DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 1

DAW.

30th Anniversary Science Fiction.

ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM.

Introductions.

MY father never told me that he was planning to leave his job at Ace Books. It was 1971, and I was in college. I can only a.s.sume that he didn't want to distract me from my studies-that he wanted to shelter me for as long as he could. So I found out after the fact, with the rest of the science fiction world. It was as much of a shock to me as it was to anyone else. Actually it was more of a shock to me than to anyone else-for my dad, the most responsible and loyal man I knew, had just picked up and walked away from his job! It was simply unimaginable but it had happened, and it rattled my world down to its deepest foundations.

Don had been continually employed in editorial positions since 1941 when he had his first (unpaid) job editing pulp magazines. He continued to edit magazines, compiled numerous anthologies, worked in editorial positions at some of the very first paperback book lines ever produced, and in 1952, convinced A. A. Wyn, owner of Ace Publications, to let him initiate a line of paperback books for Ace.

The one thing he hadn't been in thirty years was unemployed.

My dad took his responsibility to our family very seriously. He also took his work very seriously. But something monumental had begun to happen to the publishing industry. Publishing was becoming "big business" and was no longer the intimate, eccentric, personality-driven industry it had once been. Don, who had been present during the birth of the paperback book, didn't like what was happening. He was Editor-in-Chief of Ace Books for nineteen and a half years and eventually became the Vice President as well. He considered Ace his list, his creation, and for most of our field at the time, the name Donald A.

Wollheim was synonymous with Ace Books. But Ace wasn't really Don's company, and with the death of A. A. Wyn in 1968 that became glaringly obvious.

As Ace became more and more "corporate," pa.s.sing from the hands of one owner to another, the situation became less and less tolerable for Don. By 1971, he had come to the end of his rope-so he did the unthinkable. With no concrete prospects for the future, and no warning to his employers, he left his office at Ace Books, never to return.

It was a very tense time for our family, for although Elsie, my mom, had been a professional woman before my birth, my father had been the sole support of our household since 1951. Don wasn't entirely sure what to do. What he was sure of was this: he would never again work for years building an editorial list only to lose it. There was only one way to avoid that: by founding his own publishing company. Buthow could he? As a long-term employee of a notoriously frugal publisher, he had never been able to ama.s.s the money necessary for such an enterprise. All Don had was his reputation.

Luckily, it proved to be enough.

In the fall of 1971, Don met with Herb Schnall, one of the chief executives of New American Library. After several brief meetings, Herb made a statement which would change publishing history: he told Don that New American Library would take him "any way [he wanted] to come." Don could write his own ticket. It was an offer Don couldn't refuse.*

Elated, Don came home to think about his options. My dad, my mom, and I sat at the table in our narrow galley kitchen in Queens, and tried to define Don's dream. He wanted the strong national distribution which only a big company could offer- hence his meeting with NAL-but unlike most independently distributed lines, he also wanted the professional production and promotion facilities of a big publishing company. He wanted his company's list to be sold aggressively with the strength of a big corporate imprint, yet he wanted total artistic freedom, not only inside his books but in relation to the cover art and design as well, and he did not want to share the ownership of his company. Basically, he wanted to form a private corporation and enter into a contractual arrangement with New American Library to provide the services that he needed.

But corporate parameters were not Don's only concern.

For thirty years Don had edited all types of fiction. He had edited not only literary books but most of the genres-from westerns to crime to thrillers to mysteries to detective and horror novels. He had put the light into the window of the ever present mansion on the cover of the Gothic romance, had published William Burroughs' first work, and had introduced J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the American paperback audience. He even edited nurse novels and cookbooks. But since the age of eleven he had had only one real love-science fiction. He had waited a lifetime for this opportunity, and he decided to dedicate his new company to the books he loved the most. He wanted to found the first publishing company devoted exclusively to science fiction and fantasy.

In November of 1971, NAL agreed to Don's proposal, and DAW Books, Inc. was born.

