Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 50 — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION — of power! In these Books lie great secrets. The forgotten knowledge of how to build houses which will know no dampness. Of how to move swiftly through the air and over the face of the land. Knowledge of how to defeat the Great Enemy, and of how to slay our foes at a distance. If we could but understand . ” His voice trailed into silence, and shadows moved like living things over the walls of the room. The pupil sighed. “But it has been so long,” he murmured. “How many Readers have tried to unravel the secrets, and how many have failed?” He _ stared sombrely at the guttering flame. “Could it be that Kalin the Warrior is right? Are the Books a snare for the minds of men, offering promise where there is no promise to offer? Indeed, sometimes I...” He cried out as the old man stepped towards him, and the sound of the Reader’s thin hand against his cheek echoed 68 through the tiny room with a meaty, soggy sound. ‘Do you blaspheme?” The Reader trembled in his wrath. “Have a care, Pupil. You are young, but even youth must obey the sacred tenets of our village. Who are you to sneer? These Books are sacred; all the Kings have agreed on that, and our ancestors knew that the road back to the Golden Age was to be found in these pages. It is not for you to question such authority.” “Your pardon, Reader,” stammered the young man. “Tt is just that it has been so long—and still the crops fail and men die, and still we wait for the Books to show us the way.” “And they will, my son.” The old man seemed to have recovered his composure. “Listen.” Painfully, squinting in the weak light of the crude lamp, he began to read from the tattered volume, his thin, dirt-stained finger moving slowly across the page. “In the triode valve, there- commicloooks.comn