The Project Gutenberg EBook of Of Stegner's Folly, by Richard S. Shaver

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Title: Of Stegner's Folly

Author: Richard S. Shaver

Release Date: May 29, 2010 [EBook #32582]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Of Stegner's Folly

By Richard S. Shaver

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _When a twenty-foot goddess walked out of the jungle, they
knew Stegner wasn't kidding._]

Old Prof Stegner never foresaw the complications his selective
anti-gravitational field would cause. Knowing the grand old man as I
did, I can say that he never intended his "blessing" should become the
curse to mankind that it did. And the catastrophe it brought about was
certainly beyond range of all prophecy.

Of course, anyone who lived in 1972 and tried to get inside Stegner's
weird life-circle must agree that you can get too much of a good thing.
Even a pumpkin can get too big--and that's what happened when the Prof
turned on his field--things got big; and too darned healthy!

I was there the day Stegner announced the results of ten year's research
on his selector. Nearly everyone present had read the sensational
articles concerning his work in the feature sections of the big town
newspapers. Like the rest, I had a vague idea of what it was about. It
seemed the Prof had developed a device that repelled various particles
of matter without effecting others. In short, if he turned on his
gadget, gravity reversed itself for certain elements, and they went away
in a hurry. Like this: he could take oxide of iron, turn on his
selective repellor, and the rust rather magically turned to pure iron
without the oxygen. Or, he could take a pile of mixed chemicals, turn
his control knobs to the elements known to be present in the mixture,
and presto! Only certain ones, o