Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site ahuta.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!ahuta!ecl
From: ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Hugo Gernsback
Message-ID: <123@ahuta.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Nov-84 20:28:19 EST
Article-I.D.: ahuta.123
Posted: Tue Nov 27 20:28:19 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 05:01:02 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 65


                               Hugo Gernsback
                      An editorial by Evelyn C. Leeper

     Every year the World Science Fiction Convention members give out the
"Hugos," awards named after Hugo Gernsback.  But what did Gernsback do to
deserve this honor, and the respect that he is given in the science fiction
community?

     He didn't invent science fiction.  Whether you want to claim that
science fiction was invented by Jonathan Swift (or even earlier) or are one
of those who dates (modern) science fiction from Shelley, Verne, and Wells,
you have to admit that Gernsback did not invent it.  He didn't even write
much of it--his one surviving work is RALPH 24C41+--and a pretty bad novel
it is.  He didn't seek out and promote the best authors--Wells and Stapledon
were not regular contributors to AMAZING.  What he did do was to give
science fiction its own name--and its own ghetto.  Far from performing a
service for the genre, he acted in such a way that it has taken almost fifty
years to even attempt to recover from the damage he did.

     Before AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in mainstream
magazines.  After AMAZING STORIES, science fiction was published in science
fiction magazines.  Before AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good
novel to be reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of
people.  After AMAZING STORIES, authors could expect a good novel to be
reviewed by the press, sell well, and be read be a lot of people--*unless*
it was science fiction, in which case it wouldn't be reviewed (except in
science fiction magazines), sell just about the same number of copies as any
other science fiction novel, and be read by just about the same number of
people as any other science fiction novel.  The phenomenon of "it's not
science fiction because it's good" got started here; science fiction books
weren't reviewed by major reviewers.

     At last we seem to be escaping from this trap.  What prompted me to
write this editorial was the increasing number of "cross-over" books that
are being reviewed in both the science fiction markets and the mainstream
markets.  Authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Robert Heinlein you
might expect to find on the bestseller lists and reviewed in the NEW YORK
TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS, but Anne McCaffrey and Philip Jose Farmer?

     The "horror novel" was exempted from Gernsback's scope, and so (until a
few years ago) horror novels were kept in the fiction section of the
bookstore, not in a special section next to "science fiction" and
"juveniles." With the Stephen King phenomenon, and what seems like every
author coming out with a horror novel, some (but only some) stores have set
up separate sections for horror novels, but even this seems to be going
away.  Not the science fiction section, though--Waldenbooks is even giving
it its own club.

     The result is that everyone loses.  The authors whose books are
classified as science fiction sell less (which is why so many "science
fiction" authors have renounced the field).  The readers who prefer science
fiction tend to do all their browsing in that section and miss the good
novels filed in the fiction (which may or may not be science fiction
anyway).  Authors recently reviewed here that you might have missed by not
checking the fiction section include Russell Hoban (PILGERMANN), Virginia
Woolf (ORLANDO: A BIOGRAPHY), and Doris Lessing (SHIKASTA).  Other authors
of the fantastic not to be found in the science fiction section include
Jorge Luis Borges and Robertson Davies.

     Given all the trouble that's he's caused, why *do* people venerate
Hugo Gernsback?

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					...ihnp4!hocsj!ecl