Astounding Stories, July, 1931, Various [great novels .txt] 📗
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The rest of the stories were fine. I especially like the stories of the Special Patrol Service which S. P. Wright has created. Let's have some more stories of Commander John Hanson and his crew.
"The Exile of Time" has started off quite well and I look forward to the next installments. Cummings is always good for a batch of thrills and some swell adventure, to say nothing of the enjoyable[130] way he introduces science into the story.
Wish you would publish this, as I would like to get in touch with some other Science-Fiction fans.
By the way, some of the readers seem to want the mag changed, but don't you do a thing to it. All the suggestions, if followed, would make "our" mag like the other S.-F. mags on the market, and I read Astounding Stories because it is DIFFERENT, and I mean every one of those capitals!—Ben Smith, Box 444, Billings, Mont.
Mr. Ernst's Answers:
(a) No, it has not been actually proved. It has been indicated mathematically (by formulae based on conjecture), but never actually solved—for the very good reason that it is impossible to reproduce spacial conditions in earthly laboratories. Know how an explosive force would react in space? We don't even know positively what space is, let alone how our chemicals and instruments would behave in it.
The majority theory is that explosive charges would propel a rocket or space ship more effectively in the (theoretical) emptiness of space, than in our atmosphere. But to my mind it is quite possible that an explosion—a violent expansion of gases causing rapid increase of pressures—would be ineffectual where there are no pressures to be increased. Might not the violently expanding gases fly forth from an exhaust vent to expand instantly, frictionlessly and impotently to the ends of the universe? In my story, "The World Behind the Moon," I assumed that would occur. And no man living is in a position positively to disprove it.
And, as a corollary, if a propulsion explosion cannot have effect in empty space, as presumed in the story, the space ship must enter atmosphere before it can stop by firing its bow tubes. Otherwise, with the bow tubes shooting their expanding gases futilely into nothingness, you could go into "reverse" till the cows came home and the ship would hurtle forward just the same.
(b) Friction of a bullet through a rifle barrel produces a temperature considerably higher than "tropical."
(c) Again, no one knows spacial or planetary conditions. It seems reasonable to assume that a planet's mass may have a fairly direct bearing on the density of its atmosphere. However, Venus, a smaller globe than Earth, is supposed to have a denser atmosphere. For all we know to the contrary, meteors no larger than pebbles may carry about with them microscopic films of "atmospheres" of varying densities.—Paul Ernst.
Hitting Our Stride
Dear Editor:
The more I read Astounding Stories, the more I like it. You're just getting your stride this, the second year. But why not foresee the demand of your Readers and have a few stories by R. F. Starzl? You have other top-notchers such as Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster; and Tom Curry is another good writer. "Monsters of Mars" would have been better if it were boiled down to about two thirds as many pages. It reads "stretched."—W. P. O'Toole, Parker, S. Dak.
"This Missile"
Dear Editor:
Congratulations! Your magazine—excuse me, "our" magazine—is going over big!
However, there are a few things I would like to suggest. First, why not take a vote on the quarterly idea? Second, give us more stories and illustrations. Increase the price if you have to, but keep up the good work and I'm your steady buyer. So far I have not missed a copy, and my only regret is that I didn't have sense enough to keep the first six or seven instead of throwing them away.
By the way, didn't I notice a rather heated argument going on in "The Readers' Corner" about reprints? And what is the matter with reprints? Nothing, except that they are reprints. That is hardly an argument, but if you value my monthly twenty cents please give us at least one reprint to a volume, which I see comprises three copies of your—pardon, "our" magazine. If the rest of the Readers acquiesce I think we ought to have a reprint in the near future. If they object, well, the world will roll on.
Your time is precious, and besides there are more Readers waiting to say the same things I have just said, so I will close this missile—er, missive.—Eugene Benefiel, The Pioneer, Tucson, Arizona.
