Who Are They?

From The “Curve of Binding Energy” by John McPhee (1973, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. 104-105):

“Not all the Los Alamos theories could be tested. Long popular within the Theoretical Division was, for example, a theory that the people of Hungary are Martians. The reasoning went like this: The Martians left their own planet several aeons ago and came to Earth; they landed in what is now Hungary; the tribes of Europe were so primitive and barbarian it was necessary for the Martians to conceal their evolutionary difference or be hacked to pieces. Through the years, the concealment had on the whole been successful, but the Martians had three characteristics too strong to hide: their wanderlust, which found its outlet in the Hungarian gypsy; their language (Hungarian is not related to any of the languages spoken in surrounding countries); and their unearthly intelligence. One had only to look around to see the evidence: Teller, Wigner, Szilard, von Neumann — Hungarians all. Wigner had designed the first plutonium-production reactors. Szilard had been among the first to suggest that fission could be used to make a bomb. Von Neumann had developed the digital computer. Teller — moody, tireless, and given to fits of laughter, bursts of anger — worked long hours and was impatient with what he felt to be the excessively slow advancement of Project Panda, as the hydrogen-bomb development was known. … Teller had a thick Martian accent. He also had a sense of humor that could penetrate bone.”

Steve “Developers, Developers, Developers!” Ballmer, Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan were also Hungarian Jews. Kissinger has a thick Martian accent. But the scariest Hungarian/Jewish Martian is of course Ron “But Wait, There’s More” Popeil, the inventor of Mr. Microphone, GLH-9 Hair in a Can and other alien products. How can you doubt that he’s an alien?

From the website of Rosanna Hart, Linebarger’s (see my article “Psywarrior” ) daughter:

“ARTHUR BURNS WRITES ABOUT PAUL LINEBARGER
…
“He was above medium height, terribly gaunt, bald, high-nosed, narrowing in the chin; he wore severe excellently-cut suits; his favourite hat was a soft black velour like an Italian film producer’s. He was constantly ill, usually with digestive or metabolic troubles, and had to put up with repeated surgery, so that in middle age he always lived close to the vital margin. He took time off from a dinner party in Melbourne for a long drink of hydro-chloric acid, at which a guest, quite awed, remarked that Linebarger probably *was* a man from Mars… ”

Linebarger was an alien for sure, what with the acid drinking and everything, but II wonder if Linebarger was one of the Hungarians…

A sci-fi story called “Occam’s Scalpel” by Theodore Sturgeon comes to mind. Oh, I am not going to spoil the story for you. You should read it yourself.

While reading Vonnegut I never realized that Kilgore Trout was based on Sturgeon. I always thought that a writer that good (I tend not to notice awkward style when the authors ideas are good) is respected, famous and well read unlike Mr. Trout.