Online Meeting Regarding the Publication of Sic Itur Ad Astra: 9/15/2024

MAIN SPEAKER:

Mr. Martin Atkins, Proprietor of Spaceland Publications and Publisher of Andrew J. Galambos’ Sic Itur Ad Astra

Background of Martin Atkins and Spaceland Publications

This is a historic and exciting time. We’ve waited for this for an awful long time. I'm 64 years old, and I waited two-thirds of my lifetime for this day. I was 22 years old when I bought my first copies of Sic Itur Ad Astra, so it's been a long time. For those of you that don't know, I am the proprietor of Spaceland Publication.

I want to tell you just a little bit of background information on myself. I'm not going to make this long. I know no one's here to listen to me or about me. We all care far more about the theory than we do about me. But some of it, I think, is a little bit important.

When I was 14, I met a kid whose name was Lance Martin, and he quickly became the best friend I've ever had, and he was a lifelong friend. Unfortunately, that life only lasted another three years.        

He died in a jeep accident. He was 17 years old. It was perhaps the most tragic death of a young kid that the world has ever known. And I don't expect you to believe that or to understand why I could possibly say that. But if you ever do have a chance, and this isn't a plug for my books, but if you ever have a chance of reading The Biography of Lance William Martin, you'll get a glimpse of what I'm talking about. The subtitle of this book happens to be, “History's First Child of Freedom.” And people have different reactions to that, but I can tell you this—it's the truth. This was the first kid who was ever born and raised in the theory of volitional science by a father who lived and breathed it. And when he died, he had a flowstream of almost 100 young people that he introduced to Galambos’ theory and to Galambos himself. It's one of the largest flowstreams that anybody ever created for Galambos, and it came from a 17-year-old kid. He was the best friend that I've ever had, like I said, and I was the first person in his flowstream.

His father, William Martin, had had a long relationship with Galambos since 1964 when he first took his courses. And William talked Mr. Galambos into allowing me to take V-50 at the age of 15, which I believe at the time made me the third youngest person, next to Lance Martin and his brother Mike, that ever took V-50. I took V-201 at age 17. In 1981, after Lance died, I had the privilege of being invited to speak at the 20th Anniversary Alumni Meeting, which I think some of you were actually there, and I delivered a talk entitled “Lance W. Martin: A Tribute to a Primary Friend.” And his father, Bill, gave a talk right after that on spaceland childrearing, which, after all these years—and I feel funny saying this, but I'll say it anyway—it kind of brought the house down at the Quadrangle, and it was a great moment.

The next year, I was fortunate enough to be invited back to give a talk at the Centennial of Joseph Galambos' Birth. I gave a talk called “A New Future for My Generation.” Of course, that talk was started at about two o'clock in the morning on a Monday after a three-day seminar. So, not too many people remember that, and I don't know that I even remember it at the time, but it was a historic time, and I appreciated it.

In summer of 1984, Galambos called me and asked me if I would join Bill Martin in being present when he took inventory at the sixth-floor office building that he had rented in Fourth Avenue here in San Diego, in which he kept his financial records and the coin medals and things like that, and he wanted us to witness, basically, the theft of M.J. Lange, of what amounted to over two million dollars of cash, personal property, etc. It was actually quite an honor to be there. I'll never forget that night. It was a long night. It was hot and stuffy, and it was in the summer. But I can't say Galambos was depressed. I can't say he was in a bad mood. The quote, unquote “lectures” that we received that night were information that I'll never forget. And if you ever want to read about that, go to Spaceland Publications’ blog. Bill Martin's diary entry from that night—an account of that day and night—are all there. It’s well worth reading. It was a fantastic day. One thing that's kind of interesting is, during that long night, I'll never forget, Mr. Galambos turning to us and he said, and I quote, he said, “I will either deliver the books or refund all of the deposits with interest, even if it kills me.” That's a direct quote from Galambos. It was recorded in William Martin's diary and my diary. We both recorded that because it affected both of us at the time.

