Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition

About this issue

This August 1944 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction contains three novelettes and three short stories. The lead novelette, "Latent Image" by Wesley Long, follows John McBride, stationed at a uranium mining facility on Pluto, who receives urgent news that his pregnant wife Enid has fallen and needs his presence back at a space station 1,900 million miles away. With no regular transport available for five days, McBride locates an experimental spaceship, the Haywire Queen, whose alphatron (a critical component) has been destroyed during unauthorized drive experiments. McBride collaborates with the ship's crew—Steve Hammond, Pete Thurman, Jimmy Wilson, and Larry Timkins—to repair the vessel using unconventional gravitic engineering solutions, hoping to reach the Lens station safely. Other stories include P. Schuyler Miller's "Cuckoo," Cord D. Simak's "City," Fredric Brown's "The Yehudi Principle," Roby Wentz's "House of Tomorrow," and Chester S. Geier's "Environment."