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The Science Fiction Fan, v. 4, issue 8, whole no. 44, March 1940
Page 5
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FAN . . . . . . . . . . . 5 fault of the author as far as difficulty in the writing goes. It is true: the professional soon burn themselves out; the majority of amateurs mimic and jackal the masters with an almost sickening repititiousness. Weir fiction, in itself, is its own reward - the reward of creating. It is tragic that our perverted civilization is so jubled that there is no place for the dreamer of strange and beautiful dreams, in the vast majority of instances. That magazines, and books, (but especially magazines which must appear regularly) to bring material remuneration must be banal and offer their public carefully raked manure rather than artistic effort, and that the professional weird-story magazine has little chance unless it is either mediocre from the start to finish (as most of them are) or can build up an audience (a specialized audience with itself as it grows and improves. This is what Weird Tales has done. Perhaps its greatest difficulty, increasing constantly as the years go by and death claims more and more of the original circle of readers and authors, is obtaining new blood on both sides of the fence. The early readers were gradually broken in, with the editor, to the present standards of imaginative quality and true weirdness and fine writing. But were Weird Tales to print only the acme of imaginative fiction, to live rigorously up to its highest standards, its audience would very quickly be cut down to the comparative few who can understand and appreciate the gems it can and does offer to the discriminating reader. Breaking in new readers, as it is constantly doing by a running variety and grades of weird fiction, would be well nigh impossible,- at least from a commercial point of view. And, remember, authors, editors, publishers, artists
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FAN . . . . . . . . . . . 5 fault of the author as far as difficulty in the writing goes. It is true: the professional soon burn themselves out; the majority of amateurs mimic and jackal the masters with an almost sickening repititiousness. Weir fiction, in itself, is its own reward - the reward of creating. It is tragic that our perverted civilization is so jubled that there is no place for the dreamer of strange and beautiful dreams, in the vast majority of instances. That magazines, and books, (but especially magazines which must appear regularly) to bring material remuneration must be banal and offer their public carefully raked manure rather than artistic effort, and that the professional weird-story magazine has little chance unless it is either mediocre from the start to finish (as most of them are) or can build up an audience (a specialized audience with itself as it grows and improves. This is what Weird Tales has done. Perhaps its greatest difficulty, increasing constantly as the years go by and death claims more and more of the original circle of readers and authors, is obtaining new blood on both sides of the fence. The early readers were gradually broken in, with the editor, to the present standards of imaginative quality and true weirdness and fine writing. But were Weird Tales to print only the acme of imaginative fiction, to live rigorously up to its highest standards, its audience would very quickly be cut down to the comparative few who can understand and appreciate the gems it can and does offer to the discriminating reader. Breaking in new readers, as it is constantly doing by a running variety and grades of weird fiction, would be well nigh impossible,- at least from a commercial point of view. And, remember, authors, editors, publishers, artists
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