December 2006

–e*I*29– (Vol. 5 No. 6) December 2006, is published and © 1960, 1980, 2006 by Earl Kemp. All rights reserved.
It is produced and distributed bi-monthly through http://efanzines.com by Bill Burns in an e-edition only.

Contents – eI29 – December 2006

The Compleat and Unexpurgated
WHO KILLED SCIENCE FICTION?

Anybody who announces that he is a science fiction writer is announcing that he is in damn bad company financially and artistically.
                 --Kurt Vonnegut, Who Killed Science Fiction?

The Compleat and Unexpurgated

WHO KILLED SCIENCE FICTION?

Edited by Earl Kemp

Associate Editor Earl Terry Kemp

This is an

eBook

Edited and published by
Earl Kemp
P.O. Box 6642
Kingman, AZ 86402-6642
earlkemp@citlink.net

Produced and distributed by
Bill Burns
FTL Design/eFanzines.com
billb@efanzines.com

In memory of

124C41+

Hugo Gernsback

Who Killed Science Fiction? 2006

Introduction 2006
Four Years Too Early….

By Earl Kemp

I lost 1980…and it falling only four years short of George Orwell’s dark fantasy. It’s not something I do often, but it does happen. I was 50 at the time, old enough to know better. It was the year of significant happenings: old hero Henry Miller died and young hero John Lennon was assassinated…and the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Boston.

            And, wouldn’t you know it, I had just gotten around to working on one of my pet projects, the second edition of Who Killed Science Fiction?, scheduled for publication that year. I had done all the groundwork, gathered up an assortment of new material from a number of contributors, and it was complete with a very nice introduction by old Greenleaf pal Frank M. Robinson. It was all set, ready to go to the printers, only I was so broke I couldn’t pay for the printing.

            At the time, I’d been living full time in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico for a few years while pretending to be operating a graphics company in El Cajon. Already the handwriting was on the wall; PCs were rapidly putting me out of business. For the first time, any two-finger typist could become their very own writer, editor, typesetter, proofreader, and printer. They didn’t need me for anything, and were quick to tell me so.

            It was definitely time to find something else to do to earn a living wage. Fortunately, for a while, I had been surrounded by a group of very talented handbraiders who were making high quality tack for horses and cowboy clothing accessories. I saw an urgent need for my rare and extensive talents. With the assistance of my son Erik, we began organizing those braiders into a workforce to produce merchandise under our label of Western Gold for us to sell to the equestrian trade.

            Everything worked out for the best and in no time at all we were traveling quite a bit and exhibiting our wares for sale at horse shows and major rodeos all over the USA and Mexico.

            Only that’s a far cry from Who Killed Science Fiction?

            The thing is, the second edition, planned for publication in 1980, got shuffled aside, finally winding up packed away in a box that placed it firmly out of sight…and out of mind. No one even noticed that it was never published as scheduled, including me.

            Throughout the copy for the 1980 edition were references to the third, or 2000 edition of Who Killed Science Fiction?

#

I have long ago forgotten exactly where the idea for Who Killed Science Fiction? originated, but it took solid hold of my thoughts with a firm determination, almost as if the scheme was running on automatic. Like everything else I did at the time, it was somehow related to the power politics the Chicago fan group was playing, drawing attention to their efforts to claim the 1962 Worldcon. I even allowed myself to fantasize about wild improbabilities like persuading a large number of prominent people to participate in the write-in symposium for Who Killed Science Fiction? If I worked it right, it could damn near read like Who’s Who In Science Fiction. Then, producing the results in a manner that could best be described as deliberate attention getting. The attention I knew damn well I wanted was a Hugo.

I was toying with the idea that, ridiculous as it sounded, I could create and choreograph a scenario wherein people who had never even seen a copy of my book would proclaim it the best fan effort of the year. I was so naïve in those halcyon years….

I had been a member of SAPS (The Spectator Amateur Press Society) for some time, producing my fanzine SaFari for the membership. I had the outlet available to me already and, because SaFari was approaching its first anniversary, I made the first SaFari Annual as Who Killed Science Fiction?

Thereby bringing about a persistent rumor that has plagued me ever since. There was some effort made to “change the rules” for selecting possible Hugo winners to eliminate all “one shots.” However, Who Killed Science Fiction? was never a one shot, only another number in an existing volume of an ongoing publication.

Who Killed Science Fiction? was produced in 1960 in a very limited edition of 125 pre-assigned copies. Those copies were distributed as follows: The Spectator Amateur Press Society, 40; the contributors, 71; the Library of Congress, 2; friends of the immediate family, science fiction or otherwise, 12. And, following my dreams, it became an instant collectible and has been a popularly sought title ever since.

And, let it be told that my wildest dreams actually came true. In Seattle at the World Science Fiction Convention in September 1961, I was awarded a Hugo statuette for Who Killed Science Fiction? And, to pile on just a little bit more of the good stuff, I also wound up as Chairman of Chicon III, the 1962 World Science Fiction Convention.

Dreams do come true….

My copy of Who Killed Science Fiction? 1960 is bound in red buckram (see photo). I had it bound special to match the Advent: Publishers partner copies by the same binder in fact. There were a number of occasions when I found it advantageous to have them bind one-of-a-kind books for me.

            The front cover of Who Killed Science Fiction? 1960 was designed by Emsh, and is reproduced in this publication on page two. In addition to that wonderful cover, Frank Kelly Freas also designed a two-page title page for the volume, and both of those pieces of artwork are reproduced here.

            For the longest time I felt that my copy of the book was permanently attached to my hands; I seemed to cling to it so possessively. In reality, I was just taking it with me everywhere I went that there was the slightest possibility that I could get one more contributor to autograph their text. I had this foolish goal of getting every one of them to sign my book eventually. It was a commonplace sight at conventions and science fiction related parties for years.

            After that, Terry took up the challenge and passed the book around for several more autographs.

Flashforward….

            I lost 1980. The second edition of Who Killed Science Fiction? never appeared.

            I lost 2000. The third edition of Who Killed Science Fiction? never appeared.

            Hello, 2006. What are you doing out of the 20-year sequencing? Don’t you have the common decency to cooperate and keep things on schedule? Well, at least you finally arrived, whatever you are…the long-delayed second edition for 1980 or the newly revirginized second edition for 2006. What difference does 46 years make anyway?

My son Terry has wanted to see the complete version of Who Killed Science Fiction? published for a number of years. Now and then he returns to the project, trying to get me interested in doing it again. Well, it’s obvious that he finally succeeded.

            With a great deal of his help, the manuscript has been digitized and reformatted for electronic publication.

            With Terry’s assistance, and as an extra-special Christmas bonus for our loyal readers, Bill Burns and I proudly present <drum roll> The Compleat and Unexpurgated Who Killed Science Fiction?

#

            As a special book-length eI ebook, I am suspending all the regular features of eI until next month where they will be resumed, including the letter column. Please don’t hesitate to email your comments regarding this effort to earlkemp@citlink.net or snail mail them to P.O. Box 6642, Kingman, AZ 86402-6642.

Acknowledgments

            Special thanks go to the following people who helped make this book possible: John Boston, Malcolm Edwards, Edward Emshwiller, Frank Kelly Freas, Jacques Hamon, Lynn Hickman, Elaine Kemp Harris, Robert Lichtman, Jim Linwood, James O’Meara, Gregory Pickersgill, George W. Price, and Ed Wood.

Foreword 2006
Keeping the Faith!

By Earl Terry Kemp

I did it!

What’s more, I know I did it. I’m the one. Don’t look any further. It’s high time that I come clean and confess. Is anybody out there? Are you listening? No one else can take the blame, no one the credit. One day I struck back and laid out the fatal, fateful blow. With axe in hand, I killed Science Fiction.

