Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 56 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

STRANGE SUICIDE and then crop up again. If such is the case. we prohibit such people to breed. Inhuman? Hardly, when you consider the infrequency of hereditary disease today com- pared with fifty years ago.” Kristofr said nothing. “Well? Don’t you agree with what I’ve said ?” **Of course I do,” the sehibe admitted. “But then I’m a loyal employee of the State. The members of the Heresy League think quite differently, however. Their view is that the individual is more im- portant than the State; they feel that the existence of a smooth-running society is not self-justificatory when the members of such a society are not free to direct their lives according to their own wishes,”’ “I suppose they think an E class ManUl knows more about what’s good for him than do people who’ve spent their lives studying behaviour patterns, hereditary influences, psycho-genetics and so on, do they?” Kristofr lit a cigarette. “‘I don’t know whether they 19 think such a man would know better than others what he should do with his life, but certainly they think he has the right to think he knows better. The issue is not so much whether better results all round would come from an individual being able to decide his own future, but of the right and wrong of limiting such an individual’s free will. The Heretics, you see, consider free-will to be more important than the smooth-running of the World State. They see things from an entirely dif- ferent angle. Up to now their subversive activities have given us little cause for genuine concern, since the system has been so _ well established as to be virtually unshakable—thanks to the Detector. But if this man Jaksn has found a way of blanketing neurone wave emanations .. .” The general nodded slowly, thinking, his fingers tugging at the pockets of his tunic. The Detector. The end product of over a century of concerted effort in cybernetics, neuronic vibration research and electronics; the end pro- connicloooks.con