The uncanny from space
The Uncanny from Space is a utopian novel by the American Fredric Brown , the first part of which was published in 1961 and which was published in 1962 under the title The Mind Thing . The novel was published in 1965, translated by Wulf Bergner in Wilhelm Heyne-Verlag .
action
From a planet 73 light years away in the direction of the constellation Andromeda , a parasitic being is banished to earth as a punishment for a crime. From one moment to the next it jumps from its home into a piece of forest in Wisconsin, and its remaining conspecifics learn nothing about the destination that they have arbitrarily selected from a large number of known planets and of which they do not know that it is inhabited is. The parasite, on the other hand, knows that it would be accepted as a hero at home if it were to manage to return and draw attention to the fact that there are stocks of beings capable of thinking that can be exploited to good effect on earth. It consists of a brain a few centimeters in diameter, around which a turtle-like shell closes, and feeds itself through osmosis . He can x-ray its surroundings within a radius of twenty to forty meters with gradually decreasing certainty. It can seize the bodies of sleeping people from a similar proximity and up to a radius of fifteen kilometers from the bodies of sleeping animals, but only leave its hosts when they die. When the students Tommy Hoffmann and Charlotte Garner meet in a clearing near him for a lunchtime, he takes possession of the young man. He allows Tommy to bury himself in a cave, searches the memory of his host and lets this commit suicide. He now overlooks that humans are the only species on earth that he could use to get home, but gets the attention of physics professor and satellite engineer Dr. phil. Dr. rer. nat. Ralph S. Staunton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when, in the shape of a dog, apparently deliberately let himself be run over by the dog, and in the following days he leads to several other conspicuous suicides of animals and humans.
Staunton systematically investigates the events. The parasite overhears him and the teacher Amanda Talley in the form of a cat, happily survives days of hide-and-seek when Staunton locks up, observes and tries to outsmart the animal, but only excites the scientist all the more profoundly, as does the cat after its release runs straight into the forest and drowns himself in the next stream, apparently unobserved. Staunton wants to teach the FBI , maybe also the Army , but is stopped by the parasite, who goes over to open combat and takes him on in a nerve-wracking showdown with the help of very different animals (a deer, a bull, several ducks and other larger birds) Trying to prevent leaving his holiday home and trying to force him to sleep because he has recognized him as the perfect host. After the worried Amanda has come to him, Staunton has the saving idea at the last moment to let the teacher tie him to the sofa with a clothesline so that the parasite does not use it to subdue him in his own way. The uncanny from space still chooses this path, because he hopes to regain full freedom of movement for Staunton or for himself through skillful acting. With his strong and trained mind, Staunton opposes him with such resolute resistance that he just manages to point out the alien's hiding place to Amanda: “He even managed, with an almost superhuman effort, to stand up halfway and utter the words: 'Under the steps. Something like ... '"Amanda gives Staunton's assurances that he had only bad dreams, no faith, fires at the parasite and thereby gets the real Dr. Staunton back into his body. Meanwhile, Staunton has absorbed the entire knowledge of the parasite and describes to the teacher, while she unties him, how he can travel to the planets of the sun and with the help of a new technology and without any external spacecraft in just a few years other star hopes to take away.
Role within Brown's oeuvre
With The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953, German Sternfieber , 1972) and Rogue in Space (1957, German loner from space , 1963), The Mind Thing is one of Brown’s conventional science fiction novels, compared to his the science fiction satirizing novels What Mad Universe (1949, German The Other Universe , 1970) and Martians, Go Home (1954, German The Green Devils of Mars , 1959) have less of their own to offer and “stay within the framework of this ] what the science fiction of those years had to offer. ” Hans Joachim Alpers even attaches greater importance to some of Brown's short stories from the 1940s (e.g. Arena , 1944).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bibliography: The Mind Thing (Part 1 of?) . Isfdb.org. The title of this first part was The Mind Thing (Part 1 of?).
- ↑ Bibliography: The Mind Thing (Complete Novel) . Isfdb.org
- ^ Fredric William Brown: Bibliography . Www.lesekost.de
- ↑ Fredric Brown: The Eerie From Space. Utopian novel. German first publication. 2nd Edition. Heyne Verlag , Munich 1968, p. 42
- ↑ Brown 1968, p. 156
- ↑ Brown 1968, p. 158
- ^ A b Hans Joachim Alpers : Reclam's Science Fiction Guide . Reclam , Stuttgart 1982, p. 62