phenomenology without effort should go and see this film.
The present novel has one passage to which I would draw your attention: the description of Austin’s night-long battle with the mind parasites. This scene—I say with all modesty—is a tour de force, since it spends several thousand words describing a battle that takes place entirely in the mind, and in which, therefore, none of the usual cliches of battle scenes can be called upon.
I should also add that the ghastly, flaccid writing of the opening pages was supposed to be a parody of the Stevenson-Machen type of narrator, with perhaps a touch of Serenus Zeitblom from Mann’s Doktor Faustus. It didn’t come off; but what the hell. I’d rather get on with another book than tinker about with it. I have also cut out a fifty thousand word extract from Karel Weissman’s Historical Reflections from the middle of this novel; my wife felt that it slowed down the narrative. I may later publish it as a separate volume.
—COLIN WILSON
Hollins College, Virginia
Christmas, 1966
THIS EDITION OF THE MIND PARASITES CONTAINS THE
COMPLETE TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL HARD-COVER EDITION.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED…
PREFATORY NOTE
WE MAKE NO APOLOGY for devoting Volume III of the Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age to this new edition of that important document known as The Mind Parasites by Professor Gilbert Austin.
The Mind Parasites is, of course, a composite document made up from various papers, tape recordings, and verbatim reports of conversations with Professor Austin. The first edition, which was only about half the size of the present one, was published shortly after Professor Austin’s disappearance in 2007, and before the Pallas had been found by Captain Ramsay’s expedition. It consisted mainly of the notes made at the request of Colonel Spencer, and of the tape recording numbered 12xm, in the library of London University. The later edition that appeared in 2012 included the transcript of the shorthand conversation taken down by Leslie Purvison on 14 January, 2004. Inserted into these transcripts was material from two articles written by Austin for the Historical Review, and from his preface to Karel Weissman’s Historical Reflections.
This new edition retains the old text in toto, and includes completely new material from the so-called Martinus File, that was for many years in the possession of Mrs Sylvia Austin, and that is now in the World Historical Archive. The editors have made clear in the footnotes 2 the sources from which various sections have been drawn, and haveutilized the still unpublished Autobiographical Notes written by Austin in 2001.
No edition of the Mind Parasites can claim to be definitive. It has been our aim to arrange the material in such a way that it forms a continual narrative. Where it was thought to be strictly relevant, material from Austin’s philosophical papers has been added, and one short passage from the introduction to Homage to Edmund Husserl, edited by Austin and Reich. The resulting narrative seems, in the opinion of the editors, to support the views they advanced in New Light on the Pallas Mystery. But it should be emphasized that this was not their aim. They have tried to include all relevant material, and believe that the justice of this claim will be demonstrated when Northwestern University completes its edition of the Complete Papers of Gilbert Austin.
—H.S. W.P.
St. Henry’s College, Cambridge,
2014
(THIS SECTION IS TRANSCRIBED FROM A TAPE RECORDING MADE BY DR. AUSTIN A FEW MONTHS BEFORE HIS DISAPPEARANCE. IT HAS BEEN EDITED BY H. F. SPENCER.3 )
A STORY AS COMPLEX AS THIS has no obvious starting point; neither am I able to follow Colonel Spencer’s suggestion of ‘beginning at the beginning and going on to the end’, since history has a habit of meandering. The best plan is probably to tell my personal story of the battle against the mind parasites, and to leave the rest of the picture to the historians.
My own story, then, begins on the 20th of December 1994, when I returned home from a meeting of the Middlesex Archaeological Society, before whom I had delivered a lecture on the ancient civilizations of Asia Minor. It had been a most lively and stimulating evening; there is no pleasure more satisfying than discoursing on a subject that is close to your heart in front of a completely attentive audience. Add to this that our dinner had finished with an excellent claret of the 1980’s, and it will be understood that I was in a most cheerful and agreeable frame of mind when I inserted my key in the front door of my flat in Covent Garden.
My telescreen was ringing as I came in, but it stopped before I reached it. I glanced into the recording slot; it registered a Hampstead number that I recognized as that of Karel Weissman. It was a quarter to twelve, and I was sleepy; I decided to ring him back in the morning. But somehow, I felt uncomfortable as I undressed for bed. We were very old friends, and he frequently rang me up late at night to ask me to look something up in the British Museum (where I spent most mornings). Yet this time, some faint psychic alarm bell made me uncomfortable; I went to the screen in my dressing gown and dialled his number. It rang for a long time; I was about to hang up when the face of his secretary appeared on the screen. He said: ‘You have heard the news?’ ‘What news?’ I asked. ‘Dr. Weissman is dead.’ I was so stunned that I had to sit down. I finally mustered the wit to ask: ‘How should I have known?’ ‘It is in the evening papers.’ I told him I had only just come in. He said: ‘Ah, I see. I’ve been trying to ring you all evening. Could you possibly come up here right away?’
‘But why? Is there anything I can do? Is Mrs. Weissman well?’
‘She is in a state of shock.’
‘But how did he die?’
Baumgart said, without changing his expression: ‘He committed suicide.’
I remember staring at him blankly for several seconds, then shouting:
‘What the devil are you talking about? That’s impossible.’
‘There can be no possible doubt. Please come here as soon as you can.’
He started to remove the plug; I screamed:
‘Do you want to drive me mad? Tell me what happened!’
‘He took poison. There is almost nothing else I can tell you. But his letter says we should contact you immediately. So please come. We are all very tired.’
I called a helicab, and then dressed in a state of mental numbness, telling myself that this was impossible. I had known Karel Weissman for thirty years, ever since we were students at Uppsala. He was in every way a remarkable man: brilliant, perceptive, patient, and of immense drive and energy. It was impossible. Such a man could never commit suicide. Oh, I was fully aware that the world suicide rate had multiplied by fifty since the mid-century, and that sometimes the most unexpected people kill themselves. But to tell me that Karel Weissman had committed suicide was like telling me that one and one made three. He had not an atom of self-destruction in his composition. In every way, he was one of the least neurotic, best integrated men I had ever known.
Could it, I wondered, have been murder? Had he, perhaps, been assassinated by an agent of the Central Asiatic Powers? I had heard of stranger things; political assassination had become an exact science in the second part of the eighties, and the deaths of Hammelmann and Fuller had taught us that even a scientist working under high security conditions is not safe. But Karel was a psychologist, and he had, as far as I knew, no connection of any kind with the government. His main income came from a large industrial corporation, who paid him to devise ways of combating dyno-neuroses and generally increasing productivity.
Baumgart was waiting for me when the taxi landed on the roof. The moment we were alone, I asked him: ‘Could it be murder?’ He replied: ‘It is not impossible, of course, but there is no reason to think so. He retired to his room at three this afternoon to write a paper, telling me that he was not to be disturbed. His window was locked, and I was sitting at a desk in the anteroom during