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Hugo Gernsback [message #89450] Mon, 24 June 2013 10:19 Go to next message
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                               Hugo Gernsback
                      An editorial by Evelyn C. Leeper

     Every year the World Science Fiction Convention members give out the
"Hugos," awards named after Hugo Gernsback.  But what did Gernsback do to
deserve this honor, and the respect that he is given in the science fiction
community?

     He didn't invent science fiction.  Whether you want to claim that
science fiction was invented by Jonathan Swift (or even earlier) or are one
of those who dates (modern) science fiction from Shelley, Verne, and Wells,
you have to admit that Gernsback did not invent it.  He didn't even write
much of it--his one surviving work is RALPH 24C41+--and a pretty bad novel
it is.  He didn't seek out and promote the best authors--Wells and Stapledon
were not regular contributors to AMAZING.  What he did do was to give
science fiction its own name--and its own ghetto.  Far from performing a
service for the genre, he acted in such a way that it has taken almost fifty
years to even attempt to recover from the damage he did.

     Before AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in mainstream
magazines.  After AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in science
fiction magazines.  Before AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good
novel to be reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of
people.  After AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good novel to be
reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of people--*unless*
it was science fiction, in which case it wouldn't be reviewed (except in
science fiction magazines), sell just about the same number of copies as any
other science fiction novel, and be read by just about the same number of
people as any other science fiction novel.  The phenomenon of "it's not
science fiction because it's good" got started here; science fiction books
weren't reviewed by major reviewers.

     At last we seem to be escaping from this trap.  What prompted me to
write this editorial was the increasing number of "cross-over" books that
are being reviewed in both the science fiction markets and the mainstream
markets.  Authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Robert Heinlein you
might expect to find on the bestseller lists and reviewed in the NEW YORK
TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS, but Anne McCaffrey and Philip Jose Farmer?

     The "horror novel" was exempted from Gernsback's scope, and so (until a
few years ago) horror novels were kept in the fiction section of the
bookstore, not in a special section next to "science fiction" and
"juveniles." With the Stephen King phenomenon, and what seems like every
author coming out with a horror novel, some (but only some) stores have set
up separate sections for horror novels, but even this seems to be going
away.  Not the science fiction section, though--Waldenbooks is even giving
it its own club.

     The result is that everyone loses.  The authors whose books are
classified as science fiction sell less (which is why so many "science
fiction" authors have renounced the field).  The readers who prefer science
fiction tend to do all their browsing in that section and miss the good
novels filed in the fiction (which may or may not be science fiction
anyway).  Authors recently reviewed here that you might have missed by not
checking the fiction section include Russell Hoban (PILGERMANN), Virginia
Woolf (ORLANDO: A BIOGRAPHY), and Doris Lessing (SHIKASTA).  Other authors
of the fantastic not to be found in the science fiction section include
Jorge Luis Borges and Robertson Davies.

     Given all the trouble that's he's caused, why *do* people venerate
Hugo Gernsback?

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					...ihnp4!hocsj!ecl
Re: Hugo Gernsback [message #91842 is a reply to message #89450] Wed, 26 June 2013 01:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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[]
	In reply to:

>                                Hugo Gernsback
>                       An editorial by Evelyn C. Leeper
  
>      Every year the World Science Fiction Convention members give out the
> "Hugos," awards named after Hugo Gernsback.  But what did Gernsback do to
> deserve this honor, and the respect that he is given in the science fiction
> community?
> 
>      He didn't invent science fiction.  Whether you want to claim that
> science fiction was invented by Jonathan Swift (or even earlier) or are one
> of those who dates (modern) science fiction from Shelley, Verne, and Wells,
> you have to admit that Gernsback did not invent it.  He didn't even write
> much of it--his one surviving work is RALPH 24C41+--and a pretty bad novel
> it is.  He didn't seek out and promote the best authors--Wells and Stapledon
> were not regular contributors to AMAZING.  What he did do was to give
> science fiction its own name--and its own ghetto.  Far from performing a
> service for the genre, he acted in such a way that it has taken almost fifty
> years to even attempt to recover from the damage he did.
  
