Conversation in a Space-Ship

Original Fiction
Title:	Conversation in a Space-Ship
Author(s):	John F. Burke
Date(s):	Sept. 1939
Length:
Genre:	Science fiction
External Links:	Hosted online. The Fantast #6 pp 7-9.
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Conversation in a Space-Ship was a short 1939 story by John F. Burke. It was about an old man and a young boy making conversation on a spaceship bound for Mars.

The old man says that things have changed completely since he was a boy two hundred years ago in the 1930s. He explains the concepts of patriotism, races and war to the boy, who finds the ideas shocking. In the story's time period, there's a socialist World State where news is shown to the people in real-time as it happens, instead of having newspapers use the freedom of the Press to twist the truth.

The boy asks if anyone from that far back had tried to imagine a world state free of violence and injustice, and the man answers that some science fiction fans tried. He describes some science fiction fandom squabbles like the Staple Wars, saying that fans claimed to be more advanced than other people even thought they spent their time on the same futilities and often denounced other fans as subversives for theories that didn't exist in scientific textbooks yet.

The last paragraph reveals the old man to be British science fiction fan Harold Kay. At the time, the main forces in fandom calling for a World State were Michelist fans like Donald A. Wollheim, who had recently called for one by name in a 1938 issue of Novae Terrae. (See Commentary on the November "Novae Terrae".)

Fan Reactions

In the next issue of The Fantast, someone shared their thoughts on the story:

"Conversation in a Space Ship" brings up something which has long been a point of irritation with me: presenting colloquies as stories. This colloquy method, involving imaginative settings aside of time, of criticising contemporary civilisation etc is a very good one and certainly enhanced by classical tradition. But to wrap it up in pseudo-fictional trimming, stf. or otherwise, is merely to detract from the meat offered. It must stand or fall on its intellectual appeal, and space-ships (ferocious command from Prof. Clarke—you must not hyphenate "spaceship". Bow to superior wisdom) do not aid this appeal—they only give an impression of poor taste in this matter.