From the Antipodes
Dear Editor:
As a regular Reader of your magazine, Astounding Stories, I thought I would write and tell you how I appreciate the stories contained in it. I am a heavy Reader and have always had a soft spot for stories unusual and bizarre. Until I happened to see your magazine at a bookshop in Perth, I had to be content with occasional Science Fiction stories by Wells, Burroughs, and a few others which I picked up in my browsing in various bookshops and libraries. Now that I get Astounding Stories regularly, I have a monthly feast of good things that I read and reread until the next issue arrives.
You ask us Readers to criticize the magazine. Well, I have no complaints worth mentioning, except that some of the illustrations do not tally sufficiently with the text of the story. Some of the stories, in my opinion, are weak and not worth reading. But, as tastes differ, I take everything as it is, and say you have a first-class publication.[131]
Will you thank your Authors for me for the very many hours of interesting reading they have given me during the past twelve months? Later I intend to get my Astounding Stories bound in cloth covers, each twelve months' issue in a volume.
If any Reader sees this letter—of course, should you think it worth while to publish it—and can spare the time to write to me here in Australia, I would be very grateful. Perhaps we could exchange snapshots of various places of interest. Every part of America interests me, so a Reader need not back out because he thinks his district would not be interesting enough.
Here's hoping Astounding Stories grows and prospers as the years go by, so as to give more entertainment to me and my fellow-readers. A rather selfish wish, you may think, but you will forgive me when I say that I look forward with great pleasure to each month's issue.—Claude J. Nanley, 65 Forrest St., Mt. Lawley, Western Australia.
Note to Ray Cummings
Dear Editor:
I have just started Ray Cummings' latest story in the April issue. Although I wish Cummings would lay off this type of story, I am willing to read anything by him. Jack Williamson's "The Lake of Light" ranked second in this issue. He is another Merritt. "The Ghost World," by S. P. Wright, came third. Edmond Hamilton was better than he has been of late.
If anyone wants to read "Through the Dragon Glass," "The Girl in the Golden Atom," etc, and writes to me, I will tell him where they can be obtained. (This is not an attempt at free advertising.) I know several places where it is possible to secure works of this kind and will be glad to assist anyone who doesn't.
Cummings brought me to your mag. He is keeping me there. So hold on to him. But, please tell him to forget all about time and probe the mysteries of the infinitely large and small, of interplanetary space, of future civilization and future warfare.—Dale Mullen, 611 West Fifth, Topeka, Kansas.
The Effects of Cannabis
Dear Editor:
I have sold magazines, written for magazines, and, now that I have just concluded your April issue, I am editing one—for myself. Specifically, one story, "Four Miles Within." Inside of a radium mine! Chased by an amoeboid body! Ooh!
Several years ago when I was a clinical chemist in hospital service, the Roentgenologist, also a young chap, and a surgical nurse and myself were so badly burned with three grains of the substance enclosed in a lead capsule that we were crippled for nearly a month. [No fair. Your experience was with pure radium. It was only radium ore in the story.—Ed.] Imagine being four miles inside of the earth exposed to radium "ore"!
And chased and pursued by a gigantic amoeba! Oh, oh! That must have been my pet mother-of-vinegar that escaped. She was hard to herd. She took after my dad's pet fish which fell through a crack in a bridge and was drowned.
In passing, it is interesting to note that persons can vanish "into" a plane surface; say, "into" a fifth dimension. My instructor in trig. must have been all wet.
And Dr. Bird catches a man withdrawing "menthium" from human brains with a "needle," without the use of either x-ray or a trephine!
And then low forms of life such as crabs and alligators with very highly developed scientific knowledge! A few issues ago octopi were in the lead!
And those "space" ships! Mars must be an interesting spot. And those Martians! Sometimes they are ant-like, and other times worms, and again human freaks! (I still prefer the silver-green messenger I saw on the stage twenty years ago. He was a gentleman and a scholar and no one yet has improved upon him.)
And those radio waves that can vibrate matter in a straight line! One Jackson Gee vibrates it in two straight lines. (Rather funny at that.)
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 Vanishing Point"? The pellets must contain cannabis indica (hashish) 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 "im[132]possible" stories, voiced by some of your Readers. Stories thus classified, 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 attitude 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
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