Astounding Stories, July, 1931 Part 48

And people disappear into an atom by taking pellets! They take the pellets into their system and that shrinks or expands them. How does the author calculate that in "Beyond The Vanis.h.i.+ng Point"? The pellets must contain cannabis indica (has.h.i.+sh) I guess. Once upon a time I was suffering from an acute attack of colic and was obliged to use an anti-spasmodic. I took cannabis, and in the delirium that followed I shrunk small enough to walk into a mouse-hole into which I had seen a mouse disappear a few hours previous. The mouse was there and looked like an elephant. I awoke in a sweat.

Maybe all your stories won't be weird and full of monstrosities. Science is full of beauty and culture, you know.--Arthur H. Carrington, Seaside Heights Pharmacy, Seaside Heights, N. J.

_Where Fantasy Meets Science Fiction_

Dear Editor:

I have purchased many of the issues of your magazine, and have read everything in them, including the letter columns, with great interest. I have particularly enjoyed certain stories, such as "The Forgotten Planet," "The Jovian Jest"

and "The Planet of Dread," in which genuine imaginative quality was combined with good writing. Many other tales, not so well written, I have enjoyed for their fantasy, their suggestive ideas.

In following "The Readers' Corner" I have noted the objection to so-called "impossible" stories, voiced by some of your Readers. Stories thus cla.s.sified, one would infer, are tales dealing with the marvelous and the mysterious in which the author has not attempted to give a naturalistic or scientific explanation of his wonders and mysteries. In other words, he has not rendered them in terms of the test-tube. He has admitted the inexplicable, the "supernatural."

Personally, I enjoy stories of this type, as well as those that are written with the purely scientific approach. I suspect that those who condemn them are suffering from a rather amusing--and also pathetic--sort of unconscious hypocrisy. I think that people who read your magazine, as well as Science Fiction magazines in general, are people with the ingrained human love for wonder and mystery; but some of them are afraid to accept and enjoy anything--even a fairy tale--that is not couched in the diction of modern materialistic science, with a show of concern for verified credibilities. Probably, in most cases, they would like and prize the very stories that they condemn if the writer had used a different terminology, and had offered explanations that were even superficially logical according to known laws.

Please do not think that I am decrying, or even criticizing, Science Fiction. I consider it a highly important and significant branch of present-day writing, and have hopes of contributing to it myself. I am merely advocating an open att.i.tude of mind and imagination. For those who think that the "impossible" requires justification--or cannot be justified--I would suggest that the only impossible thing is to define and delimit the impossible. In an infinite, eternal universe, there is nothing imaginable--or unimaginable--which might not happen, might not be true, somewhere or sometime. Science has discovered, and will continue to discover, an enormous amount of relative data; but there will always remain an illimitable residue of the undiscovered and the unknown. And the field for imaginative fiction, both scientific and non-scientific, is, it seems to me, wholly inexhaustible.--Clark Ashton Smith, Auburn, Cal.

_Heroes Too Heroic?_

Dear Editor:

I wrote you a letter last month. I'm writing you a letter this month, and I'll write you a letter next month. In fact, I'm going to write you a letter every month just as soon as I finish the latest issue of Astounding Stories, so you might as well have a special department installed in Astounding Stories right away ent.i.tled "Letters from the Sap Who Thinks He Is So Smart," or something else equally appropriate.

Have you ever noticed that 99% of Edmond Hamilton's stories have the same plot as "Monsters of Mars"? The plot I mean is this:

A group of men, preferably three, get into enemy territory.

As to the enemy (if the enemy are not lizards or some other repulsive form of life), Mr. Hamilton has them wear repulsive clothes, live in ugly buildings, etc., to make the reader dislike them at the start. An old, old idea, and quite a commonly used one, is to have these creatures about to declare war and conquer the hero's country with the enemy's super-weapons; and after capturing our brave, bold, and heroic heroes, proceed to tell the heroes the way the weapons work, the zero hour set for attack, and the line of march of the enemy's armies (as if prisoners are told all these things!). Our heroes then cleverly escape and grab an enemy machine. About two thousand of the enemy close in to the kill, but (Mr. Hamilton simply loves "buts") our brave heroes glance over the strange controls of the captured craft and without hesitation pick out the right levers and hold the enemy at bay. After annihilating most of them, and after the zero hour has come, the heroes prevent the great invasion and return to their native land.

It is interesting to note that the heroes, though greatly outnumbered and with strange weapons, always down many of the enemy while they themselves escape unscathed. Also, Mr.

Hamilton loves narrow escapes, and phrases such as these appear frequently in his story: "But even as he raised his deadly ray-tube, I leaped and knocked it from his hand. They charged, but I was too quick and dodged as the foremost hurtled at me."

These incidents are supposed to get the reader all excited, but after a while they grow monotonous.

The second story in the April issue, "The Exile of Time,"

promises to be excellent in every way. It would be interesting if George Rankin, in his time-traveling, should witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the Battle of Bunker Hill.

"Four Miles Within" was good also, save that the heroes'

escape from being marooned and James Quade's death savored unpleasantly of Edmond Hamilton.

