（外文电子版资料）Bester, Alfred - The Flowered Thundermug.pdfVIP

Alfred Bester. The Flowered Thundermug We will conclude this first semester of Antiquities 107, Professor Paul Muni said, with a reconstruction of an average day in the life of a mid- twentieth-century inhabitant of the United States of America, as Great L.A. was known five hundred years ago. Let us refer to him as Jukes, one of the proudest names of the times, immortalized in the Kallikak-Jukes-feud sagas. It is now generally agreed that the mysterious code letters JU, found in the directories of Hollywood East, or New York City as it was called then--viz., JU 6-0600 or JU 2-1914--indicate in some manner a genealogical relationship to the powerful Jukes dynasty. The year is 1950. Mr. Jukes, a typical `loner--i.e., `bachelor--lives on a small ranch outside New York. He rises at dawn, dresses in spurred boots, Daks slacks, rawhide shirt, gray flannel waistcoat and black knit tie. He arms himself with a Police Positive revolver or a Frontier Six Shooter and goes out to the Bar-B-Q to prepare his breakfast of curried plankton or converted algae. He may or may not surprise juvenile delinquents or red Indians on his ranch in the act of lynching a victim or rustling his automobiles, of which he has a herd of perhaps one hundred and fifty. These hooligans he disperses after single combat with his fists. Like all twentieth-century Americans, Jukes is a brute of fantastic strength, giving and receiving sledgehammer blows, or being battered by articles of furniture with inexhaustible resilience. He rarely uses his gun on such occasions; it is usually reserved for ceremonial rituals. Mr. Jukes journeys to his job in New York City on horseback; in a sports car (a kind of open automobile), or on an electric trolley car. He reads his morning newspaper, which will feature such stories as: `The Discovery of the North Pole, `The Sinking of the Luxury Liner Titanic, `The Su