needed for "individual sightings, observations, analyses and even hypotheses." There is need for a UFO Annual, Editor Jessup further points out, "because no other medium is assembling scientific data and discourse pertinent to UFO operations, and making it easily available to all of the people seriously interested in UFO."
The sightings and other reports, day after day, week after week, here and abroad, convincing and less convincing, add up to impressive accumulated evidence of both world interest in and obvious existence of what have come to be described as UFO. While Dr. Jessup, also author of The Case For the UFO, is, as he admits, often "generous with comment," and has perhaps been a little less than selective in the case of some reports, the result is still an authoritative addition to the material in this field.
Harold Mead's The Bright Phoenix (Ballantine Books, 35 cents), is a disturbing excursion into a post-Catastrophe future where an authoritarian state dominates the thinking and the mores of the times. Reflecting a somewhat less than optimistic school of thinking within Science Fiction, Mead, an English writer not previously published here, describes a "perfect" State, worshipping at the Shrine of the Human Spirit, the citizens of the State dedicated to the mission of resettling the devastated areas of the world.
The State Hymn says—
"Lead us, Human Spirit, lead us.
To the peace that we would see.
Guide, inspire, condition, feed us
That perfected we may be;
That the world may take redemption
From man manifest in thee."
The difficulty lies in the fact that the human spirit has certain less than admirable qualities.
This world of the Spirit of Man is a strange world of light, of dedication to the "Spirit of Man that alone arose from the ashes of man's folly," and of shadows for the dissenters who "have to be cleansed from the past that still besmires them." John Waterville finds himself in eventual and very definite opposition to this State and to the types created by it. Ballantine Books, who as I have said in former columns—have repeatedly published interesting and provocative material in this field, have done so with this novel that compares, in stature and tempo, with John Wyndham's Rebirth. Recommended.
Albro Gaul's The Complete Book of Space Travel (World, $4.95) is a basic introduction to the problems and facts essential to the world of the day after tomor-
