[Solar-fundadores] {Spam?} Rvice operative on guard at the door admitted him and h

Mon Dec 28 00:52:14 CET 2009

Tory to be unusual, so don't bother telling me it is so. That criticism
applies to "Phantoms of Reality," which is a story above the average,
though, despite its rather flat title and slow beginning. Here's another
good point about "Tanks." Its characters are human. Some authors of
stories of the future make their characters all brains--cold monsters,
with no humanity in them. Such a story has neither human interest nor
plausibility. The sky's the limit, I say, for mechanical or scientific
accomplishments, but human emotions will be the same a thousand years
from now. And even supposing that they will be changed, your readers
have present day emotions. The magazine can not prosper unless those
present-day emotions are aroused and mirrored by thoroughly human
characters. The situation may be just as outre as you like--the more
unusual the better--but it is the response of normal human emotions to
most unusual situations that gives a magazine such as yours its powerful
and unique "kick." The response of the two infantrymen in "Tanks" to the
strange and terrifying new warfare of the future exemplifies another
point I would like to make--the fact that no matter what marvels the
future may bring, the people who will live then will take them in a
matter-of-fact way. Their conversation will be cigarettes, "sag-paste,"
drinks, women. References to the scientific marvels around them will be
casual and sketchy. How many million words of an average car owner's
conversation would you have to report to give a visitor from 1700 an
idea of internal combustion engines? The author, if skillful, can convey
that information in other ways. Yet a lot of stories printed have long,
stilted conversations in which the author thinks he is conveying in an
entertaining way his foundation situation. Personally, I like a lot of
physical action--violent action preferred. This is so, probably, because
I'm a school teacher and sedentary in my habits. I have never written a
story in my life, but I'm the most voracious consumer of stories in
Chicago. I like to see the hero get into a devil of a pickle, and to
have him smash his way out. I like 'em big, tough, and kind to their
grandmothers. It seems to me that interplanetary stories offer the best
vehicle for all the de
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