In Competition no. 2496 you were invited to submit a short story whose final line is ‘Sir, when I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’
The challenge was to make this extract — from a passage in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson about the Doctor’s beloved cat Hodge — follow on convincingly from the rest of the story rather than appearing to be tacked awkwardly on to the end. The standard was disappointing; a lot of entries stormed along promisingly only to falter badly at the final hurdle. Liz Childs played a blinder, though, and is a worthy recipient of the bonus fiver. I’m reliably informed that her story is packed with in-jokes for physicists. The other prizewinners, printed below, get £30 each.
‘Quantum mechanics? Bah!’ said Einstein. ‘I can’t believe God shoots craps, Erwin.’ ‘Courage, Albert,’ I consoled him. ‘I shall conduct a thought experiment that ridicules this fatuous theory.’
‘O fickle fortune.
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