Feghoot
Encyclopedia
A story pun is a humorous short story or vignette
ending in an atrocious pun
(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.
pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by Reginald Bretnor
under the anagram
matic pseudonym
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 Fiction
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 Magazine
, and later in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
, Amazing Stories
, 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 Publishing
.
Many of the ideas and puns for Bretnor's stories were contributed by others, including F. M. Busby
and E. Nelson Bridwell
. Other authors have published Feghoots written on their own, including Isaac Asimov
(who wrote a story that ended "A niche in time saves Stein") and John Brunner
. There have been numerous fan-produced
stories as well.
and Chapman
.
The Mr. Peabody's Improbable History
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 Garrett
), 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 Rainbow
.
The Callahan's Bar
series by Spider Robinson
uses "some of the worst puns known to man.... building up to the anticipated pun with skill and flair."
Isaac Asimov
used the song Give My Regards to Broadway
to form an elaborate story pun in his short story
"Death of a Foy"
.
Arthur C. Clarke
's short story "Neutron Tide
" culminates with a pun.
One version of the story of Little Bunny Foo Foo
is a feghoot.
Each episode of the long-running BBC
radio panel game My Word!
ended with extemporaneous feghoots from Frank Muir
and Denis Norden
.
Vignette (literature)
In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
ending in an atrocious pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
(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
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by Reginald Bretnor
Reginald Bretnor
Reginald Bretnor was a science fiction author who flourished between the 1950s and 1980s. Most of his fiction was in short story form, and usually featured a whimsical story line or ironic plot twist...
under the anagram
Anagram
An 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, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
matic pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
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 Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The 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 Publications, 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 Magazine
Venture Science Fiction Magazine
Venture Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, first 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 Magazine
Asimov's Science Fiction
Asimov'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 Stories
Amazing Stories
Amazing 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 Publishing
Pulphouse Publishing
Pulphouse 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. Busby
F. M. Busby
Francis 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 Bridwell
E. Nelson Bridwell
Edward 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 other comics...
. Other authors have published Feghoots written on their own, including Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
(who wrote a story that ended "A niche in time saves Stein") and John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John 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-produced
Fan fiction
Fan 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
Myles na gCopaleen's column Cruiskeen Lawn in the Irish Times regularly featured feghoots, generally recounted as episodes in the lives of (fictionalised versions of) KeatsJohn Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
and Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
.
The Mr. Peabody's Improbable History
Mister Peabody
Mr. 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 produced by Jay Ward, collectively referred to as Rocky and Bullwinkle...
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 Garrett
Randall Garrett
Randall 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 Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity'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 Bar
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
In 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 Robinson
Spider Robinson
Spider 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 Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
used the song Give My Regards to Broadway
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 story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Death of a Foy"
The Winds of Change and Other Stories
The Winds of Change and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1983 by Doubleday.-Contents:*"About Nothing" *"A Perfect Fit" *"Belief" *"Death of a Foy"...
.
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
's short story "Neutron Tide
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.
One version of the story of Little Bunny Foo Foo
Little Bunny Foo Foo
Little Bunny Foo Foo is a children's poem, involving a rabbit harassing a population of field mice. The rabbit is scolded and eventually punished by a fairy. Like many traditional folk songs, there are multiple versions with differing variations. It is also known under the alternative name Little...
is a feghoot.
Each episode of the long-running BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio panel game My Word!
My Word!
My Word! was a long-running radio panel game broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service and Radio 4 . It was created by Edward J. Mason and Tony Shryane, and featured comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, famous in Britain for the series Take It From Here...
ended with extemporaneous feghoots from Frank Muir
Frank Muir
Frank Herbert Muir was an English comedy writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. His writing and performing partnership with Denis Norden endured for most of their careers. Together they wrote BBC radio's Take It From Here for over 10 years, and then appeared on BBC radio...
and Denis Norden
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden CBE is a former English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during World War II. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It from Here with Frank Muir...
.