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 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.’
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
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