eprinted. True. But why? Because these
stories are all available in book form, in libraries and
book stores, in original or new editions or in the Grosset
and Dunlap list of perpetually printed best sellers. It is
possible to read them for years after publication. But try
to find the past masterpieces of Science Fiction. With the
exception of Burroughs' books, most were never printed in
book form. Even books by Wells and Verne, classics of their
kind are gone, totally gone, even from the shelves of
libraries. Many of Verne's best stories were never
translated from the French. And the other classics of which
readers write, classics familiar to most of us only by name
and a few lucky tastes of others, newer works by the same
authors, are absolutely gone--annihilated. Their best works
are beyond the reach of the reader. Only by republication,
in magazine or book, can they be revived in an age when they
will be remembered and preserved--an age awake to science
and Science Fiction. Other magazines are doing it, one or
two to the year, and it may be that you need not reprint;
but the reservoir of the past is large, and a few cannot
drain it. This leads to your first argument, that better
stories are being written to-day. They are--better than the
average of the past--but not better than the classics. It
would be folly to say that because the short story is a
modern development, and because Galsworthy or Walpole or
Reimarch are better than the average of yesterday, to our
present tastes, that the classics of the past should be
scrapped.

The analogy, I feel, is good. The classics of general
literature have their place in history. The classics of
Science Fiction should have theirs. There are dozens better
than the general run of present work, by A. Merritt, Homer
Eon Flint, George Allan England, Austin Hall, John Taine,
Garret P. Serviss, Ralph Milne Farley, Ray Cummings, and
others that stood out in an age when Science Fiction was
considered pure phantasy or imaginative "trash." In the
present age, they would be still better, and this time they
would not be lost to the world, for there are publishers and
readers who would preserve them. You may adhere to your
decision, but, to my mind, and, I think to far more than 1%
of other