Page:Astounding Science Fiction v54n06 (1955-02).djvu/140



Last month I was complaining that we're letting the adventure element go out of our science fiction, with the result that it is in danger of becoming a pastime for cultists. This month I want to look at what happens when so-called "serious" writers take up science-fiction themes.

They seem to be doing this with increasing frequency of late. Some of it may be an attempt to cash in on what they have heard is a popular and profitable field. Others, I think, have discovered that science fiction—and/or fantasy—has more elbow-room in it than the rather stiffly self-conscious social novels of the day. There's a chance to give old ideas a novel tinge, to preach a lesson, or occasionally—as in Graham Mclnness' "Lost Island"—just to tell a good story for the fun of it.

Some of you who have picked up J. B. Priestley's "The Magicians" may consider it pure fantasy. Others will recognize echoes of J. W. Dunne's multidimensional theory of time ("An Experiment With Time," "The Serial Universe"), which has interested Mr. Priestley for a good many years and which he has fitted into others of his novels and plays before this one. The three "magicians" RV 141