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From: rwl@uvacs.UUCP (Ray Lubinsky)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Hugo Gernsback
Message-ID: <1721@uvacs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 19:35:48 EST
Article-I.D.: uvacs.1721
Posted: Fri Nov 30 19:35:48 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 06:28:39 EST
References: <123@ahuta.UUCP>
Organization: U.Va. CS in Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 83

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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.)

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

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