	No, he didn't invent SF, but he did invent the name, and he created
SF in the sense of its becoming a separate and distinct genre of
fiction. Before Gernsback, no such distinction was made. We agree he
was a terrible writer, but no one argues that his writing is the reason
for his fame in the SF field. As to Wells and Stapledon: Wells was reprinted
in almost every issue of Amazing in its early days. Gernsback would probably
have been very happy to have had original contributions from either of
these writers, but it's hardly his fault if they didn't send him anything.
Wells was getting paid much more than Gernsback could have afforded for
original material, and Stapledon may not have ever *heard* of AMAZING;
like Wells, he was a British author, and more a philosopher than a SF
writer. And his 1st "SF" book (LAST AND FIRST MEN) wasn't published (even
in Britain) until 1930, by which time Gernsback no longer owned AMAZING.
He ran another rag, yes, but that was the magazine whose author compensation
was described as "payable upon lawsuit"; I doubt he could have afforded
Stapledon, either.

>      Before AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in mainstream
> magazines.  After AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in science
> fiction magazines.  Before AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good
> novel to be reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of
> people.  After AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good novel to be
> reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of people--*unless*
> it was science fiction, in which case it wouldn't be reviewed (except in
> science fiction magazines), sell just about the same number of copies as any
> other science fiction novel, and be read by just about the same number of
> people as any other science fiction novel.  The phenomenon of "it's not
> science fiction because it's good" got started here; science fiction books
> weren't reviewed by major reviewers.
  
	I disagree about the respect that fantastic literature was supposedly
accorded before Gernsback. This could be the subject of a long essay
all by itself but, briefly, fantasy seems to have fallen into disfavor
during the Enlightenment, and only started to re-emerge (as the more
rational SF) in the 19th century with a *few* authors. The bulk of fantastic
literature in the late 19th and early 20th century was published in pulp
magazines or dime novels, and was not "respectable". Only now is fantasy/
SF regaining its recognition as a very large, important and respectable
branch of literature.
	You're mostly right in what you say about the negative effects
of the ghettoization of SF on good writers. Many good SF books have not
been taken seriously because of the "SF" label. But aren't there good
effects from this ghettoization, as well? For one thing, SF needed to
develop some common foundations before SF books could go beyond the basics.
I don't think that a LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, to cite just one example,
would have been possible until many other books had beaten the subject
of star travel and alien worlds to death. Early SF gave us a vocabulary
of familiar concepts (aliens, FTL, robots, time travel, etc.) that could
be made the foundation of better books that simply used such "plumbing"
to create a situation where the results of such things could be extrapolated
into humanly-interesting questions. The insularity of SF helped this
process along by making it easier for all the SF fans and writers to
see what everyone else was doing in the field, and so to borrow useful
concepts and ideas from one another.
	Another point in favor of ghettoization: SF fans are, by and
large, more fanatically dedicated to their literature than can be reasonably
explained. The only other special-interest audiences I know of who can
be as fanatic are (some) jazz and opera fans. For the trufan, special
SF sections in bookstores are a plus, not a minus. It filters out the
uninteresting, and makes the interesting easier to find. Sure, you can
flame the hardcore fan for his/her narrowness, but it's their business.
More on this below.

>      The result is that everyone loses.  The authors whose books are
> classified as science fiction sell less (which is why so many "science
> fiction" authors have renounced the field).  The readers who prefer science
> fiction tend to do all their browsing in that section and miss the good
> novels filed in the fiction (which may or may not be science fiction
> anyway).  Authors recently reviewed here that you might have missed by not
> checking the fiction section include Russell Hoban (PILGERMANN), Virginia
> Woolf (ORLANDO: A BIOGRAPHY), and Doris Lessing (SHIKASTA).  Other authors
> of the fantastic not to be found in the science fiction section include
> Jorge Luis Borges and Robertson Davies.
  
