Stirring Science Stories/March 1942/The Fantasy World
Collections of weird stories are well-known and appear fairly often from book publishers. Ghost stories are the rule in these collections and the modern type of story is rare. The average weird anthology contains the tried-and-true old timers, Poe, deMaupassant, Bierce, and others of the Nineteenth Century. Such books as do contain modern fantasy seek it among the "accepted" writers—the book writers who dabble in fantasy once in a while accompanied by the ohs and ahs of their select little groups of literateurs. When such a man turns out a weird yarn, he exhibits it as a charming little freak, a grotesque to be held up by the tail and exclaimed at by admiring circles of well-mannered literary clubs. And someday to appear in a select volume of weird stories, nestling between Poe and others.
The writer who writes weird fiction because that is his main interest in life and the type of fiction he esteems above anything else, rarely gets a tumble. The pulp magazines are his field, in them he sets forth his masterpieces of imaginative concepts, in their pages and among their readers he reaps his reward. His stories are read by audiences of hundreds of thousands, his name is known whereever people of an imaginative turn of mind reside. But the books know him not. For the elite publishers of book anthologies and the doubly elite compilers of such anthologies, appearance in pulp magazine selling to the great anonymous American public constitutes little of interest or worth. 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. Novels of this type are
permissable but not so short
story collections. 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. But the
Literati could never be persuaded
of that. Look, they scream in
scorn, look at where these stories
are published! Magazines on
public newsstands! Dreadful!
Bright covers—Ghastly! Illustrations—Poor
taste! Captions,
introductory lines—Incredible!
And the titles of these magazines—Shocking!
Read such
stuff to find good writing? It
could not be.
So, while the weird tale once in a while succeeds in crashing the pages of books, science-fiction tales are rigidly excluded.
That is why this writer and many others were very excited when they first heard that a book was being compiled to consist of short stories of every type taken exclusively from the pages of the fantasy magazines. Furthermore, the book would contain science-fiction too—such stories as might properly belong in a book. Happily we thought of the many magnificent tales and writers that might be included. There seemed hosts of them—all the way back to 1926 and from all the magazines—short stories remembered by thousands across many years. Surely such stories would warrant inclusion? We thought of John W. Campbell, David H. Keller, Stanton A. Coblentz, G. Peyton Wertenbaker, Homer Eon Flint, Clare Winger Harris, Don A. Stuart, Charles Cloukey, Ray Cummings, C. L. Moore, Harl Vincent, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Miles J. Breuer, Clark Ashton Smith, and innumerable others. Surely, we thought, what a mighty array of terrific fiction could be assembled from the files of these writers! What a colossus among books!
But we shall have to wait. That book has yet to be compiled. The elite circle has scored again.
The book that was published
is entitled "The
Other Worlds" and is edited
and prefaced by Phil Stong.
It is 466 pages long, it contains
twenty-five stories, it sells for
$2.50, and is published by Wilferd
Funk of New York. It bears
the subtitle on the jacket "The
best modern stories of free imagination
since Dracula and
Frankenstein."
The wording of that subtitle was our first hint. Was this another weird anthology ignoring science-fiction? Well, we could make the most of it anyway. But it did not ignore science-fiction though the weird story is in the majority.
We had thought that it would contain only stories from the pages of the fantasy pulps. Mr. Stong, the anthologist, admits that that was his intention. But, he goes on to say, after going through the files of all the fantasy magazines, some 20,000 stories he estimates, he was not able to find enough good stories to fill up his book—hence there are some tales included that appeared in Westminster Magazine and Esquire and a couple that have never been published before.
Before going on further, let us introduce Mr. Stong. You all must of heard of him we're sure. For, according to the book jacket, he is "the foremost critic of this type of fiction." He is "a recognized authority upon this unique type of fiction." He has been "a devotee and student of weird and fantastic stories for a number of years." He is the author of many books, the best known of which are "State Fair" and "Horses and Americans."
At this point we wish to state that we are familiar with fantasy fiction in every aspect for over fifteen years; we have met and contacted several hundred students, collectors and enthusiasts of fantasy; we have read thousands of articles and letters by fantasy fans and authorities; we never heard of Phil Stong.
