As If It Mattered
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | As If It Mattered |
| Creator: | Robert A. W. Lowndes |
| Date(s): | August 1941 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | Whether science fiction was really "worse" in the 1940s |
| External Links: | Hosted online by the University of Iowa Digital Library. Fanfare #7 pg. 15, 19 |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
As If It Mattered was a 1941 article published in Fanfare #7 by Robert A. W. Lowndes.
Topics
- Pro science fiction of the present day was overall an improvement on the genre's early days
- Modern sci-fi writers had the benefit of a solid grounding in the fields of sci-fi and fantasy
- Talented writers are just as talented no matter their era
- There were now so many sci-fi magazines coming out that fans couldn't keep track of them or read everything available
- A fan index should be be created, rating every science fiction story through reader polls
Text
As If It MatteredEver since I first started reading fan magazines, I've been alternately annoyed and amused by various types of articles, the summation of which was "Isn't science fiction in a ghastly mess now?" and--"Oh, for the good old days of whenever-it-was-when-they-published-you-know-what stories." The latest example of this is an article called "A Collector Reminisces" by Fred W. Fischer. Not that I have anything against Mr. Fischer, whose articles have interested me for some time now, but that it all becomes more and more irritating as time goes on.
You see, I started reading science fiction and fantasy somewhat later than the real oldtimers; I started in the initial Science Wonder Stories days and didn't get around to reading the Argosy serials until THE SPOT OF LIFE finally brought me to my senses....
Eventually I got my clutches upon the old Amazings, and some of those raved-about Weird Tales yarns and Argosy serials. So what? They were good, some of them; they were outstanding, some of them; I'm not sorry I went to the trouble. But the current science fiction and fantasy was still tops.
About a year ago, the Munsey reprints started appearing, brining along with them a number of tales I hadn't seen before. The original MOON POOL, RADIO MAN stories, etc. But Astounding, Unknown, and an occasional tale elsewhere still kept the standards up.... There's a hell of a lot more stf available than any of we oldtime fans at one time believed could be possible; the precentage of readable stories may not be as high, but the real first class stuff is better than the old classics.
...Think it over, fans. The writers of today, most of them, are writers who have had a solid schooling in stf; most of them have read the old classics, read the range of stf and fantasy output for the past five or ten years.... The oldtimers were the explorers; some of them had new and startling ideas; some of them could write rather will---some outstandingly well. But they stood alone, they were groping their way, and, with a few exceptions, their work shows it. As Fred Pohl once remarked in an article written back in 1936: "There were giants in those days, but they thought and moved and wrote with the clumsiness of giants." ...
The trouble is that fans, as a whole, seem to lack the quality of being able to distinguish. They take a few exceptions as symptomatic of the whole; they seem to be unable to grasp the fact that it is entirely coincidental that a genius, or a writer with outstanding ability, writes at one period rather than another. Merritt, the early Cummings, and a few others would have been the same at any time. They and their stories would be just as brilliant were they written in 1941 as they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Edgar Allen Poe would have been just as great a man today (barring circumstances, which similarly interfered in his own day) as he was in his own time. Genius is genius. Today, some of these stories might not have been written in exactly the same manner. But they would be written, and they would be classics.
There are outstanding stories being written today; there were five years ago, and again ten years ago. Today, fans are beginning to be certain what those classics of five and ten years ago were.... Personally, I wish some fans would get together and honestly rate the old classics as well as the newer stuff. If they could do this, forgetting names and magazines, and the oodles of little irrelevant things which result in one's rating a story higher than one actually knows it is, then the results might be something of an eye-opener.
Mind! I'm not out to "debunk" those stories of past decades which were really immortal. By no means. But I do very definitely protest against this worship of the old days and concomitant underestimation of today's output. The one argument the "reminiscers" have which is sound, is that today, there's such a deluge of magazines, it's virtually impossible for all fans to get all the magazines and thus pick out the pearls. However, that can be overcome by means of service departments instigated by fans.
So, what this somewhat incoherent mess leads up to: we need, today, a reading and selecting bureau in fandom. We already have indexes published annually. Excellent. But not enough. We need an index, compiled through polls among fans, of all stories published through a given period, from the classics to the drivel. It would be of inestimable aid, not only to fans and readers, who want to read the best, but are unable to buy every issue of every magazine, but to editors, and writers, who also can benefit from such wisdom.
As if it mattered, I suggest that some fans, who are interested in selfless service to stf and fandom, rather than personal advancement in the field, tackle this task.