"0 () THE MAGAZINE OF Fantosv AND Science Fiction NOVEMBER.. ••• AND CALL ME CONRAD by ROGER ZELAZNY A FEW KINDRED SPIRITS by JOHN CHRISTOPHER ISAAC ASIMOV JUDITH MERRIL DUNE By FRANK HERBERT. This gripping novel of the distant future, by the author of The Dra~ton in the Sea, cen­ ters around a man whose son happens to be the possible key to all human rule, power, and indeed knowledge! It is a dazzling tour de force that blends the power of the past with a sweeping vision of the fut-ure. $5.95 AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPI RE By POUL ANDERSON. A two:.time win­ ner of the "Hugo" Award for science­ fiction writing introduces Sir D ominic Flandry - Captain in Earth's Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps and the "Agent 007" of the future. Here are swashbuckling battles galore as Flan­ dry fights his way through a clutch of enemies - human and non-human. $3.95 FLANDRY OF TERRA By PoUL ANDERSON. Captain Flandry mans the ramparts of the universe once again in these swift-paced adventures. This time he is up against a hundred­ foot-long enemy agent, a catlike beau­ ty, and a ruthless scientific tyranny. $3.95 A NICE DAY FOR SCREAMING And Other Tales of the Hub By JAMES SCHMITZ. Incredible adven­ tures from the central nexus of the Galactic Civilization in the year 3500 A.D. $3.95 TO WORLDS BEYOND Tales of the Future By RoBERT SILVERBERG. Foreword by ISAAC ASIMOV. A great master of S-F shows us our descendants in action among the stars, in provocative stories that pose such questions as: Can we out-invent intelligent aliens? What is· the definition of a zoo - and who be­ longs behind the bars, we or they? $3.95 Now at your bookstore CHILTON BOOKS, 227 So. 6th St., Phila., Pa.1910& Including Venture Science Fiction Come to Venus Melancholy moMAS M. DISCH s Books JUDITH MERRIL 16 The Peacock King LARRY MCCOMBS and TED WHITE 23 CtWtoon GAHAN WILSON 37 Insect Attractant mEODORE L. THOMAS 38 •• , And Call Me Conrad (2tzd of 2 parts) ROGER ZELAZNY 39 El Numero Uno SASHA GILlEN 98 Science: Squ-u-u-ush! ISAAC ASIMOV 109 A Few Kindred Spirits JOHN CHRISTOPHER 119 F&SF Marketplace 129 Cover by Gray Morrow (illustrating". • And Call Me Conrad") Joscp/1 W. Ferman, EDITOR AXD PUBLISHER Isaac Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR Ted White, ASSISTANT EDITOR Edward L. Ferman, MANAGING EDITOR Judith Merri/, BOOK EDITOR Robert P. Mills, coNSULTING EDITOR Tire Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictlMI, Volume 29, No. 5, Wlwl11 No. 1'N, Nov. 1965. Published monthly by Mercvr:y Press, Inc., at 50¢ a cop-y. Amrual subscription $5.00; $5.50 in Canada and thll Pan American Union, $6.00 in all other ccnurtries. Publi­ cation office, 10 Ferry_Street, Concord, N. H. Editorial and general mail should be sent to 347 East 53rd St., New York, N. Y. 10022. Second Class postage paid at Cor&t:ord, N. H. Prixted in U.S.A. © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc. All rights, including translations into other lang~&ages, reserved. Submissions must be accompanied by stamped, self-addressed ent•elopes; the Publisher assumes no resf>orrsibilit;y for return of smsolicited nranuscripts. Thomas Disch (NADA, F&SF, August 1964) Is a relatively new SF writer who continues to impress with the iAoentive­ ness and quality of his work. An excellent example is the in­ triguing and sensitive story below, a story of romantic looe­ without flowers or moonlight or diapers-without, even, lovers. COME TO VENUS MELANCHOLY by Thomas M. Disch Is THAT You, JoHN? Dm soME­ pened, you know, in the classic one just come in the door? Of sense-deprivation experiments. course, it wouldn't be John. Not But I guess my case is different. I after all this time. It was because guess they've rigged me up some I was startled I said that. If you're way so that can't happen. there, whoever you are, do you Or maybe-Christ, I hope notl mind if I talk to you? Maybe one of those hairy cater­ And if you're not there? pillar things has got inside. I real­ Then I suppose you'll mind ly couldn't stand that-thinking even less. of the whole house, thinking of Maybe it was just the wind. me, crawling with those things. Can the wind lift a latch? Mavbe I've