Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

and gazed at its large blue, white and green diagonal stripes. “‘At first it was purely out of affection,” he said. “Now it’s my badge of office.”’ ““Badge of office?’’ I asked. ““Yes. As Prime Minister. They soon realised that a man who was capable of flying through space was their superior, mentally. At first they asked my advice. I gave it them. Soon I became their sort of unofficial oracle. It was not long before the position became official. From there events followed a logical course and now I am ruler of virtually the entire planet.” “‘I see,”’ I said. I pulled my own tie away from my shirt and inspected it. It was a little frayed here and there, but in fairly good condition. “Er... I seem to recall the colours,” he said. “‘But I can’t for the life of me remember .. .” “Old Grimaldian,” I said. “‘Oh, yes, of course.” “As a matter of fact I was wonder- ing...” “Old Grimaldian,” he said. “Could have been a lot worse. Of course, we always beat you at rugger, but I believe you used to get the better of us at cricket. And your brother was a good chap.” “IT was wondering . . .” I began again, fingering my tie and thinking yaguely of Sandra. His eye fixed on my purple and yellow stripes on the white background. ‘“‘We could do with a foreign secretary,” he said. “With all this increase in interstellar exploration we'll be needing a man with a knowledge of the outside. You may not be an old Broadboroughian, but you’re the next best thing.” A tie may not be everybody’s idea of sartorial perfection, but believe me, it is all that is required in this perfect little world. Hoping to hear from you by return rocket. Yours sincerely, DOUGLAS. (Sir Douglas William Waterman- Jones, Hon. Order of Homobar, Knight of the most noble order of neckties, etc, etc.) EIGHT PLANETARY STARTING LIFE ON A BRAND NEW PLANET WILL NOT BE EASY, BUT IT WILL HAVE COMPENSATIONS Yes! We have arrived. All the real problems have been solved, all the imaginary ‘it’s impossibles’ have been proved false and there before us lies a gleaming orb. We have the Sun behind us. Away over there is a little bright spot called Earth, shining in the black- ness of space. All the facilities it can provide are either with us or left behind. If there is anything we need among the left-behinds, it is too late now to find we could use it. What have we brought? Firstly, at least one camera. We shall want.to know the lie of the land, hills, mountains, valleys, ravines and plains. PHOTO RECONNAISSANCE Aerial photographic reconnaissance will be a first must. One of the many examples of good which it took the dominant evil of war to produce was the great progress brought about in the development of many scientific tech- niques. Whole libraries of hundreds of thousands of photographs were taken covering many times every significant inch of enemy-occupied territory. We shall need similar cameras so equipped that each negative is automatically stamped with the time at which exposure took place, altitude and focal length of the lens used. The pictures cover overlapping tracts of terrain so that they can be examined in pairs stereoscopically and handed over to the mathematically minded topographers to produce from them accurate contour maps. There at commiclbooks.com