Space Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2

Space Stories, June 1953 This issue features "The Dark Side of the Moon," a science fiction novel by Sam Merwin Jr. centering on a galactic glacier expert encountering an unexpectedly hot iceberg. The novelet "The Cyanided Man" by Noel M. Loomis involves a protagonist navigating Mercurian arsenic mists while dealing with internal poisoning of the heart. Three short stories round out the fiction: Charles A. Stearns' "Affair of State" about a political sacrifice, Roger Dee's "The Enemy, Time" involving Terran pursuit across centuries, and Charles Foster's "Red Alert," a story framed as a universal chess game with ambiguous pawns and players. The issue includes a reader discussion section titled "Space Station" and "Science Bulletins" covering atomic weapons, embryonic development, and cosmic scale. Advertisements interspersed throughout promote the Teleron television interference filter, hospitalization insurance, and International Correspondence Schools career training.