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Fanfare, v. 2, issue 2, whole no.8, February 1942
Page 10
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10 slan!der A large number of fans admit that they no longer read the pro mags. The general reason they attribute for this attitude, is that they have grown up and lost interest in stf and fantasy. They've lost interest in neither. They just don't get it nowadays. It's about time some smart pulp publisher with money enough to finance the defense program should start a true stf and fantasy magazine. Remember the tremendous ovation Tremaine received when he began COMET? He received it because the public thought they were going to get the type of strories that the old Treamine ASTOUNDING featured; the tales of space and time blurbed on the cover. Well, they got in part the old type of story, but that's no compliment, because Tremaine had the foulest taste in shorts where the old ASTOUNDING was concerned, and he carried it over into COMET with the result that it printed nothing but hackneyed slop, with a few exceptions like "The Immortal," "Dark Reality," and one or two others. Understand me, please - I do not propose a return to the extremes of the old days: the days of wooden characters and ideas alone, hen dialogue, story value, and all other technical necessities were almost completely ignored in a mad welter of scientific impossibilities. But I do believe it's time and well past time, for a combination of the old and the new; for "characterized thought-variants" in a way of speaking. For characters that live, for writing that is slick quality, and at the same time for a little universe destroying - for stories with cosmic sweep, with the breath-taking power of "Colossus", "Rebirth", "The Mightiest Machine", "The Time Stream", etc; time for takes of time and tomorrow, of gigantic ships of space thundering up from Earth in the cold dawn of morning into an eternally black void of infinite nothingness. Of another ice age creeping over the earth, and leaving a dead civilization behind; of tremendous throbbing machines, accomplishing scientific miracles that leave one restless and dreaming; ov concepts of such cosmic intensity that they shake the imagination to its very foundation and leave one filled with a half-hopeful yearning with their very scope. We need the old Williamson, the old Gallun, the old Loinster, the old C.L.Moore, the old R. DeWitt Miller, the old Wandrei and Rocklynne and Schachner. (Calling Home for Aged Stf Authors!--yhos) The response E.E.Smith receives with his super-colossals is proof enough of that. With the modern stf mag's so-called human interest as the primary building point, infinity as the limit, and two to three cents a word as the rate, what a progressive editor could do in the fantasy field today! Upon the improbable possibility that such an editor will appear, I am inclined to believe, lies the eventual survival of the stf and fantasy pro field itself. MISCELLANIA *********** Not much space for the tag-end of news this time, but . . . If you want to read a truly grim weird story, watch for "The Enemy" by Hugh Raymond and Mallory Kent, coming up in SSS. ** .... Lowndes has accepted two more stories from a fan hopeful, John H. Mason, Canadian fan, is the newly-initiated pro. ** ** ** *
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10 slan!der A large number of fans admit that they no longer read the pro mags. The general reason they attribute for this attitude, is that they have grown up and lost interest in stf and fantasy. They've lost interest in neither. They just don't get it nowadays. It's about time some smart pulp publisher with money enough to finance the defense program should start a true stf and fantasy magazine. Remember the tremendous ovation Tremaine received when he began COMET? He received it because the public thought they were going to get the type of strories that the old Treamine ASTOUNDING featured; the tales of space and time blurbed on the cover. Well, they got in part the old type of story, but that's no compliment, because Tremaine had the foulest taste in shorts where the old ASTOUNDING was concerned, and he carried it over into COMET with the result that it printed nothing but hackneyed slop, with a few exceptions like "The Immortal," "Dark Reality," and one or two others. Understand me, please - I do not propose a return to the extremes of the old days: the days of wooden characters and ideas alone, hen dialogue, story value, and all other technical necessities were almost completely ignored in a mad welter of scientific impossibilities. But I do believe it's time and well past time, for a combination of the old and the new; for "characterized thought-variants" in a way of speaking. For characters that live, for writing that is slick quality, and at the same time for a little universe destroying - for stories with cosmic sweep, with the breath-taking power of "Colossus", "Rebirth", "The Mightiest Machine", "The Time Stream", etc; time for takes of time and tomorrow, of gigantic ships of space thundering up from Earth in the cold dawn of morning into an eternally black void of infinite nothingness. Of another ice age creeping over the earth, and leaving a dead civilization behind; of tremendous throbbing machines, accomplishing scientific miracles that leave one restless and dreaming; ov concepts of such cosmic intensity that they shake the imagination to its very foundation and leave one filled with a half-hopeful yearning with their very scope. We need the old Williamson, the old Gallun, the old Loinster, the old C.L.Moore, the old R. DeWitt Miller, the old Wandrei and Rocklynne and Schachner. (Calling Home for Aged Stf Authors!--yhos) The response E.E.Smith receives with his super-colossals is proof enough of that. With the modern stf mag's so-called human interest as the primary building point, infinity as the limit, and two to three cents a word as the rate, what a progressive editor could do in the fantasy field today! Upon the improbable possibility that such an editor will appear, I am inclined to believe, lies the eventual survival of the stf and fantasy pro field itself. MISCELLANIA *********** Not much space for the tag-end of news this time, but . . . If you want to read a truly grim weird story, watch for "The Enemy" by Hugh Raymond and Mallory Kent, coming up in SSS. ** .... Lowndes has accepted two more stories from a fan hopeful, John H. Mason, Canadian fan, is the newly-initiated pro. ** ** ** *
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