Unsightly throne queen
The door to Brian Taggerts office was open when Candron finally reached the fifth floor. Taggert, of course, was not only expecting him, but had long been aware of his approach. Earlier selections here have approached the line of definition in a variety of ways. Mr. Langart, an author new to science fiction (so far as I have been able to determine from his tight-lipped agents), here presents an exceptionally thoughtful and convincing examination of one of the potentialities for human development.* * * * How marvelous! I sighed. But Miss Fremen, I wouldnt dare try it. I’ve got a weak face.” I didn’t say it, but I thought that the corset had a lot to do with it, too. And if I tried to wear a corset I’d have to hold it on with scotch tape. He had heard it many times before, raging in the same ruthless tirades, when, deputizing for one of the sound-sweeps, he had swept out the main board room at Video City. "When somebody takes the trouble to explain, it helps," she said. Heinie was calling out excitedly, "Im in the stars, Papa! Theyre so close they burn!" He said nothing more and continued to stare straight ahead. Now dont you start, said the doctor, and he drew me forward, levering off my pants at the same time. Tell me, he asked her, has Paul ever tried to say anything yet? Anything at all?” Again once more. It wasnt a long wait. In fact, Prudence Egan appeared so swiftly through an archway that she might have been conjured up out of thin air. She was in her middle thirties, slender and regal in bearing, dressed in an expensive blue tailor-made suit with a jacket bodice. Dark red hair worn in the current upswept and rolled fashion topped a somewhat narrow but not unattractive face. Eyes the color of emeralds regarded Sabina with a blend of wariness, distaste, and controlled anger. Of necessity, Casey continued, evenly, our organization is a secret one; however, it contains some of the worlds best brains, in almost every field of endeavor, even including elements in the governments of both Hemispheres.” Take a word, any word. Multiply and prefix it: inter-, multi-,even trans-.They all work: theyre with-it because withis with-it. (Like: a molecular biopsychologist in a linguistics seminar is interdisciplinary;a cinemaphotographer projecting abstract paintings on live dancer/actors moving between sculpture/structures to electronic music— thats multimedia.)The last two SFAnnuals went international, inter-enclave,and inter-(inner/outer)-space. With no facilities, as yet, to wire-in a light show or even bind-in a Blow-up Pop-out balloon, this time it's inter-ennial.Dropping 'The Year's Best' from the title, I no longer have to wait for someone else to reprint first (as with Jarry and Borges in the 11th)to include the material freshly surfacing from avant-gardeand enclave obscurity. (I missed 'Gogol's Wife' in its first English-language publication— Encounter, 1960 — andin the 1963 New Directions collection, and found it just last year— thanks to Playboy'sA. C. Spectorsky, and J. G. Ballard. I do not know when it was first published in Italy.) The road to and from Rome/ London/ Los Angeles/ New York grows shorter by the day, and that vital word, multimedia,is at its popping-oppest in the free-form Anymarn's Land where 'underground' films meet 'plastic' sculpture. As the author of the closest thing to a movie novelisation ('Snow White', not quite based on the Disney film) ever published in The New Yorker(an insular periodical which regards Rome as an exurb of New York, and Hollywood as its shopping centre), Donald Barthelme is a fully credited connoisseur of Art/Show/Biz. Lets go, said Miss Ambush. C’mon.” "It converts it into thething itself. Remember cellophane? It used to be Du Pont's trademark for transparent wrappings, and it was spelled with a capital 'C'. And then it became so well known that the newspapers and magazines began spelling it lower case, and they never mentioned it was Du Pont's brand of anything, because everybody by that time thought of cellophane only as the transparent wrapping itself. It had become the common name of the thing itself: it had becomegeneric. Now anybody can sell his own transparent wrapping and call it 'cellophane'. Cellophane has now joined the list of irresistible trademarks that are wide open to the public: shredded wheat, mineral oil, linoleum, escalator, aspirin, milk-of-magnesia." "Ah." A black cutout standing in the glare, Miss Luptik cleared her throat and found her start. From her purse she produced a wooden doll with a feather on its head. 754304 I sagged backward against the bedpost. Racial sterility, masculine impotence, following phenomenal weather. Had some vagabond cloud of radioactive junk from God knows where penetrated their weak atmosphere one day? One day long before Shiaparelli saw the canals, mythical as my dragon, before thosecanals had given rise to some correct guesses for all the wrong reasons, had Braxa been alive, dancing, here—damned in the womb since blind Milton had written of another paradise, equally lost? Patrick studied Jane quietly for a moment. "Harvey. Im going to do something I shouldnt. I'll clear a trademark— no, not Neol. Some other mark.".
