Science Fiction Times: The World of Tomorrow Today
No. 455
June 1968
More Conan Due
The phenomenal success of the Lancer series of Robert E. Howard's stories of Conan and others continues to bust {sic} all records with a gusto that would make the Cimmerian warrior grin with pride. At this moment, with well over a half million copies of the seven books in print (to be gracious, 650,000 copies were printed in all, and warehouse stock is down to the last few hundred copies), Conan is just about the most exciting thing on the paperback stands, from the dealer's as well as the reader's viewpoint.
And now the way has been cleared for several more Conan books, for L. Sprague de Camp has just announced that on May 7, 1968 an agreement was signed between himself and Martin W. Greenberg of Gnome Press, resolving the long-standing lawsuit over rights to the Howard properties and reassigning all rights to the Howard estate. This frees a number of stories and one novel for paperback publication.
L. Sprague de Camp has also announced a list of the new volumes forthcoming . Three collections are planned. The first of these, Conan of Cimmeria, includes three of the Howard & de Camp stories form the Gnome Press hardcover, The Tales of Conan, as well as two new Howard and de Camp stories, "The Tale of the Lost Woman" (which has only had one magazine appearance) and "The Snout in the Dark" (which has never been published). This book will also contain three brand new pastiches written by de Camp and Lin Carter "Curse of the Monolith" which will appear in the first issue of Lester del Rey's new magazine "Worlds of Fantasy", and two as yet unwritten collaborations, "The Lair of the Ice-Worm" and "The Black Tower".
The second collaboration, Conan the Swashbuckler, contains the two Howard novellettes. "Black Colossus" and "Shadows in the Moonlight" two Howard amd de camp stories, "Hawks Over Shem" and {...the rest of the text unavailable}
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Science Fiction Times: The World of Tomorrow Today
No. 455
June 1968
The Letter From The Kid in Podunk
A guest editorial by Lin Carter
Like everyone else who has ever had a few books published, I sometimes get a letter from readers. In my case these readers are usually young ones, which figures, since my column in IF seems primarily to have attracted new comers to science fiction, and since my fiction, being action adventure yarns, also appeals mostly to kids.
An amazing number of these letters are from kids who want to be writers. After some polite comments on this or that of my novels, they usually get around to a series of questions about the craft. Questions which can be boiled down to How Do You Guys Do It, Anyway. I don't know why they pick me to supply the answers about writing rather than choose some of my more successful or more highly talented colleagues, but come to me they do. Maybe they feel Zelazny would snub them or can't get Laumer's(?) address or think Heinlein is too busy. Or maybe, because they are used to hearing me gas on through the pages of innumerable issues of IF, they feel they "know" me personally.
Like any writer with a grain of humility (and in my case, its only a grain), or like any writer who was once a kid fan and used to pester Ed Hamilton and other nice people with the same sort of letters and remembers the patience and kindness of these pros towards that annoying kid down in St. Pete, Fla.. I take great efforts to make certian I write a letter in reply to every single one I get.
My advice to Writers of Tomorrow is not very deep stuff. I mostly advise them to steer clear of Famous Writer's Schools and such-like tomfollery. and I tell them the only way to learn is to (1) Read. Read a littl of everything you can get your hands on. Don't stop after Proust and sartre and Camus and figure there's nothing else worth reading. Try a little Baumer and Mundy just for the hell of it. And don't be afraid to read Burroughs just because "everybody knows" he couldn't write his way out of the proverbial paperbag. Go ahead ... it's just possible he might have something to teach you about plotting or description or dialogue, who knows? In a word, read every bloody thing from the Mahabharata to Marvel comics, and don't be ashamed if you find yourself enjoying some of the stuff down at th lower end of the spectrum.
And (2) write. Keep on writing, and don't worry about Making A Sale. That takes years. I wrote seven novels before selling one, and I consider myself lucky. (Sinclair Lewis had to write ten before he got lucky.) And, if science fiction is your bag, write novels. Because science fiction is a novelist's medium and always has been. Because novels are more fun to write than short stories, more room to swing your arms and walk around in, and they pay better too. I usually Qualify this last by saying, Unless you are one of those rare types with that peculiar quirk of mind that can come up with short story plots (I am not, and can't), in which case the magazine editors will love you.
These answers, admittedly, basic stuff, fail to satisfy a few of my correspondents, who bring up more seasoning questions like what should I write about? and, How do you know where to start a story?, and like that.
To the first query I make this reply, just tell a story. A story is about people who are going somewhere or doing something and to whom things are happening. Don't get literary. Don't worry about Abt(?). Don't get psychological, or symbolic, or don't write in order to Protest. In Sam Goldwyn's words (and they are wise words), "You gotta Message, call Western Union." And don't be ashamed to be called "Just a story-teller" Some very groovy guys were "just" storytellers and not artists. Doyle, Haggard, Kipling, Merritt Stevenson, Sabatini, and Doc Smith, for example.
To the second question, which is impossible to answer honestly, I generally fall back on the Red Queen's advice to Alice, "Start at the beginning, go on until the end; then stop." It's as good as anything you'll find in the "how-to-write" books. But the reason I'm gassing on about this, is to ask a question of my own" why do so many good science fiction readers want to become writer? Why do they have to write letters asking How Do You Guys Do It, Anway? Do mystery novelists het such letters from their readers? I know a couple and they tell me No. Do readers think there is some Mystique about writing science fiction or fantasy or Sword & Sorcery. One kid asked me if you have to live in New York and know publishers personally. I said, No, but it doesn't hurt; and I pointed out that a few fairly successful writers named Vance, Anderson, and Leiber live out on the California coast. Which is just about as far from New York as you can get and still be on the same continent and in the same continent, and in the same country.
There's no mystique about writing science fiction. The real question is why do so many science fiction readers want to become science fiction writers? Because a hell of a lot of times they do. In fact, most writers are lifetime fans of the stuff, and this is most absolutely, positively certainly NOT true of western {... the rest of the text missing}.
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