Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION thing in life is to be right and unheeded. See mankind in alignment with the perspective of history. In tens of thou- sands of years we have made real progress only in the last fractional percentage of that period. Let it be emphasised that even that progress has come from an infinitesimal group of people, mostly name- less draughtsmen, designers, chemists, metallurgists and engineers who have given us everything we now take for granted. Yet the world will not listen to the little obscure men who cannot speak with the voice of power or authority. The peoples of the world today are like children playing on a newly frozen pond. If a timid stranger draws attention to the danger he will be ignored and, should he have to attempt. a rescue, he will probably die from the immersion. If a mother calls, some of the children may reluctantly come away, grum- bling and eager to return. The rest will play on until darkness _ or disaster intervenes. “There are more psychia- trists in the world today than there were soothsayers in any earlier age. Why? What has mankind suffered from better hygiene, improved food 84 processing, greater interming- ling of nationalities, the use of anesthetics, up-to-date sur- gery and the latest advances in the treatment of diseases? Millions of people work less, earn more. And yet every alienist has a waiting list of clients; the brain specialists are busier than ever before and the mental asylums are crammed. “The answer is that the star virus is subtly, silently and relentlessly boring into our minds. Its activated chemi- cals are going to be the new life, the new master power, the new soul of man. History can repeat itself. Man, who succeeded the dinosaur, who domesticated and tamed the horse, sheep and cow, can be supplanted by a higher mind which will capture and enslave the whole of humanity. Man can become a mere tool to a form of life that we cannot yet comprehend, the relationship of the spanner to the engineer, the slide rule to the mathema- tician, as functionless as the complex radio valve until it is activated by an electric current.” Those are Peter’s views on the theory, power and danger of the star virus. And he is comiclooks.corn