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The Reference Library
By P. Schuyler Miller
"Serious" Stuff
Last month I was complaining that we're letting the adventure element go out of our science fiction, with the result that it is in danger of becoming a pastime for cultists. This month I want to look at what happens when so-called "serious" writers take up science-fiction themes.
They seem to be doing this with increasing frequency of late. Some of it may be an attempt to cash in on what they have heard is a popular and profitable field. Others, I think, have discovered that science fiction—and/or fantasy—has more elbow-room in it than the rather stiffly self-conscious social novels of the day. There's a chance to give old ideas a novel tinge, to preach a lesson, or occasionally—as in Graham Mclnness' "Lost Island"—just to tell a good story for the fun of it.
Some of you who have picked up J. B. Priestley's "The Magicians" (Harper & Brothers, Xew York. 246 pp. $3.00) may consider it pure fantasy. Others will recognize echoes of J. W. Dunne's multidimensional theory of time ("An Experiment With Time," "The Serial Universe"), which has interested Mr. Priestley for a good many years and which he has fitted into others of his novels and plays
before this one. The three "magicians"
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