Farewell Message by David Mason - V'gu found Earth primitive and crude. Its hydrogen bombs, for instance...
Author David Mason was actually Samuel Mason, born in 1924 although we don’t know his birthplace and we know very little about him. We know he wrote four novels and about a dozen short stories.
Farewell Message was published in the next to the last issue of Science Fiction Adventures Magazine in April 1958.
Pru'ut is a small hot planet, covered with fern forests and swamps, and inhabited by one of the innumerable primate-human species of the universe. It was also inhabited, for a while, by one Terran, James Grady. The natives called their world Pru'ut, Grady called it The Mud Hole. He was the sole human on the planet, and his job was to pay the natives to collect the native plants and have them picked up 3 times a year. The company turned them into an array of wonderful drugs for the rest of the inhabited systems. He loved the job and enjoyed the easy going native life style. The only problem was the bewildering array of native taboos and customs that he had to learn and abide by. Which he did very well until one day when he made a tiny little mistake. Really, it was small and inadvertent, but that did not keep it from being deadly.
In 1963 David Masons imagination took him to a world where cars drove themselves. Imagine that! But in the first story, Road Stop, his speculations included the possible things that might happen at the beginning, before all the initial glitches were worked out. Thus we have the Traveller a spooky automatic car that travels the highways forever.
The second story, Placebo, takes place when a time traveler pops into existence in his shiny machine in the town park of a place near you. The traveler is bewildered and discouraged to find that this is 1955. He just left 1955 ! and in fact has been to 3 different 1955s before this, all of them getting worse and worse. This particular 1955 is different and, even though a very backward and primitive place, can help him fix his machine and return to the 1955 he came from. They help him with a placebo. And hope he won't every find his way back.
A friendship between an ordinary youngster and one the same age from a group of families descended from immigrants of long ago. He has different beliefs and talents. The story is about how well they get on....ie....teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere.
Most animals are much cleverer than people realise......especially mice and their friends.......even if it does happen to be a Lion !! And they became friends almost by accident.
This is the story about a shop. Not just an old shop, but about a very old and particularly curious shop. There are so many things inside, some are unusual and most seem to have a touch of magic about them. Kate and Joe were drawn inside and couldn't believe just how curious it really was.
This is about what happens when a pair of unusual youngsters go out into the world. They have Adventures which are exciting and quite funny. This is a story you really don't want to miss.
Two teenage girls lucky enough to be on a farm near Leningrad 1942. Perhaps not so lucky as they experience the horrors of war. Yet their optimism and teenage attitude comes through regardless of what they see. By the end, there is still hope.
