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

characterization. We found numerous coy introductions of
sex interest, but no attempts to portray women intelligently
and lovingly, except in the beautiful story by a woman which
we present here.
Clearly, one has to look for reasons for this curious state of
affairs. We were interested to notice that even that elite, the
members of SFWA, writers or editors all, voted for some
indefensible stories. This gave us the idea that we as a
fraternity might perhaps indeed use the fraternity as a way of
betteringnot only ourselvesbut our standards, that these
annual volumes should be a sort of bar or tribunal before
which we have to come yearly up to scratch: a public
performance in which we must do better than just root for
our buddies.
It will not be enough for writers to scrape under the
admittedly not-very-exacting standards of the magazines. We
are not selling them yard goods, trash instantly exchangeable
for cash. We are selling them stories, by God, for real people
to read and enjoy, to derive some excitement and enjoyment
and maybe help from. Maybe they will also derive some
better understanding of the dynamically changing world about
them.
But this was the year of the yard goods, with a few
honorable exceptions.
We would have liked to include here stories that maybe
illuminated the pressing color question, the current political
situation, not to mention present scientific developments, or
the effects of those developments on art and customs, or the
war in Vietnam. We could not; no such story was voted for
or maybe written! The discrepancy between the stories in the
magazines and the often challenging and alert editorials was
never more remarkable.
The great big wonderful world of Western technology goes
on unrolling at the same exhilarating pace; beyond its borders
lie more shadowy realms, full of strange factors for SP writers
to investigate and extrapolate. Not much has been done about
either sphere, this year. although there is always Mack Reyn-
olds. Nor, on the other hand, have we had the benefit of
many pure flights of the imagination that turn the mundane
world into another and enchanted place. Well, there are
always paragons like Jack Vance, and there was Cordwainer
Smith. But we are grumbling about the rule, not the excep-
tions.
Science fiction has had good and bad years before. Why the
trouble this year?
More than most of us care to admit, science fiction is
influenced by the world around us. It may be fantasy about
Earths packed with robots, or starving people, or large green
insects that arrived here by "sublight," but the writers them-
selves have to bow to the more stimulating perils of the