Ironically, the so-called trustees would use that theft as an excuse not to come out with the version of Sic Itur that the professor wanted. In fact, to come out with a garbage version, to say the least. I call it an abortion. Excuse my language. In spite of the fact that this lie was exposed, since by the time Galambos died 13 years later, the money in the trust had been completely replaced, and the so-called trustees were left with plenty of money to publish the correct version of Sic Itur Ad Astra.

So, other than that, over the years, I took many other courses from Galambos. About two dozen of them. I was there on November the 5th, 1989 when he gave his last two lectures for BFSC and OESC, and I was there the month before when he gave his 203rd and final session of his open-end course. So, I go back quite aways, even though I was very young. And, in a way, being young at the time was to my advantage. Galambos liked young people. He didn't have a lot of young people around him, even back then, and he kind of looked at us young people as the future of the civilization and we had a lot of great conversations during intermissions to courses. At the V-40s, at lunch, and at dinner, when I was fortunate enough to be invited to those.

As far as Bill Martin is concerned—controversial, perhaps. To me, he's not. I consider him the greatest friend I've ever had, next to his son, Lance. He's my intellectual father, my teacher, and the very definition of what Galambos called “the maximum man.” He was the epitome of the line that Joseph Galambos taught his son about “never a day without a line.” I was around when he worked on Book One, when he was paid as the literary executor. And I was around when he was fired by pygmies who had no right to fire him at all—no authority to fire him. And I was there when he continued with his own finances and private finances to continue working on Sic Itur Ad Astra by himself, with Erik, to get the work that he had been hired to do—by the professor, not by the so-called trustees—to get the work done. And he got it done. [A man says, “Bravo, for that.”] He— thank you, yes, I agree. I hesitate to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway, and sometimes I say more than I should say. He gave up a $600,000 a year income to finish Sic Itur Ad Astra. He found it absolutely impossible to spend any time, whatsoever—even though he was one of the greatest estate planners, I've been told, in the country—but he found it impossible to deal with flatland work, like estate planning, when he had Sic Itur Ad Astra to do, and by the time he had finished it, there was no way he was going to go back. So, he literally gave up that income, and he pretty much, by the time he died, he pretty much was penniless. So, he literally gave up all of the savings, he gave up his health, he gave up his income, and, ultimately, he gave up his life to produce this book, which fits in a box right there, which I just happened to have that box there. Anyway, today I'm privileged to announce that the monumental achievement that he devoted his life to is finally here, and it’s a book that we've been waiting for for over half a century.

As I said, I am the proprietor of Spaceland Publications, and I took it over when Bill died in 2012, but I couldn't afford to quit working at the time, so it took another seven years until 2019 before I devoted full time to this. That's when we fully got rolling.

Spaceland Publications Has No Agenda

I want to say something, and I'm not attacking anybody when I say this. I'm just stating a fact, and I think it's important that you know this. Spaceland Publications has no agenda. And by agenda, I mean, we aren’t taking what we're doing and claiming it's our property and trying to sell a bill of goods to anybody when, in fact, what we might have done is taken Professor Galambos’ work, twisted a few words here and there, presented it under a different name, and I think we all know the kind of people were talking about, whether it's today or all through Galambos’ life, that this happened to him. We are not doing that. We're not claiming that we have anything new. We have one mission statement, and that's it, and this is what we are here for, and this is what we are trying to do, and this is one of the reasons that we think that people should have no fear of us. We're not stealing anything. We don't want to steal anything. Our mission, our goal, is the survival, expansion, and advancement of the works of Andrew J. Galambos and William Martin. We believe that if we are successful in that goal, civilization and the species will have a chance of surviving. So, this isn't our work that we're doing here. This is the work of those two men. That's what we're focusing on, and nothing else. So, you're not going to see a book come out from Spaceland Publications claiming that we have this new theory of property or this new theory of freedom or capitalism or primary property. That's not going to happen. And I think it's important to know that.

