Astounding Science Fiction/Volume 44/Number 05/In Times to Come
IN TIMES TO COME
In Times To Come doesn't ordinarily refer back to previous issues, but since some readers didn't spot the little game we were playing with the November 1949 issue, I will make the exception, and point out the letter of Richard Hoen, in our November, 1948 issue. That November issue took a high degree of co-operation from the authors; it isn't easy to write a yarn to a title specification, and I want to thank them for a fine job well done.
With which we jump four months forward to the February 1950 issue, with a brief pause to note en passant that this January issue marks Astounding's twentieth birthday. (Next year we come of age!) But we're starting a new serial in February, "To The Stars," by L. Ron Hubbard. It's a two-parter, and a beautiful development of the theme based on the time-rate differential of ships traveling near the speed of light. Of a man shanghaied aboard a ship half a millennium old, for a trip that leads not only to the stars, but across millennia of time. In Space, the ships can move out and back, but it's a one-way road in Time, when you make The Long Trip, and the crews of the ships are strange gatherings of men from across the ages!
H. Beam Piper is back, too, with an interesting idea. Once, when the winning of wars depended on swordsmen, archers, and cavalry, there were mercenary companies, that sold their training to the highest bidder. Today, more and more, wars are won or lost by science—and a scientific team. The story is titled "The Mercenaries". Provisionally scheduled for February—possibly crowded over to March—are stories by Van Vogt, Kuttner, Foul Anderson, H. B. Fyfe, and a returning old-timer, Cleve Cartmill.The Editor.