Read Online Bill 4 - on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure by Harry Harrison - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Harry Harrison
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wandering inanely about with holograms for switchblades.
The leaves leered and winked.
The woman wearing a sweatshirt of shadows and a Jimi Hendrix hairdo rose up from the dark culture of Sixties and smell of hashish. A pill of light lay upon her nose.
Captain Kid and the woman had sex, and then tried to figure out what would happen in the eight hundred and seventy-seven page anticlimax.
For what is “Myth” but the neo-deconstructionist prose of a missing literary critic who lisps?
“Huh?” said Bill, quite baffled.
“Oh, sorry, that's the highbrow version for my intellectual friends at cocktail parties,” said Captain Rick. “I dare say you want something more soothing. Arrrrrrr. Yes, I have just the thing.”
Rick rolled out his thousand watt amplifier as big as a space tug, his Stratosphere-blaster electro-drone guitar. He laid down a few tasteful deady-metal fret licks (deady-metal being the au courant fashionable version of rock-and-roll, where computer-operated corpses of electrocuted murderers fronted your standard lead guitar, kitchen synth, drum and bass ensemble) and began to sing.
Archimedes squawked and, in a hail of feathers and a critical splatter of fresh doo-doo, fled the room.
CAPTAIN RICK'S STORY
TAKE TWO
“Ballad of the Supernal Hero”
They call me the Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I see lots of things and go lots of places.
I'm a mythic hero, I like to ramble.
But my hero's not Joseph but John W. Campbell.
Ye see, sometimes I'm a pirate, sometimes a saint,
But first a homo sapiens; coward I ain't.
Mankind was meant to rule all these stars
Build malls and condos, and taverns and bars.
As I child I was a wimp, I found nothing arousing.
Till I read John on Dean Drive and Dowsing.
Now I travel from planet to planet, circum-celestial
Killing things smart and extraterrestrial.
“Terra Uber-alles” I sing with a belch and a shout
And my surging male humanity I like to flout.
And when things get grim, and bare goes the cupboard
I just pull out DIANETICS by good old Ron Hubbard.
My greatest adventure. Hmm, well, let me see.
There was the time in a cantina that I had to wee
Alas, I'd left my blaster in my digital locker
There in the stall was Lay-ya and Luke Starfokker.
Now Lay-ya I'd divorced 'couple years before
Sex with a princess was mostly a bore.
Luke I thought was raising sheep on Mount Shasta.
“Help!” Luke cried. “We need you and your blaster!”
"Lord Brain-Death is back, the Farce help us all.
We hear Heavy Breathing, and that is his Call.
He's back from the dead, practicing evil Craft
I am scared, I am crazy — I'm going half daft."
No sooner said, that, than Storm Troopers attacked.
Dodging deathrays, quickly, to the DESIRE we backed.
We zoomed through space, hid in nebulean bogs.
Trained hard for the battle, read old ANALOGS.
Good old John Campbell, his essays were profounding!
Hectoring lectures in the good old ASTOUNDING.
In those pre-Spielberg days you'll have to agree
John would have crunched the ALIEN, barfed on ET.
“Bowb the Force,” he'd have said, "Man the garrison!
Technology rules! Up Anderson! Up Harrison!
Alien invasion? Build a great gun!
Stay to the Right of Baen and Attila the Hun."
So we cobbled and soldered like technology's fools
A better death ray, using brains and slide rules!
John would've liked it, Doc Smith would turn green
Buddy, this beamer was big, huge, and obscene!
So we hurtled on out to meet the death fleet
A terrible sight — they were something to meet!
A thousand alien ships, designed by George Lucas
Wanted to turn us to slag and horrible mucus.
“Surrender to the Dark Side,” said Death, big surprise!
“Join the Empire! Make mythic movies! Merchandise!”
In answer we just aimed our out big beamer and happily shot 'em
No way was John's boys gonna kiss the Empire's bottom.
Now, for Brain Death technology was a given!
