In the current issue, "Murder Madness" and "The Power and the Glory" stand out as mile-posts in the history of Science Fiction. The rest are not far behind, though, as a matter of fact, "Beyond the Heaviside Layer" and "Earth, the Marauder" have more discernible flaws than the rest. Just for example, a layer of organic matter would raise Cain with astronomy, due to refraction. Air is bad enough. But the writing overwhelms the error. You have certainly assembled a group of excellent authors, new and old, and I am glad to see the promise of R. F. Starzl in the next issue. His "Madness of the Dust" is one of the most naturally written interplanetary stories I have read--logical and clear, just as it would happen to anybody. And now for the big question--that of reprints. You seem to have already decided the answer, and have defended your action well, but I wonder if it is well enough. By far your best argument is your last--"authors must eat"--with which I have no quarrel at all. Still, one classic serial a year, or at most two, might not prove too harmful. Following back, I reach a statement concerning "The Saturday Evening Post." In the past it has published hundreds of the world's best stories, and never reprinted. True. But why? Because these stories are all available in book form, in libraries and book stores, in original or new editions or in the Grosset and Dunlap list of perpetually printed best sellers. It is possible to read them for years after publication. But try to find the past masterpieces of Science Fiction. With the exception of Burroughs' books, most were never printed in book form. Even books by Wells and Verne, classics of their kind are gone, totally gone, even from the shelves of libraries. Many of Verne's best stories were never translated from the French. And the other classics of which readers write, classics familiar to most of us only by name and a few lucky tastes of others, newer works by the same authors, are absolutely gone--annihilated. Their best works are beyond the reach of the reader. Only by republication, in magazine or book, can they be revived in an age when they will be remembered and preserved--an age awake to science and Science Fiction. Other magazines are doing it, one or two to the year, and it may be that you need not reprint; but the reservoir of the past is large, and a few cannot drain it. This leads to your first argument, that better stories are being written to-day. They are--better than the average of the past--but not better than the classics. It would be folly to say that because the short story is a modern development, and because Galsworthy or Walpole or Reimarch are better than the average of yesterday, to our