New Worlds Science Fiction No. 56

About this issue

This issue features a profile of Australian science fiction author Frank B. Bryning, born in Melbourne, who became interested in the genre through E.E. Smith's "The Skylark of Space" in 1928. Professionally a building trade journalist, Bryning has achieved success in American and British science fiction markets and helped found the Brisbane Science Fiction Group. The contents include McIntosh's novelette "Unit," which explores a distant-future society where individuals volunteer for collective consciousness units under a Unit Authority, losing their individual identities—a concept revisiting themes from McIntosh's earlier story "Empath." Additional short stories are by Guthrie, Chandler, High, White, and Johns, with an article on contra-terrene matter by Cornell. Editor John Carnell's opening essay discusses science fiction's educational value, citing Isaac Asimov's arguments that the genre fosters intellectual respect for scientific endeavor without propagandistic intent.