Obviously there's no place on Lunar Base Three for a live cow

August 31, 2019 8:28 AM

"I despise this synthetic milk. How can I get some real fresh milk? And the answer came: the only place you can get fresh milk from is a cow." "A cow? On the moon?" "Why not, I said to myself — why not build a cow?" Hi Diddle Diddle: an entertaining short story by Robert Silverberg (writing as Calvin M. Knox) in Astounding Science Fiction, 1959. Scanned images or plain text (search for "knox" to scroll down to this story).
posted by moonmilk (12 comments total)

Really? It’s been more than an hour, are we not doing “eponysterical” anymore??
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:50 AM on August 31, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure “eponysterical” would be appropriate here. For this post we need something like eponysterical². Have some more moon milk and a milk moon.
posted by Rob Rockets at 10:16 AM on August 31, 2019

Not just eponysterical but PostYourAnimalysterical
posted by moonmilk at 10:16 AM on August 31, 2019 [5 favorites]

Oh... I somehow totally missed PostYourAnimal. Off to figure out what bear post still needs posting.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:20 AM on August 31, 2019 [4 favorites]

I read this because Robert Silverberg is one of my favourite writers and Dying Inside is one of my favourite novels.
posted by night_train at 11:09 AM on August 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

Silverberg is one of my favorite SF writers of his era. He did so many really interesting explorations of society in his novels. To Live Again, Up The Line and Tower Of Glass were monumental in my exploration of SF back in my teens and early 20s.
posted by hippybear at 11:15 AM on August 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

Off to figure out what bear post still needs posting.

Oh, this might lead to complications.
posted by hippybear at 11:53 AM on August 31, 2019 [5 favorites]

I’ve read and watched my share of feminist body horror stories but a half-dozen men growing an udder for their personal nourishment takes the cake. :)
posted by ejs at 12:08 PM on August 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

What the?
posted by sneebler at 6:01 PM on August 31, 2019

I've got this story in an anthology somewhere around here, but I haven't read it in many years. Thanks for the refresher, moonmilk.

"A science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, that would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
– Theodore Sturgeon

Also, a note to sneebler.
posted by bryon at 9:13 PM on August 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

And a further note to Sneebler, because I was mixing up my movies.
posted by bryon at 4:16 AM on September 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

So I just spent 20 minutes converting this to an epub and cleaning it up and guess what? It's available in epub from the source amongst other formats.
posted by Mitheral at 10:34 PM on September 14, 2019