"MUgwump Four"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1959
ID: 764
Publication history:
- ????: LHomme Descend du Songe, Omnibus Mass market paperback, in French as Le coup de tlphone
- 1959: Galaxy August 1959, Magazine
- 1969: The Calibrated Alligator and Other Science Fiction Stories, Holt Rinehart Winston Hard cover book
- 1970: The Cube Root of Uncertainty, Macmillan Hard cover book
- 1971: The Cube Root of Uncertainty, Signet Mass market paperback, 239 pp.
- 1973: Other Dimensions, Hawthorne Hard cover book
- 1977: Trips in Time, Thomas Nelson Hard cover book
- 1979: Le livre d'or de la science-fiction: Robert Silverberg, Pocket Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-266-00597-9, 448 pp., in French as Le coup du tlphone
- 1988: Voir l'invisible, Pocket Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-266-02713-1, 448 pp., in French as Le coup du tlphone
- 1996: Chute dans le réel, Omnibus Hard cover book, ISBN 2258040590, 1070 pp., in French as Le coup du tlphone
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
This is one of those boy-did-I-get-a-wrong-number stories. An average Joe from 1959 accidentally gets connected to the switchboard of a mutant group planning to take over the world. They decide he's dangerous and knows too much, so they pop him into their time machine. In the future he finds himself surrounded by mutants (who now rule the world). They assume he's a spy, so they pop him into their machine...
Maybe I should explain that in the early days of telephones, the familiar seven-digit numbers used in the United States were organized into , where the first two digits were given a mnemonic word; the first two letters corresponded to those numbers, and were generally capitalized. These exchanges were assigned geographically, so a small town might fall in the EXbrook exchange, and all the numbers in the town would start with 39.