"About Something Truly Wonderful"
by
Algis Budrys
The following article first appeared in the November 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (pp. 81-84), and is reprinted with permission. First appearance in Tangent was issue #20/21 for Fall 1997/Winter 1998, our last print issue before going online.
There must be something truly wonderful about science fiction. Not even the wide, vast, and occasionally weedy "mainstream" of general literature supports such a proportionate number of people publicly concerned with where it has been, where it is going, and where it should go in preference. In the light of the currently prevailing critical opinion no other field finds itself so persistently measured by its present inability to resemble another.