My father had signed a contract, but he was still a long way from fulfilling his dream. As we sitting in the kitchen-our traditional spot for family discussions-and Don thought aloud about possible employees to help him in his new venture, I noticed my mom, Elsie, becoming more and more agitated. Finally, she exploded: "Don, what about ME?" My dad looked quite stupefied. It was clear that he had never even considered that his wife would join him in this enterprise, but Elsie was the logical choice: she had legal experience, and had run her father's company. The obvious solution was staring him straight in the face.

Bringing Elsie into the company may very well have been Don's shrewdest business decision. Elsie embraced her new position as Corporate Secretary-Treasurer of DAW with all the fervor of a mother grizzly defending her young. Every aspect of DAW and all DAW authors were sheltered under her huge protective wing. And for a pet.i.te woman, she had enormous wings indeed! Marion Zimmer Bradley once said, "Elsie has the spirit of a lion in the body of a sparrow." And it was never more true than when she took up her position as Champion-Of-All-Things-DAW. The next six months were a nightmare.

With liftoff scheduled for April 1972, Don was under the gun to purchase, edit, and package six months' worth of t.i.tles in thirty days to catch up with NAL's production schedule. Elsie had to set up accounts payable, accounts receivable, royalty reports, bookkeeping, and an entire subsidiary rights department. Together, they wrote the first DAW boilerplate contract. For my father, himself a published author with eighteen books and numerous short stories to his credit, it was important to formulate a writer-friendly contract.

My parents were nervous wrecks. Don couldn't sleep or eat-I remember more than one occasion when Elsie or I had to run to the kitchen to get Don something sweet because he was feeling light-headed. Don and Elsie were exhausted, but it was with the excited exhaustion of new parents. It was a frightening and exhilarating time.

The following spring, the first DAW books were due to debut at the 1972 Lunacon, but the night before the convention started, they still hadn't left the warehouse in New Jersey. Elsie and Don were up the entire night collecting their very first DAW books and hand delivering them to the dealers at NewYork's local convention. Lunacon was thereafter a very special time for my folks.

As for me, I went back to college and graduated with a degree in English Lit, while serving a simultaneous four-year stint in art school. My parents had kept me apprised of the goings-on at DAW, and sent me occasional ma.n.u.scripts to read and comment on, particularly when Don had discovered someone he felt was noteworthy. I especially remember Don's excitement in 1974 when he sent me Gate of Ivrel, C. J. Cherryh's first novel, and The Birthgrave, Tanith Lee's first full-length fantasy novel.*

Although I was Corporate Vice President of DAW from the get go, and had always been involved on a certain level, Don never *pressured me to come home to New York right after graduation. He thought it would be healthier for me to find my own sea legs in the business world. With my experience working as a freelance copyeditor for Ace Books (under my father's stern tutelage) during high school, I landed a job in one of the last hot-type printing houses in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts as a proofreader, then later, a dual position as proofreader and darkroom technician for one of the very first computerized printing houses in the industry. What a disaster! For every mistake corrected, the printing computer (which took up most of a good-sized wall) would generate numerous new ones. Whole chapters would suddenly become italicized. Thankfully, computers have improved enormously since those days. My two years working for printers have proved invaluable to me as a publisher.*

Finally, in 1975, I came home and took up a position as Don's general a.s.sistant and a.s.sociate Editor. By this time DAW was an established, successful line, and Don and Elsie were a recognized corporate couple. However, it is never easy working with your parents, and Don and Elsie were no exception. One of the saving graces of my situation was the presence of my old friend Sheila Gilbert, who was working as a copywriter for NAL. Sheila and I had known each other since we were thirteen and eleven, respectively, and had bonded through various embarra.s.sing fan activities, such as the Galaxy of Fashion Show at the 1967 NYcon, where I was the "Bride of the Future," and Sheila and her oldest sister Marsha were "The Gemini Twins." Numerous were the times I sought refuge in my old friend's office, and as the years pa.s.sed, Sheila was promoted to head up the Signet science fiction list, and I wrested more and more editorial and art direction control from the unyielding hands of my father. Sheila and I became close friends.

Neither of us realized just how important that friendship would prove to be.

In April 1985, when I had been working with my parents for ten years, catastrophe struck. Don went into the hospital with a complicated critical illness, and remained there on the brink of death for seven brutal months. We were just about to launch the fledgling DAW hardcover list, which was my exclusive domain, with a novel from our most important writer, C. J. Cherryh, as well as a first novel from a very promising newcomer, Tad Williams. Elsie bravely insisted that I attend the American Booksellers a.s.sociation Convention in San Francisco, where the DAW hardcover list was being debuted with special bound galleys, and where I was planning to meet Tad for the first time. I left New York not knowing if I would ever see my father alive again.

Well, Don survived, but it didn't take me long to discover what had made him so sick. At fourteen years of age, the health of DAW Books had begun to flag. The science fiction and fantasy industry had gone through some fundamental changes, and our company was desperately in need of renovation.

During those terrible months, Elsie and I fought not only to keep Don alive, but to save the life of DAW as well.

Meanwhile, Sheila had been considering leaving her job at Signet. Elsie and I realized that she would be the perfect person to join us: she had editorial experience, knew our list, and was practically part of the family already. With no guarantee that we would be able to pull the company out of its slump, she agreed.

1985 was a difficult year, but Don survived and so did DAW. During Don's long illness and recovery-it was a year before he would return to the office-Sheila and I, with the loving support of Elsie, took over the company.

Don would never again be well enough to lead DAW.

Now, thirty years and more than twelve hundred t.i.tles since its founding, Don and Elsie are gone, but the essence of DAW remains the same: a small, personal business owned exclusively by me and Sheila.Sheila and I were startled to realize, as we were writing these introductions, that we have now been running the company longer than Don did. Like Don and Elsie before us, we are committed to keeping a "family" spirit at DAW-something we feel (as Don did) is all too rare in today's world of international conglomerate publishing. If anything, DAW is even more family-oriented now than it was in the beginning.

Sheila and I brought our husbands, Mike Gilbert and Peter Stampfel, into the business. Our Business Manager Amy Fodera introduced us to her husband, Sean Fodera, who is now our Director of Subsidiary Rights, Contracts, and Electronic Publishing. Our Managing Editor Debra Euler is single, but we've told her that when she does marry, her husband will have a job waiting for him at DAW! (Or conversely, she has first right of refusal if we hire another employee.) Even our wonderful free-lance cover designer has been with us for nearly a dozen years.

With just six hardy employees (sadly, we lost Mike in August 2000), DAW Books manages to stay afloat in a sea of ocean liners. But our true family extends far beyond the DAW corporate offices. This real family includes the many wonderful authors who publish with us, the artists who grace the covers of our books with their beautiful paintings, and you, the readers who have loyally supported our little company for thirty years. We couldn't have done it without you-and we plan to keep giving you the finest in science fiction and fantasy for decades to come.

BETSY WOLLHEIM.

I REMEMBER the day DAW was born. I remember it because the events which led up to DAW's birth had a definite impact on my own life, and though I didn't know it at the time, the creation of DAW Books, Inc. in the fall of 1971 would eventually affect my future both personally and professionally.

Of course, my relationship with the Wollheim family began long before DAW was even the glimmering of an idea in Don Wollheim's imagination. I first met Don, Elsie, and Betsy at a Lunacon in Manhattan in the spring of 1963. I was thirteen years old and it was my first science fiction convention.

And among the many interesting people I had a chance to meet (some of whose works filled the bookcases of my own science fiction and fantasy reading family) were the Wollheims. My memory is that they Were quite patient with and welcoming to an enthusiastic teen at her first convention. Perhaps the fact that Betsy was eleven at the time had something to do with it. Perhaps it merely foreshadowed the days when we would begin referring to Elsie as our "corporate Mom," a t.i.tle any DAW author who was fortune enough to become part of our DAW family while Elsie was still alive would certainly understand.

Over the following seven years, I continued to run into the Wollheims at conventions and parties, and when I graduated college and started looking for a job in publishing I sent Don, who at the time was the Editor-in-Chief at Ace Books, a letter of inquiry about a job. Fortune smiled upon me, because the day after I had accepted-but not yet started-a job at another publishing company, I received a phone call from Don. He had a junior editorial position to fill, and he wanted me to come in for an interview. The idea of being paid to read and work on the books I would have been reading anyway seemed like a dream come true.

I started working for Don at Ace Thanksgiving week of 1970, and life was good. Then, one day in the fall of 1971, Don walked into my office to say good-bye. He was leaving the company that very day.

I was totally stunned by the news.

Later, I heard that Don was starting his own company, DAW Books, Inc., which would be distributed by New American Library. Perhaps a month after that, I had a phone call from Ruth Haberstroh, a friend who had once shared an office with me at Ace and who was working at New American Library. She told me that before calling me she had asked Don if he was going to hire me. He responded that he wasn't going to be hiring anyone for a while, and so Ruth offered me a job at NAL. So in January 1972, I left Ace and joined NAL. One of the benefits of this move was that I could now frequently see Don and Elsie-and Betsy, as well, once she joined her parents in the family business.

In 1978, I took over the Signet science fiction line, which, in theory, might have put me in compet.i.tion with DAW, but in reality it did nothing of the kind. Our lists were extremely compatible.In 1985, Don became critically ill and Betsy had to take on the full responsibility for running DAW.

She and Elsie asked me to join them, and after the July Fourth weekend, that was exactly what I did.

And, of course, I've been here ever since. In the ensuing years, various members of my family-my husband Mike, and my sisters Marsha and Paula-began working with us in a freelance capacity, with Mike eventually becoming our resident curmudgeon until his untimely death in August of 2000.

We've always said that we consider DAW and everyone a.s.sociated with it as one big extended family. And that is truly the way we feel about our own terrific staff and all the people we work closely with at Penguin Putnam, Inc., about our stalwart freelancers who never let us down, the artists who create such eyecatching images for us, and, of course, our authors, who, over the years we've worked with them, have become our close friends as well as our valued colleagues.

As thirty is a fairly momentous birthday in human terms (rest a.s.sured, however, that you will still be able to trust DAW to provide you with the kind of reading experiences you've come to expect), we wanted to celebrate this coming of age in a special way. And, we reasoned, what could be more appropriate than a book of stories written by the authors who have been such an important part of DAW over the last three decades. As we looked down our impressively large list of names, though, we realized that the only way this project could be accomplished without becoming completely unwieldy would be to divide the stories into two volumes by category. Thus, the books you now see before you: DAW 30th Anniversary: Science Fiction and DAW 30th Anniversary: Fantasy.*

Of course, thirty years is a long time, and as we went through our list we were saddened by the knowledge that a number of the authors we would have loved to have stories from were no longer around to provide them. Despite that, we are very pleased with the number of authors who were kind enough to join us in our thirtieth birthday celebration by creating the wonderful tales you'll find included here. Some of the contributors wrote stories which take place in the universes in which their popular DAW series are set, others have chosen to explore entirely new territory, and yet others have given us a glimpse of the worlds and characters from novels which will see publication in the upcoming years.

When DAW Books was founded, the original logo used on all our books read: DAW = sf, a corporate emblem designed by well-known science fiction artist Jack Gaughan. At that time the logo was extremely appropriate. We were the first company devoted exclusively to the publication of science fiction and fantasy, and as far more science fiction was being published (certainly this was true for DAW in those days) the genre hadn't been broken down into two distinct categories. But over the course of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, as more writers came into the field from the social sciences and humanities rather than the hard sciences, both styles and subject matter began to change. And as technological leaps began to transform science fiction into science fact, creating believable yet innovative science-based fiction became far more difficult. At the same time, the ever-increasing changes wrought by technology in both the working place and our own homes led more people to read fantasy, probably as a means to escape the stresses and demands of the "real" world.*

In recognition of these changes, the very look of DAW Books, as well as the contents, began its own evolutionary process, one that continues to this very day. Our logo went from DAW - sf to a design which incorporated the three letters in our name, and also labeled the particular book it appeared on as either science fiction or fantasy. Of course, this led to a bit of a dilemma when a novel or series didn't fall fully into one category or the other but actually melded elements of both.

What you now hold in your hands is your invitation to join our 30th anniversary celebration. The stories in each volume appear in chronological order, based on the first time the author was published by DAW. Thus our fantasy volume begins with Andre Norton, whose Spell of the Witchworld was the very first DAW book to see print in April 1972. The first story in the science fiction volume is by Brian Stableford, whose To Challenge Chaos was published in May 1972.

We hope that you will find these anthologies as enjoyable as we have, and that it will offer you a chance to read some new work by old favorites, or perhaps afford you the pleasure of discovering some of our authors for the very first time. Thank you for helping to make our first thirty years as memorable as they have been, and we look forward to sharing many more years of good books with all of you.

The science fiction field has been tremendously fortunate in attracting editors who care deeply and pa.s.sionately about the genre and its potential, among which the two most important were John W.

Campbell, Jr. and Don Woliheim. If it were not for Don's efforts, first as a magazine editor, then as a paperback editor and finally as a publisher the field would not have proliferated or progressed as quickly as it did, and many fine writers might have been lost to it.

Don gave crucial publishing opportunities to dozens of writers, some of whom went on to become important figures in modern American literature (including Philip K. d.i.c.k and Ursula le Guin] while others were enabled by him to produce work of striking and defiant originality treasured by the few (including Barrington J. Bayley and Michael Shea).

He was far more useful to writers like the latter stripe than any small press publisher because he never lost sight of the need to attract readers to his lines by publishing solid commercial fiction in economically effective packages.

Don was by far the most eclectic editor ever to work in the SF field, sustaining the careers of a dozen British writers whose domestic market was too tiny to offer adequate commercial support, and also introducing numerous foreign-language writers into the American market. I am one of the least of many writers who would not have been able to follow their vocation without his interest and help; he was a crucial element in shaping my life as a reader and writer and the hindsight I have gained since his death has allowed me to see ever more clearly how extraordinarily valuable his input was. I am very pleased and proud to be able to make a memorial contribution to this anthology.

-BS.

THE HOME FRONT.

Brian Stableford

NOW that we have lived in the security of peace for more than thirty years a generation has grown up to whom the Plague Wars are a matter of myth and legend. Survivors of my age are often approached by the wondering young and asked what it was like to live through those frightful years, but few of them can answer as fully or as accurately as I.

In my time I have met many doctors, genetic engineers, and statesmen who lay claim to having been in "the front line" during the First Plague War, but the originality of that conflict was precisely the fact that its real combatants were invading microbes and defensive antibodies. All its entrenchments wereinternal to the human body and mind. It is true that there were battlegrounds of a sort in the hospitals, the laboratories, and even in the House of Commons, but this was a war whose entire strategy was to strike at the most intimate locations of all. For that reason, the only authentic front was the home front: the nucleus of family life.

Many an octogenarian is prepared to wax lyrical now on the reelings of dread a.s.sociated with obligatory confinement. They will a.s.sure you that no one would risk exposure to a crowd if it could possibly be avoided, and that every step out of doors was a terror-laden trek through a minefield. They exaggerate.

Life was not so rapidly transformed in an era when a substantial majority of the population still worked outside the home or attended school, and only a minority had the means or the inclination to make all their purchases electronically. Even if electronic shop-pimg had been universal, that would have brought about a very dramatic increase in the number of people employed in the deliv-ery business, all of whom would have had to go abroad and inter-act vith considerable numbers of their fellows.

For these reasons, total confinement was rare during the First Plague War, and rarely voluntary. Even I, who had little choice in the matter after both my legs were amputated above the knee following the Paddington Railway Disaster of 2119, occasionally sallied forth in my electrically-powered wheelchair in spite of the protestations of my wife Martha. Martha was almost as firmly anch.o.r.ed as I was, by virtue of the care she had to devote to me and to our younger daughter Frances, but it would have taken more than rumors of war to force Frances' teenage sister Petra to remain indoors for long.

The certainty of hindsight sometimes leads us to forget that the First Plague War was, throughout its duration, essentially a matter of rumor, but such was the case. The absence of any formal declaration of war, combined with the highly dubious status of many of the terrorist organizations which competed to claim responsibility for its worst atrocities, sustained an atmosphere of uncertainty that complicated our fears. To some extent, the effect was to exaggerate our anxieties, but it allowed braver souls a margin of doubt to which they could dismiss all inconvenient alarms.

I suppose I was fortunate that the Paddington Disaster had not disrupted my career completely, because I had the education and training necessary to set myself up as an independent share-trader operating via my domestic unit. I had established a reputation that allowed me to build a satisfactory register of corporate and individual clients, so I was able to negotiate the movement of several million euros on a daily basis. I had always been a specialist in the biotech sector, which was highly volatile even before the war started-and it was that accident of happenstance more than any other which placed my minuscule fraction of the home front at the center of the fiercest action the war produced.

Doctors, as is only natural, think that the hottest action of the plague wars was experienced on the wards which filled up week by week between 2129 and2133 with victims of hyperflu, a.s.sertive MSRA, neurotoxic Human Mosaic Virus and plethoral hem-orrhagic fever. Laboratory engineers, equally understandably, think that the crucial battles were fought within the bodies of the mouse models housed in their triple-X biocontainment facilities. In fact, the most hectic action of all was seen on the London Stock Exchange, and the only hand-to-hand fighting involved the sneakthieves and armed robbers who continually raided the nation's greenhouses during the six months from September 2129 to March 2130: the cruel winter of the great plantigen panic.

I never laid a finger on a single genetically modified potato or carrot, but I was in the thick of it nevertheless. So, perforce, were my wife and children; their lives, like mine, hung in the balance throughout. That is why my story is one of the most pertinent records of the First Plague War, as well as one of the most poignant.

Although my work required fierce concentration and a readiness to react to market moves at a moment's notice, I was occasionally forced by necessity to let Frances play in my study while I worked. It was not safe to leave her alone, even in the adjacent ground-floor room where she attended school online. She suffered from an environmentally induced syndrome which made her unusually p.r.o.ne to form allergies to any and all novel organic compounds.

In the twentieth century such a condition would have proved swiftly fatal, but, by the time Francis was born in 2121, medical science had begun to catch up with the problem. There were efficient palliatives to apply to her occasional rashes, and effective ways of ensuring that she received adequate nutrition in spite of her perennial tendency to gastric distress and diarrhea. The only aspects of her allergic attacks which seriously threatened her life were general anaphylactic shock and the disruption of her breathing by ma.s.sive histamine reactions in the throat. It was these possibilities that compelled us to keep very careful control over the contents of our home and the importation of exotic organic molecules. By way of completing our precautions, Martha, Petra and I had all been carefully trained to administer various injections, to operate breathing apparatus, and-should the worst ever come to the worst-to perform an emergency tracheotomy.

Frances was very patient on the rare occasions when she had to be left in my sole care, and seemed to know instinctively when to rnaintain silence, even though she was a talkative child by nature. When business was slack, however, she would make heroic attempts to understand what I was doing.

