Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

Editorial | RECEIVED A LETTER THE other day and, because it touches on something of in- terest to us all, I’d like to talk about it here instead of squeezing other letters out of the readers’ column. The writer, a young man, wanted to know how to set about writing a good science fiction story. A simple request? Well, suppose we think about it for a little while. Writing a story, any sort of a story, isn’t as easy as most people seem to think. Many young writers, filled with the urge to do better than the professionals, have learned that, like every- thing else worth doing, writing takes time, patience, know- ledge and experience. Above all, experience; the percentage of new writers who have sold their very first story—and then sold their second—is remarkably low. It isn’t enough just to put down words; those words have to mean something. It isn’t enough to have what you may think is a good idea. That idea has to be presented in an entertaining form, for that is what a story is, you know, entertainment. No matter how cunning the concept, how strong the moral, unless it is entertaining to the reader, then it will not be read and the concept or moral lost through lack of communication. And science fiction, tosome- one outside the medium, is probably the hardest type of story to write at all. It doesn’t seem that way, I agree. With the entire universe at our disposal, with all of space and time, and the realm of science, to use as our back- ground, with every imaginable concept, both possible and desirable, then why should science fiction be so hard to write? The trouble, I think, must be that it seems too easy. . Writers tend to forget that, connicloooks.comn