{"id":10101,"date":"2019-04-16T13:01:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T13:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10101"},"modified":"2019-04-16T13:01:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T13:01:40","slug":"astounding-science-fiction-v32n01-september-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10101","title":{"rendered":"Astounding Science-Fiction v32n01, September 1943"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/a>
\nArchive.org link<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nAttitude <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novella by Hal Clement \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nDoodad <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2217<\/strong>
\nRobinc <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Anthony Boucher [as by H. H. Holmes] \u2217<\/strong>
\nConcealment <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by A. E. van Vogt \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nJudgment Night<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 serial by C. L. Moore \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nProbability Zero:
\nDer Fuehrer\u2019s Base<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by George O. Smith –
\nYou Said It!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Charles Ben Davis \u2217<\/strong>
\nFinance <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by David Charles –
\nY = Sin X<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Harold Wooster –
\nUniversal Solvent<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Clayton James MacBeth \u2217<\/strong>
\nAnd Watch the Fountains<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by William Timmins
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by William Kolliker (x4), Paul Orban (x2), Frank Kramer (x2), Elton Fax (x2), A. Williams (x5),
\nMinute and Mighty<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nIn Times to Come
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: June & July 1943
\nThe End of the Rocket Society<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 essay by Willy Ley
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a huge fan of what I would call \u201cenigmatic awakening\u201d beginnings in stories, those which involve a narrator who has no memory of who they are and\/or what has happened to them and\/or where they are. Why?\u2014because this is usually followed by pages of tedious observation and deduction that eventually lead to a reveal which is, more often than not, something that involves aliens. That said, Attitude <\/em><\/strong>by Hal Clement is one of the better examples of the type, possibly because the story relatively quickly resolves the enigma and moves on to become a different type of story.
\nThe protagonist in this one is a spaceship doctor called Little, who wakes up in free fall inside a strange hexagonal room with copper coloured walls. After examining his surroundings he deduces he is probably a prisoner on a spaceship. He confirms the latter is correct when he is later fed, or rather watered, by means of floating spheres of lime juice delivered regularly at four-hour intervals. This continues over several days, long enough for Little to start becoming sick of the lime juice, until there are gravity changes and manoeuvring which culminate in a landing.
\nLittle then hears humans walking in the corridors, but his calls are ignored until a ladder drops into his cell. When he finally climbs out of his cell five silent starfish-like aliens (four in the illustration) take him to a chamber where he is reunited with the rest of his crew from his ship, the Gomeisa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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At this point the story switches to become essentially a prison break story, starting with the ship\u2019s captain explaining to Little how they were boarded after stopping to survey a giant asteroid (a related explanation about Little\u2019s survival in a space vacuum\u2014which involves a gas used in suspended animation that turns up again later in the story\u2014is not convincing). The situation is further developed when a Vegan translator from another captive ship appears and tells them that their attempts to build weapons have been pre-empted by their continually watchful captors.<\/p>\n

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The rest of the story involves: (a) a partially successful escape attempt by the human crew; (b) an attempt by the remaining human prisoners to fix their stellar position using a Heath Robinson contraption of various lenses and a diffraction grating; (c) the construction of a video transmitter; and (d) the human\u2019s intentional loss of the transmitter to the aliens. This latter occurs after a realisation by Little about how the starfish-aliens communicate:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey think and talk immeasurably faster than we do; and their thoughts are not in arbitrary word or picture symbols, but in attitudes. Watching them, I have come to the conclusion that they don\u2019t have a language as we understand it at all; the motions and patterns of the spines, which convey thought from one to another, are as unconscious and natural as expressions on our faces. The difference being that their \u2018faces\u2019 cover most of their bodies, and have a far greater capacity for expression. The result is that they have as easy a time learning to interpret expressions and bodily attitudes of other creatures, as we would have learning a simple verbal tongue. What the psychologists call attitude\u2014or expression, to us\u2014is the key to their whole mental activity. Until we understood that, we had no chance of using their own methods to defeat them, or even of understanding the methods.\u201d\u00a0 p. 44<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story climaxes with (spoiler) the use of the suspended animation gas, which enables the humans to break into the aliens\u2019 control room and use their confiscated transmitter (which the aliens have by now patched into their own more powerful systems). The explanation at the end of the story, after the aliens flee, reveals that the prisoners were allowed a considerable degree of freedom to do as they wished so the aliens\u00a0could learn from them.<\/p>\n

