Jim Baen's Universe

From The Heart's Basement

Columns

From the Catacombs

Written by Barry N. Malzberg

The Distinguished Editor in the past has had a question. (Editor’s note: that’s Editor Resnick, not Editor Flint). More of an objection, really. "Criticisms of, references to the science fiction of the 1950's and 1960's are of no interest to 95% of the current audience. All of us old-timers may love it but this is not the audience any more; it's as if you're at a Gaming Convention now talking about Captain Video." I think the Distinguished Editor wants me to spruce it up a little, move as briskly as possible toward the present. Charles Stross, anyone? Neuromancer itself is now 23 years old; that's four complete generations of magazine readers as the market researchers of the 1950's determined. (Most of the readership turns over completely within a five year period.)

Point taken. The Distinguished Editor understands the times and knows where this magazine must be situated in order to prosper. (And how we all do want it to prosper.) When I comment on Alfred Bester's "The Men Who Murdered Muhammed" or "Fondly Farenheit" I am discussing work which was published 50 years ago. A little perspective: I began reading this stuff in 1951, had become a serious reader indeed within a couple of years. How much interest would I have had in Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang or the early-century Argosy? Wouldn't it all have been impossibly remote? Certainly I had no interest in such material in 1952; it had nothing to do with what interested me at the time.

Robt. Silverberg calls this "The McKinley Effect." In order to

understand exactly how out of it we old fellas are, remember that Eisenhower, McCarthy, The Demolished Man or Walter Miller's "Dumb Waiter" are exactly as far behind us now as the McKinley Administration was to us in our youth. Speak of impossible remoteness! Certainly any consideration of the McKinley Effect has to be humbling. Perhaps I am indeed wasting my time (and that of the audience) in becoming as emotional and specific to decades-old science fiction as I have occasionally been in this series of columns. What percentage of the readership can relate in any significant fashion? Charles Stross, anyone? More to the point: The Matrix anyone? Inside John Malkovich? Halo?

My response to the Distinguished Editor, at least to this point, has been

grudging and uncharacteristically wistful in its optimism. "I think there are a

lot of people out there who could be made interested in literary science

fiction and its antecedents. I've got to make it relevant, certainly and I should

not wallow in a pointless nostalgia, but if I didn't think that a good part of

our audience could be brought along to wider historical understanding, then I would not even try. As the Distinguished Editor himself said, Toastmastering at the 1988 New Orleans World Convention, "For without you we have no history." He was presenting the Convention's special award to members of the Science Fiction Oral History Association, whose primary task was to go into the field, interview first- and second-generation science fiction writers and fans at length and put those interviews into permanent form for custodial care. "And