the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it stylistically forecast a later trend to accept the background for granted, regardless of the quantity of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand scanning-disk television sets in existence at the time of the writing, the surmise that this media would be a natural for westerns was particularly astute.

Jack Williamson was born in 1908 in the Arizona territory when covered wagons were the primary form of transportation and apaches still raided the settlers. His father was a cattle man, but for young Jack, the ranch was anything but glamorous. "My days were filled," he remembers, "with monotonous rounds of what seemed an endless, heart-breaking war with drought and frost and dust-storms, poison-weeds and hail, for the sake of survival on the Llano Estacado." The discovery of AMAZING STORIES was the escape he sought and his goal was to be a science fiction writer. He labored to this end and the first he knew that a story of his had been accepted was when he bought the December, 1929 issue of AMAZING STORIES. Since then, he has written millions of words of science fiction and has gone on record as follows: "I feel that science-fiction is the folklore of the new world of science, and the expression of man's reaction to a technological environment. By which I mean that it is the most interesting and stimulating form of literature today."

AMAZING STORIES

AMAZING STORIES

Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding tumbled out of the rumpled bed-clothing, a striking slender figure in purple-striped pajamas. He smiled fondly across to the other of the twin beds, where Nada, his pretty bride, lay quiet beneath light silk covers. With a groan, he stood up and began a series of fantastic bending exercises. But after a few half-hearted movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open door into a small bright room, its walls covered with bookcases and also with scientific appliances that would have been strange to the man of four or five centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning.

Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding

Yawning, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding stood before the great open window, staring out. Below him was a wide, park-like space, green with emerald lawns, and bright with flowering plants. Two hundred yards across it rose an immense pyramidal building—an artistic structure, gleaming with white marble and bright metal, 

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