The "Good Old Days"

Meta
Title:	The "Good Old Days"
Creator:	Leslie A. Croutch
Date(s):	1939
Medium:	Print
Fandom:	Science fiction
Topic:	The decline of 1930s SF fandom
External Links:	Issue archived on Fanac.org
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The "Good Old Days" was an essay published in issue 3 of science fiction zine Ad Astra. It discussed Croutch's frustration with the state of current SF fandom and its overreliance on short stories, along with his discontent with publishers like John W. Campbell Jr. and Hugo Gernsback. Croutch admitted that part of the issue was also fans becoming more critical after maturing as readers.

Campbell responded in the next issue with an article titled "Those Magnificent Ideas", in which he explained that Astounding was in fact publishing a long serial by E.E. Smith, and that he refused to leave a work untrimmed if it could be improved through those cuts: "I won't accept Mr. Croutch's challenge. He’d be fearfully annoyed at the quality of the material I'd be apt to get if length and magniloquence of idea alone swayed my judgement."

Excerpt

HOW LONG, dear readers of AD ASTRA, have you opened an S-F mag and in the readers' department saw letters with phrases like these: "Remember the good old days when so and so wrote whosisand whatsis on the whirligig?"; and "The stuff you print today ain't as good as what you gave us in the good old days of '28, '29, and '30"; and "Remember such and such and this and that? Why can't we have stories like those today?” So it goes, on and on like a lover's good-bye over the telephone!

...I'll admit such yarns as Smitty's "Skylark of Space"- and its sequel "Skylark Throe" were good, better than anything he's doing today! (That's my opinion, now, so don't get the gun out yet) Jack Williamson's "Green Girl", Hamilton's "Comet Doom"; all those were topnotchers and still hold a shining spot in my memory. You probably have certain favorites also.

But -- I was young then, S-F was young, and so were you, in S-F reading years, that is. S-F was comparatively new to the most of us. It was something different that took our fancy straight off. We were easy to please, and the ones that were still green -me too - didn't know much science, and weren't much of a judge of writing values....

Leslie A. Crouch, Ad Astra Issue 3, 1939

But -- and I think this is the real reason why stories today are judged as lacking: it's the editor's faults! Too many of them trim stories. How many times have you read a story to find that it appeared to cut right off before its natural end? You blame the author, but - I found that Editor Tremaine of Astounding cut "Colossus" from a three part serial to a complete story because he didn't have room to run it otherwise! ...Wandrei is a swell writer in my opinion. Think, then, what a lot must have been deleted to make a complete from that story! Is it any wonder that we yell: "Where's the stories of the good old days?"

Festus Pragnell sent his "Green Man of Graypec" to Hugo Gernsback for Wonder Stories. I read it; you read it. We acclaimed it a wonder. But what did Gernsback do? Paid Pragnell exactly nothing at all. IN OTHER WORDS, HE STOLE HIS STORY! Now, if you were an author and that happened, would you send another story to that man? No! How many times may that have happened that we don't know about? So, Pragnell now sells his stuff in England except for a rare tit-bit that seeps over to this side. "Where's the writer of the good old days gone to?" May not they have been scared away by such high-way robber tactics?

Another thing that I think is ruining S-F, and that's the curse of the short story! The world has gone short story crazy. Now we see a magazine with seven to nine complete stories in it, where in the past we saw a long novel that was really a novel and not a novel in shorts, and two or three shorts — maybe a serial. Now, you tell me, how in the devil can an author develops a really worthwhile theme in 5000 words or so? He can't do it....

Illustrations, I think, have a reflection on a story. They have with me, anyway. A poor set of pictures will spoil an otherwise good yarn. In the past we had such artists as Wesso, Dold, Paul. Dold is fairly new, yet a damned sight better than a few other stuff Campbell is digging up somewhere or other! How many of us veteran readers applaud Wesso and Paul and stick by them? Sure, they had their faults, but who hasn't? Wesso knew people and machinery. Paul was all the same with people, that is, they looked alike as peas in a can, but he knew how to draw and paint those alien scenes, machinery, spaceships, etc. Campbell doesn't like Paul.... Yet, he went out on a rainy night to some deserted graveyard and dug up Frew and Wirt. The former is pretty bum but not nearly as bad as Wirt. So Campbell wants human looking people, eh? More like monkeys, if you ask me....

So, it all sums up to what? Bum pictures. Stories too short. More critical readers. Editors accused of being too conservative. On the latter, I offer this challenge: Let Campbell, who prides himself on having the best S-F magazine -- and he has, too! -- write to Fearn, or E.E.Smith, or Jack Williamson, or some other good writer and say: "I'm going to offer you the job of turning out something that's never been done before, I don't care how wild it will be or sound. Just write whatever you want and I'll promise I'll publish it, without cutting or trimming, or making it shoter, even if it takes ten parts." and then see what happens.

What I think? Yes, S-F today is not as good as it was yesterday, and if I ever read a story that is as good as those in '28, '29, '30, I'll be the first to admit it, and gladly.

Ibid.