Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION the character Jarril was be- ginning to assign these people. The fields that spread out from the town edges, care- fully irrigated by automati- cally-pumped canals and en- croaching on the baleful pre- serves of the desert, were all deserted. Industry was at a standstill. He passed a short row of metal huts with open fronts, inside which he could see machines ranging from primitive potters’ wheels to induction electronic furnaces. They were all idle. He had already noticed the bizarre clothing affected by nearly everyone. There seemed to be no norm, no standard type of dress, nothing by which to measure what state of affluence these people considered essential. The concrete domes _ had obviously been sprayed on balloons, the metal huts were standard erections similar to any to be found on Terran- occupied planets; there was nothing unusual there. Here, he saw with surprise, a man go past wearing khaki shorts and shirt, with a black, shiny and well- brushed top hat firmly 24 wedged on his head. Another man had a pair of white tennis slacks and a brilliant — scarlet waistcoat as his only other item of apparel. The women seemed to favour beach dress and bathing cos- tumes. All in all, to Jarril, growing every moment more uneasy and annoyed at his own uneasiness, it looked very much as though he had landed in a lunatics’ colony. The concept brought a erim frown to his lean face. It might very easily have been: some interstellar accident that brought these people to this planet in the first instance, and as a result of the shock to the brain structure of the first settlers, all their descend- ants were impregnated with the seeds of madness. The idea did nothing to alleviate Jarril’s disturbed state of mind. Cutting across a small open plaza which led off the main square with the pump, he was arrested by a growling snarl and turned in time to see a toddler standing with one hand outstretched to pat the head of a shaggy and dust-caked mongrel. The comicloooks.com