“Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!” by John T. Sladek as published in The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF
Quotes:
"Professor, are you absolutely sure ontogeny doesn't recapitulate phylogeny?"
I waited for the professor in a bland anteroom. The only unusual note was a large framed photo on the wall. It showed ants eating a red rose. The title, I saw, was "Paths Untaken."
Synopsis:
A man, presumably a reporter of some sort, is interviewing a creationist scientist who has set up an institute to debunk evolution. After meeting the professor the reporter sits in on a class where the professor shares several anecdotes intended to disprove evolution and show it to be a hoax. He also shares the life event that caused him to see through the hoax of evolution.
That event was him getting hit by a car that resulted in sufficient brain damage to cause him to have multiple hallucinations. After the class is over the reporter speaks privately with the professor about the professors plans for the future and he showed the reporter a project the institute was working on to prove the story of Noah's Ark.
The story ends with the reporter reminiscing about the Snopes trial. In the alternative history of the story it was not a trial about the teaching of evolution, but the criminal prosecution of a monkey names Snopes who possesed an opposable thumb, which was a blasphemous imitation of the human hand.
Thoughts:
This story is a comedy, but I didn't laugh once. Not now, and not many, many, moons ago when I was a callow agnostic youth who had never even thought to question evolution at that point and read it for the first time. There are many things I could say about the story, but that's the most important. As a comedy story it failed at it's most basic function, and it failed with a very sympathetic audience.
My reception of the story has not improved with age. The most interesting thing about the story is the second quote I put up. Unfortunately it never goes anywhere. And the first quote is a question that a student asks the professor and the way it's used is to imply it's a criticism of his anti-evolution philosophy that he can't answer. But it's based on an idea that had been debunked decades before the story was published! So it only works as the author intended if the reader is ignorant of science.
This is the only story of Sladek's that I've ever read, so I don't want to draw any sweeping generalizations about his writing from it, but I do have to say it certainly hasn't made me eager to go out and read any of his other works.
