The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Day of the Boomer Dukes, by Frederik Pohl

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Title: The Day of the Boomer Dukes

Author: Frederik Pohl

Illustrator: Emsh

Release Date: September 10, 2007 [EBook #22559]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Just as medicine is not a science, but rather an
art--a device, practised in a scientific manner, in
its best manifestations--time-travel stories are not
science fiction. Time-travel, however, has become
acceptable to science fiction readers as a traditional
device in stories than are otherwise admissible in the
genre. Here, Frederik Pohl employs it to portray the
amusingly catastrophic meeting of three societies._

THE DAY
OF THE
BOOMER
DUKES

by Frederik Pohl

_Illustrated by EMSH_

[Illustration: There was a silvery aura around the kid ... the cops'
guns hit him ... but he didn't notice....]

I

Foraminifera 9

Paptaste udderly, semped sempsemp dezhavoo, qued schmerz--Excuse me. I
mean to say that it was like an endless diet of days, boring,
tedious....

No, it loses too much in the translation. Explete my reasons, I say. Do
my reasons matter? No, not to you, for you are troglodytes, knowing
nothing of causes, understanding only acts. Acts and facts, I will give
you acts and facts.

First you must know how I am called. My "name" is Foraminifera 9-Hart
Bailey's Beam, and I am of adequate age and size. (If you doubt this, I
am prepared to fight.) Once the--the tediety of life, as you might say,
had made itself clear to me, there were, of course, only two
alternatives. I do not like to die, so that possibility was out; and the
remaining alternative was flight.

Naturally, the necessary machinery was available to me. I arrogate