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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: "WISHING WILL MAKE IT SO"

by Isaac Asimov

THE MONKEY'S PAW

by W. W. Jacobs

BEHIND THE NEWS

by Jack Finney

THE FLIGHT OF THE UMBRELLA

by Marvin Kaye

TWEEN

by J. F. Bone

THE BOY WHO BROUGHT LOVE

by Edward D. Hoch

THE VACATION

by Ray Bradbury

THE ANYTHING BOX

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fry Zenna Henderson

A BORN CHARMER

by Edward P. Hughes

WHAT IP-

fry Isaac Asimov

MILLENNIUM

by Fredric Brown

DREAMS ARE SACRED

by Peter Philtips

THE SAME TO YOU DOUBLED

by Robert Sheckley

GIFTS. . .

by Gordon R. Dickson

I WISH I MAY. 1 WISH I MIGHT

by Bill Pronzini

THREE DAY MAGIC

by Charlotte Armstrong

THE BOTTLE IMP

by Robert Louis Stevenson

206

216

230

234

321

INTRODUCTION:

WISHING WILL MAKE IT SO

by Isaac Asimov

When I was much younger than 1 am now, I heard the

philosophical comment: "It takes a million dollars to make a

millionaire, but a pauper can be poor without a penny."

When I was a tittle older I listened to Sid Caesar playing

me rote of a Teutonic mountaineer. Carl Reiner said to him,

"Tell me. Professor, how long does it take a person to

negotiate the distance between the top and bottom of a

mountain?"

Said Sid, "Two minutes."

Carl said. with considerable astonishment, "It takes only

two minutes to climb a mountain?"

To which Sid said, with disgust. "Not climb. To negotiate

me distance from the top down to the bottom—two minutes.

Climbing is a different thing altogether.''

I've thought about such things, and it became clear to me

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mat both the examples I have given are representative of a

general stale of affairs that can best be expressed as follows:

"Lousy things are no trouble."

For instance, it's no trouble to go hungry. You don't need

money, and you don't have to make an effort. You just sit

there. Getting yourself outside a square meal can be very

troublesome, however.

Again, suppose that someone brings you all the food you

can eat. In that case, it's getting fat that requires no effort (if

you don't count the tiny effort it takes to lift the food to your

mouth, chew, and swallow). To avoid getting fat, however,

means eating less than you probably want to and engaging in

vigorous exercise besides.

Isaac Asuaov

This is not something that has escaped the notice of hu-

manity generally. I'm absolutely certain that even the mean-

est intelligence has noticed how readily one can be poor,

hungry, thirsty, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, while

finding oneself with nothing to wear, nothing to read, and

nothing pleasant to do.

Not only does one have to take trouble and make an effort

in order to avoid all these lousy things for which there is no

charge, but there is no limit on the quantity of trouble and

effort you may have to make. Most people can work hard all

their lives and stint no effort doing so, and yet find them-

selves far short of the millionaire mark when they're through.

You may want to marry a rich man's gorgeous daughter

(or, if you are a woman, his handsome son), and for that

purpose you may bring into play every bit of charm you

have—and get nowhere. This may start you brooding over the

fact that you can probably, without any effort at all, succeed

in marrying any number of very poor. very ugly women (or

men).

Well, then. what are you going to do? You crave pleasant

things which take more of an effort than you can possibly

pump up in a lifetime of pumping, and you want to avoid

unpleasant things that arc being forced upon you against your

will and mat then stick to you despite your shouts of dismay.

It is easy to decide that there is something wrong with this.

In a properly run Universe, surely you deserve to get some-

thing simply because you want it. Even though this doesn't

seem to happen, there must surely be some trick to bring it

about. Perhaps there is some formula or spell that will give

you anything you want; you need only wish for it. Or else ^

perhaps mere is some supernatural being willing to gratify •^

you under certain conditions. Perhaps there is some wishing "''_

object that already exists, manufactured who knows how, that ^

you need only find in order to gratify your every wish. ^

Folklore of every kind includes tales of magic wishes, and H.

the most successful of all such stories is to be found in The ^

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Thousand and One Nights (more commonly known as The (

Arabian Nights). What child isn't fascinated by the tale of

Aladdin and his lamp and doesn't fantisize having such a lamp

INTRODUCTION 11

for himself? I experienced both the fascination and the fan-

tasy in copious quantities when I was young.

(Incidentally, we modems still believe in the power of

wishing. We call it "praying," of course, and, all too fre-

quently, praying is simply a way of substituting God for the

Slave of the Lamp and making him run our errands for us.)

Of course, some such tales caution against overweening

greed. Midas, having wished that everything he touched would

turn to gold, found he had gone too far and had left himself

no way of eating or drinking, scr he had to beg to get the wish

canceled.

In other stories, the wishes are limited in number, most

often to three, and then, invariably, there is a problem in

deciding what the wishes ought to be. Almost as invariably,

me choices prove unfortunate.

This instinctive suspicion that the notion that wishing will

make it so is nonsense was given its final support by the taws

of thermodynamics. The first law says that the amount of

energy is limited and the second says (in scientific terms)

exactly what 1 said earlier—that lousy things are no trouble,

but that to accomplish anything desirable takes an effort.

What's more, me laws of thermodynamics hold for every-

thing in the Universe, including Slaves of the Lamp.

And yet... and yet...

Even if we are grown-up, hardheaded, and scientific, and

have put childish things behind us. there is still this hanker-

ing. Even though we know that wishing will not make it so,

we can't help but wish that wishing will make it so.

Here, then, are sixteen stones in which wishes, in one

way or another, are involved. And just to make sure that you

will be hooked by them, the first story, "The Monkey's

Paw," is, to my way of thinking, the best such story ever

written, and the grisliest. How I envy you, if you've never

come across it and will now read it for the first time.

So suspend your disbelief for a while and enjoy.

THE MONKEY'S PAW

by W. W. Jacobs

Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour

of Laburnum Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned

brightly- Father and son were at chess; the former, who

possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes,

putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it

even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knit-

ting placidly by the fire.

"Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having seen a

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