Including Venture Science Fiction Greenplace TOM PURDOM 5 After Everything, What? DICK MOORE 17 Treat (verse) WALTER H. KERR 33 Breakthrough JACK SHARKEY 34 Books AVRAM DAVIDSON 42 Dark Conception LOUIS J. A. ADAMS 46 One Man's Dream SYDNEY VANSCYOC 53 The New Encyclopaedist-Ill STEPHEN BECKER 62 Where Do You Live, Queen Esther? AVRAM DAVIDSON 65 Science: The Black of Night ISAAC ASIMOV 72 On The House B. C. FITZPATRICK 82 Portrait of the Artist HARRY HARRISON 86 Hag (verse) RUSSELL F. LETSON, JR. 94 Oversight RICHARD OLIN 95 The Third Coordinate (novelet) ADAM SMITH 98 Letters 127 F&SF Marketplace 129 Covet' by Ed Emsb (illustrating "The Third Coordinate") Joseph W. Ferman, PUBUSBER Avram Davidson, EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jsaac Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR Edward L. Ferman, MANAGING EDITOR Ted White, ASSISTANT EDITOR The Ma.gasitte of Fantasy and Scient:e Fiction, Vol•me 27 No. 5, Whole No. 162, Nov. 1964. Published mo•tthly by Me~c•~Y P~ess, Iru:., at 401 a copy. 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(For instance the 3 year rate of $11.00 will save you $7.00 over the new single copy price.) Send your order today. ----------------------------------------------------Mercury Press, Inc., 347 East 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 F-11 Send me The Magazine of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. I enclose D $4.50 for one year D $8.00 for two years. 0 $11.00 for three years Name ••••••••••••••••••••••............••••••••••••••••••••• Please print Address .....•••••••••....................................... City • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • State . • • . • • . • . Zip # ..........• 4 Drugs which stimulme t'M 8et1.9e8 • • • drugs which free the mind from the bounds of lime and ordinllry time-bound metabolism . pyschological techniques which bind the mind, finding its weak spots and hitting both hard and painlessly • . Some of these are already facts, others may soon be facts. Few writers are ro aware of the political possibilitiu inherent in them, and the dangers inherent in the possibilities, as is Tom Purdom. StroU with 1dm now through Gt-eenplace, A Nice Place To Lwe, and see for yourself. GREENPLA(;E by Tom Purdom ON THE OUTSKIRTS OP GREBN­ swer from a big, hulking man like place, Nicholson seared himself in the sec would have made him feel the wheelchair and took. the drug a lot better. From the look of him, injector out of his shirt pocket. he had thought the sec might en­ Rolling up his sleeve, he uncov­ joy a fight. The big man's face ered the lower half of his biceps. seemed to be set in a scowl of For a moment the injector trem­ permanent disgust with a world bled above his 8esh. which made such trivial use of He put the injector down. muscles. Ever since the invention Twisting around in the chair, he of the voicetyper, which had made looked up at the sec standing be­ the old trade of stenographer-typist hind him. obsolete, sees had been the lowest "Will you help me if I get into class of unskilled labor, status a fight?" symbols hired on a temporary "I don't get paid to fight," the basis merely to carry their employ­ sec said. er's files and dictating equipment. "I thought you might do it for He turned around in the chair. pleasure." Across the street the late afternoon "I work for money." sun fell on the lawns and houses Fear was a tingling nausea in of Greenplace. Children were yell­ his chest and stomach. A yes an- ing and he could smell the grass. 5 6 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION What was pain like? He couldn't Again the injector trembled remember. He had been forced to above his biceps. He shook his endure it only once in his life, head disgustedly. He pressed the twenty-four years ago when he had · release and two cc's of red liquid been twelve and the doctors had shot into his ann. Behind him the given his left eye a new set of mus­ sec stiffened. He put the injector cles. Could he take it? Would he back in his pocket. beg them for mercy? It was a beautiful Saturday af­ "Don't think they don't know ternoon in late summer. He was you made that last survey," Bob sitting in the shade of a tall apart­ Dazella had told him. "Never un­ ment tower, the last one for sev­ derestimate the Boyd organization. eral miles. In front of him Green­ Every time a lawn gets mowed in place looked comfortable and that district, it goes in their com­ pleasant. Lawn mowers hummed puter. You'd better go armed. Be­ across the grass while their owners lieve me, you go into Greenplace watched them with sleepy eyes. On unarmed and you may come out a every lawn there was at least one cripple." person sprawling in the sun. Glued to the middle finger of Greenplace had been built in the his left hand was a scrambler, a early 1970's and it was typical of finger length tube which fired a its period. Every block had fewer tight beam of light and sound in a than fifteen houses and every pattern designed to disrupt the hu­ house had a lawn and a back vard. man nervous system. In his lower He sat tensely in the chaii. He left shirt pocket he had a pair of could feel the chemistry of his fear bombs loaded with psycho-active mingling with the disturbing gas and in the bottom of the wheel chemistry of the drug. He felt like chair he had installed a scent gen­ a pygmy with a wooden harpoon erator and a sound generator. He waiting to go out and do battle didn't know what the two gener­ with one of the giant creatures that ators could do for him if he got swam in the oceans of Jupiter. into trouble, but they had been the Congressman Martin Boyd was only other portable weapons he probably the most powerful man could think of. He didn't think in the United States. He had been anything could help him very the undisputed boss of the Eighth much. MST -melasynchrotrinad Congressional District since 19 52. -had one bad side effect. It dis­ Now that medical science had con­ rupted coordination. Once the quered death, or had at least given drug hit his nervous system he most people an indefinite life would be a helpless lump of flesh span, his organization might very for the next four hours. well control the district forever. In QUENPLACJ! 7 addition to his forty-eight years his ears told him his coordination &eniority, Boyd had accumulated was already degenerating. wealth, a first-rate psych staff, and The sec pushed him forward. control of the House Rules Com­ His head was swaying from side to mittee and the Sub-Committee on side. He tried holding it steady and Culture and Recreation. Modern failed. The landscape swung across psych techniques were so powerful his vision. politicians and social scientists MST was the most powerful unanimously considered Boyd un­ psychic energizer on the market. beatable. It multiplied the powers of ob­ His head rolled to one side. He servation and the rate and quality scanned the clouds and the blue of thought by a factor somewhere sky and he estimated the wind ve­ between three and seven. The user locity and what kind of weather observed data he would never they were having in Nigeria, have observed in his normal condi­ where his wife was on a weekend tion, and his mind invented and shopping trip. His hand suddenly discarded hypotheses at a dizzying appeared between his eyes and the rate. The drug was only eight years clouds.