The Good Old Days of pulp SF

David Langford's column in the current issue of F&SF amusingly skewers some horrible pulp SF of the 1960's, including the following passage from March of the Robots by "Leo Brett" (aka Lionel Fanthorpe):

Terrifying things, steel things; metal things; things with cylindrical bodies and multitudinous jointed limbs. Things without flesh and blood. Things that were made of metal and plastic and transistors and valves and relays, and wires. Metal things. Metal things that could think. Thinking metal things. Terrifying in their strangeness, in their peculiar metal efficiency. Things the like of which had never been seen on the earth before. Things that were sliding back panels…Robots! Robots were marching…

It almost works as a kind of psychotic poetry. But not quite.

I guess it's easy to retroactively romanticize the days of the pulp magazines and publishers. Having heard of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman books for years, I once bought a stack of paperback copies of them from a used bookstore and sat down to be entertained. That's not an experience I plan to repeat. Smith's prose style would have to loosen up quite a bit before it could be called wooden. However, in deference to his historic significance in the field, I will gladly add a recently donated omnibus editon of his "Skylark" stories to the SPL collection. This is not entirely charitable on my part. Sometimes, the best way to combat an undeservedly good reputation is to actually expose the "legendary" work to public view, just as one of the best ways to combat undeserved obscurity is to make the obscure work visible to those who might enjoy it and talk or write about it.

And who knows? There may even be someone out there who will enjoy the Skylark of Space. Just as someone might enjoy the chanting repetition of the passage above. (Not to mention its repetitive chanting.)