The Fun They had Isaac Asimov

The Fun They Had

Isaac Asimov

Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2157, she wrote, "Today, Tommy found a real book!"

It was a very old book. Margie's grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.

They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to--on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.

"Gee," said Tommy, "what a waste. When you're through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and it's good for plenty more. I wouldn't throw it away."

"Same with mine," said Margie. She was eleven and hadn't seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. He was thirteen. She said, "Where did you find it?"

"In my house." He pointed without looking, because he was busy reading. "In the attic." "What's it about?" "School."

Margie was scornful. "School? What's there to write about school? I hate school."

Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her head sorrowfully and sent for the County Inspector.

He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools with dials and wires. He smiled at Margie and gave her an apple, then took the teacher apart. Margie had hoped he wouldn't know how to put it together again, but he knew how all right, and, after an hour or so, there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a big screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked. That wasn't so bad. The part Margie hated most was the slot where she had to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a punch code they made her learn when she was six years old, and the mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.

The Inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted Margie's head. He said to her mother, "It's not the little girl's fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I've slowed it up to an average ten-year level. Actually, the over-all pattern of her progress is quite satisfactory." And he parted Margie's head again.

Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the teacher away altogether. They had once taken Tommy's teacher away for nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely.

So she said to Tommy, "Why would anyone write about school?"

Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes. "Because it's not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had hundreds and hundreds of years ago." He added loftily, pronouncing the word carefully, "Centuries ago."

Margie was hurt. "Well, I don't know what kind of school they had all that time ago." She read the book over his shoulder for a while, then said, "Anyway, they had a teacher."

"Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn't a regular teacher. It was a man." "A man? How could a man be a teacher?" "Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them questions." "A man isn't smart enough." "Sure he is. My father knows as much as my teacher." "He can't. A man can't know as much as a teacher." "He knows almost as much, I betcha."

Margie wasn't prepared to dispute that. She said, "1 wouldn't want a strange man in my house to teach me."

Tommy screamed with laughter. "You don't know much, Margie. The teachers didn't live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there." "And all the kids learned the same thing?" "Sure, if they were the same age."

"But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently."

"Just the same they didn't do it that way then. If you don't like it, you don't have to read the book."

"I didn't say I didn't like it," Margie said quickly. She wanted to read about those funny schools.

They weren't even half-finished when Margie's mother called, "Margie! School!" Margie looked up. "Not yet, Mamma."

"Now!" said Mrs. Jones. "And it's probably time for Tommy, too."

Margie said to Tommy, "Can I read the book some more with you after school?"

"Maybe," he said nonchalantly. He walked away whistling, the dusty old book tucked beneath his arm.

Margie went into the schoolroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.

The screen was lit up, and it said: "Today's arithmetic lesson is on the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday's homework in the proper slot."

Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather's grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the homework and talk about it.

And the teachers were people...

The mechanical teacher was flashing on the screen: "When we add the fractions 1/2 and 1/4..."

Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.

Written in 1951 for a syndicated newspaper page, 'The Fun They Had' was later published in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

Summary: The Fun They Had by Isaac Asimov is a story where Tommy finds a book and together with Margie, they compare and contrast their present school with school from the past

Characters:

    Margie Jones - 11 year old who's fascinated by the book on school that was printed on paper

    Tommy - 13 year old who finds the book about the "old kind of school"

    County Inspector - evaluates, adjusts and fixes "mechanical teachers"

    Mrs. Jones - Margie's mother

The way up to Heaven by Roald Dahl

To view Roald Dahl' s officilal site click HERE

Mrs. Foster has a pathological fear of being late. Whenever she is in danger of missing a train or plane or an engagement, a tiny muscle near her eye begins to twitch. The worst part is that her husband, Mr. Eugene Foster, seems to torment her by making sure that they always leave the house one or two minutes past the point of safety. On this particular occasion Mrs. Foster is leaving to visit her daughter and grandchildren in Paris for the first time ever, and she's frantic to think that she'll miss her flight. By the time her husband finally joins her at the car, she's too far behind schedule. Luckily the flight is postponed til the next day, and Mr. Foster persuades her to come home for the night. When she's ready to leave the next day, though, her husband suggests that they drop him off at his club on the way. Knowing this will make her late, she protests in vain. Just before the car leaves, he runs back in the house on the pretense of picking up a gift he forgot for his daughter. While he's gone Mrs. Foster discovers the gift box shoved down between the seat cushions. She runs up to the house to tell him that she has the gift... and suddenly she pauses. She listens. She stays frozen for 10 seconds, straining to hear something. Then she turns and runs to the car, telling the driver that they're too late and her husband will have to find another ride. She makes her flight and has a wonderful visit with her grandchildren. She writes her husband every week and sends him a telegram before she flies home six weeks later. He's not at the airport to meet her though, and when she enters the house (after taking a taxi home) she notices a curious odor in the air. Satisfied, she enters her husband's study and calls the elevator repairman. It had jammed and she left him to die there!

