CHEWING THE CRUD. An issue of SPACEWARP passed through my hands some time ago. While it was passing I caught a glimpse of some words of wisdom by one Redd Boggs. If I had a name like that I'd quietly change it by deed poll, wouldn't you?
It seems that Mr. Boggs is incensed by fanzines that print fiction, the elegant NEKROMANTIKON in particular. He prefers articles. Fair enough, but if his own article is representative of the whole, I don't. Let us indulge in a quiet spot of vivisection.
After being very harsh with Mr. Banister's excellent production he passes on to tell us that he recently received a chain letter of standard content. We are then treated to his views on some anti-Catholic propaganda sent to him by the Puritan Church, and to a description of his extraordinarily childish method of 'hitting back.' (Being neither a Catholic nor a Puritan I've no interest in either side of the question. Nor am I a Moslem, Buddhist, Rosicrucian, or Seventh Day Adventist, come to that. I'm what might be described as a person found wandering without any invisible means of support.)
Then we get some 'Forgettable Facts.' Believe you me, friends, they're just that!
Ploughing determinedly on, we come to 'Notes that missed my wastebasket.' Well now, if you can't throw straight I see no reason for picking the things up again. Let 'em lie, Redd, let 'em lie! And if we must have adverts for Messrs. E.P. Dutton's publications, let them be confined to s-f titles. 'Pride and Prejudice' indeed!
In the final paragraph Mr. Boggs seems to rocket up to mediocrity, but that was written by one John E. Anderson. Sorry, Redd, you'll have to do better than that! And next time, no split infinitives, eh?
THE BRADBURY EFFECT. Some people worship the Martian from California so fervently that they're inclined to forget that he has a pretty nasty mind too. Or had, for one seems to detect recently a welcoming breaking-in of cheerfulness. But I'm thinking in particular of a little collection of nerve-wreckers under the title DARK CARNIVAL. Reading some of these one is fascinated as by a horribly disfigured face or a grotesque dwarf, and it's impossible to leave the story unfinished. And yet one of the most memorable pieces of prose in modern literature, and that's saying something, occurs in THE NEXT IN LINE. Almost physically nauseating, but a remarkable piece of writing. How does he do it?
I think Bradbury's style depends on understatement for its effect rather than on powerful descriptive passages, and he often links a succession of quick phrases or single staccato words together with conjunctions in order to carry the mind forward with a sudden rush to some climax. This 'flat dimension of speech' is common to many American authors: in fact it is the American idiom.
Personally, I like it. I think it's a very good form for s-f, if only because one can make one's puppets live without going too deeply into their emotions and mental struggles, which must tend to give them a present-day characterisation. It seems to me that to give persons engaged in interstellar travel the same character-structure as mid-twentieth century people is all wrong, yet it's constantly being done. Many of Dr. Smith's All-American half-backs would be more at home fighting Indians with Winchester repeaters than they are chasing Boskonians with Lenses.
[These views on the great Smith are not those of the typesetter, J. White.]
HOLLYWOOD ON THE MOON (AND MARS) Being something of an addict of the cinema, that well-upholstered dispensary for the drug of dreams, I've been waiting with baited breath for the appearance of DESTINATION MOON. But HORROR! What is this? I learn that a cheapjack production called 'Rocketship XM' or 'Expedition Moon' has been rushed out to cash in on DM's publicity. Apparently it is a 24-carat stinker. This is an extraordinarily dirty trick, even for Hollywood, the dirtiest I have heard of since RKO bought up and destroyed all the copies of the fine French film LE JOUR SE LEVE because it showed up their inferior remake. One feels like doing something about things like this, but what? One can of course urge the public to stay away in droves, but what's the use? The distributors would just assume that s-f films were a dead loss, and the producer, one ROBERT LIPPERT, will make his profit anyway, seeing that this quickie cost him only 150,000 dollars and ten days time. (Evidently it looks it: I quote Miss Dilys Powell, Sunday Times.)
' ... The party are fortunate to get anywhere, and they know it. Luckily the leader happens to be looking out the window when a large cardboard globe, slightly mouse-eaten, floats into view. He recognises it at once, 'Our most congenial planetary neighbour, Mars!' he exclaims; and another savant echoes the cry: 'Well, Mars, whaddya know!' The terrain, which appears to consist entirely of stalagmites, is judged suitable for landing; the rocketship, which a moment ago was travelling at 25,000 miles an hour, bumps to earth, or rather Mars, and the party alights in gasmasks. Mars turns out to be just like Arizona, only mauve, and equipped with an invisible orchestra performing on saws. ...'
And so on, with hideous inevitability, to Martian cavewomen wearing sarongs. Most of the other reviews are in tones of tolerant resignation, and seem to indicate that the critics, and presumably the public, were ready to welcome a serious film about interplanetary flight. The damage this film will do to the chances of DESTINATION MOON is incalculable. I suppose it was inevitable that s-f films should come to be classified by the public as trash, just as the prozines are, because the worthwhile productions will be lost from view under the usual pile of rubbish. But if DM had had a fair chance we might have seen some more of such honest work. I should have loved to see just one of Dr. Smith's space operas on celluloid, if only to find out how they conveyed to the average audience that the Lensmen were about to sling a contra-terrene planet at the enemy through a hyperspacial tube!
SEX AND PARSECS. I came across a few notes the other day by one Ing. Guido von Pirquet about a little thing which seems to put the kybosh (whatever that is) on normal methods of interstellar travel. Numerous little things in fact, cosmic dust motes. A ship travelling at one third light speed would receive 3 hits a second serious enough to damage the hull. So it looks like spacewarps or nothing! I thought I had better mention this in case any of the readers of SLANT are surreptitiously building interstellar ships.
But I'm afraid I see another barrier to our reaching the stars. Did it ever occur to you that possibly the most important fact in the world is that mental activity inhibits sexual potency, an influence which will always tend to lower the IQ of the race? Not to mention that the intelligentsia practise birth control, so the intellectuals of the future are 'condomed' to death before they are born. Between dense motes and dense mites the outlook is grim: sometimes I feel like developing the nova effect and committing race suicide! But sometimes I think there must be counter-influences working for the race. Are oysters, wine and highbrow pornography saving mankind?
NO MORTGAGE ON A COFFIN. In closing I must say that if anyone is entertaining notions of homicide as a result of this column I am protected by an impenetrable screen of Mr. Cobb's Z rays. I'll have to think up some other defence against Mr. Boggs: if his brain exploded he probably wouldn't notice.
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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