Days,” we will continue to view with alarm the antics of the younger generation, and
we probably will still be after a cure for the common cold.
Notes : 1980
1. He’s still a freak but he’s all too common. There is a special circle in
Hell for the “Educators” who decided that the Three R’s really weren’t all that
important. Concerning our public schools today: Never have so many been paid so much
for so little. I thank whatever gods there be that I went to school so many years
ago that I had no choice but to be tightly disciplined in classes in which the
teachers did not hesitate to fail and to punish.
My first-grade class had 63 kids in it, one teacher, no assistant. Before
the end of the second semester all 63 could read.
Page 161
2. Many people seem to feel that the “Bridey Murphy” case has been
invalidated. Maybe so, maybe not-the investigative reporter who went to Ireland had
no special qualifications and the “disproof’ came from TIME magazine. TIME magazine
probably publishes many facts
but since its founding in the early 1920’s 1 have been on the spot eight or
nine times when something that wound up as a news story in TIME happened. Not
once-not once-did the TIME magazine story match what I saw and heard.
I have the “Bridey Murphy” recording and Bernstein’s book about it. I am not
an expert witness. . . but I fbund the recording highly interesting. To me it
sounded like
what it purported to be: regression under hypnosis to memory of a former existence.
Some years later I learned from an ethical hypnotherapist (i.e., he accepted
patients only by referrals from M.D.’s, his own doctorate being in psychology) that
regression to what seemed to be former lives was a commonplace among patients of
hypnotherapists- they discussed it among themselves but never published because they
were bound by much the same rule as physicians and priests taking confession.
I have no data to offer of my own. I decided many years back that I was too
busy with this life to fret about what happens afterwards. Long before 2001 1 will
know. . . or I will know nothing whatever because my universe has ceased to exist.
3. Anyone today who simply brushes off ESP phenomena as being ridiculous is
either pigheaded or ignorant. But I do not expect controlled telepathy by 2001; that
is sheer fiction, intended to permit me to get in that bit about Tchaka, et al.
4. I lifted this “Man is a wild animal” thesis bodily from Charles Galton
Darwin (grandson of the author of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES) in his book THE NEXT
MILLION YEARS, Doubleday, 1953. lam simply giving credit; I shan’t elaborate here.
But THE NEXT MILLION YEARS is a follow-on to THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES and is, in my
opinion, one of most important works of this century. It has not been a popular
book-but I seem to recall that his grandfather’s seminal work wasn’t too popular,
either.
FOREWORD
This polemic was first published on Saturday 12 April 1958. Thereafter it
was printed many other places and reprints of it were widely circulated inside and
outside the science fiction community, inside and outside this country.
It brought down on me the strongest and most emotional adverse criticism I
have ever experienced-not to my surprise.
After more than twenty years my “misdeed” seems to have been largely
forgotten, or perhaps forgiven. But I do not ask to be forgiven and I do not want it
to be forgotten. So I now republish it in permanent form. I have not consulted my
editor or my publisher; each is free to denounce my opinions here expressed-but is
not free to refuse this item while accepting the rest of this book.
A few specific details below are outdated by new technology-e.g.,
earthquakes can now be distinguished with certainty (we hope) from nuclear
explosions, while other aspects of detection and inspection grow more complex.
Technical details change; basic principles do not.
“Supreme excellence in war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
-Sun Tzu, ca. 350 B.C.
The Soviet Union is highly skilled at this-and so are the Chinese leaders.