May 26, 2017.
In a brittle issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from November 1952, I stumbled across a short story entitled “Bem” by sci-fi author Charles T. Webb. His story so amused me that I decided to write my own using “Bem” as one inspiration and the 1897 UFO crash in Aurora, Texas as another. And without my knowing it, my prose fell into rhythm with rhymes and near rhymes, and to my amazement, I had the first two stanzas of a poem.
Any fans of sci-writer Henry Kuttner will see that I also took inspiration from his Galloway Gallagher story entitled “The World Is Mine” first published in Astounding Stories in June 1943 under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett.
MARTIAN DEATH RAY 