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THE CAVE OF NIGHTby James E. Gunn… and so we leave behind us the troubled waters of Juniors native coastal shelf arid with a gentle swish and a graceful swoopwe warp through space and time to find ourselves again on Mother Earth the last words of our distant friends still ringing in ourears …YOU CANT DO THATA new invention is a terrifying thing—on terra firma underseas or up above the stratosphere. James Gunn who hasdistinguished himself by turning out more good solid quotnew-ideaquot stories during the past year than just about any other writer in s-f here suggests a way to peddle your new product to the old folks at home and make em like it. The phrase was first used by a poetdisguised in the cynical hide of a newspaper reporter. It appeared on the first day and was widely reprinted. He wrote:quotAt eight oclock after the Sun has set and the sky is darkening look up Theres a man up there where no man has ever been.quotHe is lost in the cave of night…quotThe headlines demanded something short vigorous and descriptive. That was it. It was inaccurate but it stuck.If anybody was in a cave it was the rest of humanity. Painfully triumphantly one man had climbed out. Now he couldnt find his wayback into the cave with the rest of us. What goes up doesnt always come back down.That was the first day. After it came twenty-nine days of agonized suspense. The cave of night. I wish the phrase had been mine.That was it the tag the symbol. It was the first thing a man saw when he glanced at the newspaper. It was the way people talked aboutit: quotWhats the latest about the cavequot It summed it all up the drama the anxiety the hope.Maybe it was the Floyd Collins influence. The papers dug up their files on that old tragedy reminiscing com-paring and theyremembered |
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