE has come right out of the pages with a bang, together with atomic power and a shower of rockets of all sizes -- I first met rockets coming the wrong way in Tunisia, in bunches of six at a time and with vampire howls -- we called them the "Sobbing Sisters." And talking of vampires, what Transylvanian roost could be more grim & foreboding than the Castle of Malatestiano in North Italy, the best-preserved medieaval castle in Europe? I had stood in that room over the drawbridge where Francesca da Rimini & Paolo were slain by the half-insane Conte (an episode which inspired a tone poem from Tchaikovsky and a drama from Dante), The torture chamber, in the dungeon, with all its original ingenious fittings, is from the Poe of "The Pit & the Pendulum." and there is a Pit too, from which the bones of scores of murdered victims are still being extracted. In one of the gloomy halls hang the original portraits of two of the Conte's wives: he strangled one and poisoned the other. Dracula had better take a back seat. Yes, fantasy has grown more factual since I was last in this den. And yet, you know, these old romantic symbols, the very stuff of which it is woven, still hold their magic. These wanderings have if anything strengthened the fabric, given substance to smoke, made vantage points of possibility upon which credulity might stand. Which reflection inclines my eye to a newcomer on these shelves, JULES VERNE by Kenneth Allott. It is so much more than just a biography of Verne. It's also an analysis of the 19th century birth of science and the romantic literature which inspired Verne, by someone who knows what s tf. & fantasy mean & what they're made of. He lumps them together as "romanticism", as against the dry factual "classicism" of reason. And shows that, as always, the poets were in the vanguard. This exposition is mainly in a fascinating last chapter entitled "The Future of a Sentiment", the Sentiment being "romanticism." Herewith a taste of it":-- "The poets woke up from the anaesthetic of rationalism to cultivate their senses. They sought refreshment from the commonsense & good taste of the coffee houses in the noisiest waterfalls, the most precipitous cliffs, the most wind-tortured trees. They followed nature ecstatically and