Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION tional problems involve going from our own position to another which we can see with our eyes. There an intuitive assumption that light travels in a straight line gives us our teference. We travel along the line joining our starting point to our destination as defined by the path of light from the objective to ourselves. WE MAKE A MAP The next stage is crawling from behind an arm chair to the unseen, but remembered, coal box. Somewhere en route there is a table leg as a thiid fixed point established as an intermediate objective. Gradually a mental picture is built up comprising a number of recognition points and associated directions—that is to say, we make our first map—a mental one. Later we get into the great outside world and build an- other map and in time we have a little personal atlas. The house—the garden—the streets near home—the way to Aunt Susan’s—Aunt Susan’s garden—the school building and playground. 96 Eventually we make another important step. We learn the conventional signs that other people have created in order to record and explain to each _other where things are to be found. The map is a compila- tion of fixed points, lines of direction and distances. And a map needs orientation. It is useless unless a standard refer- ence, known to all who use it, is in some way related to it. Given that, and the ability to read a map, we are no longer limited to our personal atlas or what we can discover. We have enlarged our ability to find our way around. The experience of thousands of other travellers is now at our disposal. That standard reference direction, the true North, is the key to all the maps for us, As a small boy I found myself at a little school soon to be destroyed by rebels. The troubles then brewing had left me as the only pupil for three teachers. They decided that I should learn the points of the compass. I was shown the north wall in one room, then taken to the next. Asked for the north wall, I pointed Comicbooks.com