Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

We are honoured to find that you are one of our regular readers, Dr. Grey Walter, and we are glad to know that you consider Authentic to be Britain’s premier science fiction magazine. It has always been our policy to demand the utmost accuracy in the stories we publish, though in some issues it has not been entirely possible. We do indeed insist that our writers are prophets of the laboratory, as you succinctly phrase it; we have no space for the temple until its dogmata become scientifically meas- urable. And thank you for your corrections. We are always happy to acknowledge errors. NO ILLOS! There’s one thing I would like to mention. Science fiction should not be illustrated. Let me explain my opinion, please. Now, when I read—let’s say Charles Dickens, I like illustrations, because Dickens recounts everything in detail; he leaves absolutely nothing to his readers’ imaginations. Science fic- tion is, more or less, just a stimu- lant to one’s own thinking. I’m completely free to draw my own conclusions out of the narrated facts, and so, illustrations irritate me. My guess, as to how terres- trials of one thousand years hence will look is almost as good as the artist’s. And I simply don’t believe that girls will be clothed and will wear exactly the same hair-do as they do now, as is depicted in Subtle Victory. I very much appreciate technical drawings; for pictures 154 like that—an emaciated man and a long-haired girl, both of them look- ing as if they had met somewhere quite recently, I’ve no use at all. What on Earth has that to do with science fiction? The dreadful at- mosphere the picture is supposed to transmit to the reader I can much more conveniently create in my Own imagination, undisturbed by drawings. A person who lacks imagination to such a degree as to rely on pictures for that, never reads science fiction anyway. Rose Frommann, Vervielfaltigungsburo, Nurnberg, Germany. You don’t believe girls will be clothed! Rose, Rose! Seriously, we can see what you are driving at but we don’t agree. We feel that people with really active imaginations like to bend them on wider fields of reference than such mundane affairs as clothing and hair-dos. They like to be stimulated to think of the economic, social and political rela- tions of the future, not the triviali- ties of individual existence. Anyway, you don’t have to look at our illustrations! SPACE BOOK I have just turned the last page of Authentic’s fortieth issue, and I think back to the days when the first issue appeared. Although the quality of the goods turned out then was pretty high, the ancient Authentic was nothing really ex- ceptional, and when I look at the modern version I am amazed at comicloooks.conn ~>