“Once upon a time in a little town there lived two night-soil men — father and son. There weren’t any sewers there, only pits full of slurry. And they scooped that shit out with a bucket and poured it into their barrel, and what’s more, the father, as the more experienced specialist, went down into the pit, and the son handed the bucket down to him from above. Then one day the son lost his grip on the bucket and dumped it back on his old man. Well, his old man wiped himself down, looked up at him, and said bitterly, ‘You’re a total screwup, a real lunkhead. No good for anything. You’ll be stuck up there your whole life.'”
–“Andrei” in The Doomed City, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
(This “lost novel” appeared for the first time in English last year. Expect a review shortly.)
Sharp and Pointed 