Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [178]
J.G. Ballard prefers to call his published work “speculative fantasy” and this, I feel, is a more apt term for the best of what is normally called science fiction. Yet Ballard’s ideas about science are at best twentieth-century ideas—not the Victorian ideas involving machines and dials and plugs and pistons. They are in keeping with the experiments modern scientists are making in the realms of nuclear physics, neurology, psychology—experiments which are increasingly touching on the metaphysical so that to read the text of a modern scientific paper is sometimes like reading the sayings of some old Asian hermit. Yet Ballard prefers to think of his work as “speculative fantasy.”
Speculative fantasy is also what Brian Aldiss, the other eminent British contributor to the field, writes. Aldiss is less interested in abstracts than Ballard. His exceptionally good style and above all sympathetic interest in the human plight have combined to produce some excellent short stories.
Nowadays there is something horribly depressing, and earnest, and dull about the main body of work termed science fiction. Ballard and Aldiss stand far above the rest. They have realized the form’s limitations but have not accepted them, have taken strides to cast them off. They have come up with stories like Faceless Card or A Question of Re-Entry which, while no means being science fiction, are extremely good stories that utilize the possibilities of the SF tale without giving in to its heavy limitations. And, above all, these two writers are literate. No wonder they stand out.
Science fiction as we know it sprang from the main body of fantastic fiction and must now, by degrees, ease back in again if it is to survive. It is doing this, it is learning that it cannot survive as an independent form. Fantastic fiction must in turn fertilize and be fertilized by the mainstream if it is to survive.
In the field of the magazines there have been two which have acted as outlets for the “changeover” story. One in America, one in Britain. The British magazine is Science Fantasy, the American is Fantastic. After this issue, we shall be left with one.
Science Fantasy has published a proportionately higher number of good stories than any other magazine to date. The comparative freedom allowed to the writer for this magazine has been greater than anywhere else. I only wish I could have written better stories for it while I had the chance.
It was not only my opinion that Science Fantasy was achieving a more literary and less prosaic tone in its choice of material. To some extent it had always possessed a more literary “image” than any of its competitors.
In recent years with the publication of stories like The Watchtowers, Where Is the Bird of Fire?, Same Time, Same Place, Skeleton Crew and many others, it has shown the uses to which fantasy can be put, has done something more than entertain on an escapist level.
Perhaps this is why it was beginning to be thought, in this country and the States, the best of all the current magazines.
It has long been a maxim that the best doesn’t sell as well as the worst.
Ironically, future analysis may show that Science Fantasy’s very death was due to its emphasis on literate and literary writing rather than on gadgets and gimmicks.
INTRODUCTION TO THE SKRAYLING TREE
Introduction to
THE SKRAYLING TREE
(2003)
TEXAS SUMMERS ARE notoriously cruel. They sap the life out of you. Anyone able to do so escapes. Sometimes we go west to California, sometimes we go north-east, to Maine, to the forests and endless seashores, whose lands are as drenched in myth and legend as Texas.
An Englishman, a Londoner, I’m often asked why I chose to live in Texas. I have