Understanding the Disaster of the Greatest Crime of All Time

So, just a few words about the Galambos part of this mission, and not the Bill Martin part of the mission, and this will take a few minutes. Please bear with me, because I think this is very important as to what we plan to do in the future, and I'll get to that. But Galambos publicly stated that he gave over 153 courses. That was the number that he used. The trustees used the number “nearly 50.” So, there's a gap there, by my math, of 100 courses that they don't claim that Galambos gave, and Galambos did. The 1977 course catalog, by the way, lists way more than 50, and Galambos gave a hell of a lot of courses between 1977 and his last lecture in 1989. So, even if the 153, you say, well, maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, the 50 is more ridiculous than the 153, that's for sure.

We also know from emails from Bill Cobb that Bill Cobb was privy to, that there were discussions from the so-called trustees between each other, led by Mr. Peter Giansante, about destroying the tapes that they had no plans to digitize and no money to store. And that's a quote directly, that the word “destroy” was used. That they had come to the tough decision, the tough time, when that decision had to be made. How many they destroyed, we don't know. [A man says, “Oh my God.”]

Over the last four years, Spaceland Publications has published four books of Galambos. We did a three-session introduction to V-50. And I think most of you have seen these. We did the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine, and Your Freedom, known as V-76. We did the Symposium on Freedom Lectures, which were actually lectures delivered in 1961, right after he started the Institute, but were done outside of the Institute, so they weren't really Galambos’ courses. They're a fantastic read. And we did STIP-2: A Lecture Series on Nothing. So those are the four books that we've done. In addition, I'm happy to say that we're working on two more major courses—major courses, which will—what would you say, Erik? Next year, do you think? I would say probably next year that we’ll be finished with those. [Erik Falvey says, “That's right. Martin, yep. Yep.”] We feel extremely fortunate to have had access to those tapes, but that's it. We're done, as far as tapes are concerned. We have no more of these courses. So that means if we don't get any more, if we don't go on from here, and nobody else has access to these tapes, then seven courses of Galambos—V-50, V-50X, V-201, Thomas Paine course, etc. Seven courses of the 153 will have been published. And the potential is that every single other course will be lost for all time. [A man says, “Oh my God.”]

Just to magnify the disaster of this—and this will only take a minute. These are some of the courses that we don't know, but we suspect—well, we certainly don't have the tapes for now. Put it this way. V-30, 31 sessions; Positive Production, 43 sessions; Positive Journalism, 28 sessions; Positive History, 19 sessions; the Physics Course, 46 sessions; V-111, 17; V-113, 21; V-137, 8; F-201, 16 sessions; Spaceland Child Rearing, 42 sessions; Stabilized Durable Growth, 50 sessions; PBVS-260, 40 sessions; V-215; V-219; V-216; Course 100, the ancestor of V-50 which Suzanne Galambos called the acorn from which the great oak has grown. We don't have it. None of the approximately 40 V-40 seminars, the Universal Concept—none of those tapes do we have.

The open end course which was 203 sessions, the open end special course which is 42 sessions, and the back flow stream course which is 68 sessions. These are just some of the courses that I just jotted down last night in five minutes off the top of my head.

But I just wanted everyone to see the overwhelming disaster of this and listen to this for a statistic. So, keep it in mind that the average session of Sic Itur Ad Astra averages 65 pages, okay, and that might be a little bit on the low side. But when you pick up Sic Itur Ad Astra and you go to session three of V-201, it's going to be around 65 pages. If you take the open-end course, the open-end special course, the backflow stream course, stabilized durable growth, and the physics course—that’s five courses—that's about 26,585 pages. The average size of each book of Sic Itur is 517 pages. So, the 26,585 pages of those five books would produce over 51 books of this size; 51 books in just those five courses. If we go further with this and we consider the 100 courses the co-trustees deny even exist, we're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 493 potential books lost for all time. The funny thing is, is that I realized in the back of my mind that we have put this in one of our books, and I dug it out again last night, and these quotes were from Galambos. This is one from STIP-17, session 1, part B, where Galambos said, quote, “All of my courses are previews of books. Naturally! Remember what my father taught me: Words fly away, writing remains.” Another quote from Galambos—and remember, I came up with 493 books. Quote, Galambos said in OEC Session 130, quote, “At least 600 books can be printed from my tapes.” V-277 Session 32, he said, “Right now I have enough material for 500 to 1000 books.” So, that's the magnitude.

So, why am I bringing all this up? Because this is the greatest crime of all time. We're fortunate that we have the books that we have. But can you imagine if we knew right now that—take Archimedes, for instance. I don't know how many pages of Archimedes’ work we actually have. I believe Pete would probably know the answer to this question, but I believe we have one small book of Archimedes and maybe some snatches of work here and there. But can you imagine if we had lost between what Galambos said, 500 and 1000 books of Archimedes, and all we had were the 12 pages of one book that we have of Archimedes? That's what people could be saying in the future. We have freedom because of this man, but we lost up to 1,000 of his books! I mean, the crime is just worse than everything—what the trustees have done.

A Bridge Corporation to Freedom Is Possible

So, one of the things I'm here for is to beseech you people to think about if you know, or if you know of anybody who knows who has these tapes, if any of you yourself, whether you want to say it or not, or you know somebody who has some kind of relationship with these so-called “trustees”, “co-trustees,” that could be willing to act as an intermediary between us. And by us, I don't just mean Spaceland Publications. I'm talking about all of us now, because this affects all of us. And then, there's no real concrete evidence of what these trustees’ condition is, other than I can tell you that Joyner has to be close to death. I don't think the other trustees have much interest in this. I think they're tired of it. My gut feeling from knowing him and his hatred of Galambos is that the one that we have to worry about is Peter Giansante, but I suspect that even he would be amenable to some financial gain from these tapes.

And, the fact of the matter is, it would be very easy to set up a corporation utilizing the corporate mechanism of V-201 with financing from the P2 company supplying these tapes of the operating company, all under the umbrella of the P1E, and use this corporation not only to produce all of these books of Galambos’, but as a potential bridge corporation to freedom. And I am not in the least bit kidding about that. This has the power, would have the power, of becoming that bridge corporation and it could grow into a very, very powerful corporation that could attract authors and publishers of the new world's literature for years and years to come.

What You Can Do to Help

But, first of all, we've got to get those tapes. We have to get the tapes because, first of all, the tapes are decaying badly. These tapes do not have a lifetime. They have a 25-year lifetime, and we're going on way, way, way more years than that. I do have some tapes that were given to me from Galambos. Fortunately, the tapes were digitized, but I took a couple of them, a couple of reel-to-reel tapes, down to a place that is expert on restoring these tapes. They had two of the V-201 tapes that  I took in. They said, yes, these are in fantastic condition. We shouldn't have any problem. Eight months later, they got back to me and said they tried everything, the tapes are destroyed. [A man says, “Oh, my God.”]

So, we can only hope, you know, we can only hope. A lot of people have asked me over the last four years in emails and phone conversations, “What can we do to help?” Well, this is what you can do to help. If we can get those tapes, and some of them have been digitized, they have been careful enough. They paid Giansante $200,000 to do a few of the courses. We know that too.

There's enough work for all of us to do for a long, long time. Believe me, the transcribing of these courses, the editing of these courses, the subtitles of these courses, the indexing of these courses, it's not rocket science. It's not what Galambos did, that's for sure, but it's time-consuming. It's rewarding as all hell, as you can ask Erik, as you can ask Pete, as you can ask Paul Thiery. It's rewarding as all hell, and it's something that all of you could do, and I guarantee you, it would rejuvenate the last decades of your lives. So, that's what's in it for you, that's what's in it for me, that's what's in it for us, and that's the severity of the problem.

