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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have made clear in the footnotes ² the sources from which various sections have been drawn, and haveutilized the still unpublished Autobiographical Notes written by Austin in 2001.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