"QRM Interplanetary," the first of the stories, appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction to start the series; typically, it serves merely to introduce the concept of the equilateral relay station as a necessary link in interplanetary communications. But the story has been so constructed that the working out of its plot gives a good concept of the general nature of the station, and of its functioning. Still, the story is essentially simply a suggestion that interplanetary communications will require the construction of a station in space to relay messages. The immediately following stories of the series introduce successive problems of the purely technical art; only gradually are the associated social and political reactions of the rest of that civilization of the future brought in. From the start, the author's problem has been simplified by picking a small, almost wholly isolated segment of the culture, so that only the technology itself need be discussed. As the series develops, however, more and more the social and political effects of the developments are brought into the picture, until, in the end, practically nothing but the social-political effects remain. The final story of the series to appear in Astounding Science-Fiction was devoted entirely to the cultural, rather than technical, problems of the matter transmitter. In essence, Venus Equilateral represents the basic pattern of science-fiction--which is, equally, the basic pattern of technology. First starting from the isolated instance, the effects spread outward through the culture. Scientific methodology involves the proposition that a well-constructed theory will not only explain every known phenomenon, but will also predict new and still undiscovered phenomena. Science-fiction tries to do much the same--and write up, in story form, what the results look like when applied not only to machines, but to human society as well. The science-fiction writer can be extremely accurate in the guesses he makes of future progress--and yet there are factors that may make a complete failure of his prediction.