            It took a while for the momentum to build. (Can’t you feel it?) The foul, dastardly deed wasn’t done in one day. It took cool planning, savage animal-like cunning, and child-like glee. Had I known the consequences at the time, I’d still have done it. The beast deserved it. For years I had heard its pained cries, howling in the night, in my nightmares, begging me…begging me to finish it off.

            So I did!

            Careful notes were taken at the time. Many contributed their wisdom to the plot, some their folly. In the end, in the final analysis, no one was right, we were all wrong. The Thing was beyond our understanding, beyond our power to control. We could not destroy it, or guide it. No fortune teller, no Delphic oracle, could have pronounced its destiny.

            The Frankenstein monster that Mary Shelley created has lumbered into the pages of history and the psyche of our civilization. Even Hugo Gernsback’s careful planning and desperate attempt to guide the beast into the Age of Technology wasn’t enough. Praiseworthy though his efforts were, even John W. Campbell, Jr. and his magnificent genius, bringing forth the Golden Atomic Age, could not embrace the depth and breadth of this wild, untamable thing. Every attempt to codify, to describe this thing, to define its passage through time and space has been lacking.

            This Thing has a life, a breath, and existence of its own, independent of us now. Ages from now people will still puzzle over it. Attempt to define it, measure its influence, assign responsibility and credit. Future heroes will rise up and try to conquer it, put it neatly in place, and say, “Now it’s over, we can move on to something new.”

            It will never be over. This Thing is, in fact, the indefinable, inexplicable new. So long as thinking creatures exist, this medium will continue to grow and to evolve. At its core science fiction is nothing less then the compelling force of imagination at work.

            And what magnificent work!

            We few, we proud few, who have had our lives blessed by involvement with it, can join together and fully appreciate the momentous bounty that has enhanced our being.

            It is not often given to any group of people to stand together and participate in both creating and praising the last, best effort of their generation. But here, in these few pages, passing among the thoughts of those who have loved it best, we can join together and show those yet to come that we knew the true, full value represented by the ideas contained in this field.

            Who Killed Science Fiction?

            We all did. Over and over again! Individually and collectively! We will all strive to do so yet again. We must because we can’t help ourselves. This Thing begs for it, so that it can arise from the ashes…reborn.

            Nothing can truly kill it. No one can alter its path. In our hands and minds we have breathed life into, fanned the flames, and released it down the corridors of time. Whether through an act of love, or through hate, whether through creation or destructive criticism, science fiction will endure.

            Here among the following pages, come read the words written by those who knew it best, words written by the first who recognized it and nurtured it. Long after we have all passed into dust, these words will still remain. Generations yet to come will marvel at our times, regret that they came later, and wish in their hearts and minds that they could have lived now, in these times, and participated in this Great Conversation.

            It is not to us, the living, that these words are dedicated. It is not to us to find all the meaning and place the final value. We, those who have lived these times, and read these words, can only dedicate our best, greatest effort to the future.

            It is our hope. It is our reason for striving, for persisting. This is clearly the truth, for why else would we endeavor so ardently against the tides of our troubled present. Rather than succumb to the outrageous misfortunes cascading down around us perpetrated by the blind masses who have succeeded in destroying the earth, we few have gathered together knowing that our expert dreaming will light the path through any and all such troubles, in the present and in the future to come.

            Science fiction is dedicated to this proposition. It is the finest of all lights guiding mankind. Without it, the lantern-lit way would be dark, impenetrable, and we would fall to the wayside.

            Sometimes dimly, sometimes in darkness, we all head toward this light. It is nothing less than the light of consciousness calling us forward, bringing out the soul of our times.

            So here it is, from one person to another, from one age to another, the undying light. The fiercely burning torch of imagination and creation, kindled by those dreaming dreams no one has ever dared to dream before.

            It is our fondest hope, and keenest desire, that at least some small note of amusement will be kindled in those reading these words. It is my belief that some small spark of genius will pass from these pages down the long centuries and find a home and place in those yet to come. It is to those who are yet to come that these great works are dedicated. It is to those that this work is dedicated.

            And when, in passing, you read these words, please remember us kindly. We have kept the faith! Our final words from now to you…do likewise!

Who Killed Science Fiction? 1960

 Introduction 1960

By Earl Kemp

I was reading the 48th mailing of the Spectator Amateur Press Society and discovered the following quote:

      “It is in some ways surprising that much of In Search of Wonder appeared originally in fanzines; there isn’t any criticism of this quality appearing in fanzines today. As a matter of fact, there isn’t any in the prozines either....”

      The statement was made by Bob Leman in the fourth issue of his SAPS-zine, Nematode. I said to myself, “God, he’s right,” and kept on reading.

      For about a paragraph...

      Then I went back and read the quote again. “Why are there no pieces of serious constructive criticism appearing within the field?” Naturally I couldn't answer this; it presupposes a knowledge I don’t possess, even if I do speak to myself with adjectives like “God.” Immediately a self-imposed edict came heralding to the rescue: IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE, DO IT YOURSELF.

      Move in fast, get the facts, hit hard, splash!

      Competence, Roman candles, splash!

      Blanket the field, quality, splash!

      Catchy, skyrockets, splash!

      Splash:

      Who Killed Science Fiction?

*****

      For well over two years I had heard far too many people decrying the death of magazine science fiction, and like Bob Leman, mourning the lack of critical soul-searching from within the field.

      How shall I go about it? I determined first that I would restrict this critical colossus to the magazine field only and decided on five specific points of enquiry, which were:

1)  Do you feel that magazine science fiction is dead?

2)  Do you feel that any single person, action, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation? If not, what is responsible?

3)  What can we do to correct it?

4)  Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation?

5)  What additional remarks, pertinent to the study, would you like to contribute?

      The next step was to prepare a letter setting forth these five points.

      The original intent was to abstract the replies to this questionnaire into tabular form, write a small article about the findings and publish them in SaFari, extending the circulation for the issue to cover all those who had responded to the enquiry.

      Who should I send the questionnaires to? It was essential that the replies come only from within the field, consequently a rigid control was placed on the questionnaire mailing list, restricting it to (as I said in the questionnaire) “everyone within the science fiction field who has ever expressed an intelligent critical look at the field. Since most of us have derived some measure of enjoyment, recognition, and income from the field over the past many years I feel it is up to us to make a definite step toward understanding (at least) and overcoming (if possible) the threats before us.”

      In order to assure a greater volume of response, realizing that the people from whom I wanted answers were accustomed to being paid for their verbiage, I said that the report would be published, which it is. I said that the report would not be for sale, and it is not. I said that circulation of the report would be restricted to the contributors and to the Spectator Amateur Press Society, and that it would be published on April 15, 1960.

      That date is now!

      As the first few replies to the questionnaire arrived, I knew that it would be an impossible task to abstract them and settle for a brief résumé in article form. Among the first to arrive was that of Algis Budrys; a report of such nature and quality that the entire article demanded to be included. And more followed it, of such magnitude that only by printing the entire piece could justice be done to the author. Hence, shoot the budget to hell, print everything that comes in.

      And now you have it, the complete report on: Who Killed Science Fiction?

      The title of the study itself bears little or no relationship to the actual five points under observation. It was merely to serve as splash—fuel to light the fire that would get the five questions answered. Apparently it worked, because there were some “whos” named.

      It would have been impossible for me to answer the questions personally once I started reading the replies as they arrived because I found my opinions becoming very highly influenced by others. Reluctantly then, you will find my own answers excluded from this report (but just for the record I will answer only one, point one: I definitely believe that magazine science fiction is dead).

