From far across the desolate moor I heard The echo of a wild and anguished cry-- A tortured voice that shrieked aloud a word, A name, that shivered 'cross the leaden sky. I stopped--stared 'round--I knew that voice did sound A faint, familiar note within my brain. I fled across that dark and desolate ground Seeking out the direction whence it came. Forebodingly, that voice kept echoing Within a brain that did not seem my own ... A vague remembrance of a recent thing I could not grasp ... I was a lost and lone Forsaken soul that sped I knew not where, Wondering frightenedly what I did seek.... At last I found it, there beside a bare And lonely road, when trembling and weak, I gazed upon a gallows-tree where hung A corpse, the very site of which did freeze The blood within my veins; a corpse that swung Grotesquely to and fro upon the breeze. And then, through rising panic, closer still I peered--then saw!--and knew! Again that cry That shrieked a name--the cry that issued shrill From my own throat, and shivered to the sky! * * * * * The name I shriek beneath the gallows-tree Was mine. The dead thing swinging there was me! The truth about goldfish KUTTNER For some time I have been wondering what the world is coming to. More than once I have got up in the middle of the nite, padded toward the bureau, and, peering into the mirror, exclaimed, "Stinky, what is the world coming to?" The responses I have thus obtained I am not at liberty to reveal; but I am coming to believe that either I have a most mysterious mirror or something is wrong somewhere. I am intrigued by my mirror. It came into my possession under extraordinary and eerie circumstances, being borne into my bedroom one Midsummer's Eve by a procession of cats dressed oddly in bright-colored sunsuits and carrying parasols. I was asleep at the time, but awoke just as the last tail whisked out the door, and immediately I sprang out of bed and cut my left big toe rather badly on the edge of the mirror. I remember that as I first looked into the fathomless, glassy depths, a curious thot came into my mind. "What," I said to myself, "is the world coming to? And what is science-fiction coming to?" It is quite evident that a logical and critical analysis of science-fictional trends is a desideratum today. The whole trouble, I feel, can be laid to velleity. (I have wanted to use that word for years. Unfortunately I have now forgotten exactly what it means, but one can safely attribute trouble to it. Where was I?) Today science-fiction is split by schisms and impaled on the trylon of bad thots. The fans, I mean, not the writers. The writers have been split and impaled for years, but nothing can be done about that. In a way, it's a good thing. Look at Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and, for that matter, the late unfortunate Tobias J. Koot.