The Excitement of Galambos’ Book: Sic Itur Ad Astra

I'm kind of done talking about that for now. I want to just talk, just for a couple of minutes about the book that we have published. I always said, produced, and we didn't produce anything. Galambos produced this. We published it. It was back in 1971 in March that Galambos said that he wanted to write his book, so you can do the arithmetic and figure out how long that's been. It was the Tenth Anniversary Alumni Meeting, that's how long it's been. Like I said, it was two-thirds of my lifetime ago that I bought my first copy of Sic Itur, and it's finally here in book form, tangible. It's right before your very eyes. I think most of you have probably seen pictures of it on the website, but it's, I don't know if you can see this over here, but it's right over here. It's down a little bit, but that's the actual 15 volumes of Sic Itur Ad Astra right there. It's beautifully done as the professor wanted. The paper is of exceedingly high quality. The binding is high quality.

A funny story that I have to relate, when I was first dealing with the printer. I must admit, I was a little hesitant and shy to ask him the number of years that I should have, but I said, “So, the paper that you're suggesting, let me ask you something. Is that going to last 300 years?” And I looked at him with a real stern look, and I saw a look of just shock on his face, and I was getting kind of annoyed, and I said, I said, “What the hell's so wrong? I just asked you a question. Is the paper going to last 300 years or not?” He says, “Mr. Atkins, no one's ever asked me that question before.” I said, “Well, it's a damn good thing I didn't say 2,000 years because that's what the man who produced this book would have wanted.” So, but anyway, this paper, I don't know if it'll last 300 years, but it's a lot better than the paper that you see in most books, that's for sure. It's off-white so it doesn't burn your eyes like the V-50 that they put out. It's imminently readable.

 [Mr. Richard Boren says, “It feels good, too.”] It feels good and when you open it you don't feel like you really have to be ginger, although please do. We do want it to last 300 years.

Anyway, 7,754 pages, and you might think, “Wow, man, no one's ever going to read that!” You'd be surprised. Pete Caneer picked up V-50X the first day he got it, and he couldn't put the damn book down. And I mean, and I get it, Pete, is that true? You there? [Pete says, “Yep, that's true.”] Okay, all right, because he's emailing me half the book, left and right, saying, “God, I heard this, and I don't remember hearing that, this is a fantastic point. I’m so excited.” I mean, you know, he's 70 years old. He's going to have a heart attack over his excitement over the V-50X. It's a great read. You won't be able to put the book down. You're going to feel like you're right there again, because the way Bill Martin did that, you feel like you're in a lecture. You feel like you're sitting right there. You're not reading a book, you're in a lecture, and you’re going to be getting feedback and you're hearing ice clink in that glass, and you're hearing him laugh and chuckle and you're hearing the Teamster meeting, for Christ's sake, in the building next door in the early days. So, you get the flavor of it all. It really brings back great memories.

The Brainchild of Bill Martin Called the Master Condordex

The index—they call it the Master Concordex. It's 1,200 pages, two volumes. You can locate any subject that the professor talked about in these courses in minutes or less. It truly is the brainchild of Bill Martin, and it is fantastic. I envisioned a day when all of Galambos’ books, all 153 or how many we can salvage, are indexed in a master index like this. So that you can look for a subject, the Battle of Zama, and go and see what courses, what session he talked about the Battle of Zama, or anything specific, in a Master Concordex like that. I think it would be a beautiful thing to have. So, as you can see, we're talking about a lot of work to be done.