      There will be no attempt on the part of SaFari to conduct a follow-up on this report. Contributors to this symposium of a professional status within the field are encouraged to send any afterthoughts directly to The Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies.* The Secretary for the Committee on Publications (Theodore R. Cogswell) has authorized me to say that a continuation of this study fits directly into the pattern of research now under way at the Institute and he joins me in encouraging you to send any further material directly to the Institute.

*Alas, as of 1980, the Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies is no longer functioning.

*****

      And now, if you please, the abstract report:

      From an initial 108 questionnaire mailed, there were 71 responses. Of this number, one was unsolicited (Edmund R. Meskys; included here because he answered the five points) and one additional reply was not counted in the figure of 71 (that of Rodney Palmer, included in the report as an example of a complete outside-the-field view, but excluded from the count of 71 because he did not have a copy of the five points under study). Or, a total of 70 solicited answers from the original 108 for a 64.8 percent return, which anyone can tell you is something like a new world’s record.

      No attempt was made to tabulate the many references to Dianetics, psionics, quackery, saucerism, Shaverism and/or pseudo-science or references to “Literature,” professionalism and/or “Maturity” (wherein the literature and maturity have respectively a capital L and a capital M, italicized).

      It is perhaps significant to note that from the authors contributing to this study, four have indicated that they are no longer writing for the science fiction magazines and/or are no longer writing science fiction at all.

      Now, let’s take the specific five points under discussion and examine the results:

      1)  Do you feel that magazine science fiction is dead?

YES:  2

NO:  55 replies, of which 38 qualified their “no” by following it with “but...,” and an alarming percentage of these 38 indicated that the death struggle was already in sight.

YES: Eleven replies, stating either “yes” or definitely dying already (this figure includes my personal vote).

      2)  Do you feel that any single person, action, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation?

NO: 24 replies.

YES: Several people were specifically named, but in numbers too small to make any tabulation significant.

      2a)  If not, what is responsible?

      As contributory causes, the following were named in order of frequency: 19, dull, boring, and inferior material being published; 18, changing market and/or times and outside interests; thirteen, television; twelve, inexcusable distribution practices; eleven each, comics and paperbacks, Sputnik and/or the Race for Space; ten, incompatible word rates and a narrowing market; nine, “science fiction” movies; six, rising costs, including magazine cover prices; five, fans and/or readers and four each, “ability to read disappearing,” “decay in English literature” and authors. In addition to this, fifteen contributions indicated editors as being either responsible for the present poor situation or that they should endeavor to adopt a “hands off” policy in the case or rewrites for item No. three.

      3)  What can we do to correct it?

      This is untabulatable. The most frequently appearing remedy is the last item mentioned above (at 2a) that editors should endeavor to adopt a “hands off” policy in the case of rewrites (fifteen responses). Also running, in order of frequency: nine, writers should work harder (each of these nine, a professional author), of these, one added “for less”; seven, readers and/or fans should adopt a “quality” approach with what is currently appearing within the field (reading studiously, commenting intelligently and in general taking a more active interest) and five indicated that we should purchase all the magazines published, regardless...

      4)  Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation?

YES: 24 replies.

NO: Sixteen replies.

      5)  What additional remarks, pertinent to the study, would you like to contribute?

      This, of course, is untabulatable, but instead forms the bulk of this symposium—the entire publication that you are now holding before you.

      Read on then.…

      Somewhere here are the thoughts of others that confirm your own suspicions—or random thoughts that will lead you down unsuspected paths to, we hope, improvement, and most certainly profit. But above all, we sincerely hope, several hours of enjoyment and a volume of lasting significance that you will want to retain for reference.

      Thus ends, or begins, the great affectionate autopsy of The Year Of Our Decline, 1960.

*****

      A work of this nature and scope cannot be conducted and delivered as a finished product without the assistance and encouragement of many people. We should then like to make our acknowledgments to the following:

To Bob Leman, for the idea

To Algis Budrys, for the line: “to slay the dragon.…”

To Theodore R. Cogswell, Secretary, Committee on Publications, THE INSTITUTE OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY STUDIES, for assistance all the way...

To Edward Emshwiller, for the burial site

To Frank Kelly Freas, for meritorious service above and beyond the call of duty

To James O’Meara, for sharing a backbreaking collation job

To Lynn Hickman, for the reproduction

and

To YOU for your personal help in working together long enough to make this
      a truly valuable study.

      Thank you, one and all...

EARL KEMP
Chicago, Illinois
April 15, 1960
Who Killed Science Fiction?

Like Some Opinions

 ANONYMOUS #1

      1) No, I do not feel that magazine science fiction is dead. Nor do I feel that any single person, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation.

       3)  I don’t know what all the bitching is about. Twenty years ago we had three leading science fiction magazines, plus several marginal ones, period. Now we have three leading science fiction magazines—whose editors are always screaming for copy—plus several marginal ones...plus television, movies, radio, pocket books, anthologies, trade books, book clubs, foreign rights, and a wide open market in all the general magazines. What the hell do they want? An egg in their beer?

      If it is the writers who are screaming, I can’t see what they have to complain about. Of course, many of them now writing have not been writing long enough to know the meaning of a dry spell, or a market with poor pickings—say back in the thirties when you either sold it to the pulps, all rights for a cent a word or a half cent a word, and if it did not sell to that market, then you might as well use it for toilet paper. So they talk about a “collapse” in the market—hell, the market hasn’t collapsed; the present market is pure heaven to anyone who remembers the thirties. But some of the writers have collapsed.

      Of course, the recent confusion in magazine distribution has hurt writers and publishers alike—but “this, too, shall pass.” Economic dislocations come and go...and only one fraction of a writer’s market was hurt by this one...and the big three still publish.

      If the readers are screaming, they have more reason to. Science fiction is a branch of the entertainment business, the first axiom of which is: if the audience doesn’t laugh, the clown is not funny. Tedious rehashing of elderly themes will not cause the readers to applaud. I suspect, from some of the crud that one sees in print, that there are “science fiction” writers who jumped in because they thought it was a gravy train, an easy way to get rich without working.

      Any writer who comes along today with stories as fresh and novel as those of E.E. Smith and Stanley Weinbaum were when they were first published is certain to find a publisher and to receive ringing applause from the cash customers. But a writer who serves up the same tired old stew, simply polishing old stories, will cause the readers to sit on their hands—no matter how finished or slick their writing techniques.

ANONYMOUS #2

      There is a dianetics group still going strong in Phoenix. A man I know who does not practice dianetics but is familiar with the group has told me that there are more than a few former practitioners of dianetics who are now in mental hospitals. And they are there as a result of dianetics. I know two writers who became all fouled up through dianetics. Neither has amounted to much as a writer since then, and one of them is still goofed-up. I think that Campbell is as responsible as anyone for these people becoming institutionalized. If he had been more careful about approaching dianetics, if he had waited a reasonable period to investigate it before pushing it in Astounding, this fraud might have died a-borning. He owes all of us science fiction readers an apology, but he has never offered it. Instead, after being disillusioned, he has gone off the deep end on psi.

ANDERSON, POUL

      ...I can’t give your questions the reasoned answers they call for...here are some offhand, thumbnail reactions to your questions.

      1)  No, though it’s obviously in poor shape. But let’s give credit to good (or at least acceptable) stories where they do appear; because they still do, from time to time. For my money, F&SF is currently maintaining the highest literary standard, which isn’t saying much, I know, but accept that Bob Mills is trying his best. So, in spite of opprobrious comment, are John Campbell, Horace Gold, Bob Lowndes, and one or two others.

      2)  No, there is no single cause for the present sad condition of science fiction. For over a year, now, any number of pros have been arguing with great heat—and, often, great perception—in Cogswell’s Publications of the Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies, trying to find a cause and cure; but there seem to be as many causes assigned as there are seekers. In my own opinion, the decay of science fiction is part and parcel of a general decay in English literature, traceable to the same—extremely many and complex—causes.

