Campbell vs Wollheim

Jacopo Zucci's "The Golden Age" (1575)

I recently returned to Robert Silverberg's essay on the "Golden Age" of SF.

It's interesting how Silverberg characterises Campbell's influence, especially how it contrasts with Wollheim's opinion. I think, though, that they're really on the same page:

I think to start with what Campbell was looking for was something along the lines of Gernsback's "SciEng Evangelism" but with the kind of near-slick writing you could find in Merritt and Moore and other greats of the 30s (taking into account that Moore was still going strong in the 40s and on into the 50s - I'm not sure why she doesn't merit a mention here, but suspect it's because Silverberg is focusing on SCI-fi, and over the years she has been classified strongly as fantasy)

But it grows evident in the later years of the 50s and on into the 60s that he was curating Astounding/Analog with a heavy hand. Even some of his "golden boys" occasionally griped that Campbell was giving them marching orders or entirely rewriting stories. And with the end of the hot part of WW2 and the opening of the cold front with the USSR, the 50s was also kind of a "golden age" of prophesies of doom - it seems inevitable that "cold hard logic" applied to predictive SF would generate an unhealthy serving of that tone.

The key is to note which of the Campbell crew were also getting accolades from Wollheim: Heinlein in particular gets comment for his upbeat, optimistic visions of interplanetary civilization.

So yeah, the 50s is a Golden Age, but I think it's also the period in which SF began to diverge into what Wollheim called the Welles vs Verne branches - enthusiastic utopianism vs scientism. This right after SFF - the larger category - had begun to diverge (partly because of the Campbell/neoFuturian movement) into clearer fantasy and "scientifiction" streams.

Who needs another hero?

Heroes. Who needs them!

Just another holier-than-thou vehicle for someone’s personal hangups.

Just another over-inflated cardboard cutout, a power fantasy made flesh.

Too strong, too competent, too perfect.

Real life isn’t like that.

Real people aren’t heroes.

And heroes have no place in serious fiction for mature adults.

Right?

Wrong.

Fat Cats and Hippies

Frank Zappa gave the interview this clip is from to MTV's "The Cutting Edge" in 1987. In this section he outlines a problem he saw with the music industry of the 80s - a problem he saw developing years earlier.

I hope you'll listen to the interview - it's just 4 minutes long. But for the moment here's the issue in a nutshell, and in Zappa's own words:

FLASH!

(click to get a readably-big image)

How small can we go with SFF? No, how small really?

I love short-shorts - make no mistake, I also love the deeply-rooted, sprawling masterpieces of the classic epics.

But I love short-shorts - or flash fiction as the modern lexicon tags them. In fact, one of the first reading projects I set myself when I reached the point in my study of Japanese that regular reading was required to progress any further was to explore the work of Hoshi Shinichi, a science fiction author famed for his mastery of the short-short format.

The short short story format takes you to a world and gives you the penny tour through the eyes of the protagonist. It leaves enormous vistas open to the imagination and puts your mind into overdrive. It's like a carefully selected aperitif - just a taste, really, and maybe an incredible contrast to the main course, but perfectly formulated to make your stomach growl and your mouth water.

But (contrary to a recent call for submissions that suggested you could write a 1500 word story in an hour (but maybe take an extra hour to edit it)) the short-short is very challenging to do well. After all, you have only one or two thousand words in which to provide the reader with an engaging situation, a believable context, and most importantly a relatable hero. 

Can it really be done? Can you really pack all three of these things onto a single sheet of paper?

My answer: Not only yes, but hell yes.

Mind the Gap - A Brief History of Science Fiction

There’s a strange blank in SFnal history these days:

When most people talk about SFF literature they start in the middle, with the lionized authors of the Campbell era – who doesn’t know the names Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke? – and then skip forward an entire generation to start talking about the 1980s and 1990s.

There are those of course who cry foul and point out the non-Campbell greats who had eager followers during the same era, and those who point further back to the pre-war pulps and the rich but forgotten veins that lie in the pages of Argosy and Weird Tales of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Secret of Ma

I edit with an axe. I hack and hammer, and when I'm done there's red everywhere.

I have to: I'm wordy.

No doubt there are a few people who've asked for my "suggestions" in the past who find the results alarming. Hopefully not discouraging, though.

But developing a habit of ruthless editing isn't the only way:

KAIJU! The Game

It’s summer vacation, the kids are all off school (sorta - this is Japan after all: the only really close the schools for about 5 days) and parents everywhere are wondering what to do with them. This gets worse when it’s so hot and humid you hardly want to move.

Enter the kaiju!

To deal with my own enforced monkey-wrangling I devised the below. Feel free to share and remix.

Kaiju: The Game