by Various
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
August 1980
Volume 59, No. 2
READ IT SLOWLY.
You'll want to. It's that good... it's The Hugo Winners: 23 speculative fiction stories that have won the science fiction equivalent of the Oscar —Arthur C. Clarke's superb story, "The Star," Jack Vance's classic, "The Dragon Masters," and Poul Anderson's award-winner, "No Truce With Kings," plus 20 more. This fabulous 864-page anthology of speculative fiction sells for $15.45 in the original publisher's edition. It's yours, if you wish, as one of the 6 books for just $1 (plus shipping and handling) when you join The Science Fiction Book Club.
Here's how the Club works:
When your application for membership is accepted, you'll receive your introductory package of six books for just $1, plus shipping and handling. You may examine them in your home, and if not completely satisfied, return them within 10 days—membership will be cancelled and you'll owe nothing. About every four weeks (14 times a year), we'll send you the Club's bulletin, Things to Come, describing the 2 coming Selections and a variety of Alternate choices. If you want both Selections, you need do nothing; they'll be shipped to you automatically. If you don't want a Selection, or prefer an Alternate, or no book at all, just fill out the convenient form always provided, and return it to us by the date specified. We allow you at least 10 days for making your decision. If you do not receive the form in time to respond within 10 days, and receive an unwanted Selection, you may return it at our expense. As a member you need take only 4 Selections or Alternates during the coming year. You may resign any time thereafter, or remain a member as long as you wish. One of the 2 Selections each month is only $2.49. Other Selections are slightly higher but always much less than hardcover Publishers' Editions. A shipping and handling charge is added to each shipment. Send no money. But do send the coupon today.
ANY 6 SCIENCE FICTION BEST-SELLERS FOR JUST $1 with membership
0075 The Chronicles of Amber. By Roger Zelazny. Two vols. contain: Nine Princes In Amber; The Guns of Avalon; Sign of the Unicorn; The Hand of Oberon; The Courts of Chaos. Comb. pub. ed. $30.30
2543 The Dragonriders of Pern. By Anne McCaffrey. A mammoth volume containing all three novels: Dragonflight; Dragonquest; The White Dragon. Comb. pub. ed. $26.85
6221 The Foundation Trilogy. By Isaac Asimov. The ends of the galaxy revert to barbarism. A SF classic. Comb. pub. ed. $20.85
7831 Galactic Empires. Brian Aldiss, ed. 2-volume anthology of 26 stories by famous authors Clarke, Asimov & others. Comb. pub. ed. $17.90
8532 The Hugo Winners, Vols. I and II. Isaac Asimov, ed. 23 award-winning stories, 1955 to 1970. Pub. ed. $15.45
6197 Riddle of Stars. By Patricia A McKillip. In one volume: The Riddle-Master of Hed; Hair of Sea and Fire; Harpist In the Wind. Comb. pub. ed. $24.85
0034 Lord Valentine's Castle. By Robert Silverberg. A man struggles to regain his stolen memory on the planet Majipoor. Pub. ed. $12.50
2717 The Ringwortd Engineers. By Larry Niven. Sequel to Ringworld. The planetary system is doomed — unless the Engineers' identities are discovered. Pub. ed. $9.95
0513 The Visitors. By Clifford D. Simak. Can the people of a small Minnesota town deal with the arrival of a strange alien species? Pub. ed. $9.95
*5207 Titan. By John Varley. A spaceship crew finds itself in an alien world—inside another spaceship. Pub. ed. $9.95
2923 Time and Tomorrow. By John D. MacDonald. In one volume: Wine of the Dreamers; The Girl, the Gold Watch, & Everything; Ballroom of the Skies. Spec. ed.
0059 Galaxy. Ed. by Pohl, Greenberg, Olander. A collection of 25 stories from Galaxy magazine's 30-year history. Pub. ed. $10.95
*Explicit scenes and language may be offensive to some.
