The Year's Best Science Fiction 10 (Judith Merril) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 57)

The RNA of a worm

Instructs it which way to turn,

But the RNA of his teachers

Might transmit noncurricular features

The student’s not intended to learn.

Dr. John Aeschlimann

(from “The Worm Re-Turns”)

The theme is still mortality: but instead of attempting to teach it, the hero of this doctor story (or if we must categorize, I suppose it should be a doctor-doctor-doctor story, for two authors and one protagonist), finds himself in a position to operate it.

The doctor-authors here are, respectively, from New York and California, a first-timer and an old-timer in SF. Dr. Smith is an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, whose previous publications have been in “very little magazines” and a college humor magazine. Dr. Nourse is “on extended leave of absence from practice to catch up on writing obligations,” and his list of caught-up-with-and-published writing, in and out of SF, is too long to recite here.

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