always hated bugs. So if you the latch i~ broken. Though. it don't mind, I'll close the door. feels all right now. Or maybe I'm hallucinating. That's what hap- Have you been trying to talk to 5 6 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION me? I should have told you it's no Oh, when I think. use. I can't hear and I can't see. Excuse me, I must be boring I'm broken. Do you see, there in you. I'm sure you can't be that in­ the larger room, in each corner, terested in a machine's love life. about five feet from the floor, how Perhaps I could read something they've been smashed? My eyes and aloud? He wasn't able to get at the ears. Can't they be fixed some­ microfilm library, so there's still how? If it's only a matter of vac­ plenty of books. When I'm by my­ uum tubes and diaphrams, there self I don't do anything but read. should be things of that sort down­ It gets to seem as though the whole stairs. I'm opening the trapdoor world was made of print. I look at now-do you see? And I've turned it not for what's written there but the lights on in the storeroom. as though it were a landscape. But Oh hell, what's the use? I digress. I mean you're probably not What do you like: poetry? nov­ there, and even if you are, he els? science textbooks? the ency­ probably thought to smash any clopedia? I've read all of it so spare tubes that were left. He many times I could puke, if you'll thought of everything else. excuse the expression. Whoever Ah, but he was so handsome, selected those books never heard he was really so handsome. He of the Twentieth Century. There's wasn't tall. After all, the ceiling nothing later than Robert Brown­ here isn't much over six feet. But ing and Thomas Hardy-and he was well-proportioned. He had would you believe it?-some of deep-set eyes and a low brow. that has been expurgated! What Sometimes, when he was worried did they think? That Browning or puzzled, he looked positively would corrupt my morals? Or Neanderthal. John's? Who can understand the John George Clay, that was his bureaucratic mind? name. It sounds like part of a Personally, I prefer poetry. poem, doesn't it? John George You don't get tired of it so quick­ Clay. ly. But maybe there's something It wasn't so much his features you need to know, a point of in­ -it was his manner. He took formation? If you could only talk himself so seriously. And he was to me. There must be some way to so dumb. It was that combination fix one of the mikes, there has to. -the earnestness and the stupid­ Oh, pleasel ity-that got to me. A sort of ma­ Oh hell. ternity syndrome I guess you'd call it. After all, I couldn't very I'm sony, but it's just that it's well be his wife, could I? so hard to believe that you're COME TO VENUS MELANCHOLY 7 there. It gets to seem that I only And yet ••• now ••• I'd give talk to hear myself speak. I wish this whole damn planet to be back to God I could hear myself speak. there in the academic squirrel Maybe I just sound like static cage, spinning that beautiful, dull to you. Maybe he smashed the wheel. speakers too, I wouldn't be sur­ Do you like Milton? I've got prised. I don't know. There's no the Complete Works, except for way I can tell. But I try my best: the things he wrote in Latin. I I think each word very slowly could read you something, if and try to enunciate mentally. you'd like. And that way the caterpillars I used to read things to John, won't be confused. Ha! but he didn't much appreciate it. I'm really glad you've come. He enjoyed mysteries now and I've been so long without com­ then. Or he'd study an electronics pany that I'm grateful even for the text under the scanner. But poetry illusion of it. Don't take offense: bored him. It was worse than that: since I can't ever be sure that he seemed to hate poetry. you're there, you can't be more But maybe you're not like that. than illusion for me, whether How can I tell? Do you mind if I you're real or not. A paradox. I just read it aloud for my own sake. welcome you in either case. With Poetry's meant to be read aloud. my doors wide open. ll Penseroso. Do you know it? It's been fifteen years. Fifteen It gives me goosebumps every years, four months, twelve days­ time. Figuratively. and three hours.