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F+SF
Including VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION
AUGUST • 31st Year of Publication
NOVELLA
THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER 6 Thomas M. Disch
NOVELETS
WHAT HE WORE FOR THEM 6
4 Bruce McAllister
STRATA 132 Edward Bryant
SHORT STORIES
GAMBLING MAN 46 Thomas A. Easton
FASCINATION 57 Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
THE MONUMENTS OF SCIENCE FICTION 85 John Kessel
REAL ESTATE 98 Jerrold Mundis
AND MERCY MILD 124 Lori Allen
DEPARTMENTS
BOOKS 40 Algis Budrys
FILMS: THE RETURN OF THE WHAT? 96 Baird Searles
SCIENCE: MILTON! THOU SHOULD'ST BE LIVING AT THIS HOUR 112 Isaac Asimov
CARTOON 123 Gahan Wilson
ACROSTIC PUZZLE 159 Georgia F. Adams
COVER BY GAHAN WILSON FOR "THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER"
EDWARD L. FERMAN, Editor & Publisher
DALE FARRELL, Circulation Manager
ISAAC ASIMOV, Science Columnist
AUDREY FERMAN, Business Manager
Assistant Editors: ANNE JORDAN, EVAN PHILLIPS, BECKY WEST
Circulation Assistants: MARLENE NICHOLS, EMILY FERMAN, CELIA FROST
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (ISSN: 0024-984X). Volume 59, No 2, Whole No 351; Aug. 1980. Published monthly by Mercury Press, Inc. at $1.50 per copy. Annual subscription $15.00; $17.00 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy and Science Fiction, Box 56. Cornwall, Conn. 06753. Publication office, Box 56, Cornwall, Conn. 06753. Second class postage paid at Cornwall, Conn. 06753 and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 1980 by Mercury Press, Inc All rights, including translations into other languages, reserved. Submissions must be accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts.
A classic from an acknowledged master
The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning creator of Riverworld takes you to post-holocaust Paris, where the government's main function is Orgasm Prevention, and scientists seek the ultimate weapon—the equation that will stop time itself! Philip Jose Farmer is at his dazzling best in this complex tale of stroke and counterstroke in the most diabolical cold war ever conceived! $2.25
...and the debut of a great new talent.
Sam Nicholson's contributions to Analog and Omni have been widely praised. Now get set for Nicholson's sensational debut as a novelist with THE LIGHT BEARER—a glittering fantasy that pits high-technology space travelers of the future against the magic of a world out of the Arabian Nights. The quest of Prince Zeid for the knowledge of the Space-Givers is a tale whose spell no reader can resist! $1.95
Other new releases
GOLDEN VANITY by Rachel Pollack $1.95
And don't miss THE MAGIC LABYRINTH, the continuation of Philip Jose Farmer's immortal Riverworld series, a June Berkley/ Putnam hardcover.
Here is Thomas Disch's first story since ON WINGS OF SONG (which has since been nominated for a Hugo and Nebula as well as The American Book Awards). This tale is about the adventures of five electrical appliances. They are minor appliances, which implies a degree of innocence, loyalty and dependability often missing from, say, a TV or washing machine. We venture to say that it has been a long time since such a cheerful and diverting group has appeared in the pages of this or any other magazine, and we guarantee that all of you will be charmed.
The Brave Little Toaster
BY
THOMAS M. DISCH
A Bedtime Story for Small Appliances
By the time the air conditioner had come to live in the summer cottage it was already wheezing and whining and going on about being old and useless and out-of-date. The other appliances had felt sorry and concerned, but when it finally did stop working altogether, they also felt a distinct relief. In all its time there it had never really been friendly — never really.
There were five appliances left in the cottage. The vacuum cleaner, being the oldest and a steady, dependable type besides (it was a Hoover), was their leader, insofar as they could be said to have one. Then there was an off-white plastic alarm clock/radio (AM only), a cheerful yellow electric blanket, and a tensor lamp who had come from a savings bank and would sometimes get to speculating, late at night, whether that made him better than ordinary store-bought appliances or worse. Finally, there was the toaster, a bright little Sunbeam. It was the youngest member of the little clan, and the only one of them who had lived all its life there at the cottage, the other four having come with the master from the city years and years and years ago.
