Now that American science fiction, past its majority, is heading for the peaceful middle age of an established form, some of its earliest adherents feel as if they had suddenly grown long gray beards; there is nothing more pathetic, I suppose, than the look on the face of an old-guard fan who's waiting to say something about Stanton A. Coblentz, while all around him people are talking about Heinlein.
With understandable bitterness, some have been driven to the extreme position that no science fiction published later than 1935 is worth reading—while among their younger colleagues it isn't hard to find those who will put the date still later, and argue that everything published before it was trash.
(Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder, 1956)
Swap out a few names, and this would be the gist of many online conversations over the past few years.
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