Pâté de Foie Gras (short story) facts for kids

Pâté de Foie Gras is a science fiction short story written by the famous American author Isaac Asimov. It was first published in 1956 in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction.

This story is a funny, pretend scientific article. It's like a modern update of an old fable by Aesop called "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs".

The Story's Plot

The story begins with an employee from the United States Department of Agriculture. This person tells about an amazing discovery on a farm in Texas. They found a goose that lays eggs made of pure gold!

The Golden Goose Mystery

Scientists from the U.S. government and universities quickly started studying this special goose. While the golden eggs were very valuable, figuring out how the goose made gold was even more important.

They soon learned something incredible. The goose uses a special natural process to change a type of oxygen (called oxygen-18) into gold. This process also creates energy, but the goose isn't harmed at all.

A Super Goose

The scientists discovered that the goose is completely safe from all kinds of radioactivity. It can even change dangerous radioactive materials into safe, stable ones. One researcher excitedly said the goose was "the perfect defense against the atomic age".

Imagine if we could use this goose's ability on a large scale! It could help clean up nuclear waste and protect people from dangerous radioactive dust. It might even be possible to change the goose's process to create any element we need.

The Big Problem

However, the goose presented a big challenge. The scientists tried taking a small sample of its liver, but they couldn't learn enough. To truly understand how it worked, they would need to study a whole liver or even baby geese. But there was only one goose!

Also, the goose couldn't have babies because the large amount of gold in its eggs was making it sick. It was like a heavy-metal poisoning.

So, the narrator decided to ask for help. They contacted Isaac Asimov, who was not only a great writer but also a biochemist (a scientist who studies living things and chemicals). Asimov had written other popular "spoof" articles, so they hoped he could write about the goose and ask readers of Astounding magazine for their ideas to solve the mystery.

The Solution to the Mystery

Isaac Asimov later explained that he intended for readers to figure out a single main solution to the goose's problem.

How the Goose Makes Gold

The story gives a clue: the goose made more gold when it was given water with more oxygen-18. This suggests that oxygen-18 is what the goose uses to make gold.

A Clever Idea

Asimov's solution was this: if the goose was kept in a special, closed room, it would use up all the oxygen-18 in that space to make gold. But it would still be able to breathe the normal type of oxygen (oxygen-16). Once it had turned all the oxygen-18 into gold and laid it in its eggs, the goose would no longer be poisoned by the gold. At that point, it should be able to lay normal, fertile eggs and have babies.

Since the story was written, new scientific ideas have come up. For example, some people have suggested that cloning the goose (making an exact copy) could also be a solution.

Publication History

The story first appeared in the September 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was later included in several of Asimov's book collections. These include his 1957 science essay collection Only a Trillion, his 1968 short story collection Asimov's Mysteries, and The Complete Stories, Vol. 2. It also appeared in other anthologies (collections of stories) like Where Do We Go from Here? and The Edge of Tomorrow.