Feghoot IX: What-so-ever-you-so, sew shall you reap

This was posted by Mike Mahnken.


By the 60’s, “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot” was a reguler end-filler in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), where he shared experiences like the trip to a planet where there were two species of humanoids. The sentient species valued the hams of the non-sentient species, so much so, that they raised the lower humanoids as a cash crop. Naturally, the best selling book on that planet was “The Fanny Farmer’s Cookbook.”


The original version by Reginald Bretnor was the following.


The Ismaili Institute of Higher Studies always rewarded the annual Hayworth Memorial Lecturer with his weight in diamonds but only if he withstood the attacks of the faculty.

Ferdinand Feghoot, lecturing on “Space Colonization and the Human Emotions,” ran this gantlet successfully in 2883. “Everywhere man has gone,” he declared, “and no matter how he has changed, you always find some small, homey, nostalgic reminder of old Mother Earth.”

At once he was challenged. “What about the planet Candide?” a professor demanded. “They are infidels, cannibals! How could anything there remind one of Earth?”

For an instant, Feghoot was taken aback. Then he smiled. “I would have said you were right,” he replied, “if it hadn’t been for one thing. As you know, the Candideans especially relish the plump juicy buttocks of slaves raised on large farms for the purpose. And it was on one of these farms that I saw something which took me right back to my boyhood, and brought tears to my eyes.”

“What was it?” everyone asked.

“It stood on a shelf in the kitchen,” signed Ferdinand Feghoot. “It was just an old . . . Fanny Farmer’s Cook Book.”

(Copyright © 1958 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1958.).

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