It seemed to be growing much colder.
She read her watch dial. It was two hours past sunrise. She remembered they had taught her in third grade that the sun was just one more star.
She went back and sat down beside the block of switches and picked it up with a shudder and flipped the fifth switch.
The rock grew soft and crisply fragrant under her and lapped up over her legs and then slowly turned white.
She was sitting in a hospital bed in a small blue room with a white pin-stripe.
A sweet, mechanical voice came out of the wall, saying, “You have interrupted the wish-fulfillment therapy by your own decision. If you now recognize your sick depression and are willing to accept help, the doctor will come to you. If not, you are at liberty to return to the wish-fulfillment therapy and pursue it to its ultimate conclusion.”
Mariana looked down. She still had the block of switches in her hands and the fifth switch still read doctor.
The wall said, “I assume from your silence that you will accept treatment. The doctor will be with you immediately.”
The inexplicable terror returned to Mariana with compulsive intensity.
She switched off the doctor.
She was back in the starless dark. The rocks had grown very much colder. She could feel icy feathers falling on her face—snow.
She lifted the block of switches and saw, to her unutterable relief, that the sixth and last switch now read, in tiny glowing letters: Mariana.
AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE CURVATURE OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE AND DIVERS INVESTIGATIONS OF A METAPHYSICAL NATURE
by Roger Price
from Monocle
This is not a droodle.
Anyhow, I don’t think it is…
In recent months I have grown increasingly concerned about the tendency on the part of Western Man [Bret Maverick, to name but one.] to make a cult of conservatism and orthodoxy. New Ideas, except in the field of tax-evasion, are viewed with suspicion and, in most instances, hostility. This is unhealthy. Science has taught us that we must constantly re-examine our basic premises and consider any innovation in the light of today’s knowledge and accept or reject it on its own merits.
Fortunately Washington is not unaware of this situation and certain elements there are attempting to create a more favorable atmosphere for fresh, original thinking—in spite of the opposition of intrenched conservatives such as Admiral Rickover (who recently refused even to consider a revolutionary plan submitted by a high-ranking Pentagon official to install steam power in submarines).
These more progressive elements, represented mostly by alert southern and mid-western Congressmen, have just sponsored a New Movement which I have become interested in.
This Group call themselves the “Flat Earthers” and they don’t believe in all those old-fashioned, 17th century theories about the earth being a round ball which spins around the sun at a speed of 19,000 miles per hour. You must admit they have a point there because if the Earth were spinning that fast we would feel a constant breeze. Also if the earth were globular it is difficult to understand—from a purely pragmatic point of view—why the oceans and lakes do not slop over and inundate the land masses located beneath them (i. e. Australia, Brazil, Illinois, etc).
This Movement may turn out to be idealistic and premature but nevertheless I believe it should have “its day in court.” We must remember that people once laughed at men whose names are now household words as familiar to us as our own; men such as Oliver and Wilmer Write, Eli Fulton and Thomas Steamboat [Inventor of the Steamboat.]. The Flat Earthers are quite progressive in all of their ideas and they plan to get national publicity for their Movement next New Year’s Day by pushing a number of people off the edge. Their only difficulty so far has been in obtaining volunteers [If you have anyone you would like to see used in this capacity don’t write to me; I have my own list.].
Of course, the Flat Earthers have run into a certain amount of opposition, mostly from a rival group composed of reactionaries, alleged scientists and people like that (you know the type) who call themselves the “Round Earthers” and still cling to the antique notion that the earth is spherical. These Round Earthers are ineffectual however because of internal bickering within their own membership. One extremist faction wants to do away with the Flat Earthers altogether by pushing them over the edge. But cooler heads have pointed out that this could be interpreted by some as positive evidence of Pro-Flatearthism. It presents an interesting problem.
DAY AT THE BEACH
by Carol Emshwiller
from Fantasy and Science Fiction
The first Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference was held in 1956. Among those invited were a number of artists, agents, editors, and publishers in the field. So artist Ed “Emsh” came up for the week—with his family.
Carol Emshwiller had then published two or three stories; but she didn’t know she was a writer, and the bated-breath humility with which she asked if she possibly might be allowed to sit in on workshop meetings has come back to haunt us Older Hands each summer since. Each summer, I mean, when Carol pops out of the playpen-and-baby-bottle laden car, an infant (at least figuratively) under one arm, and her newest manuscript under the other. (Ed carries two kids and his brushes in his teeth—nothing to it when you get the knack.)
The first time I read Day at the Beach was in one of these workshop sessions. After that, I just waited for someone to print it first, so I could next….
“It’s Saturday,” the absolutely hairless woman said, and she pulled at her frayed, green kerchief to make sure it covered her head. “I sometimes forget to keep track of the days, but I marked three more off on the calender because I think that’s how many I forgot, so this must be Saturday.”
Her name was Myra and she had neither eyebrows nor lashes nor even a faint, transparent down along her cheeks. Once she had had long, black hair, but now, looking at her pink, bare face, one would guess she had been a redhead.
Her equally hairless husband, Ben, sprawled at the kitchen table waiting for breakfast. He wore red plaid Bermuda shorts, rather faded, and a tee shirt with a large hole under the arm. His skull curved above his staring eyes more naked-seeming than hers because he wore no kerchief or hat.
“We used to always go out on Saturdays,” she said, and she put a bowl of oatmeal at the side of the table in front of a youth chair.
Then she put the biggest bowl between her husband’s elbows.
“I have to mow the lawn this morning,” he said. “All the more so if it’s Saturday.”
She went on as if she hadn’t heard. “A day like today we’d go to the beach. I forget a lot of things, but I remember that.”
“If I were you, I just wouldn’t think about it.” Ben’s empty eyes finally focused on the youth chair and he turned then to the open window behind him and yelled, “Littleboy, Littleboy,” making the sound run together all L’s and Y. “Hey, it’s breakfast, Boy,” and under his breath he said, “He won’t come.”
“But I do think about it. I remember hot dogs and clam chowder and how cool it was days like this. I don’t suppose I even have a bathing suit around any more.”
“It wouldn’t be like it used to be.”
“Oh, the sea’s the same. That’s one thing sure. I wonder if the boardwalk’s still there.”