Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 42 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

yay ATC e aoe te t i = Hiskisee wll be oon: soon, even while Gladys is praying to every 8 ase nthe is that he wil/ come home. For he is late. Very late. And there _ is that shadow. This is a story of war not as if usuz y portrayed with the false heroics of the battlefield, the ie owardice that sends men into i es action because they are afraid not to go, the brilliant _ cacaphonic chaos and destruction ay 2 irresponsible militants with their bs artificial glamour—none of that. This is a story of war as it is for those who really fight it, who really bi _ have courage, who know the _ frustrating reality that they cannot i a goddamned thing for freedom and equality and the other things the propagandists pour forth like Dg) last unction. These people, the ) i real fighters, know that all they can ‘a do is carry on. It takes courage, it ue “takes endurance, it takes a kind of faith and deep-down integrity that _ the man with a gun in his hand 149 AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION hasn't got. And will never have. Because he’s weak and cowardly. The people in Judy’s book are so very real. So very human. You know them and talk to them and cry with them and laugh now and then. The things they do are real. The way they think is real. The kind of thing that happens to them is the kind of thing that Aas hap- pened, that will happen, in wars. There are no blood-red spectacles before the eyes of Judith Merril. She sees things as they are, some- times good, sometimes bad, some- times so incredibly sickening that even the strongest faith begins to shake. And she sets it down that way. Her book is not something to enjoy in the pleasant sense of that word. Parts of it will make you want to turn to the wall and smash every mirror in the house. But it’s fine reading. It’s wonderful science fiction. Because it is so very much in contact with reality. Do please read it. comicloooks.com