Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition

About this issue

Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1944 This issue features two novelettes and three short stories. "The Storm" by A.E. van Vogt concerns an invincible Earth battleship arriving at the Fifty Suns galaxy seeking robot colonies. The galaxy's inhabitants—Dellian and non-Dellian robots descended from machines that escaped Earth millennia earlier—face destruction. A psychologically gifted "Mixed Man" named Maltby is coerced into guiding the ship into a catastrophic energy storm, where the crew will lose consciousness, allowing local fleets to board and capture it. The complicating factor: the storm has recently intensified into a Nova-level phenomenon. "Symbiotica" by Eric Frank Russell depicts explorers discovering a seemingly safe jungle planet after encountering machine-dominated Mechanistria. Eric Frank Russell and Fredric Brown contribute shorter works alongside Frank Belknap Long's "Willie" and H.H. Holmes's "Sanctuary," the latter involving Nazis, a professor, and a haunted villa.