Hello, all!
I have a story out in a new anthology, Ever After Fairy Tales #2: Innocence and Deceit, “Dr. Rudolfo Meets his Match.” The editor, Jamie Ferguson, said she had a lot of Cinderella retellings in this one, but they were all so different she just decided to run with it. Also new is the Cat Tales Issue #1 collection edited by Steve Vernon. That one features a De Kenyon (my middle-grade pen name) story, “The Society of Secret Cats.”
Up this month is an article about some classice science fiction that I’ve been reading, which went a little long but didn’t go full nerd.
Keep it nerdy,
DeAnna
Five Body-Stealing Sci Fi Classics
I’ve been reading a fair amount of classic sci-fi lately, looking for things that broke out of the science fiction genre and went nuts in popular culture. In other words, more weird philosophical stuff, fewer technical details. Which is not to say that the writers didn’t necessarily have the chops to give the technical details—just that they didn’t overwhelm readers with them.
More specifically, as I read, I found a pattern that stretches decades: the tale of the person who was replaced. I’m not talking about zombies or demonic possessions. Usually the entire body is replaced, but sometimes their nervous system is just “hacked” somehow and the person’s mind and personality is replaced. (I drew a somewhat arbitrary line between body-stealing and possession based on the question, “Is it sciencey?”)
Initially, I thought that all the stories in this weird micro-genre were about communism. At least, that’s the scuttlebutt that I heard about them. But, as I read, I found the stories were about a variety of topics. What they had in common wasn’t communism, but repugnance against letting someone do your thinking for you—and against those who push that kind of non-thinking on other people, for their own personal gain.
Please note: there are lots of other stories and novels that use this trope (Philip K. Dick often pulls this out of his bag of tricks). These are just five of the ones that I liked—and that have spread out into the wider culture.
Caution: Spoilers ahead!!!
These books have been out for a while. If you haven’t read them yet, proceed forward at your own risk! But, likely, you already know how these stories all come out, even if you haven’t read them–these are stories that “float” in pop culture in various formats today.
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1938)
You may not recognize the original title, but maybe a movie version title will be more familiar: The Thing, directed by John Carpenter (1982). (There are another two film versions, but meh.)
In the original novella, the main characters at a polar research station must fight to isolate, and then defeat, an alien invader that can quickly reproduce itself and recreate living material well enough to fool the other members of their crew. Is the person beside you human…or an alien?
In the novella, the crew succeeds in defeating the menace using good old American know-how and ingenuity. That ending, when I read it, felt disturbingly artificial, as though the author, having stacked the cards against his characters, couldn’t hide the fact that he had to stack his cards even more thoroughly to save them from their fate.
In the Carpenter version, however, most of the crew is killed off, leaving two members behind, neither one of them knowing whether the other is human or not. Both could be…neither could be. We’ll never know (although there are lots of fan theories).
I had trouble making it through the writing in the original novella. It’s heavy with detail that seems to be almost desperately used, to convince the reader that these characters really do save themselves.
Who does the monster symbolize? Communists? In the original version, maybe. In Carpenter’s version…also maybe, but more likely the monster symbolizes more our doubt and mistrust of each other.
The Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein (1951)
This is probably the most obscure of my selections for a wider audience, not having a hugely successful movie made of it (although there were several adaptations filmed over the years). This one seems to have more ripped off by TV episodes than anything else, from Outer Limits toStar Trek.
Sluglike aliens land on earth. Once they attach themselves to a mammal’s nervous system, they can control their “puppets” completely. A person might recover if their mind-stealing alien slug is removed, but, because the alien has complete access to the victim’s thoughts and feelings, it usually isn’t discovered.
Every time you see a sluglike alien that burrows into someone’s ear, or latches onto someone’s skin, and takes over their personality—you’re seeing a big, fat arrow back to Heinlein’s work.
The humans save themselves here, but they have to make some major cultural changes to do it, essentially becoming a more open (and nudist) society as a result. The vulnerabilities of the slugs are made clear throughout the story and nothing is solved via technobabble, so it doesn’t feel like a rip-off, either.
I like Heinlein’s writing, and enjoyed this quite a bit.
Who do the aliens symbolize? Probably communists. Heinlein seems to make a distinction between Russians (as people) and communists (as a sort of infection) within the book—but I may be reading too much into that.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney (originally, The Body Snatchers) (1955)
This book seems to be a perennial favorite of movie-makers, having been filmed multiple times. It certainly was a striking read, with scenes of the growing pod-people really creeping me out.
(Side note: Jack Finney is, I think, the master of writing stories that make no logical sense whatsoever. He also wrote Time and Again, which is a time travel novel in which people just think themselves into the past. So expect some illogical explanations here.)
The premise is that alien seed pods land on earth and start experimenting with taking over a small California town. They seem to think that most people will allow themselves to be replaced willingly—it’ll be more peaceful that way, and better for the planet. The people fight back, causing the aliens to sigh, go, “Oh well, too much work,” and…leave.
Surprisingly, this all works. (I told you Finney was a master!) I liked this quite a bit, even if I found the ending a bit head-shaking.
What do the aliens symbolize? It’s unclear, deliberately so. If I remember correctly, Finney seems to go from “it’s communists!” to “it’s nationalists!” to “honestly, it could be any of us.” Which I liked.
Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham (1957).
When this one was filmed, it was called Village of the Damned. This is the one with all the spooky blond kids with weird eyes.