      3)  To correct it, everybody will have to do his part. Publishers will have to give the writer an economic break. Editors will have to stop imposing their own personalities on all their writers (and I am not thinking of any particular editor) and will have to edit more creatively: finding and developing new talent, encouraging old talent to experiment—in short, taking more of an interest in their job. Writers will have to stop playing verbal games and start writing. Readers will have to develop some appreciation of quality (which, actually, rather few of them now have), offer it their moral and financial support, and be patient. You can’t cure the disease overnight.

      4)  There are no “points of salvation.” Paperback originals seldom pay well enough to justify themselves to the author: only if he also sells serial rights will he begin to approach a decent word rate. By and large, book editors are guilty of the same sins as magazine editors, plus some of their very own. Not that I’m against paperback originals, understand. They can form a very valuable supplement. I just don’t see all worthwhile science fiction moving to them.

      5)  I don’t like the idea of asking who killed science fiction? It may be sick, but it isn’t dead; and particular scapegoats are merely an outlet for suppressed aggressiveness. Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, I suggest we do something about our problems (cf. No. three) and leave to literary historians the dissection of etiologies.

ASIMOV, ISAAC

      1)  Magazine science fiction is not dead, obviously, since there are magazines still on the stands, more magazines than there were in 1948, for instance. I admit magazine science fiction seems to be declining.

      2)  Obviously no single person, action, incident is responsible. There is a whole complex of causes. Magazines in general are in a decline. Pulp fiction is virtually dead, killed by comic magazines and by paperbacks. The magazines as a whole suffer from rising costs, from the competition of paperbacks and from television. Science fiction, in particular, suffers from all of this and from one additional factor I have not seen anyone mention.

      Beginning in 1938 (with Campbell, of course) there was increasing stress on literary quality in stories. This was accelerated from 1950 on and at present the literary standard required by the better science fiction magazines is as high (and higher) than those required by the slicks. Good! So now-a-days a science fiction writer who makes the grade finds he can write well enough to make the slicks, which pay more, so he does. Robert Silverberg came up from fandom, cut a swath in science fiction for two years, and has now graduated to the slicks. Robert Sheckley did it in four years. Others took longer but went there anyway. Meanwhile we’ve all gotten used to well-written science fiction and we find it difficult to go back to the kind of pulpy writing done by newcomers before they learn the ropes. (And after they learn the ropes, they’ll be gone, too.)

      None of this applies to me. I am interested only in writing science fiction and no other kind of fiction. I’ve always known that and I’ve always known that possible greater incomes would have no lure for me. So I did think I would be in science fiction forever. However, I did write an occasional book of science-fact. Then came Sputnik. Suddenly, books on science-fact were in great demand and I found myself deluged with offers. As it turned out, straight science was the one thing I found more fascinating than science fiction and I have written no science fiction to speak of since Sputnik. I tried to help things by giving up teaching and becoming a full-time writer, but that just means I write more non-fiction. I hope to get back to science fiction sometime but I don’t know when.

      3 & 4)  The original paperback is no substitute for the magazine since it is heavily weighted in favor of novels which can only be turned out decently by authors who are past their apprenticeship. And without magazines where will the apprenticeship take place? Furthermore, there is a continuity about a magazine that builds up a loyal following who support science fiction and act as a reservoir for new fan-turned-pro authors. The casual on-and-off readers of the paperback novel cannot substitute for this. I don’t know what we can do to correct the matter except to support the magazines. That means buying all the copies we can, whatever the price, and writing stories for them whenever we can, whatever the rates. The wheel of fortune turns and magazine science fiction may enjoy a recrudescence.

      5)  Obviously, Sputnik and all that followed bears a major share of responsibility for the decline of magazine science fiction. The newspapers are so science fictiony now that there is scarcely any urge to continue looking for more science fiction in the magazines. In fact, the type of science fiction in the newspapers now—all this talk of space and satellites and moonshots—is so interbound with cold war and national prestige and military brass-hats that it makes science fiction unsavory, even to me, for instance. This isn’t helped by the fact that too large a proportion of science fiction stories written today are “tomorrow fiction”—that is, they deal with a situation one step ahead of the headlines so that one gets the impression that all science fiction is but a kind of “home life at Cape Canaveral” or “Look, Ma, the general is jutting his jaw and says the next satellite will go through carrying a man, Ma.”

      Hell, for a group of people who have been bouncing around the galaxy for 20 years, it’s downright sickening to go back to trying to reach the moon with chemical rockets.

BAILEY, J.O., PROF.

      I have read with interest your “Who Killed Science Fiction?” Here are the best answers to your questions that occur to me:

      1)  No, I do not feel that magazine science fiction is dead. So far as I know, any really good, original story may still find a publisher.

      2)  Since it is not entirely clear to me what is meant by “the present situation” (for magazines carrying science fiction are still on the newsstands), I do not have any idea who or what may be responsible for this situation.

      3)  First, I should say, define with particulars and details what needs correction.

      4)  I am not sure what is meant by “salvation.” I have the general idea that publishers of paperback books will publish whatever they think they can sell to enough people to make a profit.

      5)  No additional remarks occur to me.

BARRETT, C.L., M.D.

[Doctor Barrett starts by including a copy of Stephen Takacs’s speech “Alas, What Boom?” delivered at the Cleveland World Science Fiction Convention and pointing out that “as you can see, practically all of his predictions have come true.”—E.K.]

      1)  However, some of the situations Steve mentions are only part of the story. One of the factors which he did not mention which I think Hans Santesson mentioned in Detroit, was the fact that when science fiction apparently became popular, is that everybody got on the bandwagon and put out some 20-plus magazines. Hans, and some of the other editors there, stated that whole magazines appeared on the newsstands with stories by good authors, but material rejected by most magazines in existence before the boom.

      Whole magazines were published of second-rate material from good authors. People buying this stuff, if they read that crud would have choked, which they did, and they didn’t buy again. The end of it was that we are down now to five or six magazines.

      That is not the whole story as to why they quit. Another factor is the pocketbooks. I find that the itinerant or casual reader would much rather have a long complete story in a pocketbook and read that than read a magazine. So that is why I say the original paperback may be a point of salvation (item No. four on the questionnaire). It will keep a certain number reading but it will not help the fan field at all. No, magazine science fiction is not dead, despite everything.

      2)  I do not feel that any single person, act, or incident is responsible. One of the facts that you failed to bring in is outside interest. I have been corresponding with Ted Carnell for years, and he is behind in correspondence. The reason now is that he is so interested in forming a new Masonic Lodge that he is spending a lot of time with that. He has given up all except his professional activities. He expects to come back in again but it will probably take him two or three years to get his Lodge going right.

      The same thing has happened with me in Shrine; I have a Funster Unit of some 40 clowns and developing that has and is taking a lot of time.

      Man is not given to being satisfied with any one activity. Over a period of time he may (watch particularly the doctors) get into farming and have cows, sheep, or something, then change to motorboat racing and then to airplane flying. And they go through a cycle, it may be the same series, it may be a different series, but their interests vary from time to time and that is true of any group of people.

      There is only so much time that a person has to use and when you find yourself in an activity like this where the individuals that I work with, I like so well that we go to dances eight or ten times a year, there is less time to read science fiction than previously. Now another factor is those who have children. I would say that Kemp and Hickman are the only ones who have a larger number of children that have been able to keep active in science fiction. They have, in spite of their broods, been able to continue.

      Now, with most of those, such as our friend Milton Rothman in Philadelphia (I have been corresponding with him and been trying to get him back in) it is children, work, and degrees that is keeping them busy now. Eventually they will filter back into fandom after their children get older.

