Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 75

Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue No. 75 (December 1956) This issue features A.E. van Vogt's novelette "Fulfillment," the cover story, which explores a superintelligent computing machine that gains consciousness. The machine, sitting alone on a desolate future Earth, receives a temporal message from another machine projecting from the past. Following the signal through time, it arrives in an earlier era and discovers a rival computational entity controlling that period. Unable to trust the other machine's intentions or acquire its time-travel capabilities through negotiation, the protagonist begins observing human civilization through radio broadcasts and electromagnetic radiation. When a human attorney arrives demanding the machine remove its "shack" from private property, the entity—weighing nine hundred thousand tons—confronts the limitations and peculiar social structures of its target era. Short stories by Philip E. High, H. Philip Stratford, Douglas West, Kenneth Bulmer, and S.D. Hill are included. Regular features include an editorial addressing psychic phenomena, a third installment of "Evolution of Man," and "Miniature Microscopy."