For some time I have been wondering what the world is coming to. More
than once I have got up in the middle of the nite, padded toward the
bureau, and, peering into the mirror, exclaimed, "Stinky, what is the
world coming to?" The responses I have thus obtained I am not at liberty
to reveal; but I am coming to believe that either I have a most
mysterious mirror or something is wrong somewhere. I am intrigued by my
mirror.
It came into my possession under extraordinary and eerie circumstances,
being borne into my bedroom one Midsummer's Eve by a procession of cats
dressed oddly in bright-colored sunsuits and carrying parasols. I was
asleep at the time, but awoke just as the last tail whisked out the
door, and immediately I sprang out of bed and cut my left big toe rather
badly on the edge of the mirror. I remember that as I first looked into
the fathomless, glassy depths, a curious thot came into my mind. "What,"
I said to myself, "is the world coming to? And what is science-fiction
coming to?"
It is quite evident that a logical and critical analysis of
science-fictional trends is a desideratum today. The whole trouble, I
feel, can be laid to velleity. (I have wanted to use that word for
years. Unfortunately I have now forgotten exactly what it means, but one
can safely attribute trouble to it. Where was I?)
Today science-fiction is split by schisms and impaled on the trylon of
bad thots. The fans, I mean, not the writers. The writers have been
split and impaled for years, but nothing can be done about that. In a
way, it's a good thing. Look at Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and, for that
matter, the late unfortunate Tobias J. Koot.
I put flowers on his grave only yesterday. He lies at rest, tho his
ghastly fate pursued him even to the grave. And I attribute Mr. Koot's
fate to nothing less than the schisms of fandom. For Koot was a hard
working young man, serious, earnest, with promise of becoming a
first-class writer. He took life very solemnly--almost grimly. "My job,"
he told me once, "is to give people what they want."
"I want a drink," I said to him. "Give me one."
But Koot couldn't be turned from his rash course. He began to write
science-fiction. That was where the trouble started. "Is it science?" he
pondered. "Or is it fiction?" Already the cleavage--the split--had
begun.
It was a matter of logical progression toward ultimate division. Koot
got in the habit of typing the science into his stories with his left
hand, and the fiction with his right. He began to twitch and worry. He
got up nites. He was troubled, uneasy. "I have one thing left to cling
to," he muttered desperately, "Fandom! I can point to that and say: It
is real. It exists. It is dependable."
When fandom had its schism, Koot immediately developed a split
personality. It was rather horrible. His left side--the scientific
side--grew cold and hard and keen. He grew a Van Dyke on the left side
of his face and his left hand was stained with acids and chemicals. But
the right side of his face became dissipated and disreputable, with a
leer in the eye end a scornful, sneering curve to the lip. He grew a
tiny moustache on the right side, waxed it, and twirled it continually.
It was rather horrid, but worse was yet to come.
One day the inevitable happened. Tobias J. Koot split in half, with a
faint ripping sound and a despairing wail. He was, of course, buried in
two coffins and in two graves, the wretched man's fate pursuing him even
beyond death.
Well, you can understand how I feel, what with the mirror, the cats in
sunsuits and the weasel. Or haven't I mentioned the weasel? I mean the
brown one, of course, and he is, perhaps, worst of all. It isn't what he
says so much as his sneering, ironic tone. The other weasels, who live
in the spare bedroom with the colt, were happy enuf till HE arrived, but
now THEY are arranging a schism. As you will readily see, something must
be done about it before science-fiction collapses and the standard falls
trailing into the dust.
I suggest that we mobilize, and, to avoid dissension, give everybody the
rank of general. Then, first of all, we can march to my house and get
rid of that weasel.
The Brown One, of course. The others are welcome to stay as long as they
like. I feel that they are weak rather than wicked, and need only a good
excuse, or should I say example, in order to brace themselves up.
Contributions to the fund for the mobilization of science-fiction and
the extermination of brown weasels may be sent to me in care of this
magazine. Do not delay. Each moment you wait brings us closer to doom,
and, besides, I need a new piano.