Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 111: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Editor does not necessarily agree with all the views expounded in this article—only some of them! On Writing Science Fiction The usuai and best advice to a potential author is ‘Study the great writers,’ and it holds good for a science fiction author too. Fielding or Conrad are splendid foundations for anybody’s_ style. Addison’s Essays may be of more help than Einstein’s special theory. _If this sounds too like a counsel of perfection, re- member that every word we use has already been used over and over again, and a word, like an old penny, gets its edge worn off and the symbol that it bears becomes defaced. The most brilliant plot is not enough—there is also an emotion to be con- veyed, and the tried and true way of doing that is sentence arrangement—con- struction. Yes, grammar! You can no more write without a firm grip of syntax than you by BRIAN W. ALDISS can build a skyscraper without a steel skeleton. The science fiction writer could do worse than read Defoe. Defoe had several aims in common with sciencefiction —to give a feeling of reality to a vision, to give an “‘eye- witness” quality to something never experienced. Read his Journal of the Plague Year—it is a most enthralling account (and you can get it for 5s. in the Everyman edition). Yet, having said that, there remains something else—pace. It is amodern requirement and you will not learn it from Henry James. Instead, try a subscription—should I sug- gest it, even in the broad- minded columns of Authentic? —to Astounding. There you can see the fast bowlers of science fiction in action, as efficient as the machines they 110 comiclbooks.com