«Cum Grano Salis» by Randall Garrett, David Gordon

Cum Grano Salis is a science fiction novella by Randal Garrett, first published in 1959, under the pen-name David Gordon.

“Just because a man can do something others can’t does not, unfortunately, mean he knows how to do it. One man could eat the native fruit and live … but how?”

An exploratory expedition's food is destroyed in a freak accident, and the native fruits of the planet are mysteriously poisonous. Every Earth creature that eats them, dies; except MacNeil. He gets fat while everyone else starves.

Total Running Time (TRT): 45 min.

Randall Garrett (1927-1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet.