Futuria Fantasia, Fall 1939, Ray Bradbury [books to read for beginners .TXT] 📗
- Author: Ray Bradbury
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Also I will admit that s.f. can on occasion provide escapist flights of imagination—in fact, it can be admirable for this; but this type of s.f. has become exceedingly rare because this crazy superstructure of SCIENCE, and even more so ADVENTURE, has become such a fetish that sound writing concerning people is rarely to be found. In pulp science-fiction, never.
And the frightful smugness fostered by the modern s.f. magazines is simply appalling. It seems that not only the readers, but the editors and writers as well, cannot or will not see anything beyond their own perverted models. Just as one example which I remember very well, look how BRAVE NEW WORLD, the admirable and really important novel by Huxley, was received a few years ago. It was Clark Ashton Smith, I believe, who mentioned it as embodying some of Huxley's "habitual pornography"—simply, stunning P. Schyler Miller; whom, I might mention, I consider as one of the most intellectual authors and fans. And, reviewing the book, C.A. Brandt also decried its preoccupation with sex, but said complacently that it might, at least, bring to the attention of people that there was such a thing as the science-fictionists and their so-called literature. Of all the damned nonsense! BRAVE NEW WORLD was, as a matter of fact, a satire on sex, and of FAR MORE IMPORTANCE than to "bring to the attention of people that there is such a thing as sci-fiction." Huxley conceived a future world in which Ford's mechanistic contributions had become so emphatic as to deprive the people of all but an animal interest in sex; he projects a more normal man into such a civilization for no other reason than to characterize present-day tendencies with searing satire. But Brandt—he evidently would demolish this to set up in its stead a "Space-wrecked On Mars" atrocity.
To get back to the subject, it is my honest opinion that no person of very conspicuous intelligence can subsist very considerably on s.f. after he begins to mature intellectually. There is simply not enuf to it to provide intellectual or spiritual nourishment. He may string along with it for a few years out of habit or some mental quirk—but stuff aimed at juvenile minds cannot very long sustain a person of mature years, unless that person is himself a mental adolescent. The way the fans flocked to the S.F. League, indulged in "tests" to prove their "superiority" over other readers, the silly letters in the mags, the petty internal strife, and many other things, have served to widen the gulf between me and s.f.
The most important thing, however, is that I have discovered that there's been too much else of importance, REAL importance, that has been said and written in this world (and is being and will be), for me to desire to give much attention to such a petty thing as s.f. any more. I shall read on the fringe of it, but increasingly less frequently I'm afraid.
I might have summed this entire thing up by saying, "I'm satiated," but that wouldn't be the entire truth. The entire truth would be: "I am satiated and much wiser." In conclusion let me point out that this is only one man's opinion. I have intentionally been harsh in my estimates, maybe some points are in need of qualification or elucidation, but by and large, I stand back of what I have written here. AMEN.
THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS SUBJECT TO CRITICISM—THEREFORE ANY AND ALL FANS AND AUTHORS WHO DISAGREE WILL FIND THEIR ARTICLES AGAINST THIS ONE BY A FAMOUS AUTHOR WELCOMED AND PRINTED IN THE WINTER EDITION OF FUFA!. THE WINTER EDITION WILL BE OUT DURING THE MONTH OF DECEMBER—SO CONTRIBUTIONS SHOULD BE MAILED IMMEDIATELY TO FUTURIA FANTASIA—3054-1/2 West 12th Street, Los Angeles. (EDITOR)
FUTURIA VOLUME ONE NO. THREE
FANTASIA! OUT IN DECEMBER TEN CENTS
Contributions welcomed. Short stories preferred. No personal stuff or caustic feuding. Humor wanted. Material bought but never paid for—so what can you lose? We suggest you send a quarter for the next 3 issues of Futuria Fantasia and save yourselves a nickel.
Contributing Authors/ Willy Ley, Rocklynne, Hasse, Kuttner, Ackerman, Corvais
Satan's Mistress by Doug RogersShe dances swathed in heated mist, before the gates of Hell.
Her gleaming naked body flees before the Demon fires,
Along the shores of molten seas—ridged high by fuming pyres.
Her hair, a liquid cape of flame, whips hot about her breasts,
A strumpet in the Devil's name, which he alone invests,
Gives power to a woman born of brimstone, steam and smoke,
Her soul, a spark in early morn, flares up to share the yoke
Of evil Mephistopheles upon his throne of death,
Unheeding shrieks and doleful pleas choked out by dying breath.
The Devil's Mistress dances down thru dungeons carved from bone,
Upon her head the sinner's crown, each jewel a sigh, a moan.
Before the wailing souls in caves, tossed down from earthly things,
To charred and cindered minds of slaves her dancing passion brings.
Then, tired of her evil joke, and laughing at her games,
She draws about her fiery cloak to vanish in the flames.
Lost Soul by Henry Hasse
The echo of a wild and anguished cry—
A tortured voice that shrieked aloud a word,
A name, that shivered 'cross the leaden sky.
