Science Fiction and the Schoolchild

Abstract

During the past decade, Soviet science fiction has experienced a boom not inferior to its "golden age" of the 1920s. Many new names have appeared. The subject matter has become more serious. The writers have improved in the literary sense. There has been a noticeable broadening in the range of readers of science fiction. Moreover, it has become increasingly possible for them to familiarize themselves with the best works of foreign writers. Finally, rather probing critical efforts have appeared — science fiction is now gaining students, and even theorists, of its own. All this is beyond question. It is hardly necessary now to prove to anyone (despite the fact that a stormy discussion raged around this matter in our national press a few years ago) that science fiction is either reading for amusement or specifically "children's" literature. However, there are still no accepted precise quantitative criteria for the readers' new attitude toward science fiction, and this has allowed some critics to defend clearly outdated ideas, constantly appealing to some "mass" or "simple" reader, although it is impossible to verify such assertions. It was for just this reason that members of the Science Fiction Fan Club at Moscow University — the students in the natural science departments who had in mind the basic principle of the exact sciences that asserts that all a priori statements must be checked by experiment — decided on an attempt to apply this principle to their favorite form of literature. The best proof of the timeliness of this test was the fact that the idea had literally permeated the atmosphere, for just as the Moscow University club began, science fiction fans in Baku, headed by G. Al'tov, decided to conduct a mass survey of science fiction readers. This made it possible to develop a coordinated questionnaire and to enlarge considerably the number of people queried. Approximately 700 questionnaires were received, and the resulting data are surely the most complete reflection of the present opinions of Soviet readers about science fiction. It would, of course, be very interesting to give a complete report on the questionnaire, but the nature of this magazine forces us to confine ourselves to the subject of science fiction and the schoolchild, and to analyze primarily the attitude of school-age readers to science fiction.