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james_davis_nicollAffair With A Green Monkey
The thing about Theodore Sturgeon, the author who wrote this, is that I am sure the reason kindly doctor Fritz comes across as a pompous jackass is because Sturgeon fully intended him to come across as a pompous jackass.
I would have sworn I had never read this but there are bits in it, like wha tthe significance of the green monkey is or the IQ of a mob, that are very familiar. Either I read it or other authors swiped stuff for their stories.
Helen O'Loy
Del Rey may be better known for having made it possible for shelves to have been crowded with half-rate Tolkien knock-offs but at one time he was a reasonably respected author in his own right (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block). This is one of his best known stories.
With any other authors I'd make a crack about him not dating much but actually del Rey was married four times and at least three ended in tragedy; two wives died in car crashes and one, editor Judy-Lynn del Rey, died some months after suffering a brain hemorrhage. This would have been written a few years after del Rey's first wife died in a car crash. So, no stranger to romance or bereavement.
It's still kind of a horrible, sentimental story. Well, the bar was lower back then.
There were two details that caught my ear: one is the bit near the beginning where we learn the technology exists to medically end infatuation and love with "counter-hormones" and in at least some cases people can order this carried out on other people and professional doctors will carry that out. That's pretty creepy and worth a story in itself.
(when he cures the kids does he say "collected on a line" or "on a lie"? It sounds like line)
However
why the heck doesn't he use the treatment on himself?
Also, that final line "[t]here was only one Helen O Loy" would be a lot more touching if SHE WASN'T A MASS PRODUCED ROBOT! . Granted, a modified model but the talents of the person who did the modification are available.
So, how creepy is it the supposed housekeeper robot is in the form of a beautiful woman, a fully functional one at that?
The thing about Theodore Sturgeon, the author who wrote this, is that I am sure the reason kindly doctor Fritz comes across as a pompous jackass is because Sturgeon fully intended him to come across as a pompous jackass.
I would have sworn I had never read this but there are bits in it, like wha tthe significance of the green monkey is or the IQ of a mob, that are very familiar. Either I read it or other authors swiped stuff for their stories.
Helen O'Loy
Del Rey may be better known for having made it possible for shelves to have been crowded with half-rate Tolkien knock-offs but at one time he was a reasonably respected author in his own right (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block). This is one of his best known stories.
With any other authors I'd make a crack about him not dating much but actually del Rey was married four times and at least three ended in tragedy; two wives died in car crashes and one, editor Judy-Lynn del Rey, died some months after suffering a brain hemorrhage. This would have been written a few years after del Rey's first wife died in a car crash. So, no stranger to romance or bereavement.
It's still kind of a horrible, sentimental story. Well, the bar was lower back then.
There were two details that caught my ear: one is the bit near the beginning where we learn the technology exists to medically end infatuation and love with "counter-hormones" and in at least some cases people can order this carried out on other people and professional doctors will carry that out. That's pretty creepy and worth a story in itself.
(when he cures the kids does he say "collected on a line" or "on a lie"? It sounds like line)
However
why the heck doesn't he use the treatment on himself?
Also, that final line "[t]here was only one Helen O Loy" would be a lot more touching if SHE WASN'T A MASS PRODUCED ROBOT! . Granted, a modified model but the talents of the person who did the modification are available.
So, how creepy is it the supposed housekeeper robot is in the form of a beautiful woman, a fully functional one at that?
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Date: 2012-09-17 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 03:51 am (UTC)Helen O Loy
Date: 2012-09-17 11:03 am (UTC)Why they couldn't have used another model, and shown her the same soap operas wasn't entirely clear to me, but it could have something to do with how soap operas were done back when the story was written. Weren't some of those shows done life, and some not even recorded? If that was how they were still done in Del Ray's future, then it might explain the problem in replicating the original results.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 12:21 pm (UTC)Re: Helen O Loy
Date: 2012-09-18 08:35 pm (UTC)The talk about the doctor being called away for counter-hormone therapy and grumblings about how he wasn't a society doctor fiddling with glands reminds me the story was written not too far from the peak of ``goat gland'' implants as a cure for impotence and everything else (by ``goat glands'' they meant ``goat testicles'' by the way), and all sorts of odd biological culture samples were big news (see the famed ``chicken heart that ate the East Coast'' suspense story that, really, Bill Cosby did better).
