The Lost Kafoozalum

Her third story for Campbell was The Lost Kafoozalum, again under the name Pauline Ashwell, published in the October 1960 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction (the new name of Astounding). This story was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. Though she lost to Poul Anderson's The Longest Voyage, Richard A. Lupoff included her story in his series What If? Stories That Should Have Won The Hugo as one of three stories by women who debuted in the 1950s that he thought should have won those awards. I remember some bad times, most of them back home on Excenus 23; the worst was when Dad fell under the reaping machine but there was also the one when I got lost twenty miles from home with a dud radio, at the age of twelve; and the one when Uncle Charlie caught me practicing emergency turns in a helicar round the main weather-maker; and the one on Figuerra being chased by a cyber-crane; and the time when Dad decided to send me to Earth to do my Education. This time is bad in a different way, with no sharp edges but a kind of a desolation.