Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot

Between 1955 and 1992, Reginald Bretnor wrote 122 very short sci-fi stories about Ferdinand Feghoot, who travels through space and time solving interplanetary problems. Each story is an elaborate setup for an awesome/awful pun. They became a thing: “A feghoot … is a humorous short story or vignette ending in a pun (typically a play on a well-known phrase), where the story contains sufficient context to recognize the punning humor.” (Wikipedia)

They’ve been out of print for 30 years, and copies of the 1992 Pulphouse collected edition are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. On December 10, they’ll be back in print in a deluxe edition featuring Tim Kirk’s illustrations from the 1992 edition as well as new illustrations by Eric Raglin, Betty Rocksteady, Lor Gislason, Jacob Blanchet, Bonnie Hockin, Bert SG, and others.

“I loved the Feghoots and wish I could do a blurb for you. But I decided a few years ago to go out of the blurb business, on the grounds that if I said yes to one publisher, I’d have no good reason for refusing another, and then there would be no end to it. Sorry.” —Science Fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg