The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

[southernweirdo]

The following letter to the editor is from Astounding Stories; Vol. VII, No. 1; July 1931:

Dear Editor:

I have purchased many of the issues of your magazine, and have read everything in them, including the letter columns, with great interest. I have particularly enjoyed certain stories, such as "The Forgotten Planet," "The Jovian Jest" and "The

Comments

[marshallpayne1]

Agreed! Personally, I like my SF rather impossible. The more rubbery the better! ;-)

[southernweirdo]

I'm with you (as you can probably guess if you've read the anthology). :) I like hard science fiction every now and then, don't get me wrong, but few people do it really well. Crichton gets a lot of flack from the genre community, but in his earlier books especially, things like The Terminal Strain, he showed it can be done well and be entertaining, too. Greg Bear's stuff is pretty good, too, usually. I even liked a lot of the mundane SF trend that was popular there for a moment. But typically, I'll just say I prefer Bradbury to Niven when it comes to entertainment and emotional impact -- and lack of data dumps -- and leave it at that. The depth of imagination is a beautiful thing that should not be stifled by the exactness of scientific rigor.

[a_r_williams]

::presses like button::

[southernweirdo]

:) Too bad the 1931 Astounding Stories didn't come with a "like" button.