	While it probably *used* to be true that the SF label cut down
sales of good books (and, BTW, *helped* the sales of bad books), it doesn't
seem to be true any more. How can you otherwise explain the bestseller
treatment of some SF authors nowadays (Heinlein, Clarke, et al)? Or the
fact that used-book stores pay *more* for SF than any other kind of fiction?
	As to fans missing other good books because they only browse
the SF sections: you're putting the cart before the horse. If a SF fan
is so into SF that they're uninterested in other literature, lumping
the books together in the stores won't change them, it'll just make it
harder for them to find the stuff they like. Besides, since there seem
to be dozens (hundreds?) of new books published every day, all of us
are forced to use some kind of filter in deciding what books we'll even
consider reading. Being guided by the "SF" label is no better or worse
than any other filter; you end up reading some bad books, and missing some
good ones, but there's no avoiding that with so many books in print.
	And what makes you think authors like Lessing and Borges are
unknown to SF zombies? I discovered Borges thru reprints in F&SF; Lessing,
from reviews in the same magazine. And Woolf is almost a household name.
I think I first heard of her from the movie with her name in the title.
The others you mention are less familiar to me, but I suspect that's
because I haven't been keeping up to date on *any* fiction, SF included,
in the past few years (%$&!* computers taking up all my free time!! :-)).

>      Given all the trouble that's he's caused, why *do* people venerate
> Hugo Gernsback?
  
	Because, as you yourself point out, he was mainly responsible
for ghettoizing SF. Whether or not that was a good idea, it makes old
Hugo important in the history of SF. One thing I suspect we'd both agree
on, is that modern American SF would have been very different if SF hadn't
gotten cut off from the mainstream of literature. Maybe better, maybe
worse, but, either way, Gernsback was instrumental in making it what
it *is*.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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Re: Hugo Gernsback [message #91849 is a reply to message #89450] Wed, 26 June 2013 01:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Evelyn Leeper writes of Hugo Gernsback:


>      He didn't invent science fiction.  Whether you want to claim that
> science fiction was invented by Jonathan Swift (or even earlier) or are one
> of those who dates (modern) science fiction from Shelley, Verne, and Wells,
> you have to admit that Gernsback did not invent it.  He didn't even write
> much of it--his one surviving work is RALPH 24C41+--and a pretty bad novel
> it is.  He didn't seek out and promote the best authors--Wells and Stapledon
> were not regular contributors to AMAZING.  What he did do was to give
> science fiction its own name--and its own ghetto.  Far from performing a
> service for the genre, he acted in such a way that it has taken almost fifty
> years to even attempt to recover from the damage he did.


   Look, I love science fiction; I've been reading it since I was a child.  In
the past I have found myself attempting to justify it to people in terms of its
merits (some of which just can't be found in "mainstream" fiction).  However,
I don't see any point in crying over lost chances for critical review of, say,
Asimov's "Nightfall" in the New Yorker.  It is not a story of human passions;
it is not the kind of fiction that can help you to understand your own feelings
about the drama of human existence.

   Rather, it is a story which takes you beyond that realm.  It offers an alien
perspective that can inspire new ways of piecing together your own puzzles of
meaning and metaphor.  For me, this exemplifies what SF has to offer to the
literary community.

   I'm glad to see that the literary community is getting a chance to
experience what SF has to offer now.  But I don't think it was poor Hugo's
fault that SF has been locked in a ghetto.  It was inevitable; Gernsback was
merely a mirror of that phase of SF history.  Science fiction was not all that
literarily acceptable at that time because, as a genre it didn't exist.  Not
even in the minds of its occasional authors.

