Science fiction

“ Today, science-fiction has become a broad field, atomic energy—despite the feelings of many present adults!—is no dream. (Nor is it a nightmare; it is simply a fact, and calling it a nightmare is another form of effort to push it out of reality.)
In 1930, the only audience for science-fiction was among those who were still young enough in spirit to be willing to hope and speculate on a new and wider future—and in 1930 that meant almost nothing but teen-agers. ”

“ So from now on watch for Stirring Science Stories on your stands each month. Each issue better and better, each issue tops in both science-fiction and fantasy and still the only magazine that covers the entire fantastic field. ”

“ The discovery of AMAZING STORIES was the escape he sought and his goal was to be a science fiction writer. He labored to this end and the first he knew that a story of his had been accepted was when he bought the December, 1929 issue of AMAZING STORIES. Since then, he has written millions of words of science fiction and has gone on record as follows: "I feel that science-fiction is the folklore of the new world of science, and the expression of man's reaction to a technological environment. ”

“ After all, both science fiction and weird tales are fantastic, aren't they? They both are based on the highly improbable, and they both stimulate the imagination. It is a rare fan that does not like both. The scientifically inclined reader may not like weird tales; those that only want to be horrified and terrorized may not like science fiction; but those who want their imaginations stimulated like both.
Let us remind you again, and inform the new readers, that this is primarily a magazine for the fans, of the fans, and by the fans—the fan, the whole fan, and nothing but the fan. ”

“ Like most science-fiction writers, he knew almost nothing about science. ”

“ I find, that the relief from the high tension of our trade comes from the change in the character of what we read, rather than in "something else," such as physical recreation. Fiction relaxes where "news" has keyed up.
And in the Science Fiction of your magazine's stories of super-science, I find the keenest periods of mental enjoyment through the admirable selection of Astounding Stories' mixed adventure, unique travel and prophetic science. In this I am not alone—a number of my acquaintances have reveled likewise in your magazine at my suggestion. ”

“ An attempt to legitimatize science fiction by establishing a poetics of the genre and tracing its early evolution. Based on Marxist ideology, the first part presents the theoretical foundation, which defines science fiction as “the literature of cognitive estrangement” and emphasizes utopian literature while largely excluding myth and fantasy. The second part traces the evolution of European and American science fiction from More through Wells, with a brief excursion into early-twentieth-century Russian works and a chapter on Karel Čapek. ”

“ Perhaps you are not certain of just how we draw the distinction between the one form of fantasy and the other. Let us define our fields. Science-fiction is that branch of fantasy relying for its effect on the fact that its imaginative visionings are based upon logical projections of known science. ”

“ Yet there are millions of Americans who know that science-fiction short stories are not only good reading and enjoyable literature but that very often they can qualify as true literature by their wealth of ideas, visions, thoughts, scenes and brilliance worthy of the very highest traditions of the imaginative short story. ”

“ In science-fiction, as in all categories of fiction, there are stories that are so outstanding from the standpoint of characterization, concept, and background development that they remain popular for decades. Two such stories were Murray Leinster's The Mad Planet and Red Dust. ”

“ But if science has torn from the heavens the false lustre of fiction, it has supplied the clear light of fact. From points, the stars have magnified into worlds, and from thousands they have multiplied into millions. ”

“ Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories and their quarterlies, and Science Fiction are the current magazines that specialize in the printing of science fiction, probably the most popular type of fantastic fiction. ”

“ We have chosen you to assist us in an important research project, because our investigation has found you to be a science fiction enthusiast. We believe you have a better chance of comprehending the scope of our research than would most people of your time. ”

“ In the first place, must you make your covers as lurid and as contradictory to good design as they are? Really, I blush when my newsdealer hands me the gaudy thing. People interested in science do not usually succumb to circus poster advertising.
Then there are the stories. I realize that you must cater to all tastes, but some of them are very childish, slightly camouflaged fairy tales. Science Fiction can be written very convincingly, as is testified by the stories of H. G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Jules Verne, and others. ”

“ The authors you have acquired are supreme in this field. Ray Cummings and Captain Meek need no introduction. And Harl Vincent is a notable addition whose stories of "Indefinite Extension" and interplanetary travel are well known to Science Fiction fans.
Science Fiction, first introduced by Verne, Poe, Wells, Haggard and other old masters in this line, is a type of literature that typifies the new age to come—the age of science. ”

“ Science fiction not only offers those values in abundance but also, in its facet as satirical commentary on the here-and-now world, provides a perspective on our rapid social changes that has great appeal to readers, especially the young. ”

“ The cultural assumption of science fiction as a whole can clearly be seen to follow, rather than to lead, public opinion: most science fiction published in the twentieth century has been market commercial fiction which, however daring its departures from everyday reality, has generally tended to adopt the conventional moral dogmas of middle-class society, as does most commercial fiction. ”

“ I have a hunch that the history books are a poor way of planning a life today—and that science-fiction comes a lot closer.
There's another thing about science-fiction yarns that is quite conspicuous; it's so difficult to pick out the villains. ”

“ Similarly, the Star Trek and Star Wars movies are species of the science fiction genre. There are many standard genres in film and literature, including drama, action, comedy, war, mystery, suspense, thriller, and horror. In time, the body of expressive work becomes more complex ”