Comprehension Questions

1. Setting
The story takes place in New York in the 1950 or 1960. Mr and Mrs Foster lived in a large six storey house with a lift in New York City, on East Sixty-secod street. It is a gloomy place. They have four servants and a butler because they were very wealthy.

2. Describe Mrs. Foster:
She has a phobia, she is afraid  of  being late. She used to arrive an hour beforehand everywhere. She is a lovely  wife who always takes care of her husband but at the end she behaves badly. Finally,we think she has a selfish attitude although she is patient she isn't at all reliable.
*organized
*impatienet
*anxious
*kind
*sensitive
*obsesive
*phobic

3.- Describe Mr. Foster:
Mr. Foster is considererate with his wife and he has good maners. He never wants to increase her wife's misery.  He always thinks that her husband is guilty.
Mr. Foster is nearly seventy years old and lives with his wife. Mr. Foster has a social life but the couple relationship is really bad.
He'san elegant man and he is the member of a distinguished men´s club.
*cold

*mean

4- How is their relationship?
Mr and Mrs. Foster are the typical American coupleof the sixties. They have a stereotypical relation. They don't love each other but they get on well for the society. They have been married for about thirtty years in which she has been the typical good wife. She has an obsessive behaviour which irritates her husband so much. When he has the opportunity he makes her suffer keeping her waiting unnecessarily

