Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

functionary who had brought a paternity suit against someone in her official

familias -sensational only in that the usually conclusive blood tests having

failed for some complicated genetic reason, she seemed to want to establish

paternity, rather than to disavow it and thus take the child into her own

cr6che (and two seconds after he had heard the verdict, Jorn could not

remember whether she had won or lost, and could think of no reason why he

should care).

And given, finally, the spectacle of an unusually intelligent young man,

still almost fully in possession of the standard engineer’s education of

his time, desperately sitting through this barrage of unchangingly

insignificant news stories, as daily and as interchangeable as a dish of

catmeat, in the sole hope of hearing something which might lead him to a

job. Of course a television newscast is a wholly inappropriate medium in

which to run a Help Wanted column, since the listener cannot decide whether

or not he is interested in a given bid until he has heard it all, by which

time it is too late for him to write down the address and the telephone

number and such other details as he may need to study or to carry out onto

the beItways with him. Employers who were really seriously in search of

skilled help invariably still resorted to the newspapers, and in the very

rare cases where they also

And all the Stars a Stage 9

Inserted a television appeal, they took it for granted that anyone in whom

they were likely to be interested would be making a telefax transcript of