Page:Astounding Stories of Super Science (1930-06).djvu/135



"Second Better Than First"

Dear Editor:

The second number of Astounding Stories is better than the first. "Spawn of the Stars," by Charles Willard Diffin, was the best story, cutely followed by "Creatures of the Light," by Sophie Wenzel Ellis and "The Beetle Horde," by Victor Rousseau. I like stories of vibration as in "Mad Music," and of acceleration, as in "The Thief of Time." I am clad to see Harl Vincent in the pages of Astounding Stories. I have read many good stories by him. Interplanetary stories are my favorites, and the more you have of them the better.

I wish that you would put Astounding Stories out twice a month or put out a quarterly containing twice as much reading material as the monthly. In this you could put one book-length novel and a few shorter stories.

Are you going to start a department containing the readers' letters soon?—Jack R. Darrow, 422S N. Spaulding Avenue, Chicago, Ill.


 * Size and Paper

Dear Editor:

I certainly am glad to see your magazine appear on the newsstands. I also view with appreciation the fact that you have such brilliant authors as Harl Vincent and Captain S. P. Meek, U. S. A., on your list of contributors. Your stories are of the very highest value in the line of Science Fiction. However, I did not like "The Corpse on the Grating." It did not have an inkling of scientific background. I really am surprised it was published in a Science Fiction magazine. Aside from the fact that the idea of the story was merely a fantastical surmise I was very favorably impressed with the author's style and his use of the English language.

Why don't you try for some more of the works of the other well-known authors in this line of fiction?

My main object in writing this letter was that I think you rub the name of Science Fiction in the dust by printing it on such paper and in such a small magazine. If you intend to compete with your several contemporaries, you will almost have to alter your size and qualify of your paper.

You might Include a full page illustration for each story also, but, you will admit, that to combat these other influential Science Fiction magazines, you will have to put your magazine on a par materially with the others in your line.

I admire the type of stories which you publish and want to see your magazine get ahead.—Warren Williams, MS Dorchester, Chicago, Illinois.