Its reception by English critics was unexpectedly good I suspect this is because I didn’t sound as if I was serious. I cast it in the Lovecraft tradition, and it became The Mind Parasites, which was published in due course by August Derleth. But a couple of years later, an analogy thrown out in my Introduction to the New Existentialism became the seed of a science fiction parable about ‘original sin’ - man’s strange inability to get the best out of his consciousness. And Lovecraft’s novels are not about ideas, but about an emotion - an emotion of violent and total rejection of our civilisation, which I, being rather cheerful by temperament, do not happen to share. I write as a mathematician uses a sheet of paper for doing calculations: because I think better that way. And the answer to this question is that I never write purely for the fun of it. And Derleth wrote to me, protesting that my judgement on Lovecraft was too harsh, and asking me why, if I was all that good, I didn’t try writing a ‘Lovecraft’ novel myself. In due course, a copy of my book fell into the hands of Lovecraft’s old friend - and publisher - August Derleth. I pointed out that although Lovecraft possesses a gloomy imaginative power that compares with Poe, he is basically an atrocious writer - most of his work was written for Weird Tales, a pulp magazine - and his work is finally interesting as case history rather than as literature. Lovecraft, the recluse of Providence, Rhode Island, Who died of malnutrition and a cancer of the intestine in 1937. A large part of the book was inevitably devoted to the work of H. In 1961, I wrote a book called The Strength to Dream, a study of the creative imagination, particularly in writers of fantasy and horror stories. And in recent years, I have stumbled accidentally into the writing of a few modest works of science fiction. Since Shaw wrote Back to Methuselah, science fiction has become an established genre, and it has even become quite respectable. And there is another factor in my favour. Fortunately for me, I am neither original nor creative, so I can afford to ignore the contemporary rules. I’d like to make them stop feeling and start thinking. Mr Osborne once said his aim was to make people feel. And I completely lack sympathy for the emotional and personal problems that seem to be the necessary subject of a contemporary play or novel. I am completely unable to be objective about Shaw he seems to me simply to be the greatest European writer since Dante. Wells is probably the greatest novelist of the twentieth century, and that his most interesting novels - if not necessarily the best - are the later ones. And this seems to give me a rather odd perspective on modern literature. Now no one has a profounder respect for the critics than I, or strives more constantly to sound like a paid-up member of the literary establishment. And since the critics also like to foster this idea - perhaps out of a kind of defensive trade-unionism - it seems to have achieved the status of a law of contemporary literature. Most of my contemporaries seem to feel pretty strongly that the activities of thinking and novel-writing are incompatible, and that to be interested in ideas reveals a deficiency in the creative faculties. Or perhaps - what is altogether more probable - the younger hands are simply not interested in writing parables of longevity, or any other kind of parable. Perhaps the thought of trying to leave Shaw far behind has scared off would-be competitors. PREFATORY NOTE Bernard Shaw concluded his preface to Back to Methuselah with the hope that ‘a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave mine. Scanned : Mr Blue Sky Proofed : It’s Not Raining Date : 09 February 2002 Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Linotype Pilgrim This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. London Toronto Sydney New York Published by Granada Publishing Limited in Panther Books 1974 Reprinted 1978 ISBN 3 0įirst published in Great Britain by Arthur Barker Limited 1969 Copyright © Colin Wilson 1969 Granada Publishing Limited Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, AL2 2NF and 3 Upper James Street, London, WIR 4BP 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, USA 117 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia 100 Skyway Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Mgw 3A6 Trio City, Coventry Street, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa CML Centre, Queen & Wyndham, Auckland, New Zealand
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