Pulps as Problematical
Last weekend I had the honor of being a guest at a science fiction convention here in Virginia. One of the panels was on some other topic I cannot bring to mind, but the question arose asking which novels and short stories from the old times did old timers like me suggest the younger generation should read?
The panelists, two men and two women, with at least one Christian and one pagan among them, agreed on whose names were justly famed in days gone by, and who had been unjustly forgotten, but should not be overlooked.
So far, so good. No leftwing sucker punch yet. It was coming.
Those fans (myself included) favorable to the “Neo-Pulp Revolution” that is, a return to the less restrictive, wilder, more popular and more fun days of Pre-Campbellian SFF would have been pleased to hear all four panelists (myself included) praise the pulp mags which form an early, if not the early, strata of science fiction.
With one voice, we urged young readers to seek and discover immortals tales like those of Tarzan, A Princess of Mars, Doc Savage, The Shadow, the Skylark of Space, Shadow out of Time, City of Singing Flame,the Ship of Ishtar, the Moon Pool, the Queen of the Black Coast, Northwest Smith, and Empire Strikes Back, and immortal writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Dent, Maxwell Grant, E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett.
I was dumbfounded when, in the very last minute of the panel, not one or two, but all three other panelists, with one voice, warned the audience that pulp stories were “problematic” — a word that in English means something that constitutes or presents a problem. In Newspeak, the meaning is darker.
One mavin of politically correct purity told the audience that reading these “problematic” stories was useful as a warning and a teachable moment, since the wary reader could then learn how not to write stories which generations after his own might find “problematic.”
It is fortunate for the peace and harmony prevailing at the convention that I was dumbfounded by the sheer insolence of the smug, self-righteous hypocrisy on display. The thing was done so rapidly, so rudely, and so nonchalantly, that I was caught unawares. I said nothing in that moment, and the panel was over and done in the next, and it was too late to speak.
Should the topic ever rear its head in your hearing, dear readers, and if you wish not to be caught unawares (as I was) by the sheer ugliness of what the enemy voices, keep just this in mind:
Before anyone of the Obama and Clinton generation casually dismisses the morals and manners of the Coolidge and Roosevelt generation as “problematical” hence inferior, keep some things in mind.
In that generation, no one used four-letter words in public or in polite society. Now, such coarse language is heard on the nightly news, seen on the covers of books and magazines, and uttered by political leaders and pundits, and other men once dignified. Not a single cussword heavier than a damn or hell will be encountered in any pulp story you read. In this generation, using the Lord’s name in vain is the norm.
Modesty was taught to and expected of women, and chivalry of men. Now women are both taught that immodesty is their right, and that if immodesty attracts the male gaze, this is sexual harassment. It is an oppression to treat women as a mere object of sex. Whereas boy are taught that self control is for chumps and losers, that virginity is sin, and that whatever sexual act, however unseemly, to which the sex object consents is licit. And never mind any oxymoronic paradox involved.
While some pulps are certainly racy enough, no reader is going to encounter pornography.
By contrast, stories these days do not condemn sex out of wedlock, but encourage and applaud such acts. Indeed, stories are censored or anathematized if they fail to contain a requisite number of sexual perversions, aberrations, and anomalies. Authors have lives and careers damaged or even destroyed if they are suspected of being insufficiently enthusiastic about aiding efforts to normalize abnormality.
This generation legalized sodomy and granted, as if it were a matter of constitutional right, an alliance of sodomites to commit their unnatural acts the stature and name of holy matrimony. And never mind any oxymoronic paradox involved. Adultery is the norm.
This generation has forsworn the use of logic and reason in public debate. Under the rubric that hate speech leads to hate crimes, the exercise of First Amendment is now routinely condemned as an act of violence. This is done to excuse and justify organized & masked thugs attacking the innocent physically, and to excuse any and all slanders and libels against the innocent.
This generation routinely lies about everything and all things, and, when caught, redoubles its defiant and insolent opposition to the truth, rather than show contrition. They are liars and proud of being liars: to utter a deception, is, to them, to flourish a red badge of courage. Bearing false witness against one’s neighbor is the norm.
This generation routinely vilifies and despoils the productive members of society, and libels the greatest benefactors of mankind as exploiters who therefore deserve to be robbed, and their wealth “shared” and “spread around”– that is, given to millionaires running the state. Covetousness and using the state to steal and rob is the norm.
In that generation, all denominations of Christianity condemned the use of contraception. Now, the sin of Onan is the norm.
In that generation, homicide of infants in the womb was unheard-of, as rare as a meteor strike. Now, such killing is the norm, and to raise a voice against it is to invite hatred, reprisals, including violent reprisals. Because barbarism, the habit of answering all reason with brutality, is also the norm.
In those days, to say men were men and women were not was not regarded as a hate crime. The family unit and the values that upheld it were, by and large, upheld and celebrated. Motherhood was praised and sentimentalized, but not the idea that any male willing to castrate himself could not be denied the name and honors of being a woman.
Now, as one can see by the casual contempt of the current generation toward their forebears, to dishonor motherhood specifically, and dishonor father and mother in general, is the norm.
Are there any other commandments I have not mentioned which this generation does not routinely break and praises the breaking thereof? Idolatry? Atheism? Sabbath-breaking?
So what, exactly, makes the weird tales and fantastic stories of that day and age so “problematic”?
The use of lazy racial stereotypes, did you say? This generation has just as many or worse ones, merely with the polarities reversed. See the last decade of Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Marvel comics franchises, for examples.
The portrayal of women as weak damsels in distress? I will happily compare any number of Martian princesses or pirate queens from the pulp era to the teen bimbos routinely chopped up in the torture porn flicks of this generation, and let the matter of malign portrayals of women speak for itself.
Finally, even if we grant that there were gross unfairnesses and even violence in those generations condoned against minorities, look and see who was doing it: the Ku Klux Klan was started and staffed by the Democrats, and was opposed by Hoover’s FBI and by the NRA. Jim Crow laws ruled in the Democrat controlled South. The US armed forces were segregated by Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. The women’s right to vote and the Civil Rights act were opposed by the majorities in Congress of Democrats.
Condemning the pulps as problematical is sheer hypocrisy, uttered in holier than thou tones by persons whose morality is immorality, whose speech is violence, whose chastity is adultery, whose words are crudeness and blasphemy.
And if you find objectionable material in the pulps — that is easy enough to do, if you are a hypocrite whose sole role on Earth is to condemn works you could not create — look in the mirror to see whose spiritual ancestor the offender is. Was H.P. Lovecraft indeed a racist? Well, well. He was also an atheist and a secular humanist.
Let us pause here to contemplate the irony. Perhaps the mavin of social justice purity who warned readers to study the problematic pulps so as to identify what might be problematic in one’s own writing had the right of it after all.
If the products of your own worldview disgust you when you view them, perhaps it is time to check your premises and rethink your worldview.
Maybe the endless condemnation of the innocent for flaws you display, but they do not, is not a winning strategy. Maybe an endless diet of lies is unsatisfying.
In the meanwhile, if any generation has the right to condemn another, I suggest the most foul-mouthed, blasphemous, adulterous, perverse, deceitful, dishonest, covetous, ungrateful, and irrational generation in all recorded history is not the one who has that right.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
