Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION in the end you will be for- gotten.” ; “Then why should I?” “There are no other reasons.” “Then shall we talk about something else?’ I suggested. But in the end—the reasons why I did are not clear to me even yet—I went to Irries, alone in a small craft. Long ago though all this happened, I can still remem- ber the moment when I landed on the space field of their capital city; the levelled weap- ons, the hostile faces, the suspicion, the arguments. But I succeeded. I returned to my own planet in triumph. The revolt that broke out soon after my departure, when the army learned what my intentions were, was sup- pressed by the Queen without difficulty. She hanged eight- een leaders. So, in due course, I became the great king, leader of the three planets of our system. “Now you must tell me why you have done this for me,’ I told James. “IT think you have partly guessed,”’ he replied. “But I shall tell you... “For some thousands of years now, since the galaxy has been explored from one end to the other, and all its 52 habitable worlds occupied, and since it was shown that the galaxy is the final limit and boundary for the races within it, those races have made no real progress in any direction. Each one of them, human or otherwise, has gone through a regular cycle of advancement, civilisa- tion, maturity, degeneration and finally decay back to barbarism again. In some corner of the galaxy or another you will find an example of every stage in this process, and every possible variant of it. The average period of these cycles is about eight hundred years. The low level is usually some form of regional feudal government, and the peak whenever it is reached, is never higher than the level of culture attained by the Sol civilisations five thousand years ago. No moral or intellectual or philosophical development beyond that point has ever been achieved. What is worse, no person or group of persons any longer believes in real, continuous, unending progress, or talks of it, or hopes for it, or strives for it, or tries to imagine in what directions progress might be made.”’ | He paused. “T am attempting to alter comicloooks.comnn