Modern Electrics, or An Amazing Story

Today is Wednesday, 16 August 2006.

Hugo Gernsback was born on this day in 1884 (died, 19 August 1967).

In 1909, Gernsback founded Modern Electrics, the first magazine about electronics. In 1926, he created Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine. He was an inventor and a pioneer in amateur radio.

Your author despises literary snobbery/snottery.

“Oh, that’s just chick-lit. Oh, that’s just gay-lit. Oh, that’s just science fiction. Oh, that’s just Knee-grow fiction. Oh, that’s just [whatever one wishes to disparage here].”

Every piece of writing stands or falls on its own.

What resonates in my brain is not even an echo in your brain.

So?

My good, your bad? My bad, your good?

Given the circumstances of his times, ‘tis no wonder that Shakespeare sucked up big time to the Tudors. You want to get your works on the stage in such Stalinist circumstances, you pay the piper.

Go to your local library, and check out, or better, buy at your local independent bookstore (give the author his due, pay your dues): find an anthology by J. G. Ballard which includes the classic short story, The Voices of Time.

Then tell me science fiction can’t be poetry.

All these labels for types of literature are artifacts of the industrial process, mere brand-marketing tools.

Read every piece of writing on its own merits, on its own terms, in context.

Just don't ever read any piece of writing under the bigoted shadow of brand-marketing.