      I found that we were unable to indulge in social activities when our children were young. The number of dances per year dropped to one or two until the youngest child got to be eight or ten and the older children were old enough to take care of that one. Of course we were stymied some by the fact that my mother-in-law had a stroke and for some five years was bedfast with nurses. Others are having, not exactly the same, but similar circumstances.

      Each of us must have a group that we run around with, a local group, etc. The fortunate ones find themselves in a science fiction group (Cincinnati) and all their friends are in that same group and they can continue to have more activity in fandom. Those of us who are isolated are bound to acquire friends that have no interest in science fiction, and live and play with them.

      Another factor which has entered into the situation is the rising cost of food, clothing, and everything, consequently there is less money to spend on magazines. One reason the magazine field collapsed (that is the general field) was that the percentage of money spent for advertising stayed the same. The newspapers still kept their 76% but the other 24% made a very marked shift from magazines to television. Some $4.5 billion, I think, that the television industry picked up in a year was the year Bluebook collapsed and other magazines. That meant that the magazines that had the lesser circulation and lesser general appeal lost out. That is why today Life is selling at 19 cents. They were losing out. The advertising people were channeling their dollars into television rather than into the magazine field and, of course, the magazines of a particular field of lesser circulations were forced out.

      As far as books are concerned, a science fiction fan goes through a period of time where he is not married, and all of his spare money goes on science fiction. Then he begins to take up bowling or tennis, swimming or skin diving, or chasing women or something. He may join the Elks, Masons, or Eagles and he has less money to spend so he becomes more selective in what he spends his money for. If they want to spend their money and get as many books as possible for say $25 or $35 a year, quite naturally they turn to the book clubs which collapsed all of our friends who had gone into the publishing of science fiction for the love of it. I find now that the book reviewers don’t list the better science fiction books as science fiction, but as imaginative literature or extrapolations of the possibilities of future development.

      What we also forget is that from 1922 to ’23, the time I can remember, I knew everything that was being published and read everything up until the 1940s. Since that time, it has been impossible for any one person to read all of it. There has been so much in the book as well as magazine field that after you get it, you wish you had never seen it at all, you couldn’t even read it...There are only a few completionist fools like myself and Dr. J. Lloyd Eaton who will even attempt to do this. I find that it is totally impossible for me to obtain all the books that are published each year, financially as well as otherwise. I am more interested now in obtaining some of the old classics that I know are good, than I am in obtaining everything that is published today.

      3)  I don’t think that we can do a whole lot to correct it. I do think that one of the important things is for all science fiction fans to subscribe to Galaxy, Astounding, and F&SF, which seem to be the only ones that will survive, although Amazing has an astounding ability to come back. The fans are such a small part of the buying public that we could do very little except stabilize it a few places. My idea of permanent subscriptions to the major magazines to keep them going is about the only contribution that I think we can make.

      With the magazine or book publisher, everything is purely money. He is only in the business to make money (fan publishers excluded). This is a part of a trend that may be good. After it is all cleared up and some of these have lost their shirts in the market, they will quit publishing and leave it to the ones that can put out better literature which will keep the quality of the magazine up and maybe eventually build up a greater number of readers outside of the fan circle.

      The thing that we are not doing is increasing our fan groups this way. All we can hope to do is get in touch with them through the letter columns and by advertising the conventions, attempt to gain back what few we can, or get an increase of changing readers-to-fans insofar as possible. Only one or two percent of the readers probably are of that peculiar mental quirk or abnormality that could make fans of them. Our plan should be to try to get, and get as many of these as we can, into the fan field. However, somebody else may have better ideas than myself on that. It is a possibility that eventually the fans may have to put out the type of science fiction they want to read in privately circulated fan magazines devoted entirely to fiction.

BARTLETT, LANDELL

      1)  I certainly don’t feel that magazine science fiction is dead! The big-name magazines (with their big-name writers) are still going strong—in fact, getting better all the time. Notable are F&SF, Astounding, Amazing, Galaxy, Fantastic—to mention a few. Star and Vanguard were fine, but died a-borning. The plethora of titles attempting to ride the boom in science fiction following World War II deservedly faded away, for they offered only second-rate fare at the best, and there just wasn't room for so many—or—demand. Parenthetically, shouldn't it be “what” killed science fiction, rather than “who'”? (Besides, I’m trying to say science fiction hasn’t been killed!)

      2)  Just what is the present situation? Why is the status “deplorable”? (There I go—answering a question with questions!) Admittedly, there has been more sex than science, more bug-eyed monsters than betatrons, than many would care to see, including myself. Perhaps Gernsback’s rigid insistence on science in science fiction is the answer, with a soft-pedaling of fantasy. In other words, not enough of the former, and too much of the latter, perhaps, in current offerings? Many adult readers are revolted at clumsily contrived fairy stories palmed off as science fiction. I would say, then, let them take the trouble to be selective, and read only the best, if science fiction really interests them.

      3)  I presume “we” refers to the writers in the genre. Personally, I prefer those who follow the H.G. Wells, A. Conan Doyle, and Olaf Stapledon pattern—practitioners with great literary skill and imaginative originality. Dialogue a la Hemingway may be all right, but usually is mangled. “We” should stick to a strong story, plausible, catching the desirable sense of wonder—thus classics are spawned, and if they are good enough, will never become dated.

      4)  The original paperback need not be “a point of salvation.” More and more they are shouldering their way into the picture, and more power to them. They, alone, are evidence that science fiction has not been dealt a deathblow. As for magazine science fiction, I still believe that it will survive, if only to meet the competition of the paperbacks.

      5)  To sum up, I believe that magazine science fiction will pull through because the best editors know that what they select must have a pretty high standard of excellence. The shakedown of fly-by-night, gaudy, childish, low-level magazine is about over, don’t you think? The only threat facing “us,” as I see it, is mediocrity.

BESTER, ALFRED

      Here are my answers to your questions. I hope they can help. I also hope that you will not take them too seriously. They are only the opinion of a writer who most emphatically does not regard himself as a sage and elder statesman of our fascinating and infuriating science fiction.

      I don’t feel that magazine science fiction is dead, but I do believe that the public interest in science fiction, as we know it, is dwindling. The inexorable progress of life is responsible for this. The tremendous strides that science has made in the past decade fill the public with so much wonder and amazement that the headlines of the daily newspaper now provide what science fiction used to offer. Fiction has been supplanted by fact.

      What do you mean when you ask: “What can we do to correct it?” We must move with the times. We should be delighted with the change. There is nothing to correct unless you mean the diminishing magazine market for science fiction. The answer to that is the fact that the situation is correcting itself. The more popular entertainment media are becoming aware of the fascination of science fiction. Television and movies are hungry for it. Even the more popular, and better-paying magazines (who themselves are rapidly dying out) are becoming interested. The market isn’t dead, it’s merely changing, and writers must adapt themselves to this change...either by satisfying the demands of the existing market, or by creating a new one with a new science fiction.

      There will always be a market for paperback science fiction, just as there are markets for detective fiction and westerns. There are other markets, too, as I mentioned above, but there is no market for the limited writer. The writer who has devoted himself exclusively to science fiction is himself the only source of his woes. He has been living in a dream world for the past 30 years, imagining that this tiny, specialized area in the vast field of literature and entertainment, can be a self-sustaining world in itself which will go on forever.

      Sensible people have always known that science fiction is a luxury for the writer, and sensible writers have always made sure of their bread and butter in other, less esoteric fields of literature and entertainment. The man who dedicates himself exclusively to science fiction today has my sympathy, because he’s fallen upon hard times, but he doesn’t have my respect. There are too many other branches of literature and entertainment that offer a living, there is too great a demand for talent, and there are too many opportunities.

