Mostly, therefore, I kept my stories grave and sober (as you can tell). Yet, I never quite gave up, either. One day, at the prodding of Mr. Boucher, I tried my hand at a Gilbert and Sullivan parody and finally (in my own eyes, at any rate) I clicked without reservation. I read the story over and laughed heartily.
That was it. I had found my mйtier in humor. All I had to do was to assume a very slightly exaggerated pseudo-Victorian style and I found I had no trouble at all in being funny.
Did I enter a full-fledged career as science fiction humorist at once? Not at all. I kept the humor at the previous level and remained, for the most part, grave and sober. That's still what I do best.
However, in the middle 1960s, I took to writing a series of articles for TV Guide which are nothing but this kind of humor, and I love them. (1 am sometimes taken to task, by the way, for saying, in my artless way, that I like my own material, but why shouldn't I? Is it conceivable that I would spend seventy hours a week on writing and related reading if I didn't like what I wrote? Come on!)
By the way, a final word about "The Up-to-Date Sorcerer"-It is not essential to read Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer first, but it would make my story funnier if you did (I think), and I would like to give it every break.
First appearance-The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1958. @, 1958, by Mercury Press, Inc.
The Up-to-Date Sorcerer
It always puzzled me that Nicholas Nitely, although a Justice of the Peace, was a bachelor. The atmosphere of his profession, so to speak, seemed so conducive to matrimony that surely he could scarcely avoid the gentle bond of wedlock.
When I said as much over a gin and tonic at the Club recently, he said, "Ah, but I had a narrow escape some time ago," and he sighed.
"Oh, really?"
"A fair young girl, sweet, intelligent, pure yet desperately ardent, and withal most alluring to the physical senses for even such an old fogy as myself."
I said, "How did you come to let her go?"
"I had no choice. "He smiled gently at me and his smooth, ruddy complexion, his smooth gray hair, his smooth blue eyes, all combined to give him an expression of near-saintliness. He said, "You see, it was really the fault of her fiancй-"
"Ah, she was engaged to someone else."
"-and of Professor Wellington Johns, who was, although an endocrinologist, by way of being an up-to-date sorcerer. In fact, it was just that-" He sighed, sipped at his drink, and turned on me the bland and cheerful face of one who is about to change the subject
I said firmly, "Now, then, Nitely, old man, you cannot leave it so. I want to know about your beautiful girl-the flesh that got away."
He winced at the pun (one, I must admit, of my more abominable efforts) and settled down by ordering his glass refilled. "You understand," he said, "I learned some of the details later on."
Professor Wellington Johns had a large and prominent nose, two sincere eyes and a distinct talent for making clothes appear too large for him. He said, "My dear children, love is a matter of chemistry."
His dear children, who were really students of his, and not his children at all, were named Alexander Dexter and Alice Sanger. They looked perfectly full of chemicals as they sat there holding hands. Together, their age amounted to perhaps 45, evenly split between them, and Alexander said, fairly inevitably, "Vive la chйmie!"
Professor Johns smiled reprovingly. "Or rather endocrinology. Hormones, after all, affect our emotions and it is not surprising that one should, specifically, stimulate that feeling we call love."
"But that's so unromantic," murmured Alice. "I'm sure I don't need any." She looked up at Alexander with a yearning glance.
"My dear," said the professor, "your blood stream was crawling with it at that moment you, as the saying is, fell in love. Its secretion had been stimulated by"-for a moment he considered his words carefully, being a highly moral man-"by some environmental factor involving your young man, and once the hormonal action had taken place, inertia carried you on. I could duplicate the effect easily."
"Why, Professor," said Alice, with gentle affection. "It would be delightful to have you try," and she squeezed Alexander's hand shyly.
"I do not mean," said the professor, coughing to hide his embarrassment, "that I would personally attempt to reproduce-or, rather, to duplicate- the conditions that created the natural secretion of the hormone. I mean, instead, that I could inject the hormone itself by hypodermic or even by oral ingestion, since it is a steroid hormone. I have, you see," and here he removed his glasses and polished them proudly, "isolated and purified the hormone."
Alexander sat erect. "Professor! And you have said nothing?"
"I must know more about it first."
"Do you mean to say," said Alice, her lovely brown eyes shimmering with delight, "that you can make people fed the wonderful delight and heaven-surpassing tenderness of true love by means of a… a pill?"
The professor said, "I can indeed duplicate the emotion to which you refer in those rather cloying terms."
"Then why don't you?"
Alexander raised a protesting hand. "Now, darling, your ardor leads you astray. Our own happiness and forthcoming nuptials make you forget certain facts of life. If a married person were, by mistake, to accept this hormone-"
Professor Johns said, with a trace of hauteur, "Let me explain right now that my hormone, or my amatogenic principle, as I call it-" (for he, in common with many practical scientists, enjoyed a proper scorn for the rarefied niceties of classical philology).
"Call it a love-philtre, Professor," said Alice, with a melting sigh.
"My amatogenic cortical principle," said Professor Johns, sternly, "has no effect on married individuals. The hormone cannot work if inhibited by other factors, and being married is certainly a factor that inhibits love."
"Why, so I have heard," said Alexander, gravely, "but I intend to disprove that callous belief in the case of my own Alice."
"Alexander," said Alice. "My love."
The professor said, "I mean that marriage inhibits extramarital love."
Alexander said, "Why, it has come to my ears that sometimes it does not."
Alice said, shocked, "Alexander!"
"Only in rare instances, my dear, among those who have not gone to college."
The professor said, "Marriage may not inhibit a certain paltry sexual attraction, or tendencies toward minor trifling, but true love, as Miss Sanger expressed the emotion, is something which cannot blossom when the memory of a stern wife and various unattractive children hobbles the subconscious."
"Do you mean to say," said Alexander, "that if you were to feed your love-philtre-beg pardon, your amatogenic principle-to a number of people indiscriminately, only the unmarried individuals would be affected?"
"That is right, I have experimented on certain animals which, though not going through the conscious marriage rite, do form monogamous attachments. Those with the attachments already formed are not affected."
"Then, Professor, I have a perfectly splendid idea. Tomorrow night is the night of the Senior Dance here at college. There will be at least fifty couples present, mostly unmarried. Put your philtre in the punch."
"What? Are you mad?"
But Alice had caught fire. "Why, it's a heavenly idea, Professor. To think that all my friends will feel as I feel! Professor, you would be an angel from heaven. -But oh, Alexander, do you suppose the feelings might be a trifle uncontrolled? Some of our college chums are a little wild and if, in the heat of discovery of love, they should, well, kiss-"