Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE REFERENCE LIBRARY now know of the deeps, and a feud with another youngster who was brought up there, both partisans ob- viously nursing fancied grievances. In this sense the characterization is more real in this than in the other books in this lot, and more like the people we met in Philip Latham’s “Five Against Venus.” “Vault of the Ages” is one of Poul Anderson’s tales of a feudal future, five hundred years after an atomic holocaust which has wiped out our culture and driven America—and presumably the rest of the world— back to a feudal field-and-village economy. A few “witch-men” in the forbidden city ruins mine and work up metal tools and weapons: “Doc- tors” are witch-doctors with a little knowledge of healing and a great store 111 of taboos based on their former under- standing of what had happened. But the climate is growing colder, bar- barous northerners are pressing down on the quiet farmlands of the Dales- men, and chief’s-son Carl sets out to use the secrets of a time-vault in the forbidden city for the good of his people. These are all superior fare for young people. Plotwise they are as good as the first five in the Winston series— better than “‘Find the Feathered Ser- pent’ and ‘“Earthbound’—but the characterization seems a little poorer and the stories as a lot closer to for- mula in plot and treatment. Let’s hope that this isn’t a trend, and that Winston will continue to have ex- perienced science fiction writers handle its science fiction for teen-agers. A FEW COPIES STILL REMAIN— STREET & SMITH’S ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN FANTASY STORIES Compiled by J. W. Campbell, Jr. e 2/9 (paper edition) Illustrated by Cartier (bound edition) 6/6 ATLAS PUBLISHING & DISTRIBUTING CO, LTD,, 13 BRIDE LANE, LONDON, E.C. connicloooks.c© inn