"Aldiss, Brian W - Afterward - This Year in SF 1966" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

AFTERWORD

THE YEAR IN SF (1966)
I believe that SF attracts the more imaginative, inquiring child,
the type who can make a success in the scientific field. God
knows we need that type.
Dr. JULES T. SIMON, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission

It was definitely the year of the book in 1966. One
speciality book dealer, the F. and S.F. Book Co., informed us
that he had to work overtime to fill his orders and that he
looked forward to an even better year ahead. There were
approximately 319 science fiction books published during this
twelve-month period; of this number, seventy-three were
hardbound and 241 were paperback books. Doubleday and
Company led the hardbound publishers with twenty-six books,
and Ace Books topped the other paperback houses with
seventy-two titles.
These figures are not entirely accurate; as soon as you look
at them closely they begin to shimmer and change. Though
the publishers were co-operation itself, it proved immensely
difficult to track down all of the publishers. Many of the titles,
once discovered, proved to be in that shadowy borderland of
"but is it science fiction?" Should we include the Doc Savage
books from Bantameven though the editors of Bantam
themselves do not consider the bronze man's heroic exploits
to be SF? And what about that mysterious paperback firm of
Corinth who published 48 titles in 1966 that they dredged up
from the old pulps, names to bring a tear to the middle-aged
eye: Phantom Detective, Operator No. 5, Dusty Ayres? Are
they SF? In the light of this, we present the above figures as
being about asscience-fictional as the works under discqssion
and, in essence, a partly personal conclusion.
So much for quantitywhat about quality? Here we are on
firmer ground and, in two men's opinions, the books seemed
far superior to the short stories, an observation which we shall
examine in some detail in a moment. Perhaps one reason for
the superiority of the novel is the remarkable vitality of
well-liked works of SF. Some of these books, though beaten
to death with critical crowbars, annually assemble their scat-
tered bones and spattered blood and rise from the grave born
anew. E. E. Smith, Ph.D. ("Doc" to his friends and fansand
the world, since this is the title his publishers now label him
with on their covers) began writing his Lensman saga a
longish time ago; the oldest volume was copyrighted in 1937,
and he produced a good half million words about his hero
before he finished. Pyramid Books have seen fit to bring out a
complete edition of all of the volumes this year (Triplanetary,
First Lensman, Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage