seeking an obscure SF reference

[nancymcc]

I've been thinking about unintended consequences

Comments

[davidlevine]

"All die, oh the embarrassment" is from the alien !Tang in the story "A !Tangled Web" by, I believe, Joe Haldeman.

[ckd]

That is indeed the source. I think the story's in the collection Dealing In Futures if you're trying to track down a copy.

IIRC the pattern was "I die. A sequence of bad effects like "My corpse falls in the river and rots. Everyone gets cholera." follows, leading up to: All die. O the embarrassment."

[nancymcc]

I figured you'd being the first on top of the SF trivia!

It makes sense, since Joe was a founder of the Science Fiction League of Iowa Students (SFLIS, pronounced "syphilis"), which originated Icon.

[nancymcc]

I am told (by Gay) that Joe came up with the organization's name. Joe also came up with the best filk line ever, about the Hubble. It goes "one ton of mirror..." (and I don't know how to spell the title of the 60s pop song it so fanatically phonetically follows).