This Month's Fantasy and Science Fiction

Including Venture Science Fiction The Masculinist Revolt (nove let) WILLIAM TENN 4 Cartoon GAHAN WILSON 31 Explosion ROBERT ROHRER 32 Crystal Surfaces THEODORE L. THOMAS 42 Everyone's Hometown Is Guernica WILLARD MARSH 44 The 2-D Problem JODY SCOTI' 49 Books JUDITH MERRIL 61 First Context LAURENCE M. JANIFER and S. ]. TREIBICH 68 Science: Behind the Teacher's Back ISAAC ASIMOV 71 A Stick For Harry Eddington CHAD OLIVER 81 The Immortal (nove let) GORDON R, DICKSON 96 F &SF Marketplace 129 Cover by But Tanner (see page 70) Joseph W. Ferman, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Isaac Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR Ted White, ASSISTANT ~ITOR Edward L. FertNJn, MANAGING EDITOR Judith Merril, BOOK EDITOR Robert P. Mills, CONSULTING EDITOR The Magalline of Fantos~ and Scil!flt:e Fiction, Voloune 29, No. 2, Whole No. 171, A•g. 1965. Published moKthl~ b~ Mercur~ Press, IKe., at 50t a cop~. AnntUJI subscriptitnl $5.00; $5.50 in CtJnada tJnd the Paft American Unioft, $6.00 in all other c011ntries. Publi cation office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N.H. Editorial and general mail should be sent to 347 East 35rd St., New York, N. Y. 10022. Second Class postage paid at Concord, N. H. Printed in U.S.A. «) 1965 by Mercur~ Press, Inc. All rights, including WtJnslations inta other langutJges reserved. Submissions must be accompa~<ied by stamped, self-addressed nwelopes; the Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts. There has been some fuzzy discsntent lately about the "mascu linization of American women,• ranging from minor grumblings about boots and pants to confused enmity about economic com petition. As is often the case, it remains for science fiction to state the case with startling and needle-sharp hostility . er, that is, clarity. It is not this magazine's pDlicy to be constantly turning up lights under simmering waters, but when a good story thrusts us into the role of agitator, we accept it. WiUiam Tenn's first appear ance here since EASTWARD HO! (October 1958) is that type of story. Mr. Te1m assures us that he was fust having fun with this wild and witty extrapolation of the cold war between the sexes, and that he has no chip on his shoulder. We trust that our readers will fake his commentary in the same spirit. (Madam, is that a smile, or are you gritting your teeth?) THE MASCIJLINIST BE VOLT by William Tenn I: THE COMING OF THE CODPIECE This P. Edward Pollyglow fondly nicknamed "Old Pep" by his HISTORIANS OF THE PERIOD BE followers-was the last of a family tween 1990 and 2015 disagree distinguished for generations in violently on the canses of the Mas the men's wear manufacturing culinist Revolt. Some see it as a line. Pollyglow's factory produced sexual earthquake of nation-wide only one item, men's all-purpose proportions that was long overdue. jumpers, and had always operated Others ~ontend that an elderly at full capacity-up to the mo bachelor founded the Movement ment the Interchangeable Style only to save himself from bank came in. Then, abruptly, over ruptcy and saw it turn into a terri night it seemed, there was no fying monster that swallowed him longer a market for purely male alive. apparel. 4 THE MASCULINIST REVOLT 5 He refused to admit that he and Meanwhile, women kept gain all of his machinery had become ing prestige and political power. obsolete as the result of a simple The F.E.P.C. started policing dis change iri fashion. What if the In criminatory employment practices terchangeable Style ruled out all in any way based upon sex. A sexual differentiation? "Try to Supreme Court decision (Mrs. make us swallow that!" he cackled Staub's Employment Agency for at first. "Just try!" Lady Athletes vs. The New York But the red ink on his ledgers State Boxing Commission) enun proved that his countrymen, how ciated the law in Justice Emmeline ever unhappily, were swallowing Craggly's historic words: "Sex is a it. private, internal matter and ends Pollyglow began to spend long at the individual's skin. From the hours brooding at home instead of skin outwards, in family chores, sitting nervously in his idle office. job opportunities, or even cloth Chiefly he brooded on the push ing, the sexes must be considered ing-around men had taken from legally interchangeable in all re women all through the twentieth spects save one. That one is the tra century. Men had once been proud ditional duty of the male to sup creatures; they had asserted them port his family to the limit of his selves; they had enjoyed a high physical powers-the fixed corner rank in human society. What had stone of all civilized existence." · happened? Two months later, the Inter Most of their troubles could be changeable Style appeared at the traced to a development