This Is the Only Authorized Edition of Sic Itur Ad Astra There Will Ever Be

And the last thing I'm going to say is that this is the only authorized edition of Sic Itur Ad Astra that there will ever be. And you say, “Well, that’s kind of an obnoxious statement.” No, it's not. The professor appointed James Gafford to be his literary executor and William Martin successor executor. On his death, Mrs. Galambos attempted to make a job of Sic Itur but couldn't succeed. Upon on her death, Gafford took over, but he couldn't do much better. Fortunately for us, Gafford had had the quality of realizing that in William Martin, it would be in capable hands, so he turned it over to him, and he did finish what nobody else could do. We have the magnum opus because of him, and it carries all of the critical imprimatur of Galambos’ literary executor, and that is critical. When William Martin died, the flow stream continued when it was passed to my hands, and today I present it to you as the finished product. Nobody else who ever attempts to produce this product, even if it were to succeed, would have this pure flowstream behind them. It was done as the professor requested by the person the professor chose. What's more, nothing was left out except for slips of tongue and stops and starts. Everything the professor said was left in intact.

The Payment of Royalties

This theory—this is going to sound crazy—but I have considered this theory open to ARD for years and years and years and years. And you say, “Well, how can you possibly say that? Galambos said it wasn’t etc., etc., until the book was published, until he negotiated with whoever's in charge.” Nobody's in charge! Nobody's been in charge. Are we supposed to negotiate with criminals? So, what that did was that threw Galambos’ natural estate into exactly the same position as the natural state of Isaac Newton. So, are we supposed to not use Isaac Newton's natural ideas because he has no natural estate trustees? No. You use his ideas using Galambos’ principles of moral usage only, and a non-zero royalty. Well, you say, “Well, who the hell keeps track of them? Atkins, what's your problem? So, this is what this is all about? Are you trying to get people to send you money so that you can control the royalty money?” No, I'm not. I don't want it. Don't send me any money for that. I wouldn't know what the hell to invest it in anyway. I do my own. You do your own. You are your own—until we have one—you're your own clearinghouse. Use the ideas. Hopefully you'll use them correctly and you'll make a profit. If you make a profit from them, pay a royalty, do the bookkeeping of your first generation back flowstream. And that's it. …

Other Galambos Books for Sale

Okay. The three-session introductory of V-50 is just what it said. It is literally the same first three sessions of V-50 that you're getting in the full volume of Sic Itur Ad Astra. We came out with that as, I don't know, I guess in the business they call it a teaser for what was coming up. So, it was just basically an introduction to the theory to try and get people interested in that. STIP-2 was one of 20 STIP courses that Galambos gave. It's the only one that we have tapes to. They are special to my heart because they were short, relatively short, between one and a half and 12-session courses on more or less specific topics. And that was impossible for Galambos to give specific topics. So, they were all numerous topics, but they were excellent. Those are tapes I'd love to have. So, that is a direct, word-for-word transcription of a Galambos course. I actually did that one, and I can tell you right now that that was not an easy one to do, because I don't have a mathematics background. I don't have a scientific background. And some of the names that he used of some of the people and some of the concepts, I had to spend enormous amounts of time to try and figure out what in the hell he was talking about. Fortunately, I had some people who did understand science and mathematics better than I do, but that's directly a Galambos course, just as Sic Itur Ad Astra is V-50, V-201, V-50X. The Thomas Paine, the Declaration of Independence, and Your Freedom is another Galambos course, V-76. It was the first V-76, which is three sessions, as opposed to five. But that is a course. It's the second course that Galambos ever gave and put into his course catalog, historically speaking. And the other one, the Symposium on Freedom—and again, I'm relying on you, Erik, to make sure what I'm saying is true—but he was invited to give these lectures as a guest. It was an event called The Freedom Symposium, and Galambos gave two lectures there. One was on freedom versus destructionism, and, what was the other one on, Erik? [Falvey says, “How Freedom Will Win.”] How Freedom Will Win. [Falvey says, “Both delivered in December of ’61.] Yeah, so that book is not a Galambos course. It's really interesting, though, because you're getting authentic Galambos word for word in the year that he integrated volitional science. So, it's very young Galambos. It's just really neat to see how his speaking, writing, etc., thinking evolved over the years. [Falvey says, “Fantastic early lectures.”] Yeah, really, really, good.

