of danger and tried to protect them from the destructive forces of the dero. Reader response to these fantasies was phenomenal. Fan mail zoomed from 40 or 50 to 2500 letters a month[II-13], and the magazine’s circulation increased by some 50,000. As the records of “racial memory” continued to appear, connoisseurs of good science fiction began to cry “Hoax!” but their protests had no effect. Thousands of new readers were buying the magazine and many of them were beginning to recall and report “memories” of their own. Since the “Discussions” columns could not take care of so many letters, Palmer opened a new department, “Report from the Forgotten Past”[II-14], and urged the readers to send in their personal experiences with the hidden world. Did they ever hear strange voices? Receive mysterious messages through the air? Suspect that they were being affected by strange rays? Feel that they had been put on earth for some special mission? Have dreams that they could not explain? Have a strong urge to explore caves? Have memories of other lives? The editor was eager to learn of all such incidents. Through the Shaver stories, Palmer was already promoting the idea that interplanetary craft do visit the earth: “There are many mysteries of the past that have intrigued investigators to an almost unbearable point.... What were the glories of Babylon? What truth is there in the Chinese legend of being the people of the Moon, and of coming to Earth in rocket ships? What was the mystery metal of the Lemurians, orichalcum? What was the secret of their airships that walked on beams of light?”[II-12] When one correspondent informed him that space travel was possible “if one travels through curves but not through angles,” Palmer replied, “Your editor is sincere--and he’d like to know everything you know.... For instance, please explain this space-travel business--about curves and not angles.”[II-15] For more than three years the columns of _Amazing_ continued to assert, not as fiction but as fact, that interplanetary travel is a present reality and that the laws of physics are not valid. In a mystic mumbo jumbo the readers were told that the velocity of light, for example, was not the ultimate speed: “Light speed is due to ‘escape velocity’ on the sun, which is not large. This speed is a constant to our measurement because the friction of exd, which fills all space, holds down any increase unless there is more impetus. The escape velocity of light from a vaster sun than ours is higher, but once again exd slows the light speed down to its constant by friction, so that when it reaches the vicinity of our sun, no appreciable difference is to be noted. A body can travel at many times the exd constant, under additional impetus, such as rocket explosions. A ship whose weight is reduced to a very little by reverse gravity beam can attain a great speed with a very small rocket.”[II-12]