Today I received in the mail five issues of Astounding from 1949, all of which were missing from my own collection. They were sent to me by Kevin Greenlee, who has been reading my Vacation in the Golden Age posts, and had duplicates of these issues in question. It was above and beyond the call to offer them up and then send them to me at his expense, but it’s typical of what I have found of folks in the science fiction world, be they fans or professionals. I am fortunate to be a part of this little family and folks like Kevin remind me everyday that what my grandpa used to say is probably true: 99% of people are good. Thanks for the magazines, Kevin! They will be put to good use. (The include, by the way, the complete serial for Hal Clement’s novel, Needle.)

Also deserving of a shout-out today is my friend and former coworker from back in the day, Chris Dixson. Chris is a ham radio man and I sent him a question about radio transmissions, the answer for which would be extremely useful for my current story. Today, Chris sent me an extensive explanation, which covered exactly what I was looking for. It seems like a thank you sometimes isn’t enough for folks like Chris who go out of there way to help me out. In this case at least, I has the power to call the capcom in the story “Dixson.”