Gorgeous dust stick
"All the Mamas and Papas in the world are dying," Heinie wailed. No, Im not, said the heavy old man. I’m a spry young fellow with a name that starts with W.” You should take him back to Mexico City and put him in one of the cabarets. Hed make more than a dollar. The tiger stirred. His cab pulled up before the aged, but well-preserved, mansion, and he dropped coins into the vehicles toll box and then watched it slip away into the traffic. The last notable influx of radical new talent, between 1960 and 1963, included Norman Spinrad, Roger Zelazny, Piers Anthony, Jonathan Brand and David Bunch, as well as Lafferty, Delany, Dorman, and Disch. I think it is significant, and probably a Good Thing, that very few of these new people (or the even newer ones, like John Sladek, Joanna Russ, James Sallis) limit themselves, as an earlier generation largely did, to one area of expression: they are painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, actors, poets, playwrights, critics, scenarists, as well as fiction writers— mirroring the painters, poets, musicians, etc., on the outside who are adopting so much of the idiom of science fiction. For scientists argue. They love to argue. The meat and gist of any question scientific is just a plain lot of discourse, a good chunk of disagreement, some quarreling, and maybe even a clipboard thrown in a rage. This is the method. And they argued anywhere; at lunch, in the corridors, even in the mens room. Time was, some recalcitrant—Biev’s opinion—wrote a chemical formula of impossible structure on the bathroom mirror in soap. In turn, Biev wrote his own notation below, also in soap, which said in effect: go refer to your high school chemistry primer. A little later that day, that same formula was reproduced at the tail-end of a string of equations proving that that same formula could indeed occur. The author even took the trouble to mark down some bibliography. After some looking through this bibliography in the local library, Biev made his way back to the men’s-room mirrorand wrote—in small print—congratulations! No, dammit! It was there! Erl hadnt. He’d never been among even the last 100,000 before. But now he had no time to think about it because suddenly there seemed to be a rush on suits. It was more than an hour before he and Steve could exchange a word again. (Nova Express is the source for Quote #5; and I must admit I cheated slightly on this one, and changed Burroughs unmistakable punctuation to a more conventional system, to make it less obvious.)* * * * This story, originally published by Esquire In 1951, was reprinted last year in Fantasy and Science Fiction—thereby barely justifying my inclusion of it here, to complete my Himalayan set of three.* * * * Im glad to hear it. What’s the general theme? My mind moved like a tape recorder playing at triple speed. THIOTIMOLINE AND THE SPACE AGE by Henry Slesar Come on now, man of principles. Square with me. Havent you? Are you sure you’ve never committed . . . well, self-abuse? "Thats right," said Patrick..