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Although some of this isn\u2019t entirely convincing (I\u2019m not sure how a suspended animation gas would help you survive a space vacuum), the story gets off to a pretty good start, and Clement\u2019s clear, readable style makes the story seem shorter than its 24,000 words (Campbell\u2019s 30,000 word estimate in the last issue appears inaccurate). It shows some promise for what was only Clement\u2019s third story.
\nDoodad <\/em><\/strong>by Ray Bradbury starts with a journalist pursued by gangsters taking refuge is a superscience version of a magic shop. After the proprietor shows him the various items he has for sale (\u201cThimgumabobs, Doodads, Watchamacallits, Hinkies\u201d, etc.) Crowell leaves with a \u201cdoohingey\u201d:<\/p>\n

It may have been a crankshaft, and yet it resembled a kitchen shelf with several earrings dangling along a metal edge which supported three horn-shaped attachments and six mechanisms Crowell couldn\u2019t recognize, and a thatch of tentacles resembling shoelaces poured out of the top.\u00a0 p. 50<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Crowell gets back home the gangster boss turns up to kill him, but is (spoiler) killed by the doohingey, which also takes his body and puts it in the car. After Crowell disposes of the body, he gets a call from the shop owner to offer him a replacement model doohingey. When Crowell goes back to the shop he interviews the owner for the radio (\u201caudio\u201d) program he works for, and learns more about the shop\u2019s items. The last scene has Crowell leaving with a box of various knickknacks which he then uses to stop two cars of gangsters that pursue him. There is a lame twist ending.<\/p>\n

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This is a beginning writer\u2019s gimmick story, and not a particularly good one: it is rather dispiriting that this is one of the few pieces of Bradbury\u2019s that Campbell accepted for Astounding<\/em> (while presumably rejecting other contemporary stories such as the superior R for Rocket<\/em>, which doesn\u2019t seem any further from the magazine\u2019s norms than, say, the Moore serial).1<\/sup>
\nRobinc <\/em><\/strong>by Anthony Boucher is a sequel to March\u2019s Q. U. R.<\/em>, and is the second of his \u2018Usuform Robot\u2019 stories. This one starts with a change in the law to allow usuform\u2014single function\u2014robot production (previously only multifunction robots that looked like humans, i.e. androids, were allowed).
\nGrew, the owner of Robinc, the monopoly android producer then begins a dirty tricks campaign against Quinby and his usuform robots to put him out of business. This starts with a usuform dowsing robot blowing up during a public demonstration, and progresses through the kidnap of Quinby and the narrator, to a resolution (spoiler) where they modify one of Robinc\u2019s robots to become a \u201cconverter\u201d\u2014an android which will convert others of its kind to the efficiency of usuformity. When an ever-increasing number of Grew\u2019s Robinc androids turn up at Quinby\u2019s for modification, he concedes.<\/p>\n

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I didn\u2019t much like the previous story, which was unlikely and contrived, and this is pretty much more of the same.
\nConcealment <\/em><\/strong>by A. E. van Vogt is the first of his \u2018Mixed Men\u2019 stories about a planet of robots who, thousands of years previously, fled human persecution to set up their own society. One day, a human ship finds one of their ouposts:<\/p>\n

The Earth ship came so swiftly around the planetless Gisser sun that the alarm system in the meteorite weather station had no time to react. The great machine was already visible when Watcher grew aware of it.
\nAlarms must have blared in the ship, too, for it slowed noticeably and, still braking, disappeared. Now it was coming back, creeping along, obviously trying to locate the small object that had affected its energy screens.
\nIt loomed vast in the glare of the distant yellow-white sun, bigger even at this distance than anything ever seen by the Fifty Suns, a very hell ship out of remote space, a monster from a semimythical world, instantly recognizable from the descriptions in the history books as a battleship of Imperial Earth.
\nDire had been the warnings in the histories of what would happen someday\u2014and here it was.
\nHe knew his duty. There was a warning, the age-long dreaded warning, to send to the Fifty Suns by the nondirectional subspace radio; and he had to make sure nothing telltale remained of the station.
\nThere was no fire. As the overloaded atomic engines dissolved, the massive building that had been a weather substation simply fell into its component elements.
\nWatcher made no attempt to escape.
\nHis brain, with its knowledge, must not be tapped. He felt a brief, blinding spasm of pain as the energy tore him to atoms.\u00a0 p. 88<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Watcher\u2019s sacrifice proves to be in vain as the Earth ship\u2019s female commander, Grand Captain, the Right Honorable Gloria Cecily, the Lady Laurr of Noble Laurr,2<\/sup> orders her scientists to reconstruct the station and the man. When this is completed Laurr introduces herself to the Watcher, and commands him to provide a course to his planet (she explains that Earth\u2019s Empire allows no independent states). When he refuses he is forcibly interrogated by Laurr\u2019s officers, at which point his IQ jumps to 800. Grand Captain Laurr then interrogates the Watcher herself, at which point (spoiler) he tries to attack her, and is cut down by energy beams. This reveals that he is a robot.
\nThis starts well but has a rather inconclusive ending. I enjoyed it nonetheless as it provides background information to next month\u2019s sequel The Storm<\/em>, which I recently read in The Great SF Stories Volume 5, 1943<\/em>.
\nJudgment Night<\/em><\/strong> by C. L. Moore continues in this second part with Juille, the daughter of the Emperor, being led down into the levels under the city by Egide, the leader of the insurgents, and Helia, her treacherous Andarean servant. The group eventually reaches a cavern where the ancient superweapons are kept, and Juille is left alone while they examine rest of the arsenal: this gives her a chance to hide one of the advanced guns in her clothing. When the others return, Juille hears a few of the weapons echo the sounds they make, at which point Egide plays his harp:<\/p>\n

