Science Fiction is Escape Literature
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| Title: | Science Fiction is Escape Literature |
| Creator: | Milton A. Rothman |
| Date(s): | 1940 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | The Futurians, The Great Exclusion Act of 1939 |
| External Links: | In Voice of the Imagi-Nation issue 6 page 8 |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Science Fiction is Escape Literature was a piece of meta thinly disguised as a short story. It was published in Milty's Mag in March of 1940, and reprinted in Voice of the Imagi-Nation in April. In the wake of several prominent Futurians being barred from Worldcon, Rothman expresses support for their attempts to integrate socialism into science fiction fandom.
A character named Moskowitz meets with a bloody fate after trying to escape being drafted against "those dirty reds", suggesting that Sam Moskowitz, chairman of Worldcon 1939, would pay the same price as everyone else if he failed to stand up for a brighter future.
Excerpt
There was a guy who used to read science fiction. He used to read stories of the future. The future was wonderful. Everybody was scientists, and everybody had jobs, and all the world was one nation in which everybody lived peacefully together in cooperation instead of competition, and everything was done logically and scientific, and there weren't separate nations, and there weren't laws, and nobody cared much whether he made a lot of money, but the only thing important in life was living and advancing knowledge.Gee, the guy would say everytime he read a story about a wonderful world of the future like that, it would be swell to live in a place like that.
Then some dope came around and said how about all us guys who read science fiction putting ourselves on record as being in favor of a scientific, socialistic world state.
Communism, the guy said. It can’t work. You can't do it.
....Then this same guy who used to read science fiction would read some stories in which the earth was tyrannically controlled by a dictator, and there was a revolution and the hero set the world free and married the heroine. Always in the future the world was a dictatorship. How the dictatorship happened the story didn't explain, but the hero would awake, or arrive in the future at just the right time to lead the revolution.
....There was some noise outside, and he closed the window, because he was too interested in reading his magazine, and the noise bothered him....
Responses
Australian fan Vol Molesworth wrote to VoM in July 1941 to dispute Rothman's view of science fiction fandom as inherently valuable. Molesworth said that the number of prozines in Australia had declined due to wartime economy bans, and that by reading less science fiction he'd realized that over-indulgence in fandom had been damaging his enjoyment of both the stories and the world itself.
In the mad haste which is stfandom, we don’t stop to consider just what we're doing.We rush through prozines, so that it takes a super-plus story to register favorably. I read some hacks slowly, and enjoyed them. We rush through correspondence, become incoherent, use Ackermanese, fondly imagining we’re alone in a pseudo-existence and only our fellow citizens can understand us—that it is part of our schizophrenail [sic] reactions to the escape-literate. (Who Says Science Fiction Is Escape Literate? bellows Milty.) I do; snarls Vomoswoth; it is and is also rush-reader's literature. Is this the science-fiction fan talking? NO—it is an intelligent person deprived of stf (but not cynical, see, Rothman) who realises a few home truths. My position today is thus: I get 1 promag every month. I read it in a month. You read 22 magazines in a month. I read 6 yarns, slowly, and enjoy every one.
Molesworth writing as Vomoswoth; Voice of the Imagi-Nation issue 16 page page 11 (July 1941)