Redux: Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?

This is a fairly brief follow-up to two previous blog posts, one that I published on March 7 entitled "Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?" and a sequel post of sorts that was published just the other day, entitled "More on the Death of Science Fiction."

My friend, the author Andrew Fox, has rejoined the online community once again, and in a big way. And I wanted to point readers to his website and blog, and particularly to his recent post entitled "The Death of Science Fiction, 1960 and Today." Andy blogs about the Earl Kemp project (and graciously links to my original Earl Kemp post as well), but he covers two points that I didn't. Whereas I focused strictly on Earl Kemp, Andy talks about the state of the magazine and publishing industry just before and at the time of Kemp's project; he also does a brief crystal-ball comparison between the state of publishing in the 1960s and what we may experience approximately five years from now. If you found my previous two posts of interest, you'll certainly want to check out what Andy has written as well.

And speaking of the state of the magazine industry just before and during Kemp's project, be sure to read Bud Webster's comment on my March 7 blog post, if you haven't done so already. Between Bud's lengthy comment and Andy's post, you'll have a fairly quick, but decent, understanding of the SF magazine industry at the time.

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Note: Andrew Fox is the author of novel The Good Humor Man, or Calorie 3501, which I edited for Tachyon Publications; the book was published in 2009.

More on the Death of Science Fiction

In 1960, Earl Kemp sent out a questionnaire to the top authors, editors, and artists in the genre. He wanted to know their thoughts on the death of science fiction; Kemp was, at the time, specifically referring to the death of SF magazines, since all the pulps had ceased publication. He compiled the results of this survey, and produced just enough bound copies for everyone who participated. The publication, Who Killed Science Fiction? won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1961. Kemp updated the survey in the '80s and again in the 2000s, and published the entire project online as The Compleat and Unexpurgated Who Killed Science Fiction? A print version of this book is now available from The Merry Blacksmith Press.

I wrote in detail about this project in an earlier blog post entitled "Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?" -- and, thanks to the tweeted link by Bruce Sterling (@bruces), which was retweeted by a number of his followers, this blog post remains (at least to date) my most read post on More Red Ink. Thanks, Bruce!

I'm bringing this up again because discussions on the death of science fiction are as perennial as the weather. And if it's not "science fiction" as a genre, then the death discussion is about the short story (I was on a panel on this very topic at BayCon in 2008), or the death of the anthology (I was on a panel entitled "Will the Anthology Market Come Back" at Westercon just this past July 4th holiday weekend). Which brings me to the latest discussion by John H. Stevens on SF Signal entitled "'The Death of Science Fiction' as Mythogenic Rejuvenation" -- Part One and Part Two. [Note: Part Two links back to Part One, but not vice versa.]

John makes some interesting comments, including these:

"The Death of Science Fiction" is one of those notions that stimulates a response because of its challenge not just to genre durability, but to deeper notions of what "science fiction" means....

If, as some people maintain, [the Death of Science Fiction] is such a tired idea to trot out, then why do people keep doing so and why is there so much response to these declarations? This is where the idea of mythogenic rejuvenation comes in. Talking about SF is often as important to many producers of the literature and its adherents as the production and reception of the literature itself. The far-flung fandom community is bonded not by just what they read, but by what they say about what they read....

The most interesting aspect of this to me is the fact that no one ever hits the mark with their projections and concerns. The Death of Science Fiction never comes about (or, hasn't yet anyway)....

The cool thing about this article is that John links to a multitude of prior "death of SF" articles, blog posts, and, to use his word, "fora" -- so you could conceivably spend hours (and hours) reading words on this subject, and by noteworthy people, too, while at the same time awaiting my forthcoming anthology, Alien Contact, from Night Shade Books, as well as the first publication of just-announced new online 'zine The Revelator, to be edited by Matthew Cheney and Eric Schaller. Yes, well, so much for the death of science fiction (and magazines, and anthologies, and ad nauseam).

But, believe it or not, my whole point in this entire blog post was to get to this: John opens his SF Signal article with three choice quotes, and this one, from author Neal Asher, exemplifies my attitude toward this whole "death of SF' schtick:

[The death of SF] surfaces with the almost metronic regularity of a dead fish at the tide line (stirred up, no-doubt, by some "new wave"). SF isn't dying, it hasn’t been ill, and frequent terminal diagnoses often see the undertaker clutching a handful of nails and a hammer and scratching his head over an empty coffin. However, discussions about this demise have been resurrecting themselves in only slightly altered form since I first read "about" SF rather than SF itself. I'm betting there was some plonker declaring the death of SF the moment Sputnik beeped or just after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. Really, the whole pointless staggering debate needs a nice fat stake driven through its heart.

—Neal Asher

You can read the quote in context on Neal's blog The Skinner; the post is entitled -- what else? -- "The Death of Science Fiction (Again)."

Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?

Paul Di Filippo, in a recent column in Barnes and Noble Review, recapped the state of science fiction and its various subgenres through the first decade of the twenty-first century. I'll leave the details of Paul's reviews and commentary for you to indulge in at your leisure, but Paul does mention that some continue to proclaim the demise of science fiction. Paul writes:

Of course, as we all now realize, the twenty-first century is proving both more and less science-fictional than the literature imagined, in strange and perhaps essentially unpredictable ways. This condition bedevils SF to some extent, as both its continuing credibility and utility come under question. Some authors and critics have recently even gone so far as to pronounce the mode deceased. Such statements regarding the death of SF are eternal. In 1960, for instance, a famous seminar was conducted under the heading "Who Killed Science Fiction?"

So for more than 50 years now, we've been hearing about the death of SF, especially with regards to genre magazines. I even freelance for one such magazine -- Realms of Fantasy -- that has seen three different owners/publishers in as many years, and yet the magazine's 100th issue will be published in June!

I was intrigued by the "Who Killed Science Fiction?" seminar -- actually, it was a survey rather than a seminar -- to which Paul referred, so I followed the link he provided to a fanzine -- eI29, December 2006; this particular volume is entitled The Compleat and Unexpurgated Who Killed Science Fiction? by Earl Kemp¹. eI29 includes the original 1960 edition of WKSF? plus the updates Kemp wrote in 1980 and again in 2006, all with new introductions.

In mid-1960, Kemp put together a questionnaire on the state of SF magazines (keep in mind that by 1960 the earlier, prolific pulp magazines had all ceased to exist) that he sent to 108 individuals, a virtual Who's Who in Science Fiction at the time: Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Robert Bloch, artist Hannes Bok, Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley -- and that's just a few of the names and only from the first two letters of the alphabet!