The Flying Machine - Ray Bradbury

In the year A.D. 400, the Emperor Yuan held his throne by the Great Wall of China, and the land was green with rain, readying itself toward the harvest, at peace, the people in his dominion neither too happy nor too sad. Early on the morning of the first day of the first week of the second month of the new year, the Emperor Yuan was sipping tea and fanning himself against a warm breeze when a servant ran across the scarlet and blue garden tiles, calling, "Oh, Emperor, Emperor, a miracle!" "Yes," said the Emperor, "the air is sweet this morning." "No, no, a miracle!" said the servant, bowing quickly. "And this tea is good in my mouth, surely that is a miracle." "No, no, Your Excellency." "Let me guess then - the sun has risen and a new day is upon us. Or the sea is blue. That now is the finest of all miracles." "Excellency, a man is flying!" "What?" The Emperor stopped his fan. "I saw him in the air, a man flying with wings. I heard a Voice call out of the sky, and when I looked up, there he was, a dragon in the heavens with a man in its mouth, a dragon of paper and bamboo, coloured like the sun and the grass." "It is early," said the Emperor, "and you have just wakened from a dream." "It is early, but I have seen what I have seen! Come, and you will see it too." "Sit down with me here," said the Emperor. "Drink some tea. It must be a strange thing, if it is true, to see a man fly. You must have time to think of it, even as I must have time to prepare myself for the sight." They drank tea. "Please," said the servant at last, "or he will be gone." The Emperor rose thoughtfully. "Now you may show me what you have seen." They walked into a garden, across a meadow of grass, over a small bridge, through a grove of trees, and up a tiny hill. "There!" said the servant. The Emperor looked into the sky. And in the sky, laughing so high that you could hardly hear him laugh, was a man; and the man was clothed in bright papers and reeds to make wings and a beautiful yellow tail, and he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a universe of birds, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons. The man called down to them from high in the cool winds of morning. "I fly, I fly!" The servant waved to him. "Yes,yes!" The Emperor Yuan did not move. Instead he looked at the Great Wall of China now taking shape out of the farthest mist in the green hills, that splendid snake of stones which writhed with majesty across the entire land. That wonderful wall which had protected them for a timeless time from enemy hordes and preserved peace for years without number. He saw the town, nestled to itself by a river and a road and a hill, beginning to waken. "Tell me," he said to his servant, "has anyone else seen this flying man?" "I am the only one, Excellency," said the servant, smiling at the sky, waving. The Emperor watched the heavens another minute and then said, "Call him down to me." "Ho, come down, come down! The Emperor wishes to see you!" called the servant, hands cupped to his shouting mouth. The Emperor glanced in all directions while the flying man soared down the morning wind. He saw a farmer, early in his fields, watchihg the sky, and he noted where the farmer stood. The flying man alit with a rustle of paper and a creak of bamboo reeds. He came proudly to the Emperor, clumsy in his rig, at last bowing before the old man. "What have you done?" demanded the Emperor. "I have flown in the sky, Your Excellency," replied the man. "What have you done?" said the Emperor again. "I have just told you!" cried the flier. "You have told me nothing at all." The Emperor reached out a thin hand to touch the pretty paper and the birdlike keel of the apparatus. It smelled cool, of the wind. "Is it not beautiful, Excellency?" "Yes, too beautiful." "It is the only one in the world!" smiled the man. "And I am the inventor." "The only one in the world?" "I swear it!" "Who else knows of this?" "No one. Not even my wife, who would think me mad with the son. She thought I was making a kite. I rose in the night and walked to the cliffs far away. And when the morning breezes blew and the sun rose, I gathered my courage, Excellency, and leaped from the cliff. I flew! But my wife does not know of it." "Well for her, then," said the Emperor. "Come along." They walked back to the great house. The sun was full in the sky now, and the smell of the grass was refreshing. The Emperor, the servant, and the flier paused within the huge garden. The Emperor clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!" The guards came running. "Hold this man." The guards seized the flier. "Call the executioner," said the Emperor. "What's this!" cried the flier, bewildered. "What have I done?" He began to weep, so that the beautiful paper apparatus rustled. "Here is the man who has made a certain machine," said the Emperor, "and yet asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only necessary that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this thing will do." The executioner came running with a sharp silver ax. He stood with his naked, large-muscled arms ready, his face covered with a serene white mask. "One moment," said the Emperor. He turned to a nearby table upon which sat a machine that he himself had created. The Emperor took a tiny golden key from his own neck. He fitted his key to the tiny, delicate machine and wound it up. Then he set the machine going. The machine was a garden of metal and jewels. Set in motion, the birds sangs in tiny metal trees, wolves walked through miniature forests, and tiny people ran in and out of sun and shadow, fanning themselves with miniature fans, listening to tiny emerald birds, and standing by impossibly small but tinkling fountains. "Is It not beautiful?" said the Emperor. "If you asked me what I have done here, I could answer you well. I have made birds sing, I have made forests murmur, I have set people to walking in this woodland, enjoying the leaves and shadows and songs. That is what I have done." "But, oh, Emperor!" pleaded the flier, on his knees, the tears pouring down his face. "I have done a similar thing! I have found beauty. I have flown on the morning wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses and gardens. I have smelled the sea and even seen it, beyond the hills, from my high place. And I have soared like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky, with the wind about me, the wind blowing me here like a feather, there like a fan, the way the sky smells in the morning! And how free one feels! That is beautiful, Emperor, that is beautiful too!" "Yes," said the Emperor sadly, "I know it must be true. For I felt my heart move with you in the air and I wondered: What is it like? How does it feel? How do the distant pools look from so high? And how my houses and servants? Like ants? And how the distant towns not yet awake?" "Then spare me!" "But there are times," said the Emperor, more sadly still, "when one must lose a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already has. I do not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man." "What man?" "Some other man who, seeing you, will build a thing of bright papers and bamboo like this. But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart, and the beauty will be gone. It is this man I fear." "Why? Why?" "Who is to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of paper and reed, might not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great Wall of China?" said the Emperor. No one moved or said a word. "Off with his head," said the Emperor. The executioner whirled his silver ax. "Burn the kite and the inventor's body and bury their ashes together," said the Emperor. The servants retreated to obey. The Emperor turned to his hand-servant, who had seen the man flying. "Hold your tongue. It was all a dream, a most sorrowful and beautiful dream. And that farmer in the distant field who also saw, tell him it would pay him to consider it only a vision. If ever the word passes around, you and the farmer die within the hour." "You are merciful, Emperor." "No, not merciful," said the old man. Beyond the garden wall he saw the guards burning the beautiful machine of paper and reeds that smelled of the morning wind. He saw he dark smoke climb into the sky. "No, only very much bewildered and afraid." He saw the guards digging a tiny pit wherein to bury the ashes. "What is the life of one man against those of a million others? I must take solace from that thought." He took the key from its chain about his neck and once more wound up the beautiful miniature garden. He stood looking out across the land at the Great Wall, the peaceful town, the green fields, the rivers and streams. He sighed. The tiny garden whirred its hidden and delicate machinery and set itself in motion; tiny people walked in forests, tiny faces loped through sun-speckled glades in beautiful shining pelts, and among the tiny trees flew little bits of high song and bright blue and yellow colour, flying, flying, flying in that small sky. "Oh," said the Emperor, closing his eyes, "look at the birds, look at the birds!"

