Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION time. There are some nice pictures that have come ali the way from America to give you a preview of a forth- coming science fiction film. We have a further instalment in the “‘planetary exploration” series, this time dealing with the work of the biologist. And there’s a thought- provoking piece on what will happen when the flying saucers land. Peter. Summers is back with an article on a rather polemic note. Seems we’re barking up the wrong tree trying to get ourselves integrated with our surroundings. Let me know if you agree with him. Now you are probably wondering what has happened to the March of Science feature, which did not appear last month and is not in- cluded in this. Truth to tell I am hard put to it to produce such a feature regularly. Not enough that would interest you goes on in science, it seems. At least, not enough to make a regular feature out of it. So what I am going to do is to make it an occasional feature. It will be included whenever sufficient things have happened. Other months you'll get that much more fiction. THIS MONTH’S COVER might be on Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. It doesn’t matter which. They're all the same, except for size and a few things like that. In a way it’s like the arctic of Earth. Only colder. And deader. With no midnight Sun. Only mid- night. The Sun is one of the specks in the sky. You can’t tell which without a book and some instruments. Earth just doesn’t exist any more as far as you’re concerned. You keep trudging along between the towering black rocks that have never felt a breath of wind. Over the ice, harder than steel. And probably not ice, but some frozen concoction of compounds that would haunt a chemist’s dreams. Now and then you wonder why you keep walking, for there's nowhere to go, nothing to see that you haven't seen already. Then you realise that you keep on walking because there’s nothing else to do. You feel that you might easily just lay down and die—if it wasn't rather too much trouble to find a soft spot. You didn't think space would be like this. You didn’t think anything could be as dead and dreary as this mockery of a world. You are bitter and brittle and your heart is full of broken glass. Until you look through the helmet of the man next to you. He's been with you all the way. A fine pal. And he gives you a wink. You feel better then. You feel that, maybe after all, there is some point in doing what you are doing, though it escapes you in the cold sterility of your present situation. You sigh and take another step. You know, at least, that you and your friends have gone farther from Earth than any other men. You try to find comfort in the thought. comiclooks.conrn