Free from the superfluous, uninteresting machinery and apparatus that clutter up most illustrations in other Science Fiction magazines, your March cover remained fantastic, but human--a picture that expressed the very essence of super-scientific fiction as presented in Astounding Stories. Vivid in color, striking in subject, dramatic in treatment and drawn with consummate skill, that cover must have attracted many new Readers to this magazine. And the promise held out by the cover was more than fulfilled by the contents of that issue--one of your best to date. The only discordant note in the entire magazine was the yapping and ranting of certain dissatisfied ---- [censored] too ---- [censored] to appreciate the finest, most worthy publication in its field to-day.--Booth Cody, Bronx, New York. "_Nothing Is Automatic_" Dear Editor: First, I wish to congratulate you on the increasing quality of your magazine since its first issue. It surpasses all other Science Fiction magazines, and I haven't missed a single issue and don't intend to! What prompted me to write this letter was an article, "A Robot Chemist," published in your March, 1931, issue. In the article it states that a mechanical robot performed several experiments without human supervision. But, I am sorry to say, I disagree. Nothing is automatic. Foolishly, after perfecting anything that performs its work afterwards by itself, man calls it an automaton. But it is not! Did he not have to work and slave hour after hour, day after day and month after month to perfect it? He did! Ever since man became civilized he has deceived himself by calling, for instance, machinery in a factory, automatons. The quest for automatic machinery is as hopeless as the quest for perpetual motion! What is my idea of an automaton? Well, take a robot for instance. Man calls it an automaton in spite of the fact that he had to slave to put it together before it did its work. My idea is this: the iron ore would come out itself, smelt itself, form itself in the various shapes and parts needed to construct a robot, then take its correct place and rivet itself. Then the radio brain, electrical eyes and magnet hands take their place; and when it has constructed itself it will conduct the experiments--if a chemical robot--without human supervision. Thus, the latter clause would be true! That's my conception of an automatic robot! Otherwise, its just some metal doing the bidding of a master's brain. Another thing: the novelette "Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings, is preposterous. The flesh might shrink or grow, but the bone would not! If one shrunk as did George Randolph, one's bones would burst through the flesh.