Posted by Sean Wallace on March 06, 1998 at 10:47:55:
In Reply to: Re: Henry Kuttner posted by Larry Kuttner on January 27, 1998 at 00:29:25:
:: Much of Kuttner's fiction has dated pretty badly and is now :: close to unreadable, IMHO. He and his writing were definitely :: products of their times.
False statement - off the top of my head hundreds of his short stories are continously reprinted every year, and if we throw in all the foreign editions then it adds up. Very few of his fiction has dated, unless you count the space opera he did in his early career. He's still quite popular within the science fiction field, and was very popular in the early 1940s and 1950s (especially when he married Moore). His/her most famous short stories include:
Vintage Season,
Mimsy Were the Borogoves
The Proud Robot
The Twonky
No Woman Born
It would be a better idea if you read the pulps, and really found out what were products of their times, as Kuttner's
material far-outclassed the usual space opera then prominent
in the early 1930s and sometimes the 1940s. In fact, in the late 1940s at the height of the Golden Age, the fans attending a world science fiction convention voted for Henry Kuttner over Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Van Vogt, and all the others as the world's best science fiction writer. Hartwell says it well with "Their collaborative works (all their stories under whatever byline were jointly created -- the Padgett name was used for stories that were more strongly Kuttner's) set the highest standard of literary quality in science fiction of the 1940s. To other writers, he was the craftsman par excellence."
I respect your opinion, but the fact is that Kuttner/Moore have
been accepted as one of the best writers during that period - and still are highly considered.
Sean Wallace
Cosmos Literary Agency