Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION that it is to his welfare to follow a certain command? A female subject, for example, who is told that her clothing is on fire would tend to ollow the dictates of survival rather than those of her moral code. Instinct would prompt her to remove the burning garments and so over-ride her moral objection to disrobing in public; a command she would refuse. QUERY It strikes me as being very curious that, although machines, standards of living and spaceships are con- stantly improving in your stories, mankind remains exactly the same. Isn’t it about time that some of your authors, instead of showing the depths of degradation men can go to, write about the glories that are in human nature? A nature which is always changing with en- vironment. Do you honestly think that a man of Dale Amber’s calibre—Number 13, issue 69, by Douglas West—would be al- lowed to exist and be in charge of costly rockets and men’s lives? Or do you consider that your readers are entitled to some intelligent science fiction? I have read Authentic since issue 19, and in all these 50 issues I can honestly say that, apart from the above story or the like, I have enjoyed them all. Having ended its infancy and adolescence, Authentic has blossomed into an educational magazine of science fiction, some- thing, I think, to be proud of. Please take note of my one and only criticism though. Mike Kaye, 10 Forburg Road, London, N.16. I think West was justified in basing his character on real life. Amber bought and operated rocket ships with his own money and hired men who could, and did, refuse to fly them. Both Amber and his men were operating in a system of free enterprise. Would you prefer to live in any other system? Intelligent science fiction, yes, but can’t it also be adult and realistic? HE DISAGREES Maybe No. 68 is not the perfect issue, but it comes as near to it as any issue yet published. First of all the cover which, naturally, is the first thing the reader sees. I can truthfully say that it’s the best you’ve had since that beauty of the first spaceships approaching Mars way back in the Earth to the Stars series, One small point; aren’t the crew of the rocket going to be rather intoxicated when the globes of whatever it is hit objects and split into smaller and _ smaller droplets? This will be the first time in history when alcoholics are breathed instead of drunk! Next comes your editorial, and I'd like to disagree with you. Admitted, if a story were written today describing the invention of the aeroplane or submarine #it would not be science fiction. But if the story were written when such inventions were not even thought of seriously, much less constructed, then surely it would be science fiction. Even today most of the works of Wells and Verne, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Land Ironclads, The War in the Air, etc., can still be so regarded. 157 comiclbooks.cormn