Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 154: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PROPHETS v. PRIESTS This letter comes from Dr. W. Grey Walter, author of The Living Brain, reviewed in Authentic No. 34 (Duckworth, 15s.). I did not fail, as usual, to read every page of my latest number of Authentic, and so came upon your article on Brainwaves with a gratifi- cation that is always more lively when surprised; for beyond a review it is indeed an honour for The Living Brain to be so appre- ciated in our premier science fiction magazine. Your article was also welcome as a reminder to your writers that the brain is a very real and complex organ and not, as un- scientific fiction writers of various philosophical schools describe it, a kind of cushion between man and that undiscovered organ, his mind. An easy transcendentalism must often seem a tempting short cut for those who are blazing the new trail of science simplification; —Hrajoctiles 153 telepathy is so much more amen- able than electroencephalography. Nothing is impossible, but nothing new in science is easy. I hope science fiction writers will continue to be severe prophets of the labora- tory rather than indulgent priests of the temple. Careful readers will have noticed some points in your article which you may like to correct. The delta group of rhythms—not alpha—is the dominant one in early child- hood, and the group by which tumours. are located. Theta rhythms are the second—not the first—to appear in terms of age and maturity. Your writers may also like to know that brain rhythms, however specifically named, should always be referred to in the plural: the frequencies of the electrical rhythms of the brain are no more singular than those of the differential colour bands of the spectrum. I notice that the best science fiction is always meticulous about such details. W. GREY WALTER, M.A., SC.D., Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol. conmiclooolkks.com