Letters Through the Ages
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| Title: | Letters Through the Ages |
| Creator: | John F. Burke |
| Date(s): | July 1940 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | Letters from 1930s science fiction fans |
| External Links: | Hosted online by fanac.org. Spaceways #14 pp. 13-14. July 1940. |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Letters Through the Ages was a 1940 article by John F. Burke that looked back at the old readers' columns of the biggest science fiction magazines.
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Looking back through the readers' columns of magazines is a fascinating business, if at times rather unhappily nostalgic, when we long for the good old days when men were men and letters said something worth saying. The trends of those letters--the cheerful badinage between editor and reader in Wonder Stories, the ferocious technical arguments and the Van Kampen-Kaletsky business in Astounding--the strangely infantile comments of Sloane in Amazing; all revive memories of one's career in science-fiction reading as not even the stories themselves can.Remember the staple wars? Or should I blush for even imagining anyone could ever forget those happy days? I often wonder what Wollheim must think when he reads some of the twaddle he talked in those days. The High Bolleywag, I think he called himself--this from the guy who's always imploring us to think of the "purpose" of science-fiction.
Wonder for June 1934 publishes one of my favourite letters--at least, it was one of my favourite letters at the time, and sentimental memories still make me susceptible to its charms. William Palmer demanding a special plate for letters of praise, with such phrases as "the illustrations for stories nos. 1, 6, 4, 2, 5, and 3 were the best I have seen"--and "I have one very drastic change to make, though, in the magazine, but I hope you won't think I'm too revolutionary. Maybe I shouldn't even mention it at all. Well, I want to express my opinion, no matter how radical it may be. I think the ink you use should be a little darker. Now please don't take back your good opinion of me, and think I'm a radical of some sort". Ah, me! Same issue had 4e talking about "scientifunyarn".
Then we had a lot of talent (?) springing up in the readers' columns. Literary masterpieces were sprung upon us, as in the May '34 issue, which featured "The Man with the Longitudinal Head".
There were definite disadvantages in the Wonder readers' columns, notably having to read round a lot of extremely lurid advertisements that taught me a lot about life long before I was old enough really to need such lessons. The editor kept on telling us the magazine had to have advertisements or it would flop, and I suppose that was true, but why the advertisers should imagine science fiction readers were sexually warped I still don't know. Nowadays we are exhorted to smoke Camels, which don't get your wind. Charles Atlas is still us, though. Pardon me, I digress....
The February 1932 Wonder Stories still means a lot to me, being the science-fiction magazine I ever saw or read. I liked the stories, and I liked the letters. In the early days one letter in those readers' columns annoyed me intensely. Today, looking around at certain magazines whose names I had better not mention, I realize what a great man was speaking. I refer, of course, to one Abbey A. Schwartz, who said that science-fiction was read mostly by "wide-mouthed (not always wide-awake) youths. Dare to deny it!". A perusal of the letters during the next few months will show that quite a number of fans had the temerity to deny it in quite forcible terms. The February '32 issue also contained the biggest piece of blasphemy I can remember--Bill Bailey states that "The Time Stream...is the biggest piece of trash I have ever read".
Turning to Astounding, I remember most vividly the controversy over the "Mountains of Madness", by the master Lovecraft. Derleth, who is one of the sponsors of that admirable achievement, the HPL Memorial Volume, praised it highly in the May 1936 issue, as did many others, then and later. Unfortunately, Lovecraft's painstaking care and the mathematical precision that was so evident in all his work, put off quite a number of readers who evidently preferred rayguns and plots of the cop-and-robber type. Robert Thompson says merely: "I am glad to see the conclusion of 'At the Mountains of Madness' for reasons that would not be pleasant to Mr. Lovecraft". In the same issue (June 1936) Cleveland C. Soper goes to much greater lengths, and make cutting remarks about windowless solids, Yog-Sothoth, etc. I have heard somewhere that Lovecraft was against his material appearing in the pages of a magazine that he looked down upon as a mere blood-and-thunder publication, and the reception accorded his story by some of these readers must have confirmed his ideas.
"Science Discussions" replaced "Brass Tacks" for some time, and I was one of the many who sorrowed. Now they are both back, of course, but the number of readers' letters published these days is very small compared with the spacious old days when half the magazine was taken up with the happy rantings of dozens of little societies and cliques.
We've had our humour, some of it doubtful, but nevertheless, I suppose, humour--Tucker, Trudy Hemken, for whom each new Lovecraft story was a signal to eject such peculiar noises as "ourgh" and "oogie-woogie". We've had our scientific fanatics who fell upon anything and everything--"Colossus", "The Irrelevant" and the "Skylarks". We've had our scathing critics, like Wild Bill Hoskins and some of his confreres. We have had the advertising of fan mags, societies, and magazines for sale.
We've had our tragedy. The March '36 Astounding carried the announcement that Weinbaum was dead, and provoked a flow of letters that showed just what a niche that grand writer had carved in the hearts of his readers. Now that time has passed and a more critical analysis has been made, many are saying that he was not such a genius as at first appeared--but he did give us something new and something unique, for which we cannot forget him.
The announcement that Lovecraft was dead robbed at least one readers' column of any further enjoyment for me. The dead of Howard was not particularly annoying, as I never respected his writings very much, but I still consider that in Lovecraft we had the greatest genius of the fantasy field. Remember the letters from so many who had known him personally, through correspondence, or who had just read his stories? Lowndes, Hoffman Price, and many others...and now we have the long-delayed Memorial Volume. The more research I do along these lines, the more I realise what a lot there is to do. Pardon me while I go explore some other fascinating by-paths in the readers' columns of yesteryear.