[His] calloused fingers swept the strings into a sudden, wild, wailing chord, and another, and then a third. The underground room rang with it, and on the wall a quiver of life leaped into shining motion as here and there a thin blade shrilled response. Egide laughed, a deep, full-throated sound, and shouted out what must have been a line or two of some old H\u2019vani battle song.
\nHis voice was startlingly sweet and strong and true.
\nThe arsenal boomed with the deep, rolling echoes of it. Somewhere hidden under tons of dust, a forgotten drum boomed back, distant and softly muffled. Some metal cylinder of forgotten purpose took up the echo and replied with a clear, metallic reverberation, and down the hall an aeons-dead warrior\u2019s helmet rang with its hollow mouth like a clapperless bell, and fell clanging to the floor and the silencing dust.
\nEgide laughed again, with a timbre of sudden intoxication, and smote his harp to a last wild, shrilling wail, sent one more phrase of the song booming down the room. And all the room replied. The muffled drum boomed back, and the clear ringing twang of the hidden cylinder, and the little blades shrilled like tongues upon the wall, shivering and twinkling with tiny motion.
\nEchoes rolled and rolled again. Egide\u2019s voice sang on for a moment or two without him, diminishing against the walls. And this was no longer a thin, hopeless protest of the voiceless past against intrusion as the arsenal replied. Egide\u2019s was a warrior\u2019s voice, promising battle again, strong and savage with the savagery of a barbarous young race. These weapons had rung before, in the unfathomable past, to the voices of such men. Arsenal and weapons roared an answer to that promise of blood again, and the echoes died slowly among the blades and the drums and the hollow, hanging shields that might never echo any more to the sounds they were made to echo.
\nJuille, meeting the unashamed melodrama of his blue eyes and his laughter as he turned away, was appalled by a surge of genuine warmth and feeling. This was naked sentiment again, like the deliberate romance of Cyrille, but to her amazement, she found herself responding, and with an unexpected overwhelming response she did not understand.\u00a0 p. 113-114<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next part of the plan is for Egide and his band to leave the planet with Juille as their hostage, but on the way back to the ship he goes to consult the enigmatic Ancients. While the rest of the group wait for him to return, Juille\u2019s llar<\/em> arrives and undoes her bonds. It slips a note and two items into her hand: the message is from Dunnar, and says that one of the items is the secret \u201cphotographic\u201d weapon and gives instructions its use. The llar<\/em> then leads her to the same place in the forest where Egide went to speak to the Ancients and, after some agonising, she follows him.<\/p>\n

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Juille penetrates deep into the forest, but the Ancient\u2019s temple only slowly appears from the darkness of the trees. Inside the building there is a disorienting blackness:<\/p>\n

