HORIZONS 11 INTERIM This makes very little difference to you, we realize, but to us it's an exciting drama our race each time to get Horizons out on time. It looks like a pretty sure thing to succeed again, at least; only this page and the next to be done, besides the cover, and ten days to get them done in. Peace, it's elegant! Said cover, by the way, hasn't yet arrived. If it comes by the 25th of this month -- May -- it's be on here, but if not, we'll have to present a pretty drab appearance. ----------------------------------- The proposed amendment to require activity by members each year, mentioned some pages back, appears now to be sure to be included for voting in this mailing. We're afraid our vote will have to go against it, for the reasons outlined back there. We'd rather see the organization go along as at present than have the membership total drop to ten or fifteen or even more below capacity. Too, if passed and membership doesn't drop off, it'll probably be because members will take to four-line poems and postage-stamp magazines to keep "active". ---------------------------------- Ackermann probably saw and clipped the Pop comic strip which runs in quite a few newspapers. Several nights ago from the present moment -- about May 20 -- it showed Pop in the trenches and khaki, listening to a message over some sort of portable communications set. He sez to someone standing nearby: "Sounds like it's in Esperanto." Someone responds: "What's that?" Pop tells someone that it's the Universal Language. "Where's it spoken?" asks the afore-mentioned someone. "Nowhere," replies Pop. Tragic. ----------------------------- Too, in a Washington newspaper which occasionally uses the "inquiring photographing" idea to fill up a column, folkses were asked what they did with their spare time. Mr. Joseph Slan of Washington, D. C. replied that he keeps up with the war news and goes to the movies. Looks as though Van Vogt might not be so smart as we thought he was. Jeremy Cross hardly seemed like the individual to do such things. The accompanying photograph was too indistinct for us to determine whether or not the tendrils were present. ---------------------------------- And today we looked at The Book of the Dead, mentioned somewhere in the review of the last FAPA mailing's magazines in this issue. The climax of this anecdote must needs be a miserable flop, for naturally it's a fake or we wouldn't be typing this. It appears to be quite interesting, being a translation together with many forwards and notes and things of a sort of cross between the Bible, Koran, and Last & First Men. Just to make sure, we didn't see too clearly the accompanying reproductions of the original Egyptian text of it. Old submerged racial memories and all that sort of thing, of course. ------------------------------------- We've seen so far two reviews of The Other Worlds, that omnibus volume collected by Phil Strong out of the pulp magazines. Reviews were fairly favorable -- in the New York Herald Tribune and Philadelphia Record. So what would the reception have been if Strong had picked really good stories? We plan to see what the N. Y. Times and Sat. Review of Literature have to say about the book. ---------------------------------- The following is clipped from The Baltimore Sun, which reprinted it from the famous British weekly, Punch: "Invasion Plans. German scientists hope in a few years' time to reach the moon in a large rocket. The landing party will infiltrate over the lunar border disguised as tourists before taking possession in the name of the Reich." Which reminds us of something else we recently read, claiming that Americans can get more fun out of Punch than the British. According to this system, the magazine isn't so funny to Englishmen as it amuses American who are unable to understand how anyone could be so foolish as to laugh at the jokes it prints. Sounds quite logical, eh? ------------------------------ About the only phase of the prozines we haven't seen discussed yet are the