Epistolary fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
In spite of the greatest care, it is feared that this virus has spread
beyond the laboratory in which it was developed. We warn you most
urgently of the danger that it may have spread to the UEESR; enclosed
are a list of symptoms, etc.
My Government instructs me to advise your Government that the attitude
of your Government in the Khakum River question is utterly
unacceptable, and will require considerable revision before my
Government can even consider negotiation with your Government on the
subject. Your obedient and respectful servant,
Wu Fung Tung
_From N. Y. Times, May 12, 1984:_
AFGHAN RULER FETED AT
MOSCOW
Ameer sees Red Square Troop Review;
Confers with Premier-President Mouzorgin
_Sing Yat, UPREA Ambassador at Moscow, to Wu Fung Tung:_
26 June, 1984
Venerable and Honored Sir:
I regret humbly that I can learn nothing whatever about the fate of
the learned scholars of science of whom you inquire, namely: Hong Foo,
Hin Yang-Woo, Mong Shing, Yee Ho Li, Wong Fat, and Bao Hu-Shin. This
inability may be in part due to incompetence of my unworthy self, but
none of my many sources of information, including Soviet Minister of
Police Morgodoff, who is on my payroll, can furnish any useful data
whatever. I am informed, however, that the UEESR Government is deeply
concerned about similar disappearances of some of the foremost of
their own scientists, including Voronoff, Jirnikov, Kagorinoff,
Bakhorin, Himmelfarber and Pavlovinsky, all of whose dossiers are on
file with our Bureau of Foreign Intelligence. I am further informed
that the Government of the UEESR ascribes these disappearances to our
own activities.
Ah, Venerable and Honored Sir, if this were only true!
Kindly condescend to accept compliments of,
Sing Yat
_Dzhoubinsky to Wu Fung Tung:_
6 October, 1984
Honored Sir:
Pursuant to our well known policy of exchanging scientific information
with the Governments of friendly Powers, my Government takes the
greatest pleasure in announcing a scientific discovery of inestimable
value to the entire world. I refer to nothing less than a positive
technique for liquidating rats as a species.
This technique involves treatment of male rats with certain types of
hard radiations, which not only renders them reproductively sterile
but leaves the rodents so treated in full possession of all other
sexual functions and impulses. Furthermore, this condition of
sterility is venereally contagious, so that one male rat so treated
will sterilize all female rats with which it comes in contact, and
these, in turn, will sterilize all male rats coming in contact with
them. Our mathematicians estimate that under even moderately favorable
circumstances, the entire rat population of the world could be
sterilized from one male rat in approximately two hundred years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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