Maclean's

Fiction

Mr. and Mrs. Ali Baba

JEAN LANE lay on the lawn, basking in the hot July sunshine, surrounded by an approving coterie of small domestic animals. In her shorts and boy’s shirt she far more resembled a young girl than the mother of ten-year-old twins and a wife of twelve years’ standing. By TRAVIS INGHAM

16

Articles

The Case of The Seduced Servant

THE INCOME from a criminal practice,” Antoine Rivard remarked recently, “is very uncertain. Many clients can pay nothing, so we try to make the rich pay for the poor. But a murder case is never a paying proposition. The money invariably runs out before the case is finished. By FRANK HAMILTON

20

Fiction

I’ll Not Ask for Wine

Among the caged flowers and the golden fruits she waited for her new love with an alien song in her Martian heart By RAY BRADBURY

10

MID-CENTURY REVIEW

The Greatest Ten Of Our Time

SPEEDING along the Michigan shore in a chauffeured limousine from downtown to the University of Chicago campus, 50-year-old Chancellor Robert Hutchins, handsome and detached, decided on the final choice for his 10 greatest people of the first 50 years of the 20th century.

22

Articles

SASKATOON: CITY IN THE WHEAT

MENTION Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in such jaded junctions as New York and London and you are likely to get reactions ranging from genuine incredulity through mild mirth. Saskatoon seldom rates the spontaneous and unabashed boffs drawn by such place names as Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw and Paducah, Kentucky, but the writers who turned out a version of “Connecticut Yankee” for Bing Crosby not long ago thought it sounded interesting enough to share a spot in the dialogue with Walla Walla, Washington, and Puncetony (where do they get these names anyway?), Pennsylvania. By JOHN CLARE

4

MID-CENTURY REVIEW

MANKIND IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE

THE LAST 50 years has been the Age of Science. The things we think of as most typical of the modern world: radio, automobiles, movies, airplanes, birth control, to say nothing of the Kinsey Report and the Gallup Poll, surgery, public education and atomic energy—all these things have become universal in the Western world since 1900. By LISTER SINCLAIR

8

MID-CENTURY REVIEW

1950— Brave New Wacky World

NOW THAT 1950’s here I find myself brooding about what the next 50 years will do to humanity, and me. After all, this century isn’t getting any younger. It’s 50, just about the halfway mark for centuries. A situation like this usually calls for taking stock, but I certainly don’t want to take any more stock. By JOHN LARGO

8

MID-CENTURY REVIEW

1900— How Wrong Can You Be?

FIFTY YEARS AGO Prof. Simon Newcomb, U. S. astronomer and scientist, “proved” it was mathematically impossible to make a machine which would fly. He boldly declared, in McClure’s magazine, “I cannot possibly conclude that the 20th century is to give us the airship What use would it be? By FRED BODSWORTH

18

Articles

Going Steady’s Strictly Business

THE SCENE is a Friday night teen-age dance in a Toronto suburb. The couple are a husky, crew-cut boy in loafers, windbreaker and worn tweed slacks (many dances forbid violently colored superdraped strides), and a pretty brunette in skirt, pullover and ballerinas. By ROBERT THOMAS ALLEN

12

MID-CENTURY REVIEW

NICKELODEON TO TELEVISION

WHEN the sentimental fog is lifted and the entertainments of the early years of the present century are clearly remembered they seem to have a certain innocent charm. But the Swiss bell ringer on the Chatauqua circuit, the acrobats in vaudeville, the dreadfully polite English comedy and the heavy-handed musical comedy, the shoddy productions of the old ten-twenty-thirt’ melodrama and the revivals of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” add up to a singularly undistinguished era. By GILBERT SELDES