A
story pun (also known as a
poetic story joke or
Feghoot) is a humorous short story or
vignetteIn theater script and poetry writing, vignettes are short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting. This type of scene is more common in recent postmodern theater, where adherence to the conventions of theatrical...
ending in an atrocious
punA pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect...
(typically a play on a well-known phrase) where the story contains sufficient context to recognize the punning humor. It can be considered a type of shaggy dog story.
This storytelling model apparently originated in a long running series of short
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by
Reginald BretnorReginald Bretnor Reginald Bretnor Reginald Bretnor (b. July 30, 1911 in Vladivostok, Russia - d. July 22, 1992 in Medford, Oregon was a science fiction author, born Alfred Reginald Kahn. He flourished between the 1950s and 1980s. Most of his fiction was in short story form, and usually featured a...
under the
anagrammaticAn anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place. Someone who creates anagrams is called an anagrammatist...
pseudonymA pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or sometimes, a group.Pseudonyms are often used to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre and computer hackers' handles. Actors, musicians, and other...
of
Grendel Briarton.
A
story pun (also known as a
poetic story joke or
Feghoot) is a humorous short story or
vignetteIn theater script and poetry writing, vignettes are short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting. This type of scene is more common in recent postmodern theater, where adherence to the conventions of theatrical...
ending in an atrocious
punA pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect...
(typically a play on a well-known phrase) where the story contains sufficient context to recognize the punning humor. It can be considered a type of shaggy dog story.
Ferdinand Feghoot
This storytelling model apparently originated in a long running series of short
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by
Reginald BretnorReginald Bretnor Reginald Bretnor Reginald Bretnor (b. July 30, 1911 in Vladivostok, Russia - d. July 22, 1992 in Medford, Oregon was a science fiction author, born Alfred Reginald Kahn. He flourished between the 1950s and 1980s. Most of his fiction was in short story form, and usually featured a...
under the
anagrammaticAn anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place. Someone who creates anagrams is called an anagrammatist...
pseudonymA pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or sometimes, a group.Pseudonyms are often used to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre and computer hackers' handles. Actors, musicians, and other...
of
Grendel Briarton. The usual formulae the stories followed were for the title character to solve a problem bedeviling some manner of being or extricate himself from a dangerous situation. The events could take place all over the galaxy and in various historical periods on Earth and elsewhere. In his adventures, Feghoot worked for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History and traveled via a device that had no name but was typographically represented as the ")(". The pieces were usually vignettes only a few paragraphs long, and always ended with a deliberately terrible pun that was often based on a well-known title or catch-phrase.
"Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot" was originally published in the magazine
Fantasy and Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
from 1956 to 1973. (In 1973, the magazine ran a contest soliciting readers' Feghoots as entries.) The series also appeared in
Fantasy and Science Fiction's sister magazine
Venture Science Fiction MagazineVenture Science Fiction Magazine was a digest-sized US science fiction magazine published from 1957 to 1958, and revived for a brief run in 1969 and 1970. Ten issues were published of the 1950s version, with another six in the second run. It was founded in both instances as a companion to The...
, and later in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction MagazineAsimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy and perpetuates the name of author and biochemist Isaac Asimov...
,
Amazing StoriesAmazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
, and other publications. The individual pieces were identified by Roman numerals rather than titles. The stories have been collected in several editions, each an expanded version of the previous, the most recent being
The Collected Feghoot from
Pulphouse PublishingPulphouse Publishing was an American small press publisher based in Eugene, Oregon and specializing in science fiction and fantasy. It was founded by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch in 1988. The press was active until 1996...
.
Many of the ideas and puns for Bretnor's stories were contributed by others, including
F. M. BusbyFrancis Marion Busby was a science fiction writer and figure in science fiction fandom. In 1960 he was a co-winner of the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine....
and
E. Nelson BridwellEdward Nelson Bridwell was a writer for Mad magazine and various comic books published by DC Comics. One of the writers for the Batman comic strip and Super Friends, he also wrote The Inferior Five, among comics...
. Other authors have published Feghoots written on their own, including
Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov , was an American author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books...
(who wrote a story that ended "A niche in time saves Stein") and
John BrunnerJohn Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
. There have been numerous
fan-producedFan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...
stories as well.
Other Story Puns
The
Mr. Peabody's Improbable HistoryMr. Peabody is a fictional dog who appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s television animated series Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show . Peabody appeared in the segments entitled Peabody's Improbable History created by Ted Key. All were Jay Ward productions...
segments on Rocky and Bullwinkle were animated Feghoots, right down to the pun at the end of each episode.
In 1962,
Amazing Stories published "Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit" by Grandall Barretton (
Randall GarrettRandall Garrett was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s...
), which all ended in a pun on the name of a famous SF writer. One example of a Feghoot is the "Forty million Frenchmen" gag ("For DeMille, young fur-henchmen...") on page 559 of Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
.
The
Callahan's BarIn the fictional universe of Spider Robinson, Callahan's Place is a bar with strongly community-minded and empathic clientele. It appears in the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon stories In the fictional universe of Spider Robinson, Callahan's Place is a bar with strongly community-minded and empathic...
series by
Spider RobinsonSpider Robinson is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author.- Biography :Born in the Bronx, New York City, Robinson attended Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State...
uses "some of the worst puns known to man.... building up to the anticipated pun with skill and flair."
Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov , was an American author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books...
used the song
Give My Regards to Broadway"Give My Regards to Broadway" is a song written by George M. Cohan for his musical play Little Johnny Jones ....
to form an elaborate story pun in his
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
"Death of a Foy"The Winds of Change and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1983 by Doubleday.-Contents:*"About Nothing" *"A Perfect Fit" *"Belief" *"Death of a Foy"...
.
Arthur C. ClarkeSri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, a collaboration which also produced the film of the same name; and as a...
's short story "
Neutron Tide"Neutron Tide" is a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke. It is among his shortest pieces of writing, consisting solely of a 2-page, detailed description of a futuristic scenario in order to use a pun as a punch-line.-Plot summary:...
" culminates with a pun.