The Glory That Was

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In the fields of science fiction and of fantasy there are very few humorists. That is not to say that there are not many, many writers in these fields who try to be funny; of the number who try, entirely too many manage to peddle their weary efforts to desperate editors and the depressing results may be found on any newsstand. Most of these attempts are burlesque — and burlesque is an art hard to apply in a field in which there is literally no limit to the imagination; the practitioner is often tempted to use too wide a scoop when a teaspoon would have been more than adequate.

An approach almost as common as burlesque is that of satire, but satire is an even more difficult steed to ride. To induce a smile, satire must be subtle; but it has long since been proved that no satire can be sufficiently broad to be recognized as such by all readers. There always remains a large, very vocal, and angry minority who will have taken the attempted satire with utter seriousness at its face value and who will thereupon accuse the author of defaming motherhood, attempting to cast a smirch on the reader's church and, no doubt, being opposed to good roads and good weather.

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