“ To escape the tyranny on Terra in the year 2500, a group of scientists make a last-minute getaway under fire and take off for another planet in another solar system. Their adventures make top-flight entertainment for all science-fiction fans. ”

“ Stories published in magazines with newstand circulation, gaudy covers, illustrations (!) , and a price on the cover within the reach of anyone's pocket, just couldn't possibly be good. At any rate, they were scarcely worth noting when compiling an anthology of fantasy fiction.
As for science-fiction in book anthologies? Horrors! Never! Even if H. G. Wells did write several books filled with his science short stories and even if those books were great successes, science-fiction is something for book anthologists to avoid. ”

“ There will not be need of fiction, nor fiction writers, when Science gets booted, spurred, ready for conquest. Fiction writers belong to the world’s generously believing childhood. Its mature, reasoning manhood is here. The simplest fact of Science will dim the shabby glamour of romance. It will put out its light, as the sun puts out the stars. Ah—the stories Science will tell! Science will unravel the long adventurous past of the lily, the [163] rose, the orchid, the story of which will be unfolded logically from cells. ”

“ That branch of knowledge which has produced the steam engine, the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the printing press, modern astronomy, and chemistry, which is supplying material every day tending toward solutions of some of the still numerous unsolved problems of existence—in fact, which is the great motive force behind modern civilization—ought certainly to be represented by more than one page in a list that gives thirty-three pages to fiction. ”

“ Or because a new social theory has decided that no scientific advance should be permitted for a period of 250 years while a great program of meditation and navel-inspection instead of Naval inspection is pushed forward.
Nevertheless, science-fiction can be not only fun, but an extremely valuable experience. If a friend steps out of a dimly lighted doorway it may provoke a "Yipe!" ”

“ Our young author, who has already become a favorite with readers of scientific fiction, has woven a captivating romance out of the world of ultra-physics—captivating in its adventurousness as well as in its science. ”

“ Of the dark depths of the ocean it may be safely affirmed that no organized creation lives or moves in its grave-like silence to require this fairy aid. Fiction has frequently borrowed her creations from science. In these cases science appears to have made free with the rights of fiction. ”

“ Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science, was bored stiff by technical details. ”

“ Science has discovered, and will continue to discover, an enormous amount of relative data; but there will always remain an illimitable residue of the undiscovered and the unknown. And the field for imaginative fiction, both scientific and non-scientific, is, it seems to me, wholly inexhaustible.—Clark Ashton Smith, Auburn, Cal. ”

“ Your foreword states that this tale contains the best science of all the prize-winning stories submitted.
"Now, in a scientifiction story, I quite understand, and appreciate, that wealth of imagination, such as inventions, new powers, discoveries of new chemical, physical and psychic laws, and their adaptations, is wholly creditable to the authors, because, indeed, as you state, 'extravagant fiction today—cold fact tomorrow.'
"Now, to come to my point it is not, however, good science to cause a scientific impossibility, a logical impossibility, a direct contradiction, to appear in a story. ”

“ Science, science! This was the age of science, the age of the airplane, the submarine, radium, television and radio; and yet here was a scene to make Science herself rub her eyes in amazement, a scene that might have been taken right out of some wild story or out of some myth of the ancient world. ”

“ And warfare became world-wide. After flight came other machines and other ages. Other scientists began to have visions of the realms beyond, and they sought to tap the vast reservoirs of Nature's energies, the energies of matter.
“Other ages saw it done—a few thousand years later there passed out into space a machine that forced its way across the void to another planet! And the races of the three living worlds became as one—but there was no peace.
“Swiftly now, science grew upon itself, building with ever faster steps, like a crystal which, once started, forms with incalculable speed. ”

“ They wanted the new world visualized by science. They wanted the simplifications and conveniences, the glorious adventures of the human mind and body. They wanted the trips to Mars and into the depths of the human psyche, they wanted the robots and the thinking machines. ”

“ The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had also invented nearly everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus had, in consequence, to the full, that fantastic and distorted look which belongs to the miracles of science. For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare. ”

“ Most astounding it was, also, to a modern scientist, brought up in the methods and limited by the views of his age, to discover here a development in physics, beyond the dreams of the most daring investigator, that actually belonged to a primitive race, and was first practiced by them in a period and country without scientific culture. The whole affair, indeed, furnished an instance where science seemed to overstep the borderland of the miraculous. ”

“ They had worked out a chemistry, a botany, a physics, with all the blends where a science touches an art, or merges into an industry, to such fullness of knowledge as made us feel like schoolchildren. ”

“ I believe that readers, like myself, who are interested in scientific fantasies, prefer stories of interplanetary travels and fourth dimensional stories, and variations of these themes. Such as various space-ships and vibration machines for visiting other planets and traveling backward and forward in time. ”

“ Blot out the process by which science arrived at results, and in every achievement of science, in the steam engine, the electric telegraph, we should soon have a heaven-descended agency, a god for every machine. ”

“ If, it may be added, we are allowed, in the present day, to refer to the perfection of our arts as evidence of the advanced state of our physical philosophy;—if our steam-engines, our gas-illumination, our buildings, our navigation, our manufactures, are cited as triumphs of science;—shall not prior inventions, made under far heavier disadvantages,—shall not greater works, produced in an earlier state of knowledge, also be admitted as witnesses that the middle ages had their share, and that not a small or doubtful one, of science? ”