Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION me the data. Either that or they don’t want the publicity. Whichever it is, there is no room for it in a go-ahead magazine like this. The other feature I’ve stopped is the one that dealt with great men of science. I think I’ve covered all the truly great and I don’t want to clutter our pages with talk about the merely competent. Instead, starting next month Pll be writing you a regular feature on milestones in science—all about the little things that have changed the whole course of subsequent progress. Would you like that? Tell me if you have any better ideas. There’s only one other thing I would mention before going on to describe our cover, and that is the Authentic Book of Space. There’s a leaf- let about it enclosed with this issue. Now I’m just as good at blowing my own trumpet as the next man, and although I edited the A.B.S. I have no hesitation in telling you that if you don’t buy it you'll be sorry. It is really good. Better than any other publication of that type. And bigger. And cheaper. You'll love it! - See you next month. H.S.C. THIS MONTH’S COVER shows us the fabulous planet Mars. No princesses, No crystal castles. No picturesque ruins of a bygone civilisation. This is Mars as it really is. The air is too thin to biresthe, It’s cold, too. The ground is. just a rusty kind of dust, with patches of some lowly sort of plant that is no use to God nor man and would probably be rejected by the devil. The dust flies up as you walk along and if you’re not careful you trip and bury your face in it because of the low gravity. You slouch about like a jungle beast. You still don’t know what the canals are. You only know that they get in the way and get covered with this green joke of nature so that you fall into them and come out wet and sticky and slimy and fit to burst with temper. They get on your nerves. Mars gets on your nerves. All that ice up in the polar regions. The whole lot melts in summer and comes crashing down onto the plain as a raging torrent of slush until it seeps down into the sterile ground and disappears. That torrent is the only thing that moves on Mars. That and the dust and the stupid little clouds that are so small you want to cry. Sometimes you do cry. For home. For Earth. For trees and fields and somebody you can love or fight with or just talk to. Sometimes, on Mars, you want to scream. But you never do that. Because you know you wouldn’t be able to stop. comiclooks.corn