Читать книгу Futuria Fantasia (Illustrated Edition) - Damon Knight - Страница 4

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The best laid plans of men, it seems, are destined for detours or permanent and disappointing annihilation upon the road to accomplishment. It was this way with Futuria Fantasia, planned for publication last summer. Piles of archaic tomes towered on all sides of the editorial desk. When the door to the office was opened unexpectedly a white gusher of manuscripts and relatives spewed out. More than once Ye Editor was suffocated unto death by the musty volumes that poured in from all over Los Angeles. And then—someone turned off the financial faucet—leaving us all soaped up, but with no water! And so, into an inforced hibernation went FuFa. The manuscripts became intimate acquaintances with all of the spiders in the family vaults—even the writers could be seen lounging around in their caskets waiting for Technocracy and their thirty doubloons every Thursday to come rolling in.

But recently, awakening from the profound inactivity of spring fever, your editor became interested in Technocracy. The more he heard about it, the more he wanted everyone else to hear. So, turning the revolving door on his crypt, he reached over and shook T. B. Yerke out of his stupor and begged him to write an article, The Revolt Of The Scientists, which appears herein. Not content with this he engaged Ron Reynolds, new fan author who first appeared in Tucker's D'JOURNAL, to whip up a story about the Technate and its effect upon the hack writer in the coming decades. And Ackerman is here! Science Fiction's finest fan and friend has turned in an interesting yarn that he wrote at the gentle age of sixteen, some few years past. But best of all—there is nothing humorous in the issue by the editor himself—which should cause huge, grateful sighs of relief from Maine to Miske and back! Bradbury just has a poem, and a serious one at that.

And so—here it is, for ten cents, out every other decade or so—Futuria Fantasia—... hypoed into Life mainly because of the crying need for more staunch Technocrats, mainly because of the New York Convention, (with which it doesn't deal at all in subject matter ... but does so whole-heartedly in spirit and thought), and mainly because it's been a helluva long time since a large size mag came from our LASFL way, where the natives are all sitting around and dreaming of the New York Canyon Kiddies and praying, atheistically of course, that in the near future they may wind up in Manhatten behind the pool-ball-perisphere—and I don't mean the one numbered eight. None of the expectant tripsters have ever seen New Yawk before and have already chewed their fingernails down to the shoulder in exstatic anticipation.

I hope you like this brain-child, spawned from the womb of a year long inanimation. If you do like it, how about a letter sent to the editorial offices of F.F., at 1841 South Manhatten Place, Los Angeles, California? Appoint yourself as A-l mourner and critic and pound away at the mag. It will be appreciated. And if you have a dime in your pocket that hasn't had a breath of air in a few days just drop that in, too. This is only the first issue of FuFa ... if it succeeds there will be more, better issues coming up. And your co-operation is needed.

GOOD LUCK TO THE NEW YORK SCIENTI-FAN CONVENTION—!!

I'LL MEET YOU IN MANHATTEN—!

Ray D. Bradbury,

editor