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Science Fiction : What It’s All About Sam J. Lundwall Copyright ©, 1971, by Sam J. Lundwall This is a revised, enlarged, and specially translated edition of a work first published in Sweden under the title: Science Fiction—Fran begynnelsen till vara dagar, and which is copyright ©, 1969, by Sam J. Lundwall, for Sveriges Radios forlag. Translated by the author. An Ace Book. All Rights Reserved. Cover art by Dean Ellis. For ingred Author's acknowledgments: For invaluable help and suggestions given to me during the work on this revised edition I am grateful to Alvar Appeltofft, Kenneth Bulmer, E. J. Carnell, Alan Dodd, Philip J. Harbottle, George Hay, Archie Mercer and L. Sjdanov. And, of course, to Donald A. Wollheim, who encouraged me to undertake the job of translating and revising the book. -S.J.L. Printed in U.S.A.
SCIENCE FICTION: Three definitions: "Science fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the 'willing suspension of disbelief on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science and philosophy." — Sam Moskowitz "Science fiction is what you find on the shelves in the library marked science fiction." — George Hay "Science fiction doesn't exist." - Brian W. Aldiss SCIENCE FICTION: WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT A book that will tell you.
SCIENCE FICTION: WHAT it's ALL ABOUT
INTRODUCTION by Donald A. Wollheim We science fiction readers whose native language happens to be English—that is to say we American, we Canadian, we British, and we Australian science fiction readers—tend to a curious sort of provincialism in our thinking regarding the boundaries of science fiction. We tend to think that all that is worth reading and all that is worth notice is naturally written in English. In our conventions and our awards and our discussions we slip into the habit of referring to our favorites as the world's best this and the world's best that. The annual American science fiction convention calls itself the World Science Fiction Convention, though every now and then it deigns to allow itself to meet overseas, but always with a strong cord attached so that it will return the next year to its "natural" heliocentric American habitat. Of course we recognize with some moderate historical condescension that once there was a famous founding father named Jules Verne and that he was French. And we pay tribute to the fact that in the oldest issues of American science fiction magazines series appeared that had been translated from the German. Somehow, we also assume that abroad, in non-English speaking lands, there probably may be some local writers and even local magazines turning out stories and novels in the native tongues, but obviously going unnoticed and scarce worth translating. To one sensitive enough to think about it and to realize how provincial such a viewpoint surely must be, it comes therefore as something of a bewildering discovery upon going abroad to Western Europe or to Japan to find that these prejudices have real basis. Scan the published science fiction in Germany, or Holland, or Italy, Spain, Japan, France, Sweden, Denmark and —lo!—you will find that from eighty to ninety percent of it is indeed from English originals! Translations galore into every language, but always of the same American and British masters we honor in their original editions. We come back to wondering how this came to be so. We come back perhaps also not a little pleased that this is so. What a pat to the ego to discover that "our" science fiction does indeed dominate the Western world and that the Hugos given as "World's Best" by some predominantly American readerhood may be quite justified in that designation. (It goes without saying that all this does not apply to that mysterious world of literature masked by the unreadab