(Cover Timmins)
Astounding - Sep 1943
Letter
Dear Mr Campbell:
As it doesn't look as though I shall be able to spare the time to call in person with my list of growls, I guess I'd better put them down in writing.
The main growl is one you’ll be used to by this time. I growled when you changed the size the first time, and I growl again now you are changing it back. Of course, being used to wartimes economics, we foresaw that the time would come when paper shortage would force the change upon you. It seemed indiscreet of you to increase the size of Astounding at the very moment when U.S.A joined the belligerents.
In England we have seen our magazines and newspapers grow smaller and smaller, and the quality of paper in our books grow worse and worse. The only publications for which there appears to be ample paper are those official forms which have to be filled in, at the very least in Triplicate. Mais que voulez vous? C'est la guerre?
But let us now discuss the fare which you laid before us in the first four issues of this year of grace.
"The Weapon Makers" somehow missed fire.
"Clash by Night" was GOOD.
Lewis Padgett’s little fantasies are very worthy of publication.
"Swimming Lesson" was good. The wife puts it first, but I prefer "Clash by Night."
It is a great pity that we shall have to wait for Isaac Asimov to finish his series, and for Stewart to carry on with the Seetee Saga. Talking of series and sagas and so on, what finally happened to Comrade Gailbraith?
And now we’re going all sociological again, much as I liked "Clash by Night." I just couldn't fathom the economic set-up.
Man, as you say, is an incurably illogical animal, but the sociology of Venus seemed frightfully weird to me. One could understand something in the nature of society of the Keeps with bands of disgruntled setting up shops as bandits and/or pirates, and with bands of mercenaries maintained by the Keeps in self-defence. But this token fighting, these phoney wars, between the Keeps themselves was hard to understand. It just didn't tally.
Anyhow, it was a good story, and I liked it.
And now I will close.
But please, no more changes. Like most seaman I am intensely conservative, and any derivation from routine arouses my bitter resentment.
And can't you persuade Don A. Stuart to give us another story or so? - A Chandler