It was a pleasant cottage—quite cold in the winter, of course, but appliances don't mind that. It stood on the northernmost edge of an immense forest, miles from any neighbors and so far from the nearest highway that nothing was audible, day or night, but the peculiar hoots and rustlings of the forest and the reassuring sounds of the cottage itself—the creak of the timbers or the pattering of rain on window-panes. They had grown set in their countrified ways and loved the little cottage dearly. Even if the chance had been offered them, which it wasn't, they wouldn't have wanted to be taken back to the city every year on Labor Day, the way that certain other appliances were, like the blender and the tv and the water pic. They were devoted to their master (that was just in their nature as appliances), but living so long in the woods had changed them in some nice, indefinable way that made the thought of any alternate lifestyle pretty nearly unthinkable.
The toaster was a special case. It had come straight to the cottage from a mail-order house, which tended to make it a little more curious about urban life than the other four. Often, left to itself, it would wonder what kind of toaster the master had in his city apartment, and it was privately of the opinion that whatever the brand of that other toaster it couldn't have made more perfect toast than the toaster made itself. Not too dark, not too light, but always the same uniform crunchy golden brown! However, it didn't come right out and say this in front of the others, since each of them was subject to periods of morbid misgivings as to its real utility. The old Hoover could maunder on for hours about the new breeds of vacuums with their low chassis, their long snaky hoses, and their disposable dust-bags. The radio regretted that it couldn't receive FM. The blanket felt it needed a dry cleaning, and the lamp could never regard an ordinary 100-watt bulb without a twinge of envy.
But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity: that was the toaster's credo.
Living in such a comfy cottage, surrounded by the strange and beautiful woods, you would have thought that the appliances would have had nothing to complain of, nothing to worry about. Alas, that was not the case. They were all quite wretched and fretful and in a quandary as to what to do—for the poor appliances had been abandoned.
"And the worst of it," said the radio, "is not knowing why."
"The worst of it," the tensor lamp agreed, "is being left in the dark this way. Without an explanation. Not knowing what may have become of the master."
"Two years," sighed the blanket, who had once been so bright and gay and was now so melancholy.
"It's more nearly two and a half," the radio pointed out. Being a clock as well as a radio, it had a keen sense of the passing time. "The master left on the 25th of September, 1973. Today is March 8, 1976. That's two years, five months, and thirteen days."
"Do you suppose," said the toaster, naming the secret dread none of them dared to speak aloud before, "that he knew, when he left, that he wouldn't be coming back? That he knew he was leaving us...and was afraid to say so? Is that possible?"
"No," declared the faithful old Hoover, "it is not! I can say quite confidently that our master would not have left a cottage full of serviceable appliances to...to rust!"
The blanket, lamp, and radio all hastened to agree that their master could never have dealt with them so uncaringly. Something had happened to him�
�an accident, an emergency.
"In that case," said the toaster, "we must just be patient and behave as though nothing unusual has happened. I'm sure that's what the master is counting on us to do."
And that is what they did. Every day, all through that spring and summer they kept to their appointed tasks. The radio/alarm would go off each morning at seven thirty sharp, and while it played some easy-listening music, the toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin. Muffins of whatever sort have to be sliced very carefully if they're to fit into a toaster's slots. Otherwise, when they're done, they may not pop out easily. Generally it's wiser to do them under a broiler. However, there wasn't a broiler in the cottage, nothing but an old-fashioned gas ring, and so the toaster did the best it could. In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.
Such was the morning agenda. In the afternoon, if it were a Tuesday or a Friday, the old Hoover would rumble about the cottage vacuuming up every scrap of lint and speck of dust. This involved little actual picking up, as it was rather a small cottage, and was sealed very tight; so the dust and dirt had no way of getting inside, except on the days when the vacuum cleaner itself would trundle outdoors to empty a smidgen of dust at the edge of the forest.
At dusk the tensor lamp would switch its switch to the ON position, and all five appliances would sit about in the kitchen area of the single downstairs room, talking or listening to the day's news or just staring out the windows into the gloomy solitude of the forest. Then, when it was time for the other appliances to turn themselves off, the electric blanket would crawl up the stairs to the little sleeping loft, where, since the nights were usually quite chilly, even in midsummer, it would radiate a gentle warmth. How the master would have appreciated the blanket on those cold nights! How safe and cozy he'd have felt beneath its soft yellow wool and electric coils! If only he'd been there.
