Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION tration. Old Man, whose auto- mobiles moved generally at an upper limit of sixty-five miles per hour, could expect one fatal traffic accident per day per 250,000 inhabitants of a given area. New Man seldom drives at less than one hundred and thirty miles, even through city traffic. Still there is only one fatal accident per day per 2,500,000 in- habitants. And that is due mainly to mechanical failures. In other words, if New Man hadn’t come along, Old Man would have committed mass suicide as life speeded up. Now he just lived out his life- span in peace, providing the clerks, the servants, the large basis, quasi-slave labour, that is necessary to maintain the aristocratic leisure class—in Veblen’s sense—of the New Men. The copter had coasted to an imperceptible stop and Celeste and I got out. We walked along the approach, shaded by sixty-foot geranium trees, toward the huge cross- 12 shaped skyscraper that glit- tered in the afternoon sun from thousands of windows. So tall that it actually scraped the clouds, it contained thous- ands upon thousands of halls, apartments large and small, offices, auditoriums, stores, shops; it was the suburb, it was the Palace. “Would you care to come to my rooms for a drink?” asked Celeste. I nodded. I had expected this. Her duplex in the west sector, 253 floors up, gave no indication of her status at the court of the Dianotrix. I was not curious; she'd tell me when she felt like it. She made me at home in a large chair, gave me the promised drink, and disappeared to change into a house dress. I felt a little hot around the collar. I still can’t stomach the New Men’s promiscuity. Not that they live in sin, as it once would have been called, far from it. Nor that they are decadent or depraved. It is connicloooks.conn