Clifford D. Simak’s speech “The Face of Science Fiction” appeared in Minnesota Libraries, vol. XVII, no. 7. (September 1953). He originally gave it to the Minneapolis Branch Library staff. I have not found evidence that the speech appeared elsewhere or is anywhere online. I requested the article through the university library I’m affiliated with. I’ve included a transcription below. I hope with the easy access of important primary sources related to Simak’s fan activities and views on SF, we can see more scholarship on his fiction in the future vs. empty repetition of time-worn designators of his brand of SF.¹ As with other posts on Simak’s interviews, speeches, and fan articles, I’ll provide a few words of summary first.

“The Face of Science Fiction” articulates the intersection of Simak’s own interest in the genre (and hope for its future), its larger history, with observations about the growing contemporary interest. He highlights the exploding popularity (and commercialism) the genre underwent in the 50s in the aftermath of WWII, for example the sheer quantity of magazines, toys, games, gadgets, and scientific gadgets designed with “science fiction motif” for teenagers. He charts his own exposure to the genre through authors like Jules Verne. 

And echoing later arguments by Darko Suvin, posits an incredible “long and honorable lineage” of the genre with works like the Greek Legend of Icarus, Plato’s Republic, Thomas Moore’s Utopia, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels that detach its origins from the influence of Hugo Gernsback (he does not mention his name but does acknowledge the “first science fiction magazines” that appeared in 1926).² Arguments like this one partially serve as a rhetorical flourish meant to legitimize the genre and to self-justify your own brand of writing. And like those classics of old, 50s SF seems to re-manifest some of that ancient maturity (“fewer and fewer of them think of it in terms of Buck Rogers and rocket guns”) with increasing quality of writing. While acknowledging the fix-up novels still hitting print culled from the old pulps, he hopes the “backlog of old stories” is coming to its end.³ He admits that modern science fiction is still a young genre with growing to do!