Wrong Numbers Still!
Dear Editor:
I agree with the rest of your readers in the good things they say about your magazine in "The Readers' Corner." There is one story, however, "The Planet of Dread," in your August issue, that gives me a rather sickening feeling of disgust. The trouble was in the climax. After the hero has wandered over quite a portion of the planet Inra, he arrives at some mountains where, lo and behold! an unexpected space ship drops from the clouds to an unfrequented ledge of rock and makes a rescue. After this sensational climax comes an equally thrilling anti-climax—the hero is offered three years' salary for his story. To accuse the future world of doing such a thing is an open insult to our posterity. Ten per cent of my high school freshmen took just such an ending to their first themes.
As that story took up about one-seventh of your space and your magazine cost twenty cents. I figure you owe your readers three cents on that issue. But, due to the fineness of the rest of your stories, I am willing to forget your debt as far as I am concerned.
I am happy to see that you are beginning to print articles. I read with interest the one about Mechanical Voices for Telephone Numbers in your September issue. But can't something be done about wrong numbers? The article states that a person dialed the number 8561T. Two seconds later the loud-speaker spoke up, clearly, in an almost human voice, 8651T. Wrong number! Must this evil be with us always!
I am NOT in favor of reprints. You are printing stories every month just as good as any of those suggested to you. I have read most of those classic scientific stories referred to. The best stories along this line have not been written yet. Keep your space clear for them. Let us have young blood with new ideas. Let our authors eat. Good stories were never written on an empty stomach.
I believe yours is the highest type of the few magazines that lay a greater stress on the brains of the hero than on his good looks. But, for the sake of one of your ardent readers, let that hero use his brains to get himself out of whatever he has gotten into. Don't let a space ship swoop down from above to rescue him. That type of story reminds me a lot of the one where Jonah was rescued from the deep by the timely arrival of the friendly whale. By the way, there's a suggestion for a reprint. I will admit that it would be just about as new to me as some of the others that have been suggested in this "Corner."—Richard Lewis, 448 Marion St., Knoxville, Iowa.
Not So "Green" in Ireland
Dear Editor:
I suppose it's not often you get a letter from an Irish "Paddy," but here's one now. Here in Cork we don't get magazines like Astounding Stories regularly, but I got the May issue to-day and could not stop until I had devoured it from cover to cover. "The Atom Smasher" is a story which I have been hunting for for years. When I had finished it, I had to sit back and leave out all the breath which I was holding in in a prolonged "whew!" If ever I get the luck to find another Astounding Stories I'll burn up the pages looking for the name Victor Rousseau. Next in order I liked "Brigands of the Moon" and "The Jovian Jest." Thought the story "Into the Ocean's Depths" an awful fairy tale, but otherwise good reading. The painter of the cover design is a real artist and I wish to express my appreciation of his wonderful rendering of a difficult subject.—Fitz-Gerald Grattan, 11 Frankfield Terrace, Summerhill South, Cork, Irish Free State.