Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SGIENGE FICTION good of money in the bank if you didn’t enjoy it? And with these dreams he wasn’t enjoying anything at all. He pulled on a dressing gown and went to the jacket hung beside the wall mirror for a cigarette. When he’d lit the cigarette, he looked at himself by the little yellow flame in the mirror. And saw a face that didn’t please him much. The eyes were puffy, the mouth sullen and discontented, the black hair standing up in untidy spikes. He snapped off the lighter and strode across to the radio-phono combination against the opposite wall, turned it on and checked his watch. It was a quarter to six, and there was dead air all over Europe, except for an occasional message on short wave. He switched the wave- band selector to “Gramo- phone” and dropped the needle on a long-playing jazz disc. He needed something brash and vital and earthy ~~ to counteract the subtle horror of the dream. Then he wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in his arm- chair, smoking moodily and staring into the darkness. He was shaken, and had to admit it. He needed sleep. He couldn’t separate sleep and the nightmares since they started three months ago. And the one time he had tried sleeping pills they hadn’t worked. It was impossible to escape the dreams, which ran around his skull like mice with steel-shod feet. Morosely he analysed the effects the dreams were having on him. They had already sandpapered his nerves till he was irritable and impossible to live with. His work was suffering, and a week ago there had been a standup row with his employers, that had only failed to end in his being fired because of his pre- vious record. Objectively, he considered what could be at the root of it. Guesswork this, for obviously it must be something his comiclooks.conrn