I stopped—stared 'round—I knew that voice did sound
A faint, familiar note within my brain.
I fled across that dark and desolate ground
Seeking out the direction whence it came.
Forebodingly, that voice kept echoing
Within a brain that did not seem my own ...
A vague remembrance of a recent thing
I could not grasp ... I was a lost and lone
Forsaken soul that sped I knew not where,
Wondering frightenedly what I did seek....
At last I found it, there beside a bare
And lonely road, when trembling and weak,
I gazed upon a gallows-tree where hung
A corpse, the very site of which did freeze
The blood within my veins; a corpse that swung
Grotesquely to and fro upon the breeze.
And then, through rising panic, closer still
I peered—then saw!—and knew! Again that cry
That shrieked a name—the cry that issued shrill
From my own throat, and shivered to the sky!
Was mine. The dead thing swinging there was me!
The truth about goldfish— KUTTNER
For some time I have been wondering what the world is coming to. More than once I have got up in the middle of the nite, padded toward the bureau, and, peering into the mirror, exclaimed, "Stinky, what is the world coming to?" The responses I have thus obtained I am not at liberty to reveal; but I am coming to believe that either I have a most mysterious mirror or something is wrong somewhere. I am intrigued by my mirror.
It came into my possession under extraordinary and eerie circumstances, being borne into my bedroom one Midsummer's Eve by a procession of cats dressed oddly in bright-colored sunsuits and carrying parasols. I was asleep at the time, but awoke just as the last tail whisked out the door, and immediately I sprang out of bed and cut my left big toe rather badly on the edge of the mirror. I remember that as I first looked into the fathomless, glassy depths, a curious thot came into my mind. "What," I said to myself, "is the world coming to? And what is science-fiction coming to?"
It is quite evident that a logical and critical analysis of science-fictional trends is a desideratum today. The whole trouble, I feel, can be laid to velleity. (I have wanted to use that word for years. Unfortunately I have now forgotten exactly what it means, but one can safely attribute trouble to it. Where was I?)
Today science-fiction is split by schisms and impaled on the trylon of bad thots. The fans, I mean, not the writers. The writers have been split and impaled for years, but nothing can be done about that. In a way, it's a good thing. Look at Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and, for that matter, the late unfortunate Tobias J. Koot.
I put flowers on his grave only yesterday. He lies at rest, tho his ghastly fate pursued him even to the grave. And I attribute Mr. Koot's fate to nothing less than the schisms of fandom. For Koot was a hard working young man, serious, earnest, with promise of becoming a first-class writer. He took life very solemnly—almost grimly. "My job," he told me once, "is to give people what they want."
"I want a drink," I said to him. "Give me one."
But Koot couldn't be turned from his rash course. He began to write science-fiction. That was where the trouble started. "Is it science?" he pondered. "Or is it fiction?" Already the cleavage—the split—had begun.
It was a matter of logical progression toward ultimate division. Koot got in the habit of typing the science into his stories with his left hand, and the fiction with his right. He began to twitch and worry. He got up nites. He was troubled, uneasy. "I have one thing left to cling to," he muttered desperately, "Fandom! I can point to that and say: It is real. It exists. It is dependable."
When fandom had its schism, Koot immediately developed a split personality. It was rather horrible. His left side—the scientific side—grew cold and hard and keen. He grew a Van Dyke on the left side of his face and his left hand was stained with acids and chemicals. But the right side of his face became dissipated and disreputable, with a leer in the eye end a scornful, sneering curve to the lip. He grew a tiny moustache on the right side, waxed it, and twirled it continually. It was rather horrid, but worse was yet to come.
One day the inevitable happened. Tobias J. Koot split in half, with a faint ripping sound and a despairing wail. He was, of course, buried in two coffins and in two graves, the wretched man's fate pursuing him even beyond death.
Well, you can understand how I feel, what with the mirror, the cats in sunsuits and the weasel. Or haven't I mentioned the weasel? I mean the brown one, of course, and he is, perhaps, worst of all. It isn't what he says so much as his sneering, ironic tone. The other weasels, who live in the spare bedroom with the colt, were happy enuf till HE arrived, but now THEY are arranging a schism. As you will readily see, something must be done about it before science-fiction collapses and the standard falls trailing into the dust.
I suggest that we mobilize, and, to avoid dissension, give everybody the rank of general. Then, first of all, we can march to my house and get rid of that weasel.
The Brown One, of course. The others are welcome to stay as long as they like. I feel that they are weak rather than wicked, and need only a good excuse, or should I say example, in order to brace themselves up.
Contributions to the fund for the mobilization of science-fiction and the extermination of brown weasels may be sent to me in care of this magazine. Do not delay. Each moment you wait brings us closer to doom, and, besides, I need a new piano.
H.K.
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GOD BUSTERS Erick FreyorMark Twain, in his mysterious stranger, makes no bones about his sentiments towards Christianity and the God illusion. Speaking of Christian progress he says, "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best—to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race
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