FANTASY and SCIENCE FICTION for One Year for $4.50
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['!_eluding Venture Science Fiction Hothouse ( novelet) BRIAN W. ALDISS 5 Time Was RON GOULART 36 Of All Possible Worlds ROSEL GEORGE BROWN 47 The Ubiquitous Wife (nove lei) MARCEL AYMB 62 Ferdinand Feghoot :XXXVI GRENDEL BRIARTON 85 The Intruder THEODORE L. T~OMAS 86 Science: Order! Order! ISAAC ASIMOV 93 Books ALFRED BESTER 105 The Tunnel C. BRIAN KELLY 109 Storm Over Sodom (short notJelet) ROBERT F, YOUNG 112 In this issue . • . Coming next month 4 F&SF Market Place 35 Cover by Emsh Joseph W. Ferman, PUBLISHER Robert P. Mills. EDITOR The magazixe of Fa1<tasy and Science Fiction, Volume 20, No. 2, Whole No. 117, FEB. 1961. Published monthly by Mercury Press, Inc., at 40f a copy. An>~ual subscrip· tion $4.50 in U. S. and Possessions and Caooada. $5.00 in the Pan American Union; $5.60 in all other countries. Publication office, Concord, N. H. Editorial and general mail should be smt to 580 Fifth Avmue, New York 36 N. Y.: advertising mail to P. 0. Box 271, Rockville Centre, N. Y. R0-6·3831. Second class postage paid at Concord, N. H. Printed in U.S. A.© 1960 by Mercury Press, Inc. All rigllts, ;,.eluding translations into otl&er la1<guages, reseroed. Submissions must be at;companied by stamped, self-addressed e~welopes; the Publisher assumes 110 responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts. Alfred Besler, BOOK EDITOR isaac Asimov, CONTRIBUTING SCIENCE EDITOR J. Francis McComas, ADVISORY EDITOR Ruth Ferman, cmcuLATION DIRECTOR In this issue ••• A few months ago we commented on having heard of a new drink called a Lord and Lady, which for some reason reminded us that we had not heard of any new science fiction drink ideas lately. In "Storm Over Sodom," Robert F. Young refers to an interesting sort of concoction, but is, regrettably, more specific about its effects than its properties. We are still waiting hopefully. • • • Coming next month . ,.. • . aR All Star Issue, featuring a longish novelet by Philip Jose Farmer -"Prometheus"-which is a sequel to "A Few Miles" (Oct. 1960 F&SF), and a novelet by Zenna Henderson-"Return"-which is a new story of the People. The rest of the issue is not yet definite, but will be drawn from such stories as: "The Beetle," by Jay Williams, "Saturn Rising," by Arthur C. Clarke, "Night Piece," by Poul Anderson, "All the Tea in China," by R. Bretnor, "Something Rich and Strange," by Ran dall Garrett and Avram Davidson, "Softly While You're Sleeping," by Evelyn E. Smith ... and others. Also, of course, Isaac Asimov on Science, and Alfred Bester on Books (Mr. Bester, incidentally, will turn in that col~mn from this month's blast to an examination of some of the good things on the current science fiction scene) .... To be sure of not missing any of these, you might dG well to fill in the simple little form below .• ·• • ··-··························--····················· Mercury Press, Inc., 580 Fifth Avenue, New York 36, N. Y. F2 Send me The Magazine Of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION for one year for $4.50. 0 I en.close $4.50 0 Bill me Na.ne .............• , , ..•••.•...•........•••.•• , •••• , • , ••• , •••• Address .....••••••.••• , •••• , ..•••.....•••...... , , •. , ••• , .• , , , , City . • • . • • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Zone . ••• State •• , •••••••••• One of the attractive aspects of Brian Aldisa' work is its pleas ant unpredictability. There is something about his stories which makes them quite unlike those of other writers in the field, and no group of his stories gives any clear indication of what his next will be like. The present novelet is, we think, a most intriguing example of science fantasy, and it does give an indication of what to expect next, because Mr. Aldiss is doing a series of novelets on the most unusual world he creates in "Hothouse" ... the second of which, titled "Nomansland," will be along in two or three months. HOTHOUSE by Brian W. Aldiss My vegetable love should·- grow for enemies, they ran along the Vaster than empires and more branch, calling to each other in doW. soft voicf!s. A fast-growing berry ANDREW MARVELL whisk moved upwards to one side, its sticky crimson mass of berries I gleaming. Clearly it was intent on seeding and would offer the chil The heat, the light, the humidity dren no harm. They scuttled past -these were constant and had it. Beyond the margin of the remained constant for ... but group strip, some nettlemoss had nobody knew how long. Nobody sprung up during their period of cared any more for the big sleep. It stirred as the children questions that begin "How approached. long . ?" or "Why . ?" It "Kill it," Toy said simply. She was no longer a place for mind. was the head child of the group. It was· a place for growth, for veg She was ten. The others obeyed etables. It was like a hothouse. her. Unsheathing the sticks every child carried in imitation of every In the green light, some of the adult, they scraped at the nettle children came out to play. Alert moss. They scraped at it and hit 5 6 FA.NTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION it. Excitement grew in them as Hearing Gren's cry, out came they beat down the plant, squash Lily-yo from her nuthut, climbing ing its poisoned tips. up a line to stand on the branch Clat fell forward in her excite beside him. ment. She was only five, the "Clat falls!" cried Gren. youngest of the group's children. With her stick, Lily-yo rapped Her hands fell among the poison sharply on the bough before run ous stuff. She cried aloud and ning on ahead of the child. rolled aside. The other children Her signal called out the other also cried, but did not venture six adults, the women Flor, into the nettlemoss to save her. Daphe, Hy, Ivin, and Jury, and Struggling out of the way, little the man Haris. They basteRed Clat cried again. Her fingers from their nuthuts, weapons clutched at the rough bark-then ready, poised for attack or flight. she was tumbling frum the branch. As Lily-yo ran, she whistled on The children saw her fall onto a sharp split note. a great spreading leaf several Instantly to her from the thick lengths below, clutch it, and lie foliage nearby came a dumbler, there quivering on the qui"fering flying to her shoulder. The dumb green. She looked up pitifully. ler rotated, a fleecy umbrella "Fetch Lily-yo," Toy told Gren. whose separate spokes controlled Gren sped back along the branch its direction. It matched its flight to get Lily-yo. A tigerfly swooped to her movement. out of the air at him, humming Both chil~ren and adults gath its anger deeply. He struck it aside ered round Lily-yo when she with a hand, ·~ot pausing. He was looked down at Clat, still sprawled nine, a rare man child, very brave some way below on her leaf. already( and fleet and proud. "Lie still, Clatl Do not move!" Swiftly he ran to the Headwom called Lily-yo. "I will come to an's hut. you." Clat obeyed that voice, Under the branch, attached to though she was in pain and fear. its underside, hung eighteen great Lily-yo climbed astride the homemaker nuts. Hollowed out hooked base of the dumbler, whis they were, and cemented into tling softly to it. Only she of the place with the cement distilled group had fully mastered the art from the acetoyle plant. Here of commanding dumblers. These lived the eighteen members of the dumblers were the half-sentient group, one to each homemaker's spores of the whistlethistle. The nut-the Headwoman, her five tips of their feathered spokes car women, their man, and the eleven ried seeds; the seeds were strange surviving children. ly shaped, so that a light breeze HOTHOUSJ. 7 whispering in them made them Already the rest of the group into ears that listened to every ad· was dispersing. To stand in a vantage of the wind that would bunch was to invite trouble from spread their propagation. Hu the unnumbered enemies of the mans, after long years of practice, forest. Besides, Clat's was not the could use these crude ears for their first death they had witnessed. own purposes and instructions, as Lily-yo's group had once been Lily-yo did now. of seven underwomen and two The dumbler bore her down to men. Two women and one man the rescue of the helpless child. had fallen to the green. Among Clat lay on her back, watching them, the eight women had born them come, hoping to herself. She twenty-two children to the group, was still looking up when green four of them being man children. teeth sprouted through the leaf all Deaths of children were many, about her. always. Now that Clat was gone, "Jump, Clat!" Uly-yo cried. over half the children had fallen The child had time to scramble to the green. Only two man chiJ.. to her knees. Vegetable predators dren were left, Gren and Veggy. are not so fast as humans. Then the green teeth snapped shut Lily-yo walked back along the about her waist. branch in the green light. The Under the leaf, a trappersnap dumbler drifted from her unheed per had moved into position, sens ed, obeying the silent instructions ing the presence of prey through of the forest air, listening for the single layer of foliage. It was word of a seeding place. Never a horny, caselike affair, just a pair had there been such an over· of square jaws hinged and with crowding of the world.