DEAR DEVIL
ERIC FRANK RUSSELL
Here is a tale which may or may not seem to you to belong in a collection of stories about Man’s attempt to conquer space. In it, the people who have adventured into space are not men at all, but another race of mortals—one which might appear at first glance to be more horrible than human. And yet, if human beings are going to move among the stars and meet beings as strange to them as they themselves will seem to the inhabitants of other worlds, they must be prepared to believe that aliens are a part of life, too.
Fander, the Martian in this tale, is a creature far removed from anything that Earth people have ever seen or experienced. He is a poet and an artist, not a scientist; a Martian so far removed from the technical skills of his own world that he does not know what makes the devices of his people work. How he found that out is part of this story.
Behind this tale is an idea of real importance: the notion of what actually ties all thinking life together. Mr. Russell knows that this common denominator is not scientific knowledge but the ability to share the experience of being alive. Even though Fander is not at all like anything on Terra, he does not doubt that the children and the adults of the new planet where he has cast his lot will find out that he feels, deep down, very much like them.
. . .
