Cummings and Wagner
Dear Editor:
Astounding Stories is in my estimation the best magazine on the market. Words are feeble when an accurate description of the pleasure that I receive from every issue of Astounding Stories is needed. However, I will say that next to my extreme appreciation of classical music, I rate Astounding Stories as being the best outlet of my emotions. As in the music of that great German composer, Richard Wagner, whom I rate as the greatest of all composers, so do I find an outlet of my emotions by reading a novelette by Cummings, Vincent, Leinster and many other of your excellent Authors.
For example, I shall take the overture to "The Flying Dutchman." In the beginning of this overture we hear the opening call played by the trombones with the string section accompanying this principal motive with wild crescendo. This excites the brain so that a taste of the supreme motives is like an appetizer at dinner. So, taking the novel by Ray Cummings entitled "Beyond the Vanishing Point," we find that in the opening paragraphs there is also an "appetizer" to the rest of the story which is to follow.
Now, returning to our "Flying Dutchman" overture, we find that after the introduction by the wild calls by the trombones and the string accompaniment, we gradually drift into a somewhat pensive mood; so in the story, for the next few pages we find more or less quiet reading. Gradually, however, this quiet mood in the music gives way to rolls on the kettle-drums announcing a grand climax; finally the music becomes wilder and wilder until at last the storm breaks and we actually picture this ghost-ship riding over the waves in a terrific storm. Lightning flashes, thunder roars, huge waves sweep over the deck of the ship as we see the Dutchman at the wheel laughing out his defiance in diabolical fury.
And so in the story we are finally led up to a grand climax which actually grips anyone with an ounce of red blood in his veins.
And now I would like to ask the following questions:
Is there some Reader of Astounding Stories who no longer has any use for the old issues of Astounding Stories and would be so kind as to send me these? From the first issue up to the November, 1930, issue and also the December, 1930, issue are the magazines that I should like to have.
Leave your magazine as is, only have one good long novelette, not two fairly good ones as in your April issue, which was not up to the standard set by your previous magazines.—Walter G. Diehl, 145-38 Eighth Ave., Malba, L. I., N. Y.
This Time-Traveling Traffic