Allamagoosa

Allamagoosa is the Hugo Award -winning science fiction short story by Eric Frank Russell. Russell describes in people's weaknesses and the weaknesses of systems.

Publications

Allamagoosa was first published in March 1955 in the science fiction magazine Astounding and awarded in the same year with the Hugo Award for best short story. Later, she was part of many anthologies, such as Isaac Asimov's The Hugo Award Winners ( 1962) and Starships: Stories Beyond the Boundaries of the Universe ( 1995) or Out of this World (1972). She is now freely available on the World Wide Web.

Name

The word Allamagoosa can be translated roughly as " thing ". An extremely important -sounding thing from which no one knows what it is and what it does.

Action

A space ship in the fleet needs to prepare for an inspection. The crew of the ship is not thrilled, especially when they realize that them a " Ofund " is missing. In order not to have to explain where he's disappeared to, and because they have no idea what a Ofund should be because ( so claims the cook that a Ofund definitely not a kitchen appliance is ), they quickly decide to build a flashing dummy to the inspector to deceive, who also does not know what it should be.

The inspection proceeds to the satisfaction. To explain the loss of the " Ofund " before one starts the next port ( there is suspected that there are experts ) writes to report the loss and claims that the Ofund due to a gravity anomaly has malfunctioned and broke. A little later breaks the fleet command of panic and you can stop all ships. Out comes the urgent request, to explain what is meant so that the " Official Dog" ( Ofund was the pressure error for off. Dog ) had suffered a malfunction. The team, including captain is at the end than in larger difficulties and needs explanation before.

See also

Distant stars, The Offund