The August 1954 issue of Space Review opens with predictions for 1955 and closes with a book review of Physical Meteorology. Between these bookends, the newsletter that spent three issues pretending to be a planetarium handout drops the pretence.
The predictions come first. “The year nineteen hundred fifty five” will see a cure for cancer, a strange sky phenomenon, the discovery of Noah’s Ark with strange writings inside, weather disasters on the northeastern coast, a new weapon deadlier than the cobalt bomb, a revolutionary automobile, a discovery at the North Pole, and “a three letter word” that “shall loom into the headlines toward Christmas time of 1955. It shall be a word that we do not like.” The predictions are unsigned, unattributed, and presented without sourcing. They read like a broadsheet prophecy, closer to Nostradamus than to the Hayden Planetarium.
Then page two: “TRUE OR FALSE STATEMENTS.”
“Everyone has a curiosity that will eventually get them into all sorts of trouble,” the introduction begins. “Many wild ideas are being expressed in magazines and periodicals, but although they all sound fantastic, many of them are based on some little leak of information that may have reached the ears of the right person.” Five numbered claims follow. The reader is invited to decide whether each is sound or unsound.
The first: “UNITED STATES HAS ESTABLISHED A BASE ON THE MOON. This base was set up in 1947 and has been growing in size. By use of radar and radio guided objects they keep in close contact with bases on the Earth itself. Those that volunteered to go were soldiers and scientists without any families or dependents for security purposes. The billions of dollars spent for atom research was not all used for that purpose, as much of the money was used to set up and keep the base operating, known as Project Luna.”
The second: Russia has reached the moon using German scientists and is preparing rocket launching sites aimed at democratic nations.
The third: a world power has invented a device surpassing all aircraft. On the archive’s copy, a handwritten annotation appears beside this statement: “Al. Bender, Quote: , ‘The truth is fantastic.’”
The fourth: “THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IS CONCEALING SOMETHING SO FANTASTIC THAT EVEN THEY ARE AFRAID TO REVEAL IT TO THE PUBLIC.” The echo of the October 1953 “Statement of Importance” (“the source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by orders from a higher source”) is unmistakable.
The fifth: “RUSSIA IS PLANNING ON A NON-DESTRUCTIVE WAR USING A SPECIAL GAS THAT WILL PUT ALL THE VICTIMS TO SLEEP UNTIL THEY FULLY TAKE OVER THE COUNTRY INTACT. THE GAS WILL BE SPREAD BY A STRANGE GUIDED OBJECT OF CIRCULAR SHAPE.”
A strange guided object of circular shape. Ten months after the IFSB dissolved with its warning about flying saucers, the circular craft has returned to Space Review’s pages, not as a sighting report or a member theory or an editorial position, but as one of five statements the reader may choose to believe or disbelieve. The closing: “Your guess is as good as ours, and we hope that ours is the wrong one.”
Page three reprints an Associated Press article from 9 July 1954, datelined Seattle, about Dr. Marcel Schein of the University of Chicago presenting evidence of an anti-proton to the American Physical Society. A particle from outer space had struck an aluminium-covered film pack on a cosmic ray research balloon over Texas, producing “a scientifically thrilling sequence of what appears to be the conversion of earthly matter into energy and then a reconversion of this energy into another form of earthly matter.” The newsletter reprints the article in full, without editorial comment. It is the most technically sophisticated content in the Vol. III run: real physics, from a real wire service, about real antimatter.
The final page announces the availability of the Orson Welles 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast on long-playing record ($5.95 from Dauntless International in New York), reviews Physical Meteorology by John C. Johnson, and promises: “THE NEXT ISSUE OF SPACE REVIEW WILL NOT BE OUT UNTIL THE LATTER PART OF OCTOBER, 1954.”
The archive does not hold that October 1954 issue. Whether it was published is unknown. The publication that began in October 1952 as a twelve-page quarterly about flying saucers over Bridgeport, grew into an international organisation with representatives on four continents, dissolved in October 1953 with a cryptic warning, reinvented itself as a private astronomical newsletter, and ended (as far as the documentary record shows) in August 1954 with an AP article about antimatter, an Orson Welles record, and five claims the reader could judge for themselves. True or false. The archive holds what was published. What was withheld, by orders from whatever source, remains where Bender left it.