Sewell Peaslee Wright's adventures of the s.p.a.ce patrol are always fascinating, and "The Ghost World" is a splendid example of this.

On the whole, your magazine is practically perfect.--Robert Baldwin, 359 Hazel Ave., Highland Park, Ill.

_Likes 'Em to Seem Real_

Dear Editor:

I've been reading Astounding Stories since the November issue, and I think that, on the whole, it is a very good magazine. It is of a handy size, convenient price, and O.

K., except that you might cut the edges of the pages smoother. Wesso is an excellent artist.

I think your best authors are Harl Vincent, Ray c.u.mmings and Capt. S. P. Meek. I like Capt. Meek's Dr. Bird stories immensely. Also among your best authors are Charles W.

Diffin aid Murray Leinster. And now about the stories themselves.

I've noticed that quite a few in "The Readers' Corner" are all for fiction and no scientific explanation. I like fiction, too, but anybody can make up a pretty good plot about a girl, a lover, and a villain, and have a wild theory of super-science for a basis, and then not explain it. What I like most is when an Author--who uses such a theory as, for instance, making matter invisible by bathing it with a ray, the color of which is beyond the range of the spectrum, as in "Terrors Unseen," by Harl Vincent--backs up his idea with a clear explanation and makes it plausible and convincing. It makes his tale seem more possible, and hence more real. I like it much better when the writer doesn't even suggest a theory in his plot--to say nothing of trying to prove it--than when he gives you the invention of a professor in the year 2431, and lets you imagine how and why it works.--T. Caldwell, 912 Moreno Road, Santa Barbara, Cal.

_Covers Too Imaginative?_

Dear Editor:

For crying out loud, why can't everyone be satisfied! One person says "our" mag is too small, another says it's O. K.; one wants so-and-so's work, someone else doesn't, etc. Why can't Readers be reasonable? They'll continually admit A. S.

is the best Science Fiction mag on the market (with which I thoroughly agree) and then they'll start complaining. As if anything can be 100% perfect--though A. S. comes awfully near it!

Then for some of the complaints, I recall but two sensible ones. I have read every issue of A. S. except the first two, and several times I have been tempted to write to you about them.

1--Too imaginative a cover gives the narrow-minded non-Science Fiction reader an idea that "our" mag contains trash. I refer to such covers as those on the August, September, October, 1930, issues, and the March, April, and especially May, 1931, issues. These people's opinions reflect rather harshly on the faithful A. S. Readers. Can't the covers be more like those on the March, May, June and July, 1930, issues? (All those stories themselves, however, were great, as usual.)

2--Please hold down on "The Readers' Corner." Isn't an eight and nine-page section a bit too much? A short story has been suggested--good idea. Why not limit it to a maximum of, say, five pages?

I shall not complain of any of the stories, because I realize that others probably enjoyed what very few I may not have. I must, however, say that Ray c.u.mmings' "Brigands of the Moon" holds first place, in my opinion. It was great!

Please keep up the excellent work.--Meredith L. Evons, 4001 Cedar Lane, Drexel Hill, Pa.

"_Evenly Divided_"

Dear Editor:

Although I missed the first few issues of Astounding Stories due to the fact that I was not aware of its publication, I have become a regular reader.

In glancing through your "Readers' Corner," I became aware of the fact that most of the letters therein praise Astounding Stories to the skies, and put it far ahead of any other Science Fiction magazine. I will not go quite so far, as it is my belief that most magazines of this type are on the same level. In fact, it seems absurd to me to state otherwise, as the authors who write for you one month publish stories in another magazine the next month. Of course, these authors put out, once in a while, stories that are much better than their usual offering, but, taken over a fairly long period of time, these periodic occurrences will be about evenly divided among various magazines. I have the conceit to believe that I know what I am talking about, as my observations are based on five years of Science Fiction reading.

Of course, while I believe that there are other magazines equally as good, Astounding Stories is certainly not inferior to any. There is always room for a Science Fiction magazine of the same caliber as Astounding Stories, but unfortunately for the public there are too few of them.--James M. Kennedy, Ithaca, N. Y.

_Machine or Beast?_

Dear Editor:

Having read about every issue of Astounding Stories to date, I have decided that it is the best of the three Science Fiction magazines that I have read.

The best story that you have published yet, in my opinion, is "Brigands of the Moon," by Ray c.u.mmings. Sewell Peaslee Wright and Victor Rousseau are also very good writers. The only two stories that I did not like were "Murder Madness"

and "Earth, the Marauder." The former belonged in a detective magazine, and the latter in the waste basket. It was too far-fetched for even my imagination.

Now a word about your cover ill.u.s.trations. The first issue that I bought convinced me that your artist was a genius, but my opinion of him is steadily decreasing. That ill.u.s.tration that I speak of was a scene from "Brigands of the Moon." It certainly was good. Lately, I am ashamed to show the magazine to my friends because of the gaudily painted and repugnant creatures on the cover. A picture of a machine is much more appropriate than a beast of some kind.

Wesso seems to be able draw a picture like that which is on the March or April, 1930, numbers better than those of late.