Let that pass. Obviously he is recognized among the elite, among the non-pulp writing literati. The book proves that clearly enough.
"The Other Worlds" is divided into three sections: "Strange Ideas" being stories with ideas never used before, "Fresh Variants" being new twists on old ideas, "Horrors" being just that. We shall take up the third section first.
Here is a compilation of fairly passable but not outstanding weird tales. The best is Henry Kuttner's minor classic, "The Graveyard Rats." The rest are not poor stories but they certainly do not rate reprinting. They were acceptable stories when they appeared but they are not the gems of weird fantasy. Manly Wade Wellman's "School for the Unspeakable" and "Song of the Slaves" are good average ghost stories. This is true also of August Derleth's two stories. Stong felt that Seabury Quinn should be included and deliberately picked a story he describes as among Quinn's worst "The House Where Time Stood Still." Stong states that it is a good example of Quinn's most outstanding flaws. Therefore Stong stuck it in.
In his introduction to this section, Stong dwells a bit on H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft's tremendous popularity compelled Stong grudgingly to admit him a place, but he takes revenge by making mockery of him and including one of his most unrepresentative works, "In the Vault." The manner of Stong's handling of Lovecraft left us utterly infuriated, so crudely cynical it was, so totally oblivious to the magnificent classics Lovecraft created.
We think we ought to emphasize here and now the entire bias of this book. Mr. Stong has carefully chosen stories to represent what he considers the average rather than the exception. He has not sought for good writing; he has deliberately avoided good writing. His message throughout seems to be that the material in puip magazines is poor and infantile, more to be apolized for than upheld. To foster this impression, he left the introductory editorial remarks before the opening of stories exactly as they originally appeared, even when in some cases these are meaningless outside of the magazine's clientele. Certainly there can be no motive for that than to emphasize the "lowly" origin of these yarns and to fix that in the reader's mind.
For his second section, Phil Stong draws heavily from the wilder and more elementary, type of science-fiction magazine. Here are paraded as examples of outstanding fantasy such stories as "Adam Link's Vengeance" by Eando Binder, "Truth is a Plague" by David Wright O'Brien, "A Comedy of Eras" by Kelvin Kent, "The Man Who Knew All the Answers" by oDnald Bern. These stories have no business in a book and we think the original editors and writers would admit that. They are written for a certain type of reader—a reader catered to by an elementary plot and a deliberately hack written-down style of writing. (Our authority for this opinion is the actual statements of the editor of most of them) They were certainly not intended for the audience that can afford to pay $2.50 for a book.
Mr. Stong states that he considers the only criterion of good fantasy the condition that the story should be utterly impossible. Since no fantasy writer can take such an attitude and continue to sell, obviously he is expressing a private opinion which must arrive at the conclusion that since these stories are impossible nonsense, why worry about good writing?
We must mention one really first rate story here: "Alas, All Thinking!" by Harry Bates. Its inclusion is all the more curious insofar as Stong states that he does not consider time-travel of interplanetary themes worth while. This "devotee" considers such stories trash.
The "Strange Ideas" section does not, of course, include the real thought-variants and new twists. Some of the tales do have clever angles but we would not consider them the best examples of really startlingly original thought. Included here is the only Weinbaum story in the book: "The Adaptive Ultimate" by "John Jessel." Every editor and fan knows that John Jessel is Stanley G. Weinbaum; the great authority, of course, does not. Other stories included here are "The Considerate Hosts" by Thorp McClusky, "The House of Ecstacy" by Ralph Milne Farley, "Escape" by Paul Ernst, and "The Pipes of Pan" by Lester del Rey.
We do not mind saying that in general this book makes us feel slightly nauseated. It could have been so great; it is so utterly incapable. The anthologist deliberately turned down virtually all the great weird and science-fiction, to parade a set of mediocre material. The average would be passable for a single issue of a magazine but for permanent book publication, no. Someday the classics of pulp fanatsy will get their due. That day is not yet. The publishers ask $2.50 for this book. You could buy more and better stories for a quarter that price on any newsstand. Better still, a year's subscription to Stirring Science Stories will easily be a better investment for fantasy reading pleasure.—Daw.