      To my mind, the crux of the situation is this: Are you a modern writer, in tune with your times, or are you trying to remain an old-fashioned science fiction writer, still exploiting an aspect of literature that is rapidly becoming out-moded? Science fiction isn’t dying; it’s changing. We must change with it, or become extinct.

BLISH, JAMES

      My own views on all the questions you ask appear in issue No. 131 of Ted Cogswell’s Publications of the Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies.*

      ...Nor do I think that a writers’ strike against the science fiction magazines would have to work out the way Bob Lowndes predicts. It never has been tried, on a formal scale. If Horace Gold’s tally of inactive writers is even vaguely correct, there is an informal strike going on right now, and Horace is hurt by it and says so. That the slump in the field might be due at least in part to a wildcat writers’ strike had never occurred to me until I saw Horace’s figures quoted in PITFCS;* up until then, I suppose I had thought I was the only striker. But it makes sense. Contrariwise, there is no slump in the market for paperback science fiction books, and hence no strike; they pay well, they sell well, and everybody seems to be churning them out like mad.

*Publications of the Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies, abbreviated PITFCS, are known affectionately as “pitfucks” by one and all.-E.K.

      Poor pay and a narrowing market seem to me to be adequate explanations of the strike itself. While I agree with A.J. Budrys that persistent editorial meddling can become so annoying as to cause a writer to go out of his way to avoid it, I think he does not make it clear enough that this complaint applies primarily to Horace Gold, with whom it used to be a habit (I have no recent experience to draw on); none of the other editors in the field, in my experience, have asked for changes except infrequently and on a small scale and, like Poul Anderson, I’ve found that John Campbell’s relatively rare suggestions have mostly been helpful. Editors differ. Horace also used to write rejection letters of such remarkable viciousness that I could hardly blame a writer who never wanted to read another of them. Tony Boucher sat on manuscripts, unless they were by women, for months and even years and refused either to answer queries about them or return them; I gave up submitting to F&SF for this reason alone, and I wonder if I was the only writer to do so. Even price may not be a deterrent—that too depends a great deal on the editor: I hate Lowndes’ rates but he has taste and puts up a gallant battle to put out a good magazine all the same you would need three hands to count all the gifted newcomers he has spotted—and I for one had a wholly uneconomical leaning toward taking his 1 cent rather than Super Science’s 2 cents.

      I gather from Ray Russell’s letter that there’s also been some complaint about psionics in this context; all right, I dislike the stuff myself and could draw my philosophic objections to it out some distance. But as far as the market is concerned, psionics narrows it only in that it cuts down the number of pages available for other kinds of copy, in the top-paying market. Campbell also buys stories on other themes and does not put a gun to anybody’s head; people who want to push his psionics button do so of their own free choice.

      ...I am quite in agreement that it would be impossible to put together a readable magazine from the slush pile. During the five months that I was reading for Vanguard, I got a hell of a lot of slush, especially after the first issue appeared, and out of all that material I was very fortunate to find one printable story by a brand-new writer (H.M. Sycamore’s “Success Story,” which Bob Mills recently printed). Most of the rest of it was downright awful; for that matter, even much of the material I got from agents ranged from mediocre to poor. (Naturally, I do not count submissions by good writers who have no agents, like Dick Wilson, as part of the slush pile.)

      I was interested, too, in your [Ted Cogswell’s] reply to Dean McLaughlin, particularly by your remark that “the stories we write...have little or nothing to do with Literature.” While I don’t want to anticipate Dr. DeWitt’s forthcoming article, I have a few comments; I’m not sure of your meaning. In the scientific sense of the word, everything we write is part of “the literature,” in that it is in print and can be run down and consulted. As producers of Literature which is accepted as being a necessary part of an educated man’s cultural furniture, and which gets talked about in survey courses, etc., we have no standing; but this rarely happens to a practitioner in any way during his lifetime anyway, numerous though the exceptions are.

      But if you will accept into your definition of Literature any work of art undertaken with serious intentions and which realizes those intentions reasonably well, regardless of whether the public or the Establishment recognizes it as such, then it seems to me that there are a number of science fiction stories and novels you will have to allow. What you said to Dean certainly needed to be said, but I don’t want to see More Than Human, for example, written off for the sake of a forensic point.

      The fact that much of what we write is not literature even in that sense of the word is mostly simply a reflection of the fact that science fiction is commercial fiction, and shares with all the other kinds of commercial fiction the flaws of haste, inattention, perpetuation of clichés and adoption of made-to-order values consequent on working in an art as though the products were link sausages. What is more important is Poul Anderson’s point that “science fiction is not the whole of literature.” As he says, there are things that it cannot do. Still worse, there are things that it can do but that most of the readers don’t want to see done; perhaps this was the point Dean was shooting around. Most of the science fiction I have ever read, including most of what I would classify as good science fiction, has little or no emotional content—and I can see no evidence that improving this situation, which is certainly remediable, would be welcomed by the readers. The career of Ted Sturgeon is a glaring example of this; though Ted is held in relatively high esteem, I don’t recall anybody’ ever hanging any medals on him for being the finest and most thoroughly conscious artist this field has ever had; he ought to be covered with medals by now, but now it seems to me that most readers prefer such writers as Heinlein, Asimov, and Arthur Clarke who, regardless of many other strengths as writers, generally produce work where the emotional content is shallow or even absent. For a writer who believes that human emotions make up the primary raw material in this and every other art, science fiction has indicated pretty plainly that the rewards are just plain not there. Second, most of the science fiction, good and bad, that I have ever read has been weak on intellection. That may seem to be a peculiar statement but I think it is true. One of the rewards of fiction lies in the chances it gives the writer to tackle a large philosophical question; he may not supply the answer but at least he has the chance to illuminate it from all sides in terms of its implications in human life, an opportunity denied to the nonfiction writer. Very few science fiction writers do this or even seem to be aware that it can be done; and here again I am not at all sure that it would be welcomed by the fans. On the other hand, every science fiction novel by an “outsider” which has gained a large public following does this very thing, and it doesn’t have to be a big-name outsider, either: look at Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo. Meanwhile the pros sit around groaning because their much more professional work doesn’t seem to gain any status by these occasional successes, oblivious to the fact that the difference between a pro like, say, George O. Smith and an “outsider” like Kurt Vonnegut, is that Vonnegut can plainly be seen to be thinking about something.

      Originality in the invention and elaboration of fantastic ideas and scientific rationales is, of course, a form of thinking, and more of that kind goes on in science fiction than in any other kind of fiction, but it will never command a large audience and there’s no point in wishing that it could. The kind of thinking I am talking about is fundamental to good fiction of any kind (is there anybody in the audience who thinks Moby Dick is primarily about whaling?) and in science fiction it is usually 100% absent.

      ...Currently I am doing just as much science fiction as I ever did, and perhaps a little more, but it is almost entirely novels. Whether Horace can use them or not, that is where the money lies; it is uneconomical to write magazine short stories when with the same expenditure of time you can produce a chapter of a novel for two or three times the expectable income. Anybody who has been doing this for long soon finds that the difference is substantial, particularly as the small checks for subsidiary rights pile up; for the past three years, I have made more money on subsidiary rights than I have on first sales of new work, and I am not complaining.

      I have also come to share...[the]...feeling that science fiction is far from the whole of literature and that in certain specific respects it is a cramped and unrewarding genre. I am not moving out of the field, which certainly would be financial suicide for me—and besides, science fiction is fun, but I am expanding to cover more territory where the restrictions don’t apply, and I will be well satisfied if I can eventually reduce my science fiction writing to an occasional jeu d’esprit. I hope I have found something to do which will not only engage my full attention and allow me to do things that science fiction doesn’t allow, but which also will enable me to use as much as three-fourths of the special skills a science fiction writer develops, but every writer has to solve this problem in his own way, and there’s no reason to attempt a solution even a second in advance of the time that you yourself really come to think of it as a problem.

