The Doorway To The Moon
Such a practical and down-to-earth organization as the United States Army is very busy trying to bounce bits of metal oil the surface of the moon. That's what guarded dispatches from the "guided missile" areas inform us in the daily newspapers. Receiving re-echoed radio signals from Luna's pock-marked surface is already old stuff, last year's headlines. People read these reports as they go about their daily work: outwardly they do not change, but we feel confident that inwardly a very profound disturbance is moving into the hearts of humanity.
For thousands of years, as far back as recorded legend goes, the moon has been a symbol of the unattainable, of the heights of ambition and vanity and desire. Luna, hanging there, has inspired libraries of verse, oceans of prose. Fantasy hinged on the silver crescent and that deep dark background of glittering stars to which it seems the key. Now, in this day out of all history we are earnestly reaching for it. First to peg missiles, then eventually, in our own time, to reach out bodily for it, to go there on wings of atomic flame and stalk its conquered surface in person.
It is no wonder at all that the Avon Fantasy Reader has found its readers applauding each number with mounting enthusiasm. In the pages of this hook we present the best efforts of imaginative men and women to obtain glimpses beyond the moon, to tell us tomorrow's blazing headlines today. Nothing else but the omens of our times can account for such stories as the pen of Catherine L. Moore can turn out. Such a tale as Scarlet Dream, interlocking within itself the future of men on Mars and temptations of dimensions yet unguessed by science.
