New Worlds Science Fiction No. 29

About this issue

This issue of the British science fiction monthly features three original short stories and one novelette. The lead novelette, "The Messengers" by Lan Wright, posits a twenty-fifth-century scenario where faster-than-light travel outpaces radio communication across interstellar distances. A specialized corps of human couriers—the Messengers—transport diplomatic secrets, fortunes, and critical documents between thousands of colonized planets. These operatives, drawn from all backgrounds including reformed criminals, live by a single code: deliver the cargo or destroy it. The opening depicts a thirty-four-year-old Messenger with black hair and blue eyes receiving an assignment. The issue includes short stories by Alfred Bester ("Disappearing Act"), E.C. Tubb ("Into Thy Hands"), C.M. Kornbluth ("The Remorseful"), and E.R. James ("Rockfall"), alongside an editorial examining the recent collapse of the American science fiction magazine boom and its international reverberations.