The Müller-Fokker Effect

by John Sladek

  Practical Mysticists, claiming God as the creator of heaven, earth, and self-contradiction, refuse to make a choice, but insist on embracing all 128 creeds (and all others besides). All is ambiguity, they maintain. And while agreeing with Aquinas that ‘even God cannot contradict Himself’, they hold also the opposite view.

  Appendix III: The Hines Family

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  Also by John Sladek

  Novels

  The Reproductive System (1968) (aka Mechasm)

  The Muller-Fokker Effect (1970)

  Roderick (1980)

  Roderick At Random (1983)

  Tik-Tok (1983)

  Bugs (1989)

  Wholly Smokes

  Collections

  The Steam-Driven Boy (1970)

  Keep The Giraffe Burning (1977)

  Alien Accounts (1982)

  The Lunatics Of Terra (1984)

  Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2001)

  Dedication

  To Pearl Peace, M.A.

  and

  Doc Sam H Smith

  John Sladek (1937 - 2000)

  John Sladek was born in Iowa in 1937 but moved to the UK in 1966, where he became involved with the British New Wave movement, centred on Michael Moorcock's groundbreaking New Worlds magazine. Sladek began writing SF with 'The Happy Breed', which appeared in Harlan Ellison's seminal anthology Dangerous Visions in 1967, and is now recognized as one of SF's most brilliant satirists. His novels and short story collections include The Muller Fokker Effect, Roderick and Tik Tok, for which he won a BSFA Award. He returned to the United States in 1986, and died there in March 2000.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © The Estate of John Sladek 1971

  All rights reserved.

  The right of John Sladek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin's Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 11058 8

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  * Must? See table in Appendix I, p. 222.

  *Camp Concentration, Thomas M. Disch.

  * That came later: Songs by a gospel choir unblushingly called the Holy Smokes; a slapstick interpretation of the story of Job; a family tumbling troupe billed as the WingSd Michaels (formerly the Flying Fettas); an Irish tenor/harpist; assorted female impersonators, midgets and interpretive strippers; all run by an MCcalled Peter Saint who told old ‘Heaven’ jokes (‘A funny thing happened to me on my way here tonight—I died…Die? Thought I’d laugh,’ etc.) to keep the celestial sphere rolling along.

  *Knows Many Ways was his name. Every Indian tribe has its Harvard graduate; the Utopi were no exception. ‘Knows’ had gone to Harvard and majored (under Hackendorf) in anthropology.

  † Or: The seven-fold table of truth. See Appendix II.

  * Nose-picking is the mark of an enquiring mind. Had Alexander Fleming been more fastidious, he could never have (summarizing his chain of research) ‘Put in his thumb and pulled out penicillin.’

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  ANA*O*Y

  Editor’s Note

  Preliminary

  Part 1: An Experiment

  One

  Two

  Three

  Part 2: Noun’ Man’

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Part 3: Cement Socks

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Part 4: Haunted Benefactor

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Part 5: Announcement: Haunted Experiment ‘Man’ Socks Benefactor

  Twenty-Six

  Aftermath

  Appendix I: Table of Persons, Objects, etc., Which Have Not Fallen Back to Earth, With Explanations

  Appendix II: The 128 Ways

  Appendix III: The Hines Family

  Website

  Also by John Sladek

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright