Speer-Shroyer and Company
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| Title: | Speer-Shroyer and Company |
| Creator: | John B. Michel |
| Date(s): | March 1939 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Science Fiction |
| Topic: | Michelism/Leftism in Fandom |
| External Links: | Hosted online by the Iowa Digital Library. The Science Fiction Fan Vol. 2 #8 pp. 7-9. March 1939. |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Speer-Shroyer and Company was a 1938 essay written by John B. Michel in response to an ongoing debate over Marxism and other progressive ideologies in science fiction fandom. Fans like Jack Speer and Fred Shroyer were opposed to the new Michelist movement (see Mutation or Death!), and had been vocal in their protests against it. (See In Defense of Michelism.) The Michelists were against what they called "the Gernsback delusion": that science fiction was first and foremost about escapism and fun. They felt that science fiction fans had a duty to look towards the future of the world, ideally by embracing Communism or a similar movement.
While the essay was mainly aimed at Speer and Shroyer, Michel also named Sam Moskowitz and William S. Sykora as enemies of Michelist thought.
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Perhaps the queerest people all stf is that clucking group of old hens who not only fail to recognize the basic principles of the field but also become apoligists for their do-nothing crew and polemicists against the progressive forces.As a Marxist I know of a very excellent means of analysis of debunking them and exposing them in their true light. But this searching examination would dredge down to the very bottom of the psychological and historical basis of the the case would necessitate thousands of words and would require a high degree of understanding of Marzist thought on the part of the opposition.
A simpler method exists.
It would indeed be and absurdity and a waste of time for me to argue against Speer and Shroyer who seem to be the opposition on purely ideological and tactical grounds. This method of attack has been used with great success by we of the progressive group on the open mind in stf. But it is obvious that it is not a question of convincing them or the people they speak for of the necessity of joining this or that revolutionary or reformist program, but a much more difficult one; persuading they and them of the ened for change and imbuing them with the desire for change.
The base of the question, must, therefore, be forst considered. Not toward an attempt to persuade these people of the falsity of their own position, because I concede them to be of the type it is utterly impossible to convince in any way, but toward the guidance of other developing minds into paths not calculated to destroy their usefulness not only to humanity but to themselves.
Why, to continue, do they not only fail to see the need for change, but engages actively in fighting the placing of the change and problem before the world of stf.
In a world of constant flux, it is difficult to conceive of a reasoning mind refusing to meet the consequences of progress, considering th efact that Wworld does move.". Inevitabilities cannot be evaded but must be faced with that degree of equanimity appropriate to the gravity of the situation. The great inevitability confronting us at all times is the inevitability of the tendency of mankind to go ahead, to improve itself, and with itself, the state of its surrounding environments. The might truty is that whether we like or not (and it is perfectly clear that Speer and Shroyer do not like it) despite all the obstacles which the workings of natural law throws in its way, come hell or high water, the race surges forward.
There are among us, of course, those who for certain reasons (crystal clear to any philosopher basing his conclusions on materialiam and dialectics) tend to seperate from the great mass movement and set themselves up in ivory towers, there to pontificate endlessly on the futility of the onwarnd sweep.
"Why all the turble-burly?" they shreik in chorus, "to what end shall we thus strive? Are you so insane as to want us to soil our lily-white feet on the posteriors of the whole human race?"
"Away with change and strife and turbulance!" They scream again, lifting the shrill falsetto of their impotency against the gathering storm.
Everything they say, everything they do is a conscious effort to run away from practical work.
The reason behind it si obvious. They are not awake to the vital problems of this day or the future. They are not men seeking even to go ahead under their own haphazard system, but chronic, anarchic negativists, full of ennui and welt-schmertz, terribly, tragically empty. Deathly afraid to face the real realities and seeking always to blur the sharp outlines of truth, Stapledon wrote of them, with hollow outburtsts of sound and fury.
Shroyer--Sykora--Moskowitz--Speer and their satellites, they are all of the same cloth. Bored, satieted with what little of life they have born on their shoulders as "martyrs", they turn dulled, glazy eyes on a world stirring with creative energies they themselves cannot feel or understand and belch vapid condemnations on [illegible] people actively working twoard the saving [illegible] civilization. Weary of life before they [illegible] learned its meaning, cynically tell us how to bury ourselves in escape, in wine, [illegible] religion, in every pursuit that dulls the senses and serves but to put off for awhile the battle for sanity and a firm grasp on the fabric of the cosmos. Themselves a minus sign on the pages of history, they invite us to step over to their cosy, sheltered nook and have a few snorts of their witches brew of mental stagnation.
It will be interesting, of course, to watch their peregrinations as immutable natural laws. force a universal revulsion against barbarity and ignorance, bringing their ivory towers crashing down out of the clouds into the swaet muck of present-day reality.
The way of life is struggle onward and upward, now and forever. We cannot eaacpe from from it be denial or suicide or in the warm depths of a woman's arms. It may be futility. We may all of us be the butt of some cosmic joke.
But the universe itself proclaims, with the voice of the unknown crying out for revealment and liberation that this is not so.