that oc Paris openings. · curred shortly before World War I, It appeared, of course, as a ver he decided. "Man-tailoring," the sion of the all-purpose jumper, a first identifiable villain. kind of short-sleeved tunic worn When used in connection with everywhere at that time. But the women's clothes, "man-tailoring" men's type and the women's type implied that certain tweed skirts were now fused into a single Inter and doth coats featured unusu changeable garment. ally meticulous workmanship. Its That fusion was wrecking Polly vogue was followed by the imita glow's business. Without some de tive patterns: slacks for trousers, gree of maleness in dress, the work blouses for shirts, essentially male shop that had descended to him garments which had been frilled through a long line of manufactur here and furbelowed there and ing ancestors unquestionably had given new, feminine names. The to go on the auctioneer's block. "his-and-hers" fashions came next; He became increasingly desper they were universal by 1991. ate, increasingly bitter. 6 PAN1'ASY AND SCIENCE FICTION One night, he sat down to study or breeches-how easily it could the costumes of bygone eras. Which be added to a man's jumper! It was were intrinsically and flatteringly unquestionably, definitively male: virile-so virile that no weman any woman could wear it, of would dare force her way into course, but on her clothing it them? would be merely a useless append Men's styles of the late nine age, nay, worse than that, it would teenth century, for example. They be an empty mockery. were certainly masculine in that He worked all night, roughing you never san: a picture of women out drawings for his designers. In wearing them, but what was to pre bed at last, and exhausted, he was vent the modern female from do still bubbling with so much en ing so if she chose? And they were thusiasm that he forgot about sleep far too heavv and clumsv for the and hitched his aching shoulder gentle, mad~-to-order climates of blades up against the headboard. today's world. Visions of codpieces, millions of Back went Pcllyglow, century them, all hanging from Pollyglow by century, shaking his head and Men's Jumpers, danced and swung straining his eyes over ancient, and undulated in his head as he fuzzy woodcuts. Not this, no, nor stared into the darkness. that. He was morosely examining But the wholesalers refused the pictures of lmights in armor and new garment. The old Pollyglow trying to imagine a mailed shirt Jumper-yes: there were still a with a zipper up the back, when few conservative, fuddy-duddy he leaned back wearily and no men around who preferred famil ticed a fifteenth century portrait iarity and comfort to style. But lying among the pile of rejects at who in the world would want his feet. this unaesthetic ~ovelty? Why it This was the moment when flew in the verv face of the modern Masculinism began. doctrine of interchangeable sexes! Several of the other drawings His salesmen learned not to use had slid across the portrait, ob that as an excuse for failure. "Sep scuring most of it. The tight-fitting arateness!" he would urge them as hose over which Pollyglow had bit they slumped back into the office. ten his dry old lips negatively "Differentness! You've got to sell these were barely visible. But be them on separateness and differ tween them, in emphatic, distinc entness! It's our only hope-it's tive bulge, between them- the hope of the world!" The codpiece! Pollyglow almost forgot the This little bag which had once moribund state of his business, been worn on the front of the bose suffocating for lack of sales. He THE MASCULJNIST REVOLT 7 wanted to save the world. He shook Early fn the campaign, how with the force of his revelation : he ever, a market research specialist had come bearing a codpiece and employed by Pollyglow's advertis no one would have it. They must ing agency pointed out that the -for their own good. · word "masculine" had acquired He borrowed heavily and em unfortunate connotations in the barked upon a modest advertising last few decades. Tons of litera campaign. Ignoring the more ex ture, sociological and psychologi pensive, general-circulation me cal, on the subject of over-compen dia, he concentrated his budget in sation, or to<H>vert maleness, had areas of entertainment aimed ex resulted in "masculine" being clusively at men. His ads appeared equated with "homosexuality" in in high-rated television shows of people's minds. the day, soap operas like "The Sen These days, the specialist said, ator's Husband" and in the more if you told someone he was mascu popular men's magazines-Caw line, you left him with the impres boy Confession Stories and Scan sion that you had called him a dals of World War I Flying Aces.

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