Far, far away through the crystal on which she stood, a lazy motion stirred. Too far to make out clearly. It moved like smoke, but she did not think it was smoke. In a leisurely, expanding column it moved toward her, whether swiftly or slowly she did not even think, for awareness of time had ceased. And she could not tell if it were rising from fathoms underfoot or coiling down out of the sky toward her as she stood upside down on a crystal ceiling.
\nNearer and nearer it came twisting, intangible as smoke and moving with the beautiful, lazy billowing of smoke\u2014but it was not smoke at all.
\nWhen it had come almost to her feet it expanded into a great, slow ring and came drifting toward her and around her and up past her through the solid substance on which she stood. And as the ring like a wide, hazy, yawning mouth swept upward a voice that she thought she knew, said quietly in her ears:
\n\u201cYou may speak.\u201d\u00a0 p. 121<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Juille asks how she can save her people from the H\u2019vani, but the answer is enigmatic. She exits the temple with a vertiginous feeling, and then finds Egide telling her to open her eyes, whereupon she finds herself back in the forest, with the temple vanished. They struggle, but she cannot best him. When she stops struggling they discuss their experiences in the temple, and then talk about what happened on Cyrille and their feelings for each other. They kiss, but Juille is still very conflicted, and they end up fighting again until she is knocked unconscious.
\nJuille awakes later on Cyrille, imprisoned in one of its worlds. She eventually discovers by means of the communication screens that Egide and Jain have a huge laser beam pointed at the surface of Ericon, and they mean to burn the capital to the ground when they pass overhead. She uses her hidden weapon to blow a hole through the wall and escapes, later finding a palm gun. She then contacts the men, luring Jair away from the control room, which then leads to an extensive chase sequence that takes her and Jair through many of Cyrille\u2019s virtual realities, including one particularly nightmarish one:<\/p>\n

Below was a dim-green twilight forest of wavering weeds. Not too far below. Juille took a tight grip on both her guns and jumped. She was in midair before she saw the terrible pale face peering up at her through the reeds, its dark mouth squared in a perfectly silent scream.
\nIt was a madman\u2019s face.
\nJuille\u2019s throat closed up and her heart contracted to a cold stop as she met that mindless glare. She was falling as if in a nightmare, with leisurely slowness, through air like green water that darkened as she sank. And the face swam upward toward her among the swaying weeds, its mouth opening and closing with voiceless cries.
\nThe floor was much farther than it had seemed, but her slow fall discounted the height. And the creature came toward her as slowly, undulating with boneless ease among the weeds. Juille sank helpless through wavering green currents, struggling in vain to push against the empty air and lever herself away. The room was a submarine illusion of retarded motion and subdued gravity, and the dweller in it, swimming forward with practiced ease against the leverage of the tangled weeds, had a mad underwater face whose human attributes were curiously overlaid with the attributes of the reptile.
\nJuille\u2019s reason told her that she had stumbled into one of the darker levels of Cyrille, where perversions as exotic as the mind can conceive are bought and practiced to the point of dementia and beyond. This undulating reptilian horror must be one of the hopeless addicts, wealthy enough to indulge his madness even when civilization was crumbling outside the walls of Cyrille.\u00a0 p. 133-134<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Juille and Jair fight their way through many more worlds until she manages, on her third or so attempt, to hit him with her palm gun. She seizes his weapon and starts trying to destroy her way towards the control room. Eventually, she causes so much damage (she blows lots<\/em> of holes in things) Cyrille starts collapsing, and she is washed away in a huge wave of water, the mini-climax of a pretty impressive action\/image sequence\u2014which, perhaps, goes on for slightly too long. Eventually (spoiler) Juille finds Egide, and threatens to kill him with the secret weapon unless he stops the attack on the planet. They make their way back to the control room to find the capital is burning. Jair turns up, revealing himself as an android, before he leaves to meet the H\u2019vani fleet to complete the conquest of Ericon. Juille takes Egide to the surface, and goes to see her father.<\/p>\n

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The H\u2019vani space fleet attacks and lands its forces: the two sides clash and, during this, Juille recognises the envoy from Dunnar as one of the Ancients. He tells Juille and Egide that neither side will win, that humankind\u2019s day is over, and that another race will surpass them. He and the llar<\/em> ride off into the wood, while Juille and Egide go down to the battle.
\nThe story closes with the llar<\/em> reflecting on the communal nature of his own race, and that they should not trust the Ancients.
\nWhen I finished reading this novel I felt that, for all its many accomplishments, the various parts don\u2019t entirely fit together. Perhaps this is because, ultimately, it isn\u2019t really much more than a relationship novel mixed in with a fairly basic Empire vs, resistance plot. I also found that some of the motivation and plotting didn\u2019t entirely make sense to me. That said, parts of it are particularly accomplished (the characterisation, the descriptive writing, the action sequences, the idea of virtual realties, etc.) and it is still a notable piece of work, even if it\u2019s not of the same level as, say, Leiber\u2019s Gather Darkness<\/em>.
\nOne final thing I found unusual about this work is its \u201cdoomed mankind\u201d ending, which presents a strangely elegiac view of humanity that doesn\u2019t entirely square with Campbell\u2019s supposed human exceptionalism bias. Perhaps everyone was feeling pessimistic because of the ongoing World War.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

