Stainless Steel Visions

Начало книги

It was wonderful to grow up in the world of the pulp magazines. Brassy and colorful they were, filled with adventure and wondrous machines. Some of the many categories invented in the thirties still exist today, in book if not magazine form; love and romance, Western and detective. Many categories have slipped away — air war and battle stories — while many heroes are now forgotten. In what lonely grave does Operator Number 5 lie? Close to The Spider, Cash Gorman, G8 and his Battle Aces no doubt.

Give science fiction that; although its magazine existence has tottered, down from around sixty titles a month to three or four, it never died. SF magazines still publish more short stories in a year than magazines dedicated to any other kind of fiction.

At the age of seven or eight I did not notice the deficiencies of this particular art form. Yes, I did read all kinds of pulps— except Western or romance. (Particularly loathsome was that hybrid, Rangeland Romances.) But my attention strayed more and more to science fiction until I was reading all that was being published. It was exciting, that was what counted. Having no critical standards, I did not notice the banality of the writing, the repetition and the hackwork. Excitement was what mattered, emotional and intellectual — that was the double-barreled attraction of SF. Still is. Where else can you get the machine as hero? This was good stuff, still is good stuff. When written well nothing can better it.

Читать дальше →