To All Loyal Future-Minded Readers of MIRACLES OF TOMORROW MAGAZINE:
ADAPT OR PERISH! Those are the words to live by in this, our modern age. Every day, new MIRACLES OF SCIENCE burst out of our nation's workshops and laboratories.
In our lifetimes, wireless telegraphy has begun to transmit news around the world at the speed of lightning, man has unlocked the secrets of flight, and with electrical lights we can reclaim our world from that savage conqueror Night. In earlier centuries, but one of these discoveries would define an era. But today, SCIENCE CONTINUES ITS FORWARD MARCH.
The only question that remains: WILL YOU JOIN THE FUTURE, OR BE LEFT BEHIND?
As readers of MIRACLES OF TOMORROW MAGAZINE, you are already at the forefront of the coming technical revolution. It is your privilege and your duty to learn what you can of the coming New Golden Age of Progress and to be prepared for its challenges. Each day in this time of marvels, obsolete ideas are thrown aside in the face of NEW, SCIENTIFIC ways of living.
Should not the games we play be similarly cast aside in favor of NEW, SCIENTIFIC amusements? In the future, when electrical automata have replaced manual labor, children and adults alike will have THREE TIMES the available time for leisure and play. Should we waste those hours on the pitiful, outmoded games of yester-age?
No.
Our future society will surpass the meager thinking required for the games of today. Checkers? Simplistic. Cards? A gateway to degeneracy and destitution. Marbles and jacks? Mindless.
What of chess? Chess – the game of the great conquering generals of old. Surely chess cannot be supplanted as an unparalleled contest of wits and courage?
I announce that, as of the publication of this issue of MIRACLES OF TOMORROW MAGAZINE, CHESS IS OBSOLETE. It may teach fine tactics for wars gone by, but for the battlefields to come – battlefields BEYOND THE EARTH OUR HOME – its lessons are useless. The castles of tomorrow are rocket-ships. The knights will ride vicious, six-legged lizard-horses that hunger for the taste of human blood. Even the lowly pawn will be armed with terrible electric weaponry capable of rendering a man to dust in seconds! Clearly, the future demands a better class of war-game.
Last issue saw this magazine's most celebrated and visionary writer, J.N. Lawson, write a simulation-game allowing YOU THE READER to take command of the forces of the future's Gettysburg: Sgt. Bronzewood's heroic stand against the Strangle-Men of the Black Beyond. Dozens of our readers from across the country have written to our offices, recounting the enjoyment and intellectual thrill derived from playing Mr. Lawson's imaginative and accurate portrayal of space-warfare of the decade to come.
With this issue, you can re-visit the future's other great battles, like Julius Clay's rout of the savage Goliaths of the Martian cliffs, famed adventurer Ruby Rocket's daring raid on the nightmare castle of the wicked Science-Countess Nazarova, or “Wildcat” Bill Bristol's heroic defense of Man's first colony on Mercury from the terrifying assault of Urzile the Beast-Master and his legion of Mercurian Tunnel Spiders – all stories accurately foretold in the pages of MIRACLES OF TOMORROW MAGAZINE.
With every issue of MIRACLES OF TOMORROW MAGAZINE, we will present you with new playing-pieces, new boards, new future-historic battlefields. Much like scientific advancement, the war-game of the future never stands still. Within two years, EVERY AMERICAN will be playing our new game. Soon after that, it will reach THE ENTIRE WORLD AND BEYOND. Will you lead this revolution or be left dazed in its wake?
You have two choices: ADAPT OR PERISH.
Those that adapt invariably play SPECTRUM COSMOS.
Max Osterhagen
September 1933
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