THE “IF THIS GOES ON …” STORY HAS LONG BEEN A staple of science fiction, probably because it’s a naturally occurring train of thought. The writer looks at current trends and tendencies and thinks, “If nobody does anything about overpopulation …” (“Make Room, Make Room” by Harry Harrison) or “If computer incompetence continues to proliferate …” (“Computers Don’t Argue” by Gordon Dickson) or “If urban violence gets any worse …” (A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess) and carries them to their logical (or illogical) extreme.

Luckily, most of these extrapolated bitter ends never come true. Overpopulation is stopped in its tracks by our old pals Famine, War, and Pestilence, and countertrends and unpredictable variables like rehabilitation programs and Bernard Goetz keep the original trend from going off the charts—at least partly.

I wrote “Ado” when political correctness was still just a gleam in some activist’s eye, and the only thing the Fundamentalists were trying to do was keep The Catcher in the Rye from being taught in high school. In the years since, productions of The Taming of the Shrew have been picketed by feminists, a federal judge has upheld the banning of The Wizard of Oz and “Cinderella” from Tennessee public schools, and the Nancy Drew books have been removed from the Boulder Public Library on the grounds that they are sexist and racist.

Last year Culver City took “Little Red Riding Hood” off its shelves because of their school substance-abuse program—Red’s basket of wine and bread “sent the wrong message.” And a few months ago Penn State ruled that a print of Goya’s The Naked Maja constituted sexual harassment in the classroom.

I hope those countertrends and unpredictable variables I talked about get here pretty soon. At this point I’d even settle for Bernard Goetz. Or Pestilence.