Roald Dahl

Short Stories

"The Way Up to Heaven"

ROALD DAHL - Biography


Roald Dahl (English pronunciation: /ˈroʊ.ɑːl ˈdɑːl/[2], Norwegian: [ˈɾuːɑl dɑl]; 13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

Born in Llandaff, Wales, to Norwegian parents, Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often very dark humour.

Some of his more well-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

"The Way Up to Heaven"

Plot/Description

Mrs. Foster has a pathological fear of being late. Whenever she is in danger of missing a train or plane or an engagement, a tiny muscle near her eye begins to twitch. The worst part is that her husband, Mr. Eugene Foster, seems to torment her by making sure that they always leave the house one or two minutes past the point of safety. On this particular occasion Mrs. Foster is leaving to visit her daughter and grandchildren in Paris for the first time ever, and she's frantic to think that she'll miss her flight. By the time her husband finally joins her at the car, she's too far behind schedule. Luckily the flight is postponed til the next day, and Mr. Foster persuades her to come home for the night. When she's ready to leave the next day, though, her husband suggests that they drop him off at his club on the way. Knowing this will make her late, she protests in vain. Just before the car leaves, he runs back in the house on the pretense of picking up a gift he forgot for his daughter. While he's gone Mrs. Foster discovers the gift box shoved down between the seat cushions. She runs up to the house to tell him that she has the gift... and suddenly she pauses. She listens. She stays frozen for 10 seconds, straining to hear something. Then she turns and runs to the car, telling the driver that they're too late and her husband will have to find another ride. She makes her flight and has a wonderful visit with her grandchildren. She writes her husband every week and sends him a telegram before she flies home six weeks later. He's not at the airport to meet her though, and when she enters the house (after taking a taxi home) she notices a curious odor in the air. Satisfied, she enters her husband's study and calls the elevator repairman. It had jammed and she left him to die there!

Classroom Activities
Vocabulary Work
1. List 10 words from the story which describe Mrs Foster as being either nervous or afraid.

2. Find one word in the story which means the same as:

a. unhappy, disappointed
b. very tired
c. find out about something
d. an odd habit or tendency
e. for a short time

Comprehension

1. Why is Mrs Foster upset with her husband at the beginning of the story?

2. How did her husband make her anxious the following morning?

3. What crucial decision did she finally make?

4. What were Mrs Foster's feelings at the end of the story?

Discussion Points
1. Was Mrs Foster right to want to live in Paris? Should husbands and wives always go away together?

2. Do you sympathise or not with Mrs Foster? Do you think she should go to prison? Do you understand why she let her husband die?

Writing

1. Write a short letter (100 words) from Mrs Foster to her daughter in Paris. Describe what happened when she returned home and describe her plans for the future.

Review
1. Is the ending to the story predictable or unpredictable? Give reasons.

The Way Up to Heaven

STUDENTS' VIEW
Description of characters

Mr. Foster
He is an old man, nearly seventy years old.
He tries to control his wife all the time. He is mean, because he usually makes things to provoke her phobias.
He is a selfish man, he is only interested in himself.
He seems to enjoy her wife’s phobias.
He seems to enjoy when his wife suffers from her phobias.
He does not love his daughter much. He does not to see her. He is a typical man of the nineteen fiftieths.

Mrs. Foster has a pathological fear of missing a train, a plane, a boat… although she is not a particularly nervous woman. That fear makes her twitch the corner of her left eye, for an hour, even the plane has been safely caught.
She has been married for over 30 years and even she has been a good and loving wife (she has served her husband loyally and well), her husband controls her - although she has refused to let her believe that Mr. Foster would ever consciously torment her.
With this trip to Paris, one part of her realizes that her husband manipulates her, and it makes her move on in the way that she continues with something that she really wants (to know her grandchildren) even her husband doesn’t like it. So, in one way she makes herself free.
On the other hand, we think she is used to that kind of life, and maybe she needs that her husband treats her in that way. And that’s why she still remembers her husband and writes to him.
The death of her husband is a relief to her, because that liberates her from the manipulation of Mr. Foster. However, we also have a few questions: If she hasn’t gone in the car, maybe Mr. Foster would be alive by now? In that case, she is his murderess? Has she killed him consciously? In her desire to be free, does she sees an opportunity that she might not have anymore?


They are an old couple.
Mrs. Foster is a poor woman who's been taken to extremes by her mean husband.
Mr. Foster is authoritative with her. The woman, probably, had been educated like that.
He seems to enjoy watching his wife suffer, especially in the later years of their married life.
For over thirty years, she has served him loyally and well.
They are tired of each other. He is irritated by her foolishness. She is tired by his authoritative manners and the life she's had with her husband.