Thanks loads, Carlos

[james_davis_nicoll]

Collected John W. Campbell, Jr. editorials

Comments

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

There is a visible gap in transmission from science fiction derived from the magazine era to the science fiction that's currently being read (though it might be classified as young adult fiction etc). Compare the lines of transmission for fantasy, where people still discuss the writers of ninety years ago as living influences.

It's probably for the best: do we really want science fiction as a curated, backwards-looking genre, only in conversation with itself forever and ever and ever? But I can't help but think some babies have been thrown out with the bathwater.

[seawasp]

I'm not sure I see this gap you're talking about, or that a similar gap doesn't exist in fantasy if you look at it in certain ways. I think we'd have to define what you mean by "being read" and so on. If you mean that fewer people admit to having, say, Doc Smith as a direct influence, I'd agree, but his indirect influence remains as does that of all the other Big Names of the past. Urban fantasy (which as I understand it is the largest fantasy division) seems to me much more influenced by secondary (or tertiary) sources than by the originals, just like most SF.

In both cases there are people who still write stuff that directly acknowledges the roots of their genre, and with *epic* fantasy we do have the situation in which the great majority of the genre is still influenced by a single work (Lord of the Rings) which has remained sufficiently popular to stay in the public eye, instead of (like Doc Smith and his contemporaries) being relegated to mostly-obscurity. But even in the latter case there are still stories written that derive from and hearken back to the earlier works.