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 Cummings 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.)