{"id":1122,"date":"2021-05-12T11:30:44","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T11:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2021-05-20T13:27:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T13:27:34","slug":"the-sword-swallower-by-ron-goulart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1122","title":{"rendered":"The Sword Swallower by Ron Goulart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sword Swallower<\/em><\/strong> by Ron Goulart (F&SF<\/em>, November 1967) is one of his \u2018Ben Jolsen\/Chameleon Corps\u2019 stories, and opens with Jolsen being briefed about the disappearance of senior military men from the Barnum War Cabinet. Jolsen\u2019s boss Mickens suspects the persons responsible are pacifists objecting to the colonization of the Terran planets by Barnum, and he sends Jolsen to Esperanza (a cemetery planet) in the guise of an elderly technocrat called Leonard Gabney. When Jolsen arrives there, his task is to slip a truth drug to an Ambassador Kinbrough and find out where the missing men are.
The rest of the story follows his various adventures on the planet, which include meeting a female agent, getting shaken down when he arrives at a health spa, meeting the Ambassador and drugging him, an attempt on his life by the health spa attendant who extorted him, tracking down the Ambassador\u2019s contact (Son Brewster Jr., a not very good protest singer), and so on (this takes you about two thirds of the way through the story).
To be honest the plot is irrelevant, as it\u2019s just a framework for Goulart\u2019s telegraphic and occasionally semi-amusing prose, such as when he steps out of the air taxi on arrival at the health spa:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jolson stepped out of the cruiser and into a pool of hot mud. He sank down to chin level, rose up and noticed a square-faced blond man squatting and smiling on the pool\u2019s edge.
The man extended a hand. \u201cWe start things right off at Nepenthe. Shake. That mud immersion has taken weeks of aging off you already, Mr. Gabney. I\u2019m Franklin T. Tripp, Coordinator and Partial Founder.\u201d
Jolson gave Tripp a muddy right hand. His cruiser pilot had undressed him first, so he\u2019d been expecting something.
\u201cI admire your efficiency, sir.\u201d
\u201cYou know, Mr. Gabney,\u201d Tripp confided in a mint-scented voice, \u201cI\u2019m nearly sixty myself. Do I look it?\u201d
\u201cForty at best.\u201d
\u201cEvery chance I get I come out here and wallow.\u201d  p. 213 (World\u2019s Best Science Fiction 1968<\/em>, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is pleasant enough magazine filler but I\u2019ve no idea what it is doing in a \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 annual, and I doubt anyone will remember much about the story a couple of hours after they have read it. I also thought, for a piece of semi-satirical fluff (the peaceniks, the incomprehensible slang used in the club, the protest songs, etc.) it\u2019s longer than it needs to be.
** (Average). 9,800 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sword Swallower by Ron Goulart (F&SF, November 1967) is one of his \u2018Ben Jolsen\/Chameleon Corps\u2019 stories, and opens with Jolsen being briefed about the disappearance of senior military men from the Barnum War Cabinet. Jolsen\u2019s boss Mickens suspects the persons responsible are pacifists objecting to the colonization of the Terran planets by Barnum, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[10,17,25,7,88],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ron-goulart","tag-10","tag-17","tag-fsf","tag-novelette","tag-ron-goulart"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}