“But the story. Ugh!”
“What story?”
“There was a story?”
“Maybe it’s supposed to be a children’s show.”
“Or a spoof.”
“It wasn’t funny enough to be a spoof.”
“Or intelligent enough to be a children’s show. Giant amoebas in space!”
“It’ll set science fiction back ten years, at least.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the President Emeritus said, clutching his walking stick. “I thought it was pretty funny in places.”
“In the wrong places.”
“One thing, though. That new projection system is terrific. I’m going to scrounge up enough money to buy a life-sized three-dee. They’ve finally worked all the bugs out of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Let’s get a life-sized set for the clubroom.”
“Do we have enough money in the treasury?”
“We do,” said the treasurer, “if we cancel the rocket launch in March.”
“Cancel it,” the president said. “Let’s see if the show gets any better. We can always scratch up more money for a rocket launch.”
In Pete’s Tavern in downtown Manhattan, the three-dee set was life-sized. The regulars sat on their stools with their elbows on the bar and watched “The Starcrossed” actors galumph across the corner where the jukebox used to be.
After the first few minutes, most of them turned back to the bar and resumed their drinking.
“That’s Francois Dulaq, the hockey star?”
“Indeed it is, my boy.”
“Terrible. Terrible.”
“Hey, Kenno, turn on the hockey game. At least we can see some action. This thing stinks.”
But one of the women, chain smoking while sipping daiquiris and petting the toy poodle in her lap, stared with fascination at the life-sized three-dimensional images in the corner. “What a build on him,” she murmured to the poodle.
In the Midwest the show went on an hour later.
Eleven ministers of various denominations stared incredulously at Rita Yearling and immediately began planning sermons for Sunday on the topic of the shamelessness of modern women. They watched the show to the very end.
The cast and crew of As You Like It caught the show during a rehearsal at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. They decided they didn’t like it at all and asked their director to pen an open letter to Titanic Productions, demanding a public apology to William Shakespeare.
The science fiction classes at the University of Kansas—eleven hundred strong—watched the show in the University’s Gunn Amphitheater. After the first six minutes, no one could hear the dialogue because of the laughing, catcalls and boos from the sophisticated undergraduates and grad students. The professor who held the Harrison Chair and therefore directed the science fiction curriculum decided that not hearing the dialogue was a mercy.
The six-man police force of Cisco, Texas, voted Rita Yearling “The Most Arresting Three-Dee Personality.”
The Hookers Convention in Reno voted Francois Dulaq “Neatest Trick of the Year.”
The entire state of Utah somehow got the impression that the end of the world had come a step closer.
In Los Angeles, the cadaverous young man who wrote television criticism for the Free Press-News-Times smiled as he turned on his voice recorder. Ron Gabriel had stolen three starlets from him in the past year. Now was the moment of his revenge.
He even felt justified.
The editor-in-chief of the venerable TV Guide, in his Las Vegas office, shook his head in despair. “How in the world am I going to put a good face on this piece of junk?” he asked a deaf heaven.
In Oakland, the staff of the most influential science fiction newsletter watched the show to its inane end—where Dulaq (playing Rom, or Romeo) improvises a giant syringe from one of his starship’s rocket tubes and kills the space-roving Giant Amoeba with a thousand-liter shot of penicillin.
Charles Brown III heaved a mighty sigh. The junior editors, copyreaders and collators sitting at his feet held their breath, waiting for his pronouncement.
“Stinks,” he said simply.
