FUTURIA FANTASIA

THE RECORD

This being the first issue of FuFa I feel fortunate in being able to offer a piece of scientifiction by the field's most famous fan.

THE RECORD was written first in 1929, scarcely more than a sketch, on two pages. Ackerman was thirteen. ED EARL REPP, LA author of THE RADIUM POOL, said of it: "I found it delighting and exceptionally interesting for the writing of a boy so young." Ackerman re-wrote it into a three page story, later, the present product. It has not been touched since. It is not being retouched now. Allow me to present THE RECORD as a record of how Forrie wrote, spelled and punctuated six years ago at the age of sixteen. ED.

by FORREST J. ACKERMAN

For twenty years—for twenty long, horror filled, war laden years the Earth had not known peace.

Hovering over the metropolises of the world came long, lean battle projectiles, glinting silver in the sunlight or coming like gaunt mirages of grey out of the midnight sky to blast man's civilization from its cultural foundations. Man against man, ship against ship—a ceaseless and useless orgy of slaughter. Men, at their battle stations in the ships, pressed buttons, releasing radio bombs that blistered space and lifted whole cities up in shattered pieces and flung them down, grim ruins, reminders of man's ignorant hatreds and suspicions.

And gas—thick black clouds of it—billowing over the cities, seeking every possible egress, pushed forward by colossal Wind machines. But even when Victory came for the one side, often Nature, in one of her vengeful moments, would send the black gas flowing back to annihilate its senders.

Rays cut the air! Power bombs exploded incessantly! Evaporays robbed the Earth of its water—shot it up into the atmosphere and made of it a fog that condensed only after many months. And heat rays made deserts out of fertile terrain.

Rays that hypnotized caused even the strong minded to commit suicide or reveal military secrets. Rays that effected the optical nerves swept cities and left the population groping and blind, unable to find food.

It was a war that destroyed almost all of humanity. And why were they fighting? For pleasure and amusement!

In the middle of the twenty-second century, every nation had a standard defense. The weapons of war of each were equal—not in proportion to size, but actually, since man-power no longer counted high. Pacifism had done its best, but the World was armed to the hilt. And now—though illogically—it felt safe—for every nation meant the same as if all had nothing.

Another thing—there was no work to be done. Robots did it. And there seemed nothing left to discover, invent or enjoy. Art was at its perfection, poetry was mathematically correct and unutterably beautiful—worked out by the Esthetic machines. Sculptoring had been given the effect complete, artists hands guided by wonderful pieces of machinery. Huge museums were crammed with art put out synthetically.

And thus it was with the many Arts and their creators who grew stagnent in their perfection. And it was that way with the many sciences also....

Paleontologists had found, and articulated, and catalogued every fossil. The ancestor of the Eohippus, the little four-toed Dawn Horse, was discovered; the direct line between man and ape established in skeletal remains; the seat of life itself definitely proved Holarctica. And great bio-chemists, skilled in the science of vital processes, had created synthetic tissues and muscles and flesh, built upon the frames that had been recovered bodies with skillful modeling ... even supplied them with blood and given them the spark of LIFE ... so that Paleobotonists recreated the flora of a prehistoric era. Again the ponderous amphibious brontosaur pushed through marshes. Fish emerged upon the land, and the first bird archaeopteryx tried his imperfect wings for flight. In the regulated climates of long dead ages, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals lived again for the edification of those interested in the very ancient—or who were amused with queer animals.