As chance would have it, she was present when I first set up my position in plantigens in July 2129, and it was only natural that she should ask me to explain what I was doing and why.

"I'm buying lots of potatoes and a few carrots," I told her, oversimplifying recklessly.

"Isn't Mummy doing that?" she asked. Martha was at the supermarket.

"She's buying the ones we'll be cooking and eating. I'm buying ones thathaven't even been planted yet. They're the kind that have to be eaten raw if they're to do any good." "You can't eat raw potatoes," she said, skeptically.

"They're not very nice," I agreed, "but cooking would destroy the vital ingredients of these kinds, because they're so delicate." I explained to her, as best I could, that a host of genetic engineers was busy transplanting new genes into all kinds of root vegetables, so that they would incorporate large quant.i.ties of special proteins or protein fragments into their edible parts. I told her that the recent arrival in various parts of the world-including Britain-of new disease-causing viruses had forced scientists to work especially hard on new ways of combating those viruses. "The most popular methods, at the moment," I concluded, "are making plantibodies and plantigens."

"What's the difference?" she wanted to know. "Antibodies are what our own immune systems produce whenever our bodies are invaded by viruses.

Unfortunately, they're often produced too slowly to save us from the worst effects of the diseases, so doctors often try to immunize people in advance, by giving them an injection of something harmless to which the body reacts the same way. Anything that stimulates the production of antibodies is called an antigen. Some scientists are producing plants that produce harmless antigens that can be used to make people's immune systems produce antibodies against the new diseases. Others are trying to cut out the middle by producing the antibodies directly, so that people who've already caught the diseases can be treated before they become seriously ill."

"Are antigens like allergens?" Frances asked. She knew a good deal about allergens, because we'd had to explain to her why she could never go out, and why she always had to be so careful even in the house.

"Sort of," I said, "but there isn't any way, as yet, of immunizing people against the kind of reaction you have when your throat closes up and you can't breathe."

She didn't like to go there, so she said: "Are you buying plantigens or plantibodies, Daddy?"

"I'm buying shares in companies that are spending the most money on producing new plantigens," I told her, feeling that I owed her a slightly fuller explanation.

"Why?"

"Plantigens are easier to produce than plantibodies because they're much simpler," I said. "The protection they provide is sometimes limited, but they're often effective against a whole range of closely related viruses, so they're a better defense against new mutants. The main reason I'm buying plantigens rather than plantibodies, though, has to do with psychological factors."

She'd heard me use that phrase before, but she'd never quite gotten to grips with it. I tried hard to explain that although plantibodies were more useful in hospitals when sick people actually arrived there, ordinary people were far more interested in things that might keep them out of hospitals altogether. As the fear of the new diseases became more widespread and more urgent, peoplewould become increasingly willing-perhaps even desperate-to buy large quant.i.ties of plantigen-containing potatoes and carrots to eat "just in case." For that reason, I told Frances, the sales of plantigen-producing carrots and potatoes would increase more rapidly than the actual level of threat, and that meant that it made sense to buy shares in the companies that were investing most heavily in plantigen development.

"I understand," she said, only a little dubiously. She wanted me to be proud of her. She wanted me to think that she was clever.

I was proud of her. I did think she was clever. If she didn't quite understand the origins of the great plantigen panic, that was because n.o.body really understood it, because n.o.body really understood what makes some psychological factors so much more powerful than others that they become obsessions.

No sooner had I taken the position than it began to put on value. Throughout August and early September I gradually transferred more and more funds from all my accounts into the relevant holdings-and then felt extremely proud of myself when the prices really took off. From the end of September on, the only question anyone in the market was asking was how long the bull run could possibly last-or, more specifically, exactly when would be the best moment to cash the paper profits and get out.

From the very beginning, Martha was skeptical about the trend. "It's going to be tulipomania all over again," she said, at the beginning of November.