Books › Blue Book v057 n02 [1933-06], 1933 › scan 1
Scan 1
Blue Book v057 n02 [1933-06], 1933
12 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Writer and Inventor
3In this issue begins "There's Murder in the Air," a novel based upon an extraordinary idea—upon an idea entirely fantastic, perhaps. Yet how many once-called fantastic ideas have come true even in our own brief lifetime! Rudyard Kipling, who is still living, once wrote a "fantastic" story of an imagined future, "With the Night Mail." Last year Leland Jamieson, himself an air-mail pilot, wrote for Blue Book "With the Night Mail—1932," a story of the air mail as it has actually come to be. (This same story, by the way, is to lead a new book of "Best Short Stories of 1932" shortly to be published.) Radio, of course, would have been incredible a generation ago. And within our own middle-aged memory is the comment of a sweet old grandmother on receiving her first telegram: "But this doesn't look at all like John's handwriting!"
5It is commonplace to comment that the inventions of this much-decried machine age are marvelous. We have not, however, thus far achieved any invention remotely approaching the marvel of the human brain. And we know less, probably, of the powers and mechanism and limitations of that brain than we do of electricity or light or radio. So it requires no great effort to follow Mr. Chanslor in imagining a mind whose powers somewhat exceed the abilities of a normal mind. And in following him in this idea, we have some grounds for believing that this "fantasy" may also sometime come true.
7Indeed fact follows fiction, as we have observed before. And this is logical enough. For the same endowment of creative imagination which gives the inventor his power is likewise a necessary qualification for a fiction-writer. His stories are inventions built out of facts—some facts old, some new, and some daringly imagined.
9In each issue, then, we aim to give you the best of these fiction-inventions procurable. Mr. Chanslor's is built of many old and well-known facts, adroitly put together. It has the novelty also of making use of this one idea which is as yet "fantastic." Who knows whether it may not some day prove true!
11—The Editor
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.