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This issue also has, unfortunately, half a dozen Probability Zero <\/em><\/strong>items: Der Fuehrer\u2019s Base<\/em><\/strong> by George O. Smith is some voodoo doll nonsense about Hitler with an ending I didn\u2019t get\/understand; You Said It!<\/em><\/strong> by Charles Ben Davis has a scientist develop a clich\u00e9 actualiser; Finance <\/em><\/strong>by David Charles has a time-traveller play the stock market in 1929 and (spoiler) cause the Crash; Y = Sin X<\/em><\/strong> by Harold Wooster has radio sensitive pigeons and a dumb ending; Universal Solvent<\/em><\/strong> by Clayton James MacBeth is self-explanatory, and has a vaguely clever thiotimolineish-like ending; And Watch the Fountains<\/em><\/strong> by Ray Bradbury has two intensely competitive liars meet\u2014one says he has a time machine and will use it to kill the other in the future\u2014the other prepares: this has a nonsensical setup and a lame ending.
\nThe Davis, MacBeth and Bradbury are mediocre; the others aren\u2019t even that good.<\/p>\n

The Cover <\/em><\/strong>is an average effort by William Timmins for Clement\u2019s story. The Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> in this issue is almost uniformly mediocre: the one saving grace is the illustration by A. Williams on p. 126, where Juille goes through the forest to speak with the Ancients: I\u2019d have liked it even more if she wasn\u2019t wandering about in what appears to be stockings and high heels. The magazine needs more striking full-page illustrations like this: the spot and half page illustrations provided by the other artists just seem half-baked by comparison.
\nMinute and Mighty<\/em><\/strong> by John W. Campbell, Jr. is a snippet about the amplification and stabilisation of radio signals that feels like it would be more at home in Radio Ham Monthly<\/em>.
\nIn Times to Come<\/em><\/strong> is part blurb for A. E. van Vogt\u2019s The Storm<\/em>, and part Campbell\u2019s maunderings about stars and night bombers.
\nThe scores for The Analytical Laboratory: June & July 1943<\/em><\/strong> were commented on in the reviews of those issues.4<\/sup> I note in passing Campbell\u2019s observation about trying to compare the results for stories in different issues:<\/p>\n

The June issue carried seven stories besides the article; this means that point-score votes ranged from one to seven\u2014and made point scores tend to run high. That\u2019s somewhat unfair, in a way\u2014a third-place story or fourth-place story in such an issue has met and surpassed more competition, yet gets a tougher point score than the rear-guard item in a five-story issue. Some day all things will be perfect\u2014and a completely fair system of reporting may be worked out.\u00a0 p. 48<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The End of the Rocket Society<\/em><\/strong> by Willy Ley continues this issue, and starts with a description of the boom times in German rocketry at the beginning of the 1930s:<\/p>\n

To an outside observer during the years 1930 and 1931 it must have looked as if the \u201crocket people\u201d were in all the rooms\u2014at least in all the rooms in Berlin. For weeks we had an exhibit of the Oberth rocket, the Mirak and a lot of apparatus right in the middle of Potsdamer Platz. Then the exhibit was moved for two weeks to Wertheiin\u2019s\u2014Berlin\u2019s equivalent of Macy\u2019s\u2014and could have been moved to the equivalent of Gimbel\u2019s after that, if the equipment had not been needed. We got more newspaper space than ever before and every magazine in existence ran at least one article about our activities. I overheard fishermen mending their nets at the shores of the Baltic talk about the VfR; I had to explain the principles of rocket propulsion to innumerable street-car conductors, gasoline-station operators and bookkeepers, in addition to the normal complement of engineers and newspapermen. One morning I received a letter with government stamps on it\u2014philatelists will know what I mean, the Dienstmarken<\/em> that go on \u201cofficial business\u201d\u2014asking me to come to the Reich Post Ministry to see Postal Counselor So-and-So. It turned out that the counselor was the editor in chief of a biweekly official magazine, \u201cmust\u201d reading for all postal employees. He wanted me to write a comprehensive report about the VfR for immediate publication, to be followed up by supplementary articles once every second month. Thereafter all postal employees knew as much about rockets and the VfR as most of the members.
\n[. . .]
\nThe intensity of the interest can be judged by the following: Around the middle of December, 1931, I knew that I would have about a week in January or February to visit my parents living in Konigsberg in East Prussia. I also informed one of our few Konigsberg members about it and he wrote back asking whether I would be willing to lecture.
\nMy week then looked as follows: Sunday, radio; Monday, Engineering Society; Tuesday: free; Wednesday, University, Geographical Seminary; Thursday, Merchant\u2019s League; Friday: University, Department of Physics; Saturday: free; Sunday: radio again. I did not speak a word without being paid for it, and the VfR got half of the gross proceeds. When I got back to Berlin I slept for a full day: six lectures in eight days, plus an eight-hundred-mile round trip, is work.\u00a0 p. 58-59<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The rest of the article describes further rocket tests against a deteriorating political background and the eventual involvement of the military. Ley concludes with this:<\/p>\n