Bill Cosby did better
Date: 2012-09-18 09:15 pm (UTC)Re: Helen O Loy
Date: 2012-09-19 02:52 am (UTC)Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 11:04 am (UTC)Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-18 11:47 am (UTC)Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 06:15 pm (UTC)And Helen O'Loy was still famous enough in the seventies, when I started to read subscription guidelines, that magazines said, "Don't do this one."
Sturgeon...well, Sturgeon also had his problems with writer's block, but as I recall, RAH at one time gave him a dozen or a hundred (I misremember) plot seeds to help him along. I do remember the news junkie story that came of that (Sturgeon credits RAH in the story's intro in one of his anthologies).
He did reuse some lines, so the bits from Green Monkey (which I don't recall, though I read an awful lot of Sturgeon for a while) might have been reused by Sturgeon. Or stolen; he gave stuff away, too, apparently.
(I still like his comment about one of his stories, which was essentially that it was twice as long as it needed to be for a particular market: "Crossing out every other word made it read funny, so I didn't." He eventually sold it elsewhere.)
Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 06:51 pm (UTC)I remember that being Zelazny, about a story collected in Unicorn Variations, I think. But my memory is unreliable.
Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 07:24 pm (UTC)For Sturgeon, I believe it was the story where the opening paragraph has the waves shampoo the half-buried protagonist. You're right about the Zelazny.
Maybe I've conflated the two.
Re: (I have a half-memory he got hammered by writer's block).
Date: 2012-09-17 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 12:42 pm (UTC)I listened to this, just to confirm that the production went all the way with the “gay-seeming alien really has an enormous penis” ending of the original. There are reasons why “World Well Lost” is the Sturgeon-wrote-about-gay-themes story that most people refer to, rather than this.
- matthew davis
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Date: 2012-09-17 02:19 pm (UTC)I believe RAH used both.
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Date: 2012-09-17 03:09 pm (UTC)Bruce
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 03:25 pm (UTC)From TV Tropes:
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Date: 2012-09-18 07:01 am (UTC)Bruce
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Date: 2012-09-17 04:56 pm (UTC)Oh, and del Rey's second wife was called Helen.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 05:13 pm (UTC)Does anyone know what happened to del Rey's fourth wife? That is, the one who isn't one of the pair who died in crashes and who was not Judy-Lynn Benjamin? Did they divorce or was he bereaved a fourth time?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 06:30 pm (UTC)I did find a 1930 census record with the whole Knapp family laid out. Father Wright Knapp, 67, mother Jennie Knapp, 46, son Leonard Knapp, 14, son Leon Knapp, 11, daughter Sarah Alice Knapp, 9. Del Rey told a story about his mother dying soon after his birth which appears to be hooey as well.
Also this from Google Books:
Seekers of tomorrow: masters of modern science fiction
books.google.comSam Moskowitz - 1974 - 441 pages - Snippet view
Now 30 and lonely, he dated Helen Schlaz, a Lithuanian girl who worked in another White Tower. Repeating the pattern that led to his first marriage, he proposed on their first date and they set up housekeeping in 1945. He quit the White ...
So maybe the Moskowitz book has more.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 06:52 pm (UTC)Somebody somewhere must have a diagram planning out exactly who in mid-20th century science fiction slept with whom. Possibly with Judith Merril very near the centre as a sort of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel equivalent.
-matthew davis
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Date: 2012-09-17 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 05:30 pm (UTC)http://365tomorrows.com/09/16/twitch-2/
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 05:28 pm (UTC)--Dave
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Date: 2012-09-17 10:35 pm (UTC)