Never Too Old to Dream

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Most of the contemporary masters have one point in common: their stories are laid in the future. Interplanetary flights are routine, as are the "space operas" in which heroes chase villains through dazzling stretches of the galaxy. One of the oldest forms of science fiction is the "Utopia story," in which a coherent history of an ideal world is sketched out. A popular form is the "prophecy story," in which the consequences of man's inventive ingenuity in, say, rocket ships, are thought out. Subject matter ranges from the zoology of other planets to apocalyptic portraits of the world after it has been destroyed in the Third, Fourth or Fifth World War.

Hungry Fans. Readers of science fiction include a special cult which specializes in collecting the classics in the field and faithfully supports the worthy publishing ventures. The prices which some of the more prized volumes command are steep. H. P. Lovecraft's The Outsider sells for from $50 to $100, Vol. I No. 1 of Astounding Stories of Super Science for as high as $50. Several publishers estimate that from 30% to 40% of their readers are professional men, some of them scientists who read the stories for relaxation but with a sharp eye for scientific errors. Clubs are often organized by fans who hold regular discussion meetings and publish such magazines as Fandom Speaks, Fantasy Review, Macabre, The Gorgon and Lunacy. One Californian keeps his precious 2,000-volume collection in a fireproof concrete vault.

There has been some speculation about the reasons for the science-fiction fad. The Saturday Review of Literature's Harrison Smith has speculated about the relation of the "age of anxiety" to the "scientific fantasy story" as "a buffer against known and more conceivable terrors." Publishers' Weekly finds that the appeal of these stories lies "in their free flight of [imagination] . . . uninhibited by present reality, yet sometimes terrifyingly close to the advanced discoveries of modern science."

The reader who reads science fiction dispassionately is likely to be struck by how closely the human imagination is tied to reality, even when it deliberately sets out to violate it. Stanley Weinbaum's loonies and slinkers have been seen before. The shapes may be different, but his dream-beasts come startlingly close to what the human race has been running across, for a good many years, in its childish nightmares.