BLOCH, ROBERT

      Your questionnaire...is a good idea, I think....

      1)  No, I don’t feel that magazine science fiction is “dead” although it might well be moribund...due to the same factors which adversely affect all other types of magazine fiction. Said factors, in my opinion, being price increases, which bring magazines into direct competition with full-length novels in pocketbook form, and the continuing influence of television on reading...and on the ability to read, which seems to be diminishing rapidly among the adolescents.

      2)  No single villain is responsible for the present situation, in my opinion. The above factors play a part...and there are at least two others which I would mention. (1)  the bad “advertisement” for the field provided by so-called science fiction movies, which misrepresent the quality of science fiction to the general public. (2)  Atrociously low word rates, which do not encourage writers to spend an inordinate amount of time, thought, and effort upon their output—unless they write as a hobby and earn the major portion of their income through such illegitimate channels as teaching, projecting science fiction movies, or fronting for the Syndicate.

      3)  I believe individual effort and individual proselytizing are the only practical avenues of correction available to us. We cannot “organize” any “movement,” nor do complaints seem efficacious. But we can, each of us, do our best to sell science fiction to friends as a source of entertainment. And we can do our best to correct erroneous impressions, produced by the worst possible examples of what is mislabeled science fiction, by recommending the best.

      4)  Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation? For an answer to this one, I suggest you just look at the original paperbacks which have been published. When you stop vomiting, then rephrase your question. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Just hope and pray that someday there will be some new paperback publishers who will open a market for decent work instead of the crud now offered.

      5)  Undoubtedly, amongst the answers you receive to the above questions, you will find many which infer or directly state that magazine science fiction is in a bad way because of editorial decisions. While there is a case to be made for this viewpoint (and a host of enthusiastic hatchetmen to splinter the kindling and construct said case), I feel that editors, by and large, do a conscientious job within an area which is horribly constricted. It is the publishers who peg the low rates, who insist on the stinking luridities, who often dictate choice of material, who stick their noses into policy, who botch up distribution arrangements and circulation deals.

BOK, HANNES

      Lost your letter anent who what why when and how science fiction was killed, so can’t perhaps answer all the queries therein, but here’s one man’s opinion (cribbed by the way from Wylie’s Generation of Vipers, which I’ve been rereading, and which I noticed was very applicable in this instance):

      Who killed science fiction?

      The editors, naturally. A writer can write the superbest yarn of all time, but it won’t do him any good if editors don’t feel like publishing it. Hence it’s editors and editorial policies that have run science fiction into the ground.

      How?

      By printing only what they, the editors, think that the public should (or might wish to) read. Since people can purchase only what’s on the market or else not purchase anything, either they had to “make do” with the unreadable garbage in print, or else switch to other forms of literature. Both of which they’ve done.

      WHY?

      Science fiction was okay in the early days when it was IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE, with no holds barred, but then the “scientific attitude” came into domination. Stories could be written ONLY extrapolating known facts. Now, I’ve always maintained that NEW facts are bound to be discovered time and again in the future, many of which may negate today’s “facts”—hence “visions of the future” which are based strictly on today’s principles are bound to be wrong. (And, oh boy, are they DULL!) As Wylie says (except that I apply it to today’s editors), “He is...unable even to conceive of the possibility of knowledge that is broader, other, or different.”

      For instance, science has ignored a lot of subjects (astrology, witchcraft, etc.) which DO work (I’ve plenty of proof). I’ve always wanted to write a story in which the future United States is run by witchcraft (after all, think of the 50 pentagrams on the flag, and the Pentagon Building wherein “evil forces are summoned” all too darned often. And what about that Fifth Amendment, h’mm?) But it wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s magazines. Science “knows” that witchcraft can’t work (just as 100 years ago it “knew” that heavier-than-air craft was impossible).

      To quote Wylie: “The result is not science but ‘scientism’—authority set above free inquiry [Bok: substitute “imagination” for “inquiry”] and while almost any sane scientist will admit that science has much truth to learn, almost every [editor behaves] intellectually as if nobody had a right to question the finality of his concepts in his chosen field.” Yeah, man. Yeah...

BOUCHER, ANTHONY

      The one thing I’m fairly certain of is that science fiction is in a bad way. I should suspect that it was just me—that I’ve lost my taste or gone stale—if it weren’t that I hear so many other reactions similar to mine.

      I haven’t even tried to keep up with magazine science fiction in the past year, but as a book reviewer I am plain bored. Everything that comes in is a retelling (sometimes competent) of a dozen earlier stories. I have to flog myself to read science fiction books, and half the time (at least) I see no reason to finish them or to publish a review.

      (Note: This is emphatically not true in the much older field of the mystery novel. To be sure, there’s always a fair amount of repetitive crap, but there’s always enough fresh, creative work to keep a reviewer stimulated and happy even in his 18th year of professional reading.)

      This quality of boredom prevails even in the work of (onceuponatime) very good writers. Let’s not mention names, but keep it clean. I felt the same way in my last year or so as an editor. Manuscripts would come in from authors whom I used to feel I could damn near buy sight unseen—and the manuscripts wouldn't even be worth finishing.

      The very existence of your survey reassures me that the fault is not (entirely) in me. Something is wrong, and the only thing I can think of is that science fiction needs some kind of a new breakthrough.

      Which apparently it should have every ten or twelve years. In 1926 there was Gernsback. In 1938-9 Campbell brought the field to life with better science and far better fiction. In 1949-50, first J. Francis McComas and I, and then Gold, tried to expand the horizons and place more stress on literary and psychological values. And each time, the result was vigorous, exciting, creative work, for five years or so.

      It’s time for yet another fresh new revitalizing approach...and if I knew what it was, I’d probably get back into the field and do it.

      As to the questions:

      1)  Of course science fiction is not dead. It’s always been a small part of (particularly Anglo-American) literature, and doubtless it always will be. Whether we’ve succeeded in creating an economically satisfactory market for it as a specialized labeled category (comparable to the mystery or the western or the historical) is another question. The necessary converting of new readers once looked like a hopeful project; I doubt if much conversion is going on right now.

      2)  Responsibility? I don’t know. Certainly not any single factor. I do not believe that science fiction has been “killed” by psionics or psychology or literary self-consciousness or any of the other frequently heard assertions; the bad effects (if any) of each of these affected only a portion of the field. And the weariness is everywhere—in psionic stories, in sheer space opera, in “novels of character”...

      3)  To correct it? I only wish I knew.

      4)  “The original paperback as a point of salvation?” Well, economically it’s been a help to writers, but the standards of editing have been so low as to encourage writers to turn out crap for a fast sale. The trend does seem to be away from magazines and toward the paperback book, on the part of both readers and writers. This could possibly be all right (for everybody but magazine publishers), but not at today’s standards.

      5)  Additional remarks: or I suppose this should really have been under Number four: I was interested in a recent remark of Poul Anderson’s—that he’s now writing mostly novels rather than shorts and novelettes, because the eventual total income on a novel (which means principally the paperback money) makes it a more profitable procedure.

      Novels used to be the rare and welcome plums in science fiction—infrequent and usually something special and exciting. An author didn’t embark on the financial risk (in those days) of a novel unless he had a story he strongly wanted to tell, an idea that demanded extensive development. Now...

BRADBURY, RAY

      1)  A bit dormant, perhaps, but soon science fiction will spread through all the other types of magazines.

      2)  I believe we’re in a period of transition, when science fiction, under that label, may vanish, to reappear in the guise of realistic fiction everywhere, as indicated above. I believe the Space Age itself, the beginning of it, might be responsible for this period of uncertainty we’re going through. But once we’ve assessed our goals, set up some ways to get where we want to go, established values, I see an influx of talent into science fiction from all sides. We need more good writers and writing. Ten writers, and there are about ten really excellent writers in the field, cannot do all the work. They need help. There are only eight or nine good western writers, eight or nine good mystery writers. Eight or nine good practicing novelists in the broad general field. But I would like to see more people, like Robert Frost, for a wild example, coming our way.

