Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13

This issue of *Avon Fantasy Reader* No. 13 (1950) collects reprinted fantasy and science-fiction stories. The lead story, "The Love-Slave and the Scientists" by Frank Belknap Long, depicts year 5678 where scientists have created Mechanical Companions—rubber robot substitutes—to solve marital jealousy. A gland surgeon V67 enjoys GH8, a pneumatic companion with recorded voice disks, while the story raises the unstated question whether wives will accept such solutions. Additional contents include Ray Cummings's "The Curious Case of Norton Hoorne" (love transcending death), Albert Richard Wetjen's "The Ship of Silence" (a Marie Celeste mystery), and Sewell Peaslee Wright's "The Forgotten Planet" (a space patrol's final voyage to a banned world). The issue further features stories by Beatrice Grimshaw, Donald Wandrei, Charles W. Diffin, Mary E. Counselman, August Derleth, Julius Long, S. Fowler Wright, Clifford Simak, and Carl Jacobi.