A small village becomes isolated when everyone within a certain radius falls dead asleep—even a caged canary. After everyone wakes up, a bunch of women all become pregnant at the same time, giving birth to rapidly-growing, telepathic children with group minds: one for the boys, and one for the girls. Other, similar villages have sprung up around the world, but the children in those villages were killed, proved nonviable, or were bombed out of existence by the Soviets. Eventually, after coming close to dominating the town completely (and from there, the world), the children are destroyed by a clever and believable sacrifice.
I really liked this one. The overt plot is pretty simple, but there’s a lot going on under the surface, and the subtext of the book reads like a manifesto for women’s rights, covering topics like rape, abortion, and sexism with more sympathy than I would have expected.
What do the aliens symbolize? Again, it’s not clear. Even the Soviets didn’t want them, so it’s hard to imagine that they represented communism. For me, they seemed to reflect whatever was on my mind that day—from fascism to cults to the groupthink that builds around the Internet.
And I liked that a lot.
Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (1972).
This is the one about women being replaced by robots—or by having robotic controls implanted in their brains, I’m never sure which. A couple moves to a new neighborhood, where most of the wives are pleasant suburbanite housewives with few ambitions. The main character feels like she doesn’t fit in and begs to leave, but they can’t afford it. She discovers that women are being replaced (or rewired), and tries to flee. She doesn’t succeed.
This book made me mad when I put it down, but in a good way. I had been prepared to empathize (just a little) with the spouse in the book, lessening his actions because I thought that he hadn’t intended them. Then I found out he had, and that he had, from the beginning, wished to replace his wife with a freaking robot. I wanted to set fire to the entire world at that point.
I’ve enjoyed all of Ira Levin’s books that I’ve read so far—A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and Boys from Brazil (which, if you watch the TV show Archer, is referenced when they discover that Krieger has clones). He also wrote the play Deathtrap, which I loved in its film version with Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine. I think if I were able to pick and choose what kinds of books I wanted to write, regardless of my muse, I would love to write books like his!
What does the replacement symbolize? Here, definitely not communism, but rather sexism, which, in a sense, makes robots of us all.
Although the themes of the books vary more widely than I would have expected when I started reading them, these tales share some trends and similarities:
- The focus is usually on a contained or isolated location (similar stories were called “cozy catastrophes” by SF writer Brian Aldiss). The Puppet Masters, the most overtly anti-communist of the stories, is the exception.
- The characters tend to think of themselves as very rational, and often are the first ones to grasp what’s going on. The exception here is Stepford Wives, but only because a) the main character is one of the few who doesn’t know, and b) the big reveal is near the end. The character herself is still very rational.
- The technology is handwaved, and can even get truly ridiculous. Scientific accuracy isn’t important, and it certainly isn’t dwelled upon.
- The larger idea or impulse behind the books seems to be exploring groupthink-based behavior, in which people give up, or are forced to give up, their individuality.
- While the first two books are considered classics of science fiction, the last three don’t usually show up on science fiction best-of lists. The stories with most technical detail were the ones most likely to have been treated as primarily science fiction.
What I got out of these stories is that some of the most popular science fiction isn’t considered such. Not focusing on technical details seems to make the books more accessible, and less genre-specific (whether that’s good or bad, I can’t say; some books aren’t for everyone).
Most of the writers used very simple, direct language, which now feels a little dated but isn’t unreadable. Underneath the simple surface plots of the books, however, there was a big opportunity to talk about some fairly complex and taboo subjects.
I love science fiction, but I have trouble with a lot of hard science fiction. For a while, especially in the Eighties, it tended to get into the weeds with science. It felt like you had to have a background in a technical field just to follow the book—and the plots were often lackluster.
This is not to say that if you love technical details, you’re wrong, by the way. You love what you love.
For myself, I’m trying to destroy my (despairing) assumption that hard SF is the only real SF, even though I dislike it. What can I do to write more SF? What kind of SF do I actually like? While I’m enjoying the wider diversity of stories coming out of the field now (not just inclusive stories, but stories that don’t stick to hard SF plots), I feel like I’m still not seeing what I really want.
What I need to do is figure out what that is, and write it.
And what I’d like to see from SF authors in general is making purposeful choices about how to communicate their ideas, and treating technical expertise as an option, rather than as an entry-level requirement for readers in the field.
I think we can all benefit from that.
Best Book of February
Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. An awkward, antisocial butler falls in love with a hellion housekeeper, but doesn’t realize it until long after the fact. Instead, he dedicates himself to an upper-class family who may not be worth his devotion. This is a character-based book, not a plot-based one. I laughed through the first chapters and cried through the last ones. Read if you’ve ever loved and lost for stupid reasons, or if cutthroat capitalism is currently pissing you off. A quiet, but radical, book.
New Stuff
Ever After Fairy Tales #2: Innocence and Deceit, now available, containing my short story, “Dr. Rudolfo Meets his Match.”
Cinderella’s not so innocent, but neither is Prince Charming. Innocence and Deceit, the second volume in the Ever After Fairy Tales anthology series, contains fourteen fairy tales retold, reimagined, and reinvented. Enter the magical, unpredictable, wonderful world of fairy tales!
Cat Tales Issue #1, now available, containing my short story (as De Kenyon), “The Society of Secret Cats.”
No matter where you go, no matter what you do, some cat, somewhere, is always watching you! Nine tales of cat magic, suitable for reading in front of clever, adorable, and even irascible cats.If you would like a review copy, all you have to do is ask! I welcome private comments as well as public reviews. Please contact me if you have questions. My website is at www.WonderlandPress.com.
Copyright © 2019 Wonderland Press, All rights reserved.
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