   First, look at the Names mentioned in the previous article.  Swift?  He 
wasn't a science fiction writer; he was a social satirist.  Verne?  A writer of
adventure stories; sometimes they involved "futuristic" hardware.  Wells?  In
a biography I read some time ago, it was noted that the science fiction stories
were not the works for which he wanted to be remembered; he was principally a
mainstream author by his own definition.  

   Lets face it, there was a time in the twenties and thirties when science
fiction was just not that good.  "Ralph 124C42+" was a middle-of-the-road
example.  I wouldn't blame reviewers for not being able to seriously critique
a wet-dream stories of BEM's drooling over the quivvering bodies of naked
virgins.  But this was a phase.

   Science fiction of the forties began to rediscover the idea of human beings
in fiction.  By the time of the 1960's several authors had established them-
selves as standard-bearer's of the genre.  Even then, SF hasn't done much to
prove itself a fiction of human relevance.  Take, for example the body of
Heinlein's work after (or during) _Stranger_In_A_Strange_Land_.  I'm sure I'll
be flamed for this, but I think that Heinlein's juvenile novels (e.g.,
_Have_Space_Suit_Will_Travel_, _Red_Planet_, etc) have more human feeling to
them than his later, supposedly more urbane and worldly, cyclopediae like
_Time_Enough_For_Love_.

   I think that SF would have been in a ghetto for decades with or without
Gernsback.  By the time SF came to take itself seriously (after the BEM phase)
it was dealing with matters of cosmic scope; this was not something that a
member of the literary establishment was going to appreciate any more than the
average person.  I've always considered myself an elitest because I could
appreciate science fiction.  Not everyone can, and this is a matter apart from
differing tastes.

   Now that we have all, to some extent learned to be "shock wave riders",
science fiction is not all that hard to comprehend.  Even better, it is gaining
the personal relevance that separates a novel from hack work.  I think Hugo
and the BEM's played their part and now that part is over.  Let's at least
give him some credit for "science fiction" (he was thinking of calling it
"scientifiction" [yuk!]).

   (WHEW!  Just had to get that off my chest.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ray Lubinsky		     University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science
			     uucp: decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!rwl

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Re: Hugo Gernsback [message #91851 is a reply to message #89450] Wed, 26 June 2013 01:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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One possible reason that the HUGO awards honor Hugo Gernsback is related
to the World Science Fiction Society.  The same authors that were published
in Amazing Stories, and the readers of such publications are typically the
people that went to the WorldCons.  The fact that people liked the idea
of special recognition for there favorite stories is not surprising.

It is debatable that the pulp magazines were detrimental to the field.
I started reading science fiction very early; much earlier than I would
have read anything more demanding.  I read the Tom Swift Jr series rather
than the Hardy Boys.  Although these books may not be great literature
I enjoyed them at the time.  The same goes for the Science fiction magazines.
They offered an avenue for both the reader and the writer to explore many
different realities.  I would feel deprived if I had to wait for a similar
story in the "high class" magazines.

This is not to say that all the stories are worth reading but my inclination
is choose from many rather than wait for a few good ones.  Who would decide
if they are good anyway?  My values are definitely not the same as the
New York critics.

I for one am glad to have the Hugo awards.  Beside the obvious incentive
for authors, the list of Hugo nominations is usually an excellant reading list.
Re: Hugo Gernsback [message #91861 is a reply to message #89450] Wed, 26 June 2013 01:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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                               Hugo Gernsback
                   A counter-editorial by Mark R. Leeper

     Last week Evelyn published an editorial suggesting that Hugo Gernsback
has had a negative effect on the field of science fiction.  In the guise of
the "loyal opposition" I would like to disagree.  Her argument is two-fold.
First, it is that he was an incompetent writer and second, that by creating
separate science fiction magazines, he pulled science fiction out of the
mainstream and made it a separate genre that the critics could ignore.

