Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction

by Sam Moskowitz

Moskowitz, Samuel

Genres: Science Fiction, Criticism

441 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Sam Moskowitz (June 30, 1920-April 15, 1997) was an early fan and organizer of interest in science fiction and, later, a writer, critic, and historian of the field. As a child, Moskowitz greatly enjoyed reading science fiction pulp magazines. As a teenager, he organized a branch of the Science Fiction League. Meanwhile, Donald A. Wollheim helped organize the Futurians, a rival club with Marxist sympathies. While still in his teens, Moskowitz became chairman of the first World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1939. He barred several Futurians from the convention because they threatened to disrupt it. This event is referred to by historians of fandom as the "Great Exclusion Act."

Moskowitz later worked professionally in the science fiction field. He edited Science-Fiction Plus, a short-lived genre magazine owned by Hugo Gernsback, in 1953. He compiled about two dozen anthologies, and a few single-author collections, most published in the 1960s and early 1970s. Moskowitz also wrote a handful of short stories (three published in 1941, one in 1953, three in 1956). His most enduring work is likely to be his writing on the history of science fiction, in particular two collections of short author biographies, Explorers of the Infinite and Seekers of Tomorrow, as well as the highly regarded Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of “The Scientific Romance” in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920. Moskowitz has been criticized for eccentrically assigning priorities and tracing influences regarding particular themes and ideas based principally on publication dates, as well as for some supposed inaccuracies. His exhaustive cataloguing of early sf magazine stories by important genre authors remains the best resource for nonspecialists.

Moskowitz's most popular work may be The Immortal Storm, a historical review of internecine strife within fandom. Moskowitz wrote it in a bombastic style that made the events he described seem so important that, as fan historian Harry Warner, Jr. quipped, "If read directly after a history of World War II, it does not seem like an anticlimax."
Moskowitz was also renowned as a science fiction book collector, with a tremendous number of important early works and rarities. His book collection was auctioned off after his death.

As "Sam Martin", he was also editor of the trade publications Quick Frozen Foods and Quick Frozen Foods International for many years.

First Fandom, an organization of science fiction fans active before 1940, gives an award in Moskowitz' memory each year at the World Science Fiction Convention.

Moskowitz smoked cigarettes frequently throughout his adult life. A few years before his death, throat cancer required the surgical removal of his larynx. He continued to speak at science fiction conventions, using an electronic voice-box held against his throat. Throughout his later years, although his controversial opinions were often disputed by others, he was indisputably recognized as the leading authority on the history of science fiction.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seekers of Tomorrow (and its earlier companion volume, Explorers of the Infinite, which examined modern science fiction writers), was an important early work that looked at modern science fiction writers in a scholarly and serious fashion. Moskowitz was a long time fan and student of the field, and did as much to found sf fandom as anyone else, establishing one of the first clubs and chairing the first science fiction convention. Most of the essays in this book were first published in digest-sized genre magazines in the early 1960s, and many of the authors he discussed had never received any serious academic attention. The authors he writes about include E.E. "Doc" Smith, John W. Campbell, Jr., Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, Mort Weisinger, John Wyndham, Erick Frank Russell, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak, Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip Jose Farmer. (This wouldn't mirror my choice for most influential sf authors of the time, but they're certainly all noteworthy. Note only one woman on the list...sigh...) Moskowitz was often opinionated, but does a very good job of providing details about the authors and their place in literature and their times. It's a little dry at times, but it's a very informative history of the formation of the field as we now know it.

[Karl Bunker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume presents some fascinating biographies and career histories of a host of science fiction writers who were active in the 50s, 40s and 30s. The authors given chapter-length coverage are:
E.E. "Doc" Smith
John W. Campbell
Murray Leinster
Edmond Hamilton
Jack Williamson
John Wyndham
Eric Frank Russell
L. Sprague De Camp
Lester Del Rey
Robert A. Heinlein
A.E. Van Vogt
Theodore Sturgeon
Isaac Asimov
Clifford D. Simak
Fritz Leiber
C.L. Moore
Henry Kuttner
Robert Bloch
Ray Bradbury
Arthur C. Clarke
Philip Jose Farmer

A number of other authors get briefer treatment in a final chapter, and for some unknown reason there is also a chapter titled "Superman," covering the career of Mort Weisinger, who edited the early Superman comic books.

The book was originally published in 1966, so it only covers authors and writings up to that date.

Moskowitz' writing is fluent and engaging, and he had a vast knowledge of his subject. Thanks to his all-encompassing study of science fiction, he had a gift for finding links between stories that thread their way back through the history of the genre. Thus, for example, he could name no less than three precursors to the idea (or at least significant parts of the idea) that Theodore Sturgeon presented in his classic "Microcosmic God."

Moskowitz wasn't afraid to express his opinions about various issues, and any given reader is bound to disagree with him from time to time. At one point he bizarrely claims that Robert Heinlein was responsible for "the decline of science fiction [...] through the entire decade of the 1950s", stating that Heinlein's success resulted in a host of imitators and thus a bland uniformity in the field. No doubt Heinlein had his second-rate imitators, but the very existence of this "decline" of the 50s is something that I think few historians of SF would agree with.

Elsewhere he gives an unsparing account of A.E. van Vogt's career-long hopscotching from one quack-belief to another, noting how this did significant harm to his writing. But he has nothing but the highest praise for van Vogt's novel Slan, which by the standards of anyone over the age of 12 is a laughable piece of rubbish.

And so on; endless examples of good, bad, and just plain odd passages in the book could be given. But "good" passages definitely predominate. Overall it's an excellent read, full of fun and interesting information. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the science fiction of the early 60s and before.

[Norm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam Moskowitz was a towering - and controversial - figure in the world of Science Fiction fandom, around the middle of last Century. Possibly no other person, with the exception of Forrest J. Ackerman, wrote so lovingly about his beloved genre. This book is a collection of brief essays on 22 different SF authors who were popular at the time of the book's publication, 1966. Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke are featured here, among others. The final chapter is a summary of writers who were fairly new to the SF scene, at the time. Sam's enthusiasm for the authors and their works leaps off these pages. I've read many of these chapters several times, since they contain capsule biographies and neat overviews of the each author's works; at least, up to the mid-60's. It's a handy reference guide, but it's also a great read, which is not always the case with reference materials. If you love the "old time" SF writers and if you haven't read Sam Moskowitz, I think this is a great place to start.

NOTE: a "companion" to this volume is "Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction", also by Sam Moskowitz.

[Dkolacinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early critic of SF, Moskowitz was an early proponent of treating the genre from a critical perspective. Each essay contains a biographical description of the author, the influences the author had, the publication dates of stories in the SF pulps and an evaluation of the author's role in both the genre and when appropriate, in the world of literature as a whole. A reader must put the essays in the perspective the the genre was only 30 years old and the ultimate role that the author would have in the future could not be anticipated. I became exposed to Mt. Moskowitz's essays when I was in early high school, and I began to evaluate the genre which I grew up with and loved (without access to the pulps themselves) with a critical, yet loving eye.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have lots to say about this. A non-fiction book about Sci-fi from a time when Dune was not a book yet, 2001 had not happened yet.