Let the Fire Fall

Riots continued over this Labor Day weekend as strikers from the Panmin Labor Association clashed with pollee in numbers estimated in the tens of thousands.

Labor Secretary Hideke Kurusu called out the military to control the strikers. Anti-riot foam was dispersed by helicopters.

Hachiro Nomura, Secretary of the Panmin Labor Association issued a statement which said in part: “We protest this mammoth expenditure in a venture that is doomed to fail. Only when the house of Earth is in order will the children of Earth be permitted to enter God’s space. We predict a series of accidents at those places where such work is commencing….”

Hearings started today to determine the causes of the recent tragic accidents that continue to plague the Panmin Corp. Charges made by the government that the Voice of God Church affiliate in Tokyo is directly to blame for the fires that have all but destroyed the Panmin Corp. here have been vigorously denied by Hachiro Nomura, Secretary of the Panmin Labor Association. He admitted readily that the Voice of God Church has initiated a program to feed and clothe the striking workers and their families. He refused to comment on the report of a 3 percent membership increase in the church among the strikers. He denied angrily the charges that the church has inaugurated training schools in acts of sabotage….

The Voice of God Church is ten years old this month. There are few on the outside of its threshold who will wish it a happy birthday. Government gets no smaller, its classification system no less complex, and with the advent of universal credit cards taking cash almost completely out of the hands of the people and forcing registration and corrections in registrations as a weekly routine practically, the central data bank has become an actual necessity, no longer the gleam in the eyes of a few wild men. Chance is being replaced by computerized logic in every aspect of daily life, and there is no rebellion possible against these inevitable changes, because each is born of necessity created by earlier changes. The steps that follow like night the day are good in themselves.

But man’s thoughts and imagination transcend his daily environment. In the most pious society man turns from the crucifix on the wall to mechanization, war, satanism. In the technological society now realized man doesn’t want to see the technology, the computer banks, the array of circuitry in his electronic world. He turns to the mystical. Not the establishment churches that have became social organizations, but to those that exist to voice his hidden desires and fears, which the state mistakenly believes it has quieted with housing programs and poverty programs and training schools and mass planned vocations. The growth of the Voice of God Church is proof that those programs have foiled the basic needs of the people. The church offers nothing, no social welfare, no aid for widows and orphans, no salvation through good works. It voices hatred and fear and despair in a country where the existence of those things has been denied. That is its success.

Dr. Leo Marckland, President of the Congress of Christian Churches of America, today resigned his post in that organization. The Reverend Dr. Marckland denied that his resignation resulted from pressure brought by members who are dissatisfied with his firm stand opposing the Voice of God Church.

…Crandall M. Jennings, long a Cox supporter, accepted the position of pro-tem president following a heated debate during which one-third of the members of the congress walked out….

There is a story about two blind men who met an elephant in the jungle. One felt the elephant’s leg and said, “It’s a tree.” The other felt the trunk and said, “It’s a vine.” Neither would listen to the other, so one sat around waiting for the coconuts to fall, and the other sat around waiting for the berries to ripen, until the elephant got tired of the whole thing and stepped on them both.

We, today, the people of Modern America, are blind men. In the valley where the first Ship from Space still stands, there is a temple devoted to the hatred of the race that crossed space only to die. The Priests of Religion won’t look across the valley and see the ship. The Priests of Science, in the ship, won’t look across the valley and see the temple.

When was the last time you read a science article in a notional magazine? Two years ago? Three? Hmm… hard to remember, isn’t it? Can you tell when the first space station was orbited and manned—or who manned it? Ask ten people about that, and you’ll get nine blank looks. The news was in the daily fox-two inches, one column, right under the daily astrology forecast. It was announced on 3D—a spot announcement in between commercials for BOW ZOW GOODIES, and TOE JOY FOR YOUR CORNS. Twenty-one seconds It took to bring the greatest news of the decade to the public!

Remember when there were 37 magazines devoted to science fiction and science fact? Know how many there are today? One. You’re reading it. Monologue. And we wouldn’t exist, even in this mimeographed format, if our readers were not 94 and 99/100ths percent engineers and scientists.

Where are the thousands of fans who used to wait eagerly for the next serial by Doc Smith or Bob Heinlein? Gone—lost to philately, or numismatics, or the Voice of God Church. The Public never did care much about Science or Extrapolation, and they are being brainwashed today into believing that Science is Bad. Science brought the aliens, and the crash programs to compete with alien technology, which caused shortages of luxury items the public has come to expect and demand. Blame it on BAD SCIENCE!

I know a historian who has specialized so thoroughly that all he knows is the week of November 20, 1963. Period. He suspects something was going on in the world before then, and maybe afterward, but he isn’t sure. Then there’s a doctor in the newest medical building in Westchester who specializes also.

He treats the right eye. Go in there with an ailment in the left eye, and he’ll say he’s sorry, but he can refer you to a good man….

What if you have something wrong with BOTH EYES? Do they consult? Or just exchange memoes?

What we need today is a man who can stand and look at the Temple of Religion and the Temple of Science, and see them BOTH! Science isn’t Bad; Religion isn’t Bad. But when each denies the existence of the other, they can both be made BAD!