March 14, 1897
Dear Dr. Mosqueira
I received your letter in the morning post and sir, I am struck by the singularity of your belief that many of our problems can be solved by employing the use of heavier-than-air ships (other than balloons or the motor-propelled gas bags currently being tested by Count Zepplin in Germany).
Your further predictions are so preposterous as to make any learned man instantly label you as the fool and charlatan that you undoubtedly are.
To speak of Man traveling to the Moon, or the creation of automated metal men, or to embrace (with even an iota of circumspection) the mad idea that machines may someday think like Men. . . truly, sir, you have all the qualifications needed to play the role of Jester in some medieval court. Although they may have burned you for witchcraft if you dared to utter such nonsense among the Royals in those hitherto grim times.
Indeed, sir, you tax my patience and those of my colleagues with your lengthy diatribes purporting to expostulate upon the validity of the ideas already listed above and others even more outlandish such as using the power of atoms to create energy or light beams to create some kind of radium-like death-ray.
Throw away those convoluted tomes which you must possess -- those lunatic writings of Wells and Verne. For surely your mind must be clouded by their fantastic phantasies.
I shall therefore ask you to-day, that from this time forward, do not address any more communication to me or any of my associates. We are all in agreement that any such future ravings are best sent on to Bedlam, where the learned staff in residence are in the position to offer the proper assistance which you seem to sorely require.
I remain in the service of the King,
Sir Edwin Popminister
Royal Academy of Science
London, England |
