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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 6, January 1946
Page 18
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18. personifications become clear in the vastness of space. Lust, Pride, Temptation, Desire, and Respect are ordinary characters of futuristic fiction. These personifications grouped together form allegories. In one futuristic story in Astounding Science-Fiction the problem of the Jewish race, today and always, is allegorically told in the story of a wandering planet which is looking for a home.5 The problem is developed by conversations between a citizen of our world and a leader of the wandering planet. The good and the evil of the "aryan" world are vividly given, as are the same qualities of the Jewish world. In these mythological, allegorical stories the cosmos is intuitively expressed in the placing of man as the superior race, and the earth, either because of its democratic ideals, or its self sufficiency, as the center of all space. The inhabitants of other planets fall into the category of elves and trolls, being dangerous but also amusing in their unconscious aping of mankind. Or they may fall into the satanic division, becoming, almost power for power, Morgan Le Fay fighting against the good scientist Merlin. Like movie heroes, never wet after swimming for hours and neatly combed after an hour's tussle with a tiger, the futuristic hero wanders through life-time upon life-time of peril and contention, returning by the grace of his amulet, or superior scientific knowledge, to the woman he left behind a good ten-times longer ago than Ulysses. All these things are done, however, much more logically than by the movies, with weather-suits, age-defying drugs, time-travel and counter-everything rays and fields. __________________ 5. Wesley Long, "Nomad," Astounding Science-Fiction (December, 1944), XXXIV, No. 4:7-55.
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18. personifications become clear in the vastness of space. Lust, Pride, Temptation, Desire, and Respect are ordinary characters of futuristic fiction. These personifications grouped together form allegories. In one futuristic story in Astounding Science-Fiction the problem of the Jewish race, today and always, is allegorically told in the story of a wandering planet which is looking for a home.5 The problem is developed by conversations between a citizen of our world and a leader of the wandering planet. The good and the evil of the "aryan" world are vividly given, as are the same qualities of the Jewish world. In these mythological, allegorical stories the cosmos is intuitively expressed in the placing of man as the superior race, and the earth, either because of its democratic ideals, or its self sufficiency, as the center of all space. The inhabitants of other planets fall into the category of elves and trolls, being dangerous but also amusing in their unconscious aping of mankind. Or they may fall into the satanic division, becoming, almost power for power, Morgan Le Fay fighting against the good scientist Merlin. Like movie heroes, never wet after swimming for hours and neatly combed after an hour's tussle with a tiger, the futuristic hero wanders through life-time upon life-time of peril and contention, returning by the grace of his amulet, or superior scientific knowledge, to the woman he left behind a good ten-times longer ago than Ulysses. All these things are done, however, much more logically than by the movies, with weather-suits, age-defying drugs, time-travel and counter-everything rays and fields. __________________ 5. Wesley Long, "Nomad," Astounding Science-Fiction (December, 1944), XXXIV, No. 4:7-55.
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