Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 15:45:04 -0500
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Talking SF, oh my;  was:  time travel
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:

> As an aside, the pre-JWC, the Gernsback era it could be called, was
> essentially a vast wasteland; with some exceptions and some notable
> writers at the begining of their careers (Jack Williamson comes to mind).

Burroughs, Leinster, deCamp, "Doc" Smith, Simak, Lovecraft, Hodgson ...

There was also some good stuff from outside the pulp field.  Stapledon,
Huxley, and Benet come to mind.  I rather suspect that the awfulness of
the pulps was due as much to editing standards as to bad writing and
ruinously low word rates.  I heard it said once (dunno if it's true)
that Hugo Gernsback *required* that the author "explain" how everything
works.  (As one author (Larry Niven?) said, "If I knew how it works, I'd
be writing patent applications instead of fiction.")

>[snip]
> Bleiler is particularly tough on one of the era's fave writers, David H.
> Keller, M.D., calling one of Keller's stories one of the worse racist
> stories pulished in the genre.

Yeesh!  Given the casual sexism, racism, and speciesism that you come
across in that era, I don't want to think about the worst ....

> [snip]

> >I could make a case that "all SF from the 1940s and 1950s was actually
> >allegories about totalitarianism or nuclear war".
>
> I think it would be a difficult case to make considering the volume of
> crap published.  Shaver Mystery anyone?

"The Enemy Within?"  That was easy enough ...

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."