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My source lists a copyright without a specific date for some stories’ original magazine publications. I have inserted a best-guess date, with a question mark and linked to this note, using the date of the magazine issue.
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Up the Close and Doun the Stair
Copyright © 1958? Mercury Press, Inc.
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Beety leaned over and kissed his forehead—the gesture, by its deliberate avoidance of the conventionally-erotic kiss, indicated nowadays in all sophisticated circles that love was being enjoyed to its fullest extent whenever desired: so why bother with a pale proxy? | Topics: |
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“Have you ever wondered why I have a picture of—of all possible people—the Reverend Cotton Mather? You know what a terrible old man he was, a devil-in-robes. When he said the witches in Salem should be put to death, he was cheered. And when he—somehow, from somewhere—got a correct idea in his hard old head, and urged inoculation against smallpox, why, the ones who’d cheered him a little while before, they threw rocks at his manse and smashed all the windows. “I keep it as a lesson. If I were to go out this minute and preach that . . . oh”—he groped for words—“that all red-headed Swedes, let’s say, have inferior genes, and shouldn’t be allowed to marry, or should be interned, every yahoo and gutter gorilla who curses me now would stand up and cheer.” | |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 | |
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Now Let Us Sleep
Copyright © 1957 by Mercury Press, Inc.
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| It seemed as if man could be fond of nature only on the planet of man’s origin, whose ways he knew so well. Elsewhere, it was too strange and alien—you subdued it, or you adjusted to it, or you were perhaps even content with it. But you almost never cared about the flora or fauna of the new planets. No one had the feeling for living things that an earth-born had. | |
| There no longer seemed any place for the helpless, or for those who cared about them. | |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 | |
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The Sixth Season
Copyright © 1960? Mercury Press, Inc.
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| “The more taboos a culture has, the richer its obscenity.” | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 | |
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My Boy Friend’s Name Is Jello
Copyright © 1954? Mercury Press, Inc.
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| Don’t write about Sex, the editors say, and don’t write about Religion, or about History. If, however, you do write about History, be sure to add Religion and Sex. If one sends in a story about a celibate atheist, however, do you think they’ll buy it? | Topic: |
| They played this one on the sidewalk, with chalked-out patterns and bits of stone and broken glass. They chanted and hopped back and forth across the chalkmarks and shoved the bits of stone and glass—or were they potshards—“potsie” from potshard, perhaps? I shall write a monograph, should I ever desire a Ph.D. I will compare the chalkmarks with Toltec emblems and masons’ marks and the signs which Hindoo holy men smear on themselves with wood ashes and perfumed cow dung. All this passes for erudition. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 | |
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Summerland
Copyright © 1957? Mercury Press, Inc.
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| All the mediums and all their customers had the same line: There is no grief in Summerland, there is no pain in Summerland—Summerland being the choice real estate development Upstairs, at least in the Spiritualist hep-talk. They all believed it, but somehow they all wanted to be assured. And after the séance, when all the spooks had gone back to Summerland, what a consumption of coffee, cupcakes, and cold cuts. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 | |