SEPTFM BER.. Including Venture Science Fictiotl NOVEL The Productions of Time (2nd of 2 parts) JOHN BRUNNER 25 NOVE LET Troubling of the Water ZENNA HENDERSON 100 SHORT STORIES Luana GILBERT THOMAS 5 Mr. Wilde's Second Chance JOANNA RUSS 65 Municipal Dump MAX GUNTHER 68 Narrow Valley R.A.LAFFERTY 77 fEATURES Cartoon GAHAN WILSON 13 Books JUDITH MERRIL 14 Science: I'm Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover ISAAC ASIMOV 89 F&SF Marketplace 129 Cover by Jack Gaughan (illustrating "The Productions of Time") Joseph W. Ferman, PUBLISHEil Edward L Ferman, EDITOR Ted While, ASSISTANT EDITOR Isaac Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR Judith Merril, BOOK EDITOR Robert P. Mills, CONSULTING EDITOR Dale Beardale, CIRCULATION MANAGEil The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Volume 31, No. 3, Whole No. 184, Sept. 1966. Published monthly by Mercury Press{;lnc., at 501 a copy. AnnuaJ subscription $5.00; $5.50 in Ca11ada and the Pan American 11ion, $6.fl0 in all other countries. Publication office, 10 Ferry Stree!~ Concord, N. H. 03302. Editorial and general mail should be sent to 347 East 53rd St., New York, N. Y. 10022. Second Class postage paid at Co11cord, N. H. Printed in U.S.A. ® 1966 by Mercury Press, Inc. All rights including translations into other languages, reserved. Submissions must be accompanied by stamped, sel/·addressed envelopes; the Publisher assumes no resPonsibility for return of unsolicited mannscripts. New novel by the author of Davy! HE title: The Judgment of Eve. The time: after the T Holocaust. The cast: the beautiful Eve and the three men who love her. Their quest: to find for her the meaning of courage, honesty, laughter and love in ·a world where the law of the hunter is the only recog· nizable order. EDGAR PANGBORN The Judgment of Eve Just out • $3.95 • Simon and Schuster New books by Sam Moskowitz BACK COPIES OF P. S. MODERN MASTERPIECES OF SCIENCE FICTION Nat Hentoff on jazz, William An anthology of stories by the most influential authors of science fiction Tenn on the student rebel, within the last four decades. Twenty­ Alfred Bester on the Negro two stories are included, in chrono­ logical order, from Edward E. Smith's in advertising; also articles "The Vortex Blasters" to Philip Jose Farmer's "Mother." $6.00 by Ron Goulart, Isaac Asi­ SEEKERS OF TOMORROW mov, Avram Davidson, Wil­ Here are in-depth biographical and critical studies of the twenty-two liam F. Nolan and many major science fiction authors repre· more-all in the April and sented in Modem Masterpieces. A final chapter summarizes the work of June issues of P. S.-both new authors who may become the harbingers of tomorrow's science issues for $1.00. Send to fiction literature. $6.00 Both volumes at your bookstore now. Mercury Press, 347 East 53 THE WORLD PUBUIHINII CDMPAIIY St., New York, N. Y. 10022 Cleveland and New York When science fiction is at its best, it conceives a perfect story out of the inconceivable; a story which has interior logic, which says something about the human situation and which contains a mini­ mum of contrivance no matter how startling the concept. Here's a perfect example, a wryly humorous closeup of a remarkable by­ product of a Gemini flight-and its odd but appropriate effects upon tl1e ttco men who share in its discovery. LUANA by Gilbert Thomas AFTER A DAY OF MYCOLOGY-MY acid, DNA, without which life can­ specialty-I would turn to paint­ not exist-had been purchased by ing, to sculpture. Cutting women the Museum of Modern Art in out of my life-I had been hurt New York for their files. enough. Art, life's shadow, is not a I wanted to get my hands on good substitute, but it would have something big. Although my first to do. I'd begun by painting water wife had not been large, nor my colors of fungi. Nothing is so love­ second. Little women in fact, do­ ly as spring lichen spreading cile as the gentle morel, delicious across the face of crisp rock, crack­ fried in butter or added to soups. ing it into sand. Fungi shattering Evidently they found me more do­ the Parthenon into chips of mar­ cile still, interested only in my ble has never failed to amaze me work. That the lowly ubiquitous with its power. Thus does beauty Penicillium had saved millions become soil. and blue cheese gave them no It was after losing my first wife cause to rejoice. They didn't care that I turned to sculpture. Al­ that man's journey into the ex­ though I had captured the