Stanley G. Weinbaum - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Lester del Rey declared that "Weinbaum, more than any other writer, helped to take our field out of the doldrums of the early thirties and into the beginnings of modern science fiction." H.P. Lovecraft stated that Weinbaum's writing was ingenious, and he stood miles above the other Pulp Fiction writers in his creation of genuinely alien worlds in a comparison to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his "inane" stories of "egg-laying Princesses". Everett F. Bleiler, however, reported that although Weinbaum "was generally considered the most promising new s-f author of his day," his reputation is overstated. While "Weinbaum's style was more lively than that of his genre contemporaries, and he was imaginative in background details, . . . his work was ordinary pulp fiction, with routine plots, slapdash presentation, cardboard characterization, and much cliche of ideas. Alexei and Cory Panshin concluded that "Time has swallowed what were once Weinbaum's particular virtues. What is left seems quaint and quirky."