This Is the Best Way Sic Itur Ad Astra Could Have Been Done

By the way, I have to read you one more small quote and I'll shut up, I promise. But there's been a lot of talk. Even Galambos said that if we did Sic Itur this way, that was a second best. In other words, if it wasn't written, if he didn't write it, it was going to be a second-best version. He used that many times in his courses, and he said it many times. But in the last session of V-201, in 1978, in the last session of the last V-201 he ever gave, he changed his mind on that and he said this. He said, “In disclosing this to you, there is a major measure of risk. On the other hand, there's no other way I know how to do it, other than write the book first. In all due honesty, I do not think the book would have been anywhere near as good as it's going to be with the disclosure as I have done it.”

And he goes on there to talk about what he means by that and why it is. But I believe that that's one of the reasons that Galambos never did write his book, because subconsciously he knew what he said right there that “I do not think the book would have been anywhere near as good as it's going to be with the disclosure as I have done it.” That's session 48 of V-201, part A, in volume eight. It's page 116. [One person applauds with clapping of hands.] So, what I'm just pointing out is, what we are getting in Sic Itur Ad Astra is not a second best, and Galambos knew it towards the end. It's the real thing. It's the best way it could have been done.

Sic Itur Ad Astra Vol. 1 vs. Sic Itur Ad Astra 15-Volume Set

I think as time goes on and as this book gets distributed more and more, and the paperback comes out, and it's distributed more and more, I believe the book that you're talking about, the big red abortion [Sic Itur Ad Astra Vol. 1 published in 1999], is going to fade into the distance and eventually be forgotten. That's my personal opinion. And, ultimately, when you say Sic Itur, because of habit, repetition, because that's all they've seen for years and years, that's all anybody has seen, the other ones have disappeared, they're going to realize we're talking about the whole 15 volumes. That's the only answer I could give. I just think eventually that will wither away. But, by the way, don't throw that book away. It's going to be very valuable one day, one year. You know, it's like the old coin that they miss-stamped. It's, you know, the one in 10 million. And can you imagine 500 years from now, if you have Sic Itur Ad Astra, the one of the 50 Sic Itur Ad Astras—and we’re, naturally, living in freedom or we wouldn't be here 500 years from now—and side by side, you had the stolen, unauthorized, half-assed developed and printed and poorly printed, misnamed theory of “volution” side by side. Can you imagine how much that disaster book's going to be worth? I mean, it would be like having a copy of Principia Mathematica and a stolen version next to it, both the same age and the same, you know. So, yeah, Bill Martin wanted to have a bonfire with all the big red books [SIAA Vol. 1] once he came out with Sic Itur Ad Astra [The complete, authorized version.] Down at his office on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, he was just going to pile all of them into a big fire and burn the damn things. But I wouldn't do that. I'd save it.

Take a Moment to Celebrate the Achievement of William W. Martin

[Erik Falvey speaking.] Do what you want with it, but I think it's just an embarrassment. [Falvey referring Sic Itur Ad Astra Vol. 1.] And, if I could just make one quick comment, and I know we're at the top of the hour, but for me, personally, this is a huge happy day for me, because I worked side by side with Bill Martin from 1997 to 2003 on Sic Itur Ad Astra. I had the enormous thrill and pleasure and honor to be working with Bill Martin, who is my all-time greatest teacher, having the stupendous gift to be able to work on Professor Galambos’ magnum opus means more than I can say. And I think it's also, we should take a minute and just also celebrate the achievement of William Martin and the years of calumny and abuse he's taken, and the proof is with everyone, the care, competence, integrity, the absolute care he had in protecting and editing Professor Galambos’ work. I think I'm really happy for him too. That’s all I’ll say.