Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION cal reactions take a certain time and release a certain" amount of energy. There is no way of increasing these things. And so it is impossible for muscles that are only one hundred and twenty-five times as big as they were to develop two hundred and fifty times as much power as they did before. That is why you do not find birds larger than a certain size. That is why the kind of flying monsters you read about in the inferior publica- tions are not only right out of this world, but right out of this universe! They are con- structed according to quite unknown biological laws. Having gone so far with me, you are probably wondering when I am going to get down to giving you the blue-print. Well, I’ve thought about this a lot, but I’m afraid there just is no blue-print for BEMS. You see, every time you try to design an animal that will actually work, you can get as far as maybe one or two systems and then you realise that the creature you have designed would fail because of some other system’s not being able to function. Naturally, I’m not a world authority on biology, but I do know quite a bit about it. And I would say that, given the same kind of physical laws and the same kind of carbon- based life, the animals we find will be fundamentally just like the ones we know—no matter from what distant star they may come. Queer ones there will be for sure, but not nearly so queer as the BEMS! (Note by H.J.C.: Though I gave Frank Wilson free reign for his ideas, I hoped and felt sure that he would come to this con- clusion. I do, too.) By now you'll probably have read TRIPLANETARY by E. E. Smith and be anxiously awaiting publication of the next five novels in this epic of the Galactic Patrol. But you don’t need to wait! Copies of these and many other famous novels are available to members of Our SCIENCE FANTASY POSTAL LIBRARY. Terms, from £3 15s. a year to 3s. 6d. a month, arranged to fit all pockets and all speeds of reading. Write for full details and sample listing of titles, to: FANTAST (MEDWAY) LIMITED 22 BROAD STREET, SYSTON, LEICS. comiclooks.corn