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FUTURE_DECLINE


                                              September 22, 2006
                                              January   16, 2007

The 2006 Burning Man event had
a (largely ignored) theme of         Actually, there was a certain
"The Future: Hope and Fear", so      amount of prefunctory observance,
I came up with a small bit of        mostly in the form of nods to
performance art:                     the "theme" in artist statements
                                     and so on.
I hung around in different
places, reading the
September 1952 issue of
"FUTURE Science Fiction"

I choose this particular magazine for the
title, of course, but the particular issue
I selected for it's cover, a picture of a
blond woman in a blue and gold bikini-like
outfit, wearing some sort of veil, running         The veil, according to
away from an erupting volcano and a flying         the story, was a spiffy,
saucer.                                            far-future space helmet,

   That was supposed to remind one of
   Burning Man fashion and settings.          A friend looked at
                                              what I was reading
                                              and commented:

                                              "Is that a real one?!"

                                                  He was expecting,
                                                  maybe, McSweeny's?

I decided to read this one                           He was impressed to hear
cover-to-cover (though I                             that the letters column
didn't finish it off at                              included a member of a
Burning Man).                                        Theosophical group,
                                                     arguing with L. Sprague
I was left with the strong sense that                deCamp about Madame
this was a weak issue...  or perhaps                 Blavatsky.
an example of a magazine in decline.


Robert A. Lowndes was a respected
editor, but this is one of the                   And by then,
second or third rank magazines,                  _Astounding_
with extremely low pay rates.                    was established
                                                 as the center
Few people would publish here if                 of the action
they could publish elsewhere, and                for more serious
over time the problem becomes                    work.
more pronounced...

                                                    BLACK_MASKS
    So this is not just an
    example of a reviled genre
    magazine, but a minor
    example:

          This is a look in a
          dark corner within          DARK_CORNER
          a dark corner...



                                    "The Gods Fear Love"
      This issue begins and          by Gene Hunter       (No, I don't believe
      ends with stories of                                that name either.)
      sex infecting the
      asexual.                      "Facts of Life"
                                     by Dave Dryfoos      (That's a little
   The seduction of the innocent,                         hard, too.)
   where the innocent is played
   by a humanity evolved into
   Spock-like intellectual rigor,
   and the seducer is exotic
   barbarian "aliens" (of the                    FORBIDDEN_PLANET
   familiar humanoid variety).
                                     Note: Forbidden Planet was not out
                                     until '56, four years later.

                                             My guess: these were all
                                             idealizations of the
                                             plight of US servicemen
                                             during WW II.

                                                  The "South Pacific"
                                                  scenario (1947 on
 None of the stories are                          Broadway).
 anywhere near hard sf.
                            HARD_PROBLEMS
Most are "translations":
conventional fiction
retold in an invented           One of them is clearly
exotic locale on another        a version of "The
planet..                        Treasure of Sierra Madre"

                                         "Final Barrier by
This issue has a quite long               Alan E. Nourse
letter column...

It was free content after all,
though in retrospect we can recognize
that there's a sense of community
there that is probably at the core          Return readership.
of what these magazines were really         Sticky eyes.
about.

                                     
One of the letters complains about a      
lack of science, a lack of a focus on     
the future in FUTURE -- but the           
examples of what he likes are all         
movies:                                   
                                          
   "When Worlds Collide",                
   "The Day the Earth Stood Still",
   "Rocketship XM"...

he even mentions the old 30s Flash
Gordon serials as being far superior
to the science fantasy published in
"Future".


Even as far back as 1952, there
were already people for whom the
printed word was a secondary medium.



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