loveli­ panding universe of the mind is ness of Monascus purpureas on powered by diethylamide tartrate canvas, and my shaggymanes in of D-lysergic acid-LSD-25- tempura-guarded against decay rooted in ergot, fungus. by infusions of deoxyribonucleic ~ y first wife screwed up her 5 6 FANTASY l•XD SCIENCE FICTION courage to the point of calling me My second wife, the Greek, was moldy. "You moldy bastard," she dark and dainty but she turned up said one morning over coffee and one morning black and blue. She figs. I had taken to eating fruit for had taken to staying out overnight breakfast after my latest trip to Eu­ without my permission :md I had rope and found it suited my sys­ noticed bruises and what appeared tem. "Moldy fig!" our daughter to be the marks of teeth on her Priscilla shot from the next room from time to time. These occurred -she'd been put up to it, a fat lit­ most usually about the throat with tle girl, clinically speaking. Then some finding their way down to the Elva had gone to the cookie jar and breast. Pressed for an explanation pulled out a sack of glazed dough­ she would sav she refused to wear nuts; and defiantly dumping them glasses and ·had run into some­ on the table was about to eat one thing. When I said it was more when she noticed-may God likely something had run into her, strike me dead-they were moldy. she asked for a divorce. I didn't Bursting into tears she ran from remember her as being nearsight­ the room screaming: "You did it­ ed. At the little quaysidc cafe at you did it!" I hadn't, of course. Piraeus she had seen well enough. The fact is: spore is all around us, \Veil enough to come over and ready to feed on anything. Basidio­ ask: "Aren't vou Doctor Ravmond mycetes will feed on solid plastic, Kelpe, the fm;1ous mycologi;t from changing it into sugar. Elva had the United States?" When I said I waited too long to make her move was, she blushed, saying she was and the hyphae had taken over. interested in molds herself, was in Picasso is a good sculptor. (A fact an advanced student special­ man must have his heroes-par­ izing in torula as it pertains to ticularly when depressed.) I've al­ cracking oil into food-petro-pro­ ways enjoyed his goat, created at teins-at the University of Ath­ Vallouris in the 50s, using a mul­ ens; had actually seen me in lec­ tiplicity of materials. Whatever ture and knew I was in town to came to hand. \Vire, plaster, fruit help save the Parthenon. Which crates. Finished, he discovered still may be possible; often of a something was missing: the geni­ morning I've joined the little talia. His remedy-take an old tin workman there on the Acropolis, can, flatten it and double it back his cup of cement helping us re­ on itself, then insert it in the moist store the chips to their historic po­ plaster just below the stiff up­ sition. turned tail and protruding gas­ Pallas became my assistant, pipe. Daring. I like to think I warning me to beware of the "I model myself on that Picasso, love you, kiss-ing" girls of Ath- LUAKA 7 ens; and to make sure that I did, early in the evening-S or 9- seduced me. It was simple in the sleeping like the dead at 10 or 11. laboratory, for I often work late. I wouldn't have put it past them We were among the trays of sapro­ to be slipping me a little chloral phytes, which had just hatched­ hydrate. Love will find a way. No you could actually see the little one knows better than a doctor champiguons rise from their beds that the Oath of Hippocrates is as of crushed acorn, dead leaves, and outdated as the general practition­ coffee grounds lightly laced with er. Once I thought I heard her merde. There in the moist scented scream but couldn't rouse myself air-for the little tan fruit has a from my stupor; it was possible delicious odor-she reached for a they had invaded my bedroom for retort and fainted. Falling on a added thrills. soft bed of mushrooms six feet I returned to sculpture, experi­ long. Her laboratory dress, but­ menting after the manner of Pi­ toned down the front, was some­ casso, using bread as the basic ma­ what askew, and as I bent to lend terial; malleable, sprayed with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, she plastic, a variety of textures and moaned. colors was possible, whole wheat We were married; and it was to white to rye and pumpernickel, soon after arriving back in the the whole allowed to overrun with United States that I noticed she algae to give a patina of age.