     On the first charge I have to admit that Evelyn is right, but Gernsback
is guilty with mitigating circumstances.  People like Wells and Verne were
writing for a fiction-reading audience and were putting new twists on
fiction writing when they wrote what we call science fiction.  Gernsback was
a science writer.  He started with science articles about the present, went
on to scientific speculation about the future, and then as a twists on that
he started putting characters in, and writing his articles as stories.  He
was writing the literary equivalent of a World's Fair exhibit showing the
world of the future.  These exhibits, incidentally, often create a fictional
character, usually called Jimmy, and take Jimmy through a typical day.  One
gets to the end of such an exhibit with some dubious idea of what the future
may be like, but rarely does he or she get any earth-shaking insights into
Jimmy's psyche.

     What Gernsback discovered was that just like there are long lines
outside World's Fair future exhibits, there was a demand for his future
fiction.  Now at this time, there were maybe two or three novels written in
a year about the future.  Maybe one in six was any good, so every couple of
years there would be a competently written book that we would consider a
science fiction novel.  Critics noticed this one book every couple of years
and called it to the attention of their readers, many of whom had some
interest in the fantastic.

     Gernsback recognized this interest and started devoting separate
magazines to it.  Readers brought writers; writers brought more readers.
Suddenly readers no longer needed the critics to point out where fantastic
literature was--it was right there on the magazine shelf.  Critics continued
to point out literature their readers might miss, but it was not science
fiction because that was not hard to find.  Also, the percentage of hack
writers had increased with a proven demand for science fiction.  They tended
to give the field a bad name.  Soon every science fiction magazine had its
own critics reviewing science fiction books and telling which were the good.
There was no need for mainstream critics to discuss science fiction at all.

     Now what gave science fiction a bad name were the hack writers and the
demand for even hack science fiction.  There was a real market for bug-eyed
monster stories in magazines with bug-eyed monsters on the cover.  Through
all this the critics disdained the bad stuff and enjoyed the good, but there
was little need to review the good because people who liked the fantastic
had very apparent ways of finding the better writing.  In the Fifties,
celebrities, including prominent critics, would show up on the back cover of
F&SF extolling the virtues of science fiction.

     Most high school English teachers were not well-read in science fiction
and, having seen newsstands, were painfully aware that much of science
fiction was bad, backed away from letting students read it for school.  Now
the readership of science fiction is expanding as never before.  Baby-boom
children who grew up on Captain Video or Captain Kirk make up a large
proportion of the reading public.  That means that science fiction is now
creeping onto the bestseller lists.  Further, there are people who do not
read the science-fiction-only critics who are getting interested in the
field, so mainstream critics are reviewing science fiction for them.

     All this might or might not have happened without Gernsback's help.  He
was just someone who saw a demand and made some money filling it.  But by
creating a dependable source of his "scientific fiction"--a magazine that
showed up down at the corner drugstore once a month--he brought together the
people who wanted to read science fiction and the people who wanted to write
it.  Once that happened, both the success of the genre and the ghetto were
inevitable.  The former is what Gernsback is gratefully remembered for.  The
latter was a temporary minor inconvenience resulting from the formation of
the genre.  The formation of the ghetto could have been avoided only if the
supply of science fiction had remained very small.  And that is too high a
price to pay for a few pats on the back from mainstream critics.

     To blame Gernsback for the formation of the science fiction ghetto is
like blaming Henry Ford for our country's dependence on petroleum.  All this
convinces the writing critics that there is enough interest in science
fiction that their readers will want to read about the field.

					(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!lznv!mrl
Re: Hugo Gernsback [message #91879 is a reply to message #89450] Wed, 26 June 2013 01:04 Go to previous message
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Evelyn made an error typing in my counter-editorial about Gernsback.  The
sentence:
	All this convinces the writing critics that there is enough
	interest in science fiction that their readers will want to read
	about the field.
should have been at the end of the third to last paragraph, and the last
paragraph should read just:
	To blame Gernsback for the formation of the science fiction ghetto
	is like blaming Henry Ford for our country's dependence on petroleum.

					(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!lznv!mrl
[Mea culpa--ecl]
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