Imaginative Tales, January 1956

# Imaginative Tales: January 1956

This issue features five science fiction stories. The 20,000-word serial "The Cosmic Bunglers" by Geoff St. Keynard concerns government scientists at a Nevada testing facility who successfully exceed the speed of light using an experimental fuel called calefite and a new alloy called sclerium. Narrator Sam Black, an M.Sc. engineer, describes two successful test launches of a miniature spacecraft down a precisely-engineered twenty-mile desert trench. However, the breakthrough coincides with an inexplicable highway robbery by a mounted gunman dressed in early 18th-century garb with a Norfolk accent, speaking 1725-era English, who steals from a transcontinental bus—apparently a historical figure somehow displaced into the present. Four additional short stories of approximately 6,000 words each include "Practical Joke" by Richard O. Lewis, "Code of the Bluster World" by Milton Lesser, "The Girl from Nowhere" by Darius John Granger, and "A Day for Battle" by C. H. Thames. The issue also contains science articles and reader correspondence.