de me realize how unimportant I am. A human lifetime is
really as brief as the flash of an electric spark. The whole
lifetime of our Earth is not much more than that. Stars,
worlds, are born, live and die, and the Great Cosmos goes
majestically on. Yet some people seem to feel that they and
the Space they occupy in this Time they call the Present are
the most important things that ever were or ever will be in
the whole Universe. It is a good thing to realize that that
isn't so.--Ray Cummings.

_Likes_

Dear Editor:

Starting with the August issue, I am going to give my
opinion of the stories.

"The Planet of Dread," by R. F. Starzl, couldn't have been
better. Get more stories by him. "Murder Madness," by Murray
Leinster, was a good story, but it didn't belong in a
Science Fiction magazine. "The Terrible Tentacles of L-472,"
a good story; "The Invisible Death," a very good story;
"Prisoners on the Electron," very good; "The Ape-Men of
Xlotli," a good story, but it does not belong in a Science
Fiction magazine; "The Pirate Planet," very excellent--much
more so because it is an interplanetary story. "Vagabonds of
Space," "The Fifth Dimension Catapult," "The Gate of Xoran,"
"The Dark Side of Antri"--all good.

Well, I guess I will sign off and give somebody else a
chance to broadcast.--Wm. McCalvy, 1244 Beech St., St. Paul,
Minn.

_I Do; I Don't_

Dear Editor:

"I like the magazine the way it is," "I want a larger
magazine," "I want a magazine twice a month," "I want a
quarterly," and so do I, "There is a terrible flaw in one of
the stories," "All of the stories are flawless," "I want
reprints," "I don't," "I like Ray Cummings," "I don't," "I
want a better grade paper," "The paper's O. K. with me," "I
want smooth edges on the magazine," "So do I," "And so do
I!"--these seem to be the most often repeated sentences in
the letters from Readers.

However, I have a new one to add: I would like to see an
answer, by the Editor, to each letter that is printed in
"The Readers' Corner," like this: "I liked 'An Extra Man,'
etc.--Mr. Syence Ficshun" (I am very glad to hear that you
liked this little masterpiece, etc.--Editor). Why not?

The illustration on the cover of the January issue surely
shows that you'