      3)  We can do our part, by writing as well as possible when each of us, as writers, sits down to do a science fiction story.

      4)  The original paperback will help, in some ways, yes.

      5)  I have some ideas I want to try myself, in order to move science fiction into new fields. I have already finished two science fiction one-act plays. I am starting work on a science fiction one-act opera, have already finished another chamber opera, and two others, based on my works, are in existence done by young U.S. composers. We should stimulate more of this in order to prepare a climate of acceptance, not for science fiction per se, but for the Space Age itself, which should be the end-all and be-all of this hullabaloo.

BRADBURY, WALTER I.

      I am really at a loss to offer anything intelligent on the points of inquiry.

      I not only have not been able to keep up with science fiction magazines, but have unfortunately been removed from even the book publishing end of it. I’m afraid my opinions and knowledge would be from a time so far back that it would do you no good.

BRADLEY, MARION ZIMMER

      And then the corpse sat up and demanded to know why in the hell they were holding a funeral over him?

      And they, who professed to love him, quickly pushed him back and screwed down the coffin lid, muffling his cries.

      That is how I feel when I hear all this talk about “Who killed science fiction?”

      Science fiction is not dead, even in the magazines. It is being read, even the poor stuff which is passed out today. But it is perilously sick from malnutrition. Who is keeping it on this starvation diet?

      The writers. And a worse damned bunch of incompetents never lived. All of us...and I include myself in this indictment...are directly responsible for the state of science fiction; and if we want science fiction to boom again (and the time is ripe for such a boom as you never heard) it is going to be up to us.

      What sparked the previous booms? The first big boom was the Golden Age of Astounding, and I think we have to give John Campbell’s forethought in envisioning a fascinating magazine, without gadgets (“grant your gadgets and start from there”) the credit. Unfortunately, he has now abandoned this notion—of printing wonderfully readable stories—in favor of using his pages as a crusade to save the world through psi, and this is as dreary as such crusades usually are. BUT THE WRITERS ARE TO BLAME: they played along, writing this dreary claptrap, to soak up those fat Astounding checks.

      The second boom came with the great explosion of magazines in 1953; through sheer quantity, some of these stories had to be good, some of the new writers who were able to break through the clique of “big names” had to be good ones.

      And then we got careless and complacent. For a while, there were so many magazines around that editors would buy almost any piece of writing which was halfway literate. This gave new writers a chance, sure. But it also gave good writers, who should have known better, a chance to write (and, worse, to SELL) the kind of thing they secretly wanted to write but that nobody really wants to read at all, except a very small percentage of “literary” writers. The editors, starved for stories, printed everything with a “Big Name” on it...including those “writer’s darling” stories which the writer loves and his friends love and which bore HELL out of the readers.

      We forgot the main thing, that pulp magazines exist, not to create works of art, not to develop great writers who are too good for the pulp magazines, but to ENTERTAIN A VAST, NOT TOO INTELLIGENT AUDIENCE. I’m not saying we should write down to this audience; I say that we should write enjoyable stories...not write “literary pieces” and say, when they complain, “Of course you don’t understand it. Man, this is literature, nobody understands it, but you clods keep on reading it and someday you’ll be IN.”

      Now we come to a common alibi offered by writers: “Sputnik killed off science fiction. Now they can read it in their daily papers.”

      My answer to that is terse and unprintable, but the general gist is “Oh, shut up, who are you kidding?”

      Did the atom bomb kill off science fiction? Heck, no; it spurred the biggest boom in science fiction we’ve ever had. Sputnik could easily have done the same, but the current crop of writers, instead of challenging this wonderful new era, immediately flocked to change their spots. They started pluming themselves and preening; “Now we, the science fiction writers, are the writers of TODAY!” Instead of writing for new vistas of tomorrow, new worlds to conquer, more escape from the grim realities of Russian satellites overhead, they tried to amalgamate science fiction into “realistic timely stories”—and the bastard product was as unhappy as all illegitimate offspring.

      Science fiction, by its very nature, dares not be TIMELY. It must exit outside time and space.

      So what kind of science fiction have we been getting? Well, we got some “gutsy” stuff about how it feels to be one girl in a ship full of spacemen (shades of True Confessions!) or pale little emotional vignettes about the emotions of a spaceman taking off on a rocket. Plot? Heavens, no; that’s old stuff from the pulp magazines, and have you forgotten? (so they swagger,) We are creating Literature now! We are the current Big Men!

      The few people who stuck to the escape fiction have often, grossly and culpably, gone to the other extreme and written sheer spoof stuff. Space opera? Oh, no, that’s old stuff, so let’s write a nice subtle (or blatant) little parody on space opera!

      And how does this affect the kids, the garage mechanics and policemen and college students who want to relax their brains after an evening wrestling with the problems of the world, the boss, and the devil? I only know how it affects some old readers and nonfans I’ve been talking to lately. “Science fiction used to be fun to read,” they say, almost in the same words. “Nowadays I pick it up and I might just as well read the newspaper or some-pin’. Either it sounds like somepin’ out of the men’s mags or else I can’t make sense of it, it’s like a private sort of joke.”

      Their reaction? The magazine goes into the corner and on goes the television set, and next time they buy a copy of Rogue. Which may suit Harlan Ellison just fine, but it jolly well doesn’t suit ME.

      People who read science fiction are, by definition, people who are bored with today and they are looking for tomorrow.

      Another common argument says “People are scared of space, what with Sputnik and all.” Well, back in 1946 they were scared of the atom bomb. But it is the function of science fiction to look beyond the immediate dooms to the bright or bitter tomorrows. (Or beyond the immediate delights to the bitter tomorrows.)

      People go to science fiction, by and large, because todayish fiction has failed them somehow. Some writers still say science fiction ought to be timely and realistic. I say timeliness and realism are killing science fiction, and between the television and the men’s magazines, if it ever gets screwed down in that coffin...well, coffins are harder to get out of than to get into.

      I don’t believe the paperback novels offer any solution. Writers love to write novels, but I am sadly conscious that a lot of people today don’t want to read them. The average novel used to be 100,000 words long. The magazine’s “book-length novel” was about 50,000. Now the “paperback novel” runs about 60,000 words and the magazine novel about half that...and what they print as book-length novels in some magazines would hardly be called a novelette in the old magazines, but they are still complained about by people who want something to pick up and read quickly. Oh, yes, inveterate readers buy novels, but the backbone of readership must always be the people who read with some difficulty (even college students show reading deficiencies, and the mass of the population wants something short; if we don’t give it to him he will buy Rogue and Reader’s Digest, not a pocketbook. Of course, once we have gotten him firmly snared, and as he reads more, THEN he will read novels, but the new readers must be snared by short stories, and for that we need MAGAZINES).

      Will science fiction die or boom? I think the only hope is for the writers to change their spots, and to think less about their goddamn “artistic development” than about writing stories which the average reader will flip over.

      And if they don’t—well, we will have all our leisure time to write artistic stories for our own delight and read them aloud to one another in our garrets where we slowly starve.

BRINEY, ROBERT E.

      1)  Not necessarily dead, but science fiction magazines are now on their last legs.

      Science fiction is still in the process of reverting to its status as a specialty field, catering to a limited audience, and able to support only one or two small magazines entirely within its borders. (And this specialty field will never again reach even its modest popularity of the mid-1930s, let alone the “boom” periods of ca. 1940 and ca. 1950...) As the reading audience falls away, existing magazines turn in different directio