First Published in
Science Fiction Quarterly, summer 1942.
The Futurians in 1938 - DAW is top row at the right.* |
Coming straight after
Lowndes, we have one of the most important editors in the later
development of SF. Wolheim was already a seasoned pro at age 28 when
this story was published, having made his first professional sale 10
years previously. He was an active SF fan and had been involved in
one of the earliest of fandom’s schisms.
In the 30s, Hugo Gernsback
had used the pages of Wonder Stories to promote the official-sounding
‘Science Fiction League’ as a kind of rallying point for the
growing fandom movement. Ashley observes that ‘For science fiction
fans [emphasis in original] the fiction came secondary in
Wonder Stories.’ One of SF’s biggest magazines had become
a house organ for a social group, rather than being about stories at
all.
Wolheim was expelled
from the Science Fiction League in 1935. He’d been responsible for
setting up the International Scientific Association which, in
Ashley’s words, ‘opposed the Science Fiction League’ on the
basis that fan organisations should be separate from commercial
publishers. The feud lasted a few years and numerous splinter and
fringe groups grew up in its wake, like protestant religious factions
in the 17th century. Wolheim was later a founding member
of The Futurians, perhaps the most influential group in the history
of SF, and certainly in the genre’s golden age.
In light of all this,
this story becomes less an individual work and more like a rallying
cry for certain types of fan.