It is my estimate that a quick rehash of the work done and to forge on to the meteorological rocket from there would require some thirty thousand dollars per year for the first three years, more later.
\nAt present the problem has to rest until Hitler is dead\u2014after the war we\u2019ll see. At any event I believe as firmly as ever in the feasibility of the first practical step, the instrument-carrying high altitude rocket. And I have never for a moment stopped believing in the ultimate goal: the spaceship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ley doesn\u2019t seem have foreseen the first offensive use of the V2 rocket\u00a0a year later.5<\/sup>
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> has letters by two writers, the yet to debut A. Bertram Chandler, and Malcolm Jameson. It also has this from Karl K. Webber, from Flora, IL:<\/p>\n

\u201cFinal Blackout\u201d\u2014Who cares whether it\u2019s science fiction or history or what? Everyone who reads it is on the lieutenant\u2019s side when the U. S. comes to call.
\nHubbard is no small potatoes as a writer. Next (these aren\u2019t in order of preference\u2014they\u2019re all equal) is: \u201cThe Weapon Makers,\u201d a story which has as great a sweep as Smith\u2019s series, but doesn\u2019t get you bogged down by breathlessness caused from too much space\u2014a form of spacesickness, I guess. Last is a short story and it needs no explanation\u2014\u201cMimsy Were the Borogoves.\u201d Padgett may be a pen name, but he reads Carroll and loves him\u2014even as I (and maybe you). Every adult ought to read Lewis Carroll\u2019s works once a year.
\nOver in another group are all of Bob Heinlein\u2019s historical patterns waiting for this war to end so Bob can finish the design. To my notion when you\u2019ve got the stories I\u2019ve named hid away in a comer of your library, brother, you\u2019ve got something. Rogers for covers is A-1; Orban inside; Isip\u2014both of \u2019em\u2014are good, but fit Unknown<\/em> a little better; Cartier can\u2019t be beat for Unknown<\/em>.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He finishes with this pre-emptive, if ungrammatical, rejoinder:<\/p>\n

You edit the two best mags\u2014bar none\u2014in the science-fiction and fantasy fields, and I know a few things about removing the teeth suddenly for any guy who disagrees.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Charming.<\/p>\n

A middling issue, and one let down by lacklustre artwork.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. The only other Astounding<\/em> appearances I\u2019ve noticed from Bradbury are a couple of Probability Zero<\/em> pieces, including the one above. Here is Bradbury\u2019s ISFDB page<\/a> for those that want to check.<\/p>\n

2. Atypically for the time, van Vogt\u2019s Imperial Battleship Star Cluster<\/em> is not only commanded by a woman (Grand Captain Laurr), but the crew is mixed sex too (Lieutenant Nesslor is also a woman).<\/p>\n

3. Campbell\u2019s supposed insistence that humanity always gets the upper hand seems to have a had a few exceptions: from 1943 there is P. Schuyler Miller\u2019s The Cave<\/em> (January) and Moore\u2019s novel in this issue. Even as late as 1953 we have Philip K. Dick\u2019s Imposter<\/em> (June).<\/p>\n

4. The Analytical Laboratory<\/em> results for this issue appeared in the November issue:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m surprised the Clement wasn\u2019t further ahead of the van Vogt: longer stories usually do better than shorter ones.<\/p>\n

5. The Wikipedia page<\/a> for the V2 rocket.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Archive.org link _____________________ Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant Fiction: Attitude \u2022 novella by Hal Clement \u2217\u2217\u2217 Doodad \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2217 Robinc \u2022 short story by Anthony Boucher [as by H. H. Holmes] \u2217 Concealment \u2022 short story by A. E. van Vogt \u2217\u2217 Judgment Night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2CV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10101"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10159,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions\/10159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}