But his scientists hadn't read Tom Clancy, Pournelle and
The leaves leered and winked.
The woman wearing a sweatshirt of shadows and a Jimi Hendrix hairdo rose up from the dark culture of Sixties and smell of hashish. A pill of light lay upon her nose.
Captain Kid and the woman had sex, and then tried to figure out what would happen in the eight hundred and seventy-seven page anticlimax.
For what is “Myth” but the neo-deconstructionist prose of a missing literary critic who lisps?
“Huh?” said Bill, quite baffled.
“Oh, sorry, that's the highbrow version for my intellectual friends at cocktail parties,” said Captain Rick. “I dare say you want something more soothing. Arrrrrrr. Yes, I have just the thing.”
Rick rolled out his thousand watt amplifier as big as a space tug, his Stratosphere-blaster electro-drone guitar. He laid down a few tasteful deady-metal fret licks (deady-metal being the au courant fashionable version of rock-and-roll, where computer-operated corpses of electrocuted murderers fronted your standard lead guitar, kitchen synth, drum and bass ensemble) and began to sing.
Archimedes squawked and, in a hail of feathers and a critical splatter of fresh doo-doo, fled the room.
CAPTAIN RICK'S STORY
TAKE TWO
“Ballad of the Supernal Hero”
They call me the Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I see lots of things and go lots of places.
I'm a mythic hero, I like to ramble.
But my hero's not Joseph but John W. Campbell.
Ye see, sometimes I'm a pirate, sometimes a saint,
But first a homo sapiens; coward I ain't.
Mankind was meant to rule all these stars
Build malls and condos, and taverns and bars.
As I child I was a wimp, I found nothing arousing.
Till I read John on Dean Drive and Dowsing.
Now I travel from planet to planet, circum-celestial
Killing things smart and extraterrestrial.
“Terra Uber-alles” I sing with a belch and a shout
And my surging male humanity I like to flout.
And when things get grim, and bare goes the cupboard
I just pull out DIANETICS by good old Ron Hubbard.
My greatest adventure. Hmm, well, let me see.
There was the time in a cantina that I had to wee
Alas, I'd left my blaster in my digital locker
There in the stall was Lay-ya and Luke Starfokker.
Now Lay-ya I'd divorced 'couple years before
Sex with a princess was mostly a bore.
Luke I thought was raising sheep on Mount Shasta.
“Help!” Luke cried. “We need you and your blaster!”
"Lord Brain-Death is back, the Farce help us all.
We hear Heavy Breathing, and that is his Call.
He's back from the dead, practicing evil Craft
I am scared, I am crazy — I'm going half daft."
No sooner said, that, than Storm Troopers attacked.
Dodging deathrays, quickly, to the DESIRE we backed.
We zoomed through space, hid in nebulean bogs.
Trained hard for the battle, read old ANALOGS.
Good old John Campbell, his essays were profounding!
Hectoring lectures in the good old ASTOUNDING.
In those pre-Spielberg days you'll have to agree
John would have crunched the ALIEN, barfed on ET.
“Bowb the Force,” he'd have said, "Man the garrison!
Technology rules! Up Anderson! Up Harrison!
Alien invasion? Build a great gun!
Stay to the Right of Baen and Attila the Hun."
So we cobbled and soldered like technology's fools
A better death ray, using brains and slide rules!
John would've liked it, Doc Smith would turn green
Buddy, this beamer was big, huge, and obscene!
So we hurtled on out to meet the death fleet
A terrible sight — they were something to meet!
A thousand alien ships, designed by George Lucas
Wanted to turn us to slag and horrible mucus.
“Surrender to the Dark Side,” said Death, big surprise!
“Join the Empire! Make mythic movies! Merchandise!”
In answer we just aimed our out big beamer and happily shot 'em
No way was John's boys gonna kiss the Empire's bottom.
Now, for Brain Death technology was a given!
But his scientists hadn't read Tom Clancy, Pournelle and
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