galacticjourney

by Gideon Marcus

I used to call The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction "dessert." Of all the monthly sf digests, it was the cleverest, the one most willing to take risks, and the most enjoyable reading. Over the past two years, I've noticed a slow but decided trend into the realm of "literary quality." In other words, it's not how good the stories are, or how fun the reading – they must be experimental and erudite to have any merit. And if you don't get the pieces, well, run off to Analog where the dumb people live.



A kind of punctuation mark has been added to this phenomenon. Avram Davidson, that somber dilettante with an encyclopedic knowledge and writing credits that take up many sheets of paper, has taken over as editor of F&SF from Robert Mills. Five years ago, I might have cheered. But Davidson's path has mirrored that of the magazine he now helms: a descent into literary impenetrability. Even his editorial prefaces to the magazine's stories are off-putting and contrived.

I dunno. You be the judge.



(see the rest at Galactic Journey!)

by Gideon Marcus

It's not quite time for a funeral, yet!

Nearly a decade ago, the Chicken Littles of our genre scribbled at length in our magazines and buttonholed each other at conventions to voice their fears that science fiction was dying. Well, it is true that we are down to just six American sff digests per month, off of the 40 magazine peak of 1953. On the other hand, I'd argue that we're not that much worse off for having lost the lesser monthlies. Moreover, sff novels still seem to be doing a brisk trade.

In the three years since I started this column, I've seen a cadre of new writers burst onto the scene; clearly, no one told them that their field is dead! And while sff continues to be something of a man's world, this fact is changing, slowly but surely. Since just last year, when I wrote 18 mini-biographies of the women authors of science fiction, I've become exposed to a whole new crop of female bylines. Some of them are just new to me, having been in the biz for a long time. Others are genuinely fresh onto the scene.

Without further ado, the supplemental list for early 1962:



(see the rest at Galactic Journey!)

Have you ever heard/seen Karl Orrf's Carmina Burana? It's an opera of sorts, the performance of a set of medieval poems to music. It is likely that you're at least familiar with its opening number, the catchy Oh Fortuna!. Well, having seen Carmina, I can tell you that even Orff knew there wasn't much to the rest of the piece – as evidenced by the fact that Oh Fortuna! gets performed twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. You can snooze through the rest.

This month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is like Carmina: a tremendous beginning followed by a largely snoozeworthy remainder. I suppose that, if you want to complete the analogy, you can simply read the opening piece again after finishing the book. You probably will.



(see the rest at Galactic Journey!)