Old Rambling House
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"Old Rambling House" is a short story by American science fiction author
Frank Herbert Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920February 11, 1986) was an American science fiction author best known for the 1965 novel '' Dune'' and its five sequels. Though he became famous for his novels, he also wrote short stories and worked a ...
which first appeared in
Galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...
magazine in 1958 and later in Herbert's 1985 short story collection '' The Worlds of Frank Herbert''. It features a
dystopia A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
n multiverse in which no hope of freedom is left, which is atypical for Herbert's works.


Plot

Having decided to leave their old life behind and to settle down to raise their child, Ted and Martha Graham put their trailer house on sale. Over a phone call they are offered a house in exchange for their trailer, and are shortly after lead to the tour of the house by its owners Clint and Raimee Rush. Although suspicious of the deal, as the house is worth several times more and of the Rushes themselves who claim to be foreigners ( Basque), they still decide to go forward with the deal. As soon as they said yes, the Rushes disappeared and a strange man entered their new home informing them that they are now under the Rojac sovereignty. Rushes, aliens from another planet, have cleverly realized that the only way to be free from Rojac is to find willing substitutes for their position in the sovereignty, a position of taxcollectors in a house that travels around galaxies. However, because of Martha's pregnancy, they realize that the child did not agree to the exchange. They are compelled to contact the Rojac, realizing that this will bring Earth, a world yet unknown to them under Rojac's domain.


Publication history

* ''Galaxy'' magazine, Volume 15 No. 6, April 1958. *Herbert, Frank. '' The Worlds of Frank Herbert'', London: New English Library, 1970. *Herbert, Frank. ''The Priests of Psi and Other Stories'', London, Gollancz, 1980.


External links

* * Text a
Project Gutenberg
{{FrankHerbert 1965 short stories Short stories by Frank Herbert Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction