From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Dec 19 2002 - 08:34:37 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
>Charles Hixson wrote:
>
>
>
>>it's a pity that the [Baen] selections are so restricted, but it's
>>also easily understandable. In particular, I wish that he carried a
>>large selection of out of print works, though I certainly understand the
>>economic rationale for not doing so.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>But it's a shame that so many works languish unreprinted because of
>>copyright restrictions. That does nobody any good.
>>
>>
>
>A quite amazing hoard of old and recent sf is now available at
>www.Fictionwise.com, usually quite cheaply. The writers get a heroic royalty
>rate, three or four times what we'd earn for paper.
>
>Some time back I recommended Poul Anderson's BRAIN WAVE, a short and flawed
>but immensely interesting early novel (nearly half a century old now) about
>brain augmentation on a planetary scale. It was out of print and hard to
>find at 2nd hand stores, but now it's at F/wise at
>http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook8270.htm for four and a half bucks...
>...
>Damien Broderick
>
But I consider Brain Wave to be recent science fiction. I'm thinking of
magazine serials and stories from the 1930's and 40's (I never saw any
significant amount of the work from the 20's or earlier). Early Jack
Williamson, e.g. I once had an early story of his called the
Equalizer. Or the E.B. Cole novella's. Or the early James H. Schmitz.
Well, most of what I know actually was written after WWII, but I saw
enough to know that the mood and theming of the stories changed
DRAMATICALLY around them. Eric Frank Russell wrote a truly moving short
story about militarism, that includes the entire text of a child's story
about experiencing an aerial bombing "...My cat went splat against the
wall...". I can't remember it, and I regret it much. This is a story
that would be very important to us now, if we but knew it.
And sometimes the early work of an author is their best. "Blood's a
Rover" by, I believe, Chad Oliver, was never again equalled by that
author. But it was too short to be half of an ACE double, so it died
ca. 1952, when that magazine issue was replaced by the next.
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