In the Jag-Whiffing Service

by David R. Bunch

Famous and Classic Science Fiction NovelThe jag-stuff in those black rings waswonderful, but why did they have to packageit with so many extra accessories?

19 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 21, 2019

About the author

David Roosevelt Bunch (1920–2000) was born in rural western Missouri. After serving as an army corporal during World War II, he worked toward a PhD in English literature at Washington University in St. Louis and then transferred to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied for two years before dropping out. He married Phyllis Flette in 1951 and they had two daughters, Phyllis and Velma. While working as a cartographer for the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis, he began publishing stories in sciencefiction magazines, two of which were included in Harlan Ellison’s landmark 1967 sci-fi anthology, Dangerous Visions. In 1971, Bunch published Moderan, a collection of stories set on a future earth devastated by war and environmental exploitation. In 1973, he retired from cartography to pursue writing full-time. A poetry chapbook, We Have a Nervous Job, followed in 1983, and Bunch! (1993), another book of short stories, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Bunch’s last book, the poetry collection The Heartacher and the Warehouseman, came out in April 2000. He died of a heart attack the following month. In 1965 he told Amazing Stories, “I’m not in this business primarily to describe or explain or entertain. I’m here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow.”

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much for Alien Contact…

Drug pushers from outer space if there ever was one. Giving Earthits some jag whiff is like pushing cosmic cocaine for fun and profit. Now the aliens were in trouble when they realized they’ve been played. It’s a fun story. Wished more David Bunch were back in print. Still recommended.