Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

122 “Ultrasonic God’’—takes us to Vishnu for a brush with the centaurs native to that planet. Two of the stories deal with that interstellar sharp-practicer, Darius Ko- shay, of whom I should like to have heard more. His goal in life seems to be getting around the regulations of the Viagens and profiting thereby. In “The Animal-Cracker Plot’ he is on Vishnu, dealing deftly in magic. In “Git Along!’’ he becomes one Moritz Gloppenheimer, establishes a dude ranch on Osiris, and comes about as close to his comeuppance as at any time in our acquaintance. Meanwhile an equally larcenous individual by the name of Felix Borel has involved himself on Krishna in the affair of “Perpetual Motion,” the fascinating Zerdai, and the embarrassing rules of the Order of Qarar. Although it fits into the same scheme of things, you may feel cheated to find that the title story, worth about one quarter of the book, takes place back on Earth. There are various aliens involved in the events which surround an attempt to create a “mew continent in the South Atlantic —an ostrich from Thor, a beautiful Krishman tourist, an Osirian reptile with a Thothian pet—with a grand climax on Ascension Island. FUTURE TENSE, edited by Kendall Foster Crossen. Greenberg Publishers, New York. 1952. 364 pp. $3.50 This is one of the anthologies which missed connections with me when I moved to Pittsburgh last summer, and a good one, too. Only seven of the stories are reprints; the other seven are published here for the first time. *“On the record,” the first section of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION the book, opens with Peter Phillips’ “Plagiarist,” a touching yet not quite convincing tale of the boy in a fos- silized future era who discovers the for- bidden and forgotten past. Anthony Boucher contributes ‘““The Ambassa- dors,”’ a delightfully tricky little item which bridges fantasy and science fiction, and Henry Kuttner, in ““Dream’s End,” takes us grimly into the depths of psychosis where fantasy and reality merge. From Ward Moore, in “We the People,” we have a neat little satire of a Presidential year in the far future, with the nip in the fourth line from the end, and from Miriam Allen de Ford, with her “Throwback,” comes a discomforting little story of one woman’s revolt against regimentation. Crossen’s “Things of Distinction’’ is a joyous foolery of interstellar sharp trade, and the section closes with one of the most haunting of C. L. Moore’s Northwest Smith fables, ‘Scarlet Dream.” “Off the record,” picked up from the discard heap or written for the book, isn’t quite up to the level of the editor’s selections from the past. H. F. Heard, in “Cyclops,” has a talky variation of what the sleeper sees when he awakes in the far future. Bruce Elliott’s ‘The Battle of the eye s” is a farce-comedy of the film industry’s future, and Martin Gardner—whose ‘“No-Sided Profes- sor’ seems established as a mathe- matical classic—has another go at topology in “The Island of Five Colors” with the eminent Professor Stanislaw Slapenarski. “Baby Killer,” by Rose Bedrick Elliott, is a very short tale of the way a world defends itself against Man. James Blish, in “Beanstalk,” gives us a bitter novelette built on Man’s in- humanity to the fruits of his own tamperings with his genetic line. Finally, John D. MacDonald—who EComichooksnco -~ AA Y