Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
Why is it that in every interplanetary story the other race
is always hostile. Just think, would we, if we received
visitors from space, make war on them? Also, when our people
make an interplanetary flight, would we go with intent to
kill? Let's have some stories, where the first
interplanetary flight leads to cooperation between the
planets involved.--Dave Diamond, 1350--52nd St., Brooklyn,
N. Y.
_In Every Way, True_
Dear Editor:
I want to rejoice again over Astounding Stories. Reprints or
no:--and I hunger for them--the magazine must be described
in superlatives.
The reasons is pretty clear to me. After years in an
experimental stage, Science Fiction suddenly turned up with
a clash of cymbals in the shape of a definite magazine. It
had to cover the whole field, and its successors tried to do
the same. Due to its ancestry its logical scope was the more
technical Science Fiction farthest removed from sheer
fantasy, but, none-the-less, one of the most important
branches. Now it is specializing in that type.
When Astounding Stories appeared many of us were apt to be
skeptical, particularly when we noticed that an established
corporation was backing it, one that had been limited to
westerns and the like. The first few issues came and there
was a dubious tinge of the occult, the "black-magical." This
petered out, and we noticed that no matter how poor the
subject matter from the point of view of Science Fiction,
the style of writing was almost always on the highest level.
Then we realized that this magazine was no menace to the
literature of Science Fiction, but a valuable addition. It
could afford the better writers and hence keep up the
quality of work of every writer. It was adopting as its own
a type of Science Fiction that the rest minimized, and that
demanded good writing--a type having a skeleton of science,
like the girders of a great building, holding it erect and
determining its shape, yet holding the skeleton of less
importance than the vision of the completed edifice. Stories
with emphasis on the fiction rather than the science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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