Page:Astounding Science Fiction v54n06 (1955-02).djvu/152

logic-conceptions, we may be making the problem insoluble.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

I have a few questions about SPACE which have bothered me for some time. I have read the first two instalments of "Achilles and the Tortoise" which have not clarified the matter for me. As no doubt I will not be able to understand Part Three either, I'll ask the questions now.

When I drive my car from a side road onto a main highway, I stop. This is partly because there is a stop sign, partly because I must wait for a SPACE to come by so that I can get into it. Now there is no doubt in my mind that the SPACE I am waiting for is movable because I have to wait for it. Now it isn't there and now it is. It may be that it is moving through time, but since I can see it coming down the road, I conclude it is moving through my ordinary layman three-dimensional universe.

Now, imagine that I approach the highway at some hypothetical time when there is no traffic on the road. There are plenty of SPACES available. My questions are these: Are those SPACES moving? If so, which way? Do they conform to the American custom of keeping to the right? Do they stop at red lights? Do they pass each other? Do they ever collide? How big are they?

And the big question from a pragmatic viewpoint is: How can I save one for use at a time when the highway is fully congested?—Robert E. Fogg, 1815 North 54th Street, Seattle 3, Washington.

That's a lovely question! Darned if I can answer it, though!

Dear Mr. Campbell:

What manner of man is it that planks down thirty-five cents and says to the clerk, "Gimmie that ASF over there"?

Last year, February or thereabouts, ASF ran a letter of mine asking for ideas on how to record the movements of the tongue during a spasm of stuttering. I threw the subject open and just asked for help from anybody. At the same time we sent similar letters to several physics journals, several technical communication journals and so forth.

Results? ASF by a landslide!! Some of the hoity-toitier publications—you know, those that you can't buy at the newsstands but must subscribe to at a university address—refused to run the letter, saying it was "policy," but of the ones that did, the results from ASF were outstanding. The letters from ASF came in like a wave—from doctors, engineers, plumbers, radio hams, electricians, et cetera and et cetera. The letters were full of ideas—some good, some fair. One could sense that these people had something to