"Now, the main purpose of the storyteller was to entertain. He might also try to point a moral, or teach a fact, or expound his faith or philosophy, or startle his hearers by some novel idea or trick, or exorcise his private demons by putting them into story form. But all these purposes remained secondary to the main one: to entertain. The storyteller who put one of these other elements first soon found himself addressing empty air; and empty air would drop no drachmai or rupees into his cap. In the last century, alas, more and more storytellers have felt that they should place one of these secondary aims first, ahead of entertaining the reader. In the early years of this century we had a flood of novels of social problems—should an heiress marry her chauffeur? Then came stories exposing conditions in this or that industry, or baiting the booboisie. Then there were the proletarian novels, setting forth the evils of capitalism, and hailing the Great Red Dawn. More recently, we have had case studies of abnormal psychology thinly disguised as fiction. We have had stories that reduce human beings to animated sets of genitalia with legs and other parts vaguely attached. We have had stories whose heroes are human zeros—dull, pathetic little jerks with neither brains, brawn, nor character. We have had stories in which the words and sentences seem to be strung together at random, so that it would take a cryptographer to recover the meaning, if any… Now, these are all very well for those who like that sort of thing. Judging from sales figures, many do. However, some still like a story for the sake of the story. When they read fiction, they want first of all to be entertained—not instructed, uplifted, converted, incited, warned of the doom to come, or forced to admit what a monstrous clever fellow the writer is—but entertained. For those who put entertainment first, heroic fantasy offers it in its purest form. Of course, to enjoy a story of this kind, one needs some slight imagination. One must be able to suspend one’s disbelief in ghoulies and ghosties and other denizens of the worlds of fantasy. However, if the reader can believe in international spies who race about in super-powered cars from one posh gambling joint to another and find a beautiful babe awaiting them in bed at each stop, a few dragons and demons should not bother him."