Tory to be unusual, so don't bother telling me it is so. That criticism applies to "Phantoms of Reality," which is a story above the average, though, despite its rather flat title and slow beginning. Here's another good point about "Tanks." Its characters are human. Some authors of stories of the future make their characters all brains--cold monsters, with no humanity in them. Such a story has neither human interest nor plausibility. The sky's the limit, I say, for mechanical or scientific accomplishments, but human emotions will be the same a thousand years from now. And even supposing that they will be changed, your readers have present day emotions. The magazine can not prosper unless those present-day emotions are aroused and mirrored by thoroughly human characters. The situation may be just as outre as you like--the more unusual the better--but it is the response of normal human emotions to most unusual situations that gives a magazine such as yours its powerful and unique "kick." The response of the two infantrymen in "Tanks" to the strange and terrifying new warfare of the future exemplifies another point I would like to make--the fact that no matter what marvels the future may bring, the people who will live then will take them in a matter-of-fact way. Their conversation will be cigarettes, "sag-paste," drinks, women. References to the scientific marvels around them will be casual and sketchy. How many million words of an average car owner's conversation would you have to report to give a visitor from 1700 an idea of internal combustion engines? The author, if skillful, can convey that information in other ways. Yet a lot of stories printed have long, stilted conversations in which the author thinks he is conveying in an entertaining way his foundation situation. Personally, I like a lot of physical action--violent action preferred. This is so, probably, because I'm a school teacher and sedentary in my habits. I have never written a story in my life, but I'm the most voracious consumer of stories in Chicago. I like to see the hero get into a devil of a pickle, and to have him smash his way out. I like 'em big, tough, and kind to their grandmothers. It seems to me that interplanetary stories offer the best vehicle for all the de
