The fly (short story)
The Fly (Original title: The Fly ) is a 1957 published science fiction - narrative of the Anglo-French author George Langelaan that has been filmed several times. It is about an inventor of a matter transmitter who becomes the inventor's undoing.
English and French versions
The English version appeared in the June issue of Playboy in 1957 , the French version only five years later as part of Nouvelles de l'anti-monde , a collection of stories by Langelaan. The French version is not a direct translation. The plot largely follows the original version, but deviates in many details. The most noticeable difference is the personal names, which are French in the English version and conversely English in the French version. The main character is called Delambre in the English version and Browning in the French version.
The English version also has an expressly French flavor: you drive a Citroën , drink Pernod and say “Merci” when you say thank you. The 1958 film version naturally uses the names of the English version. The German translation by Karl Rauch was based on the French version, accordingly the English names of the characters are used below.
| English version | French version | description |
|---|---|---|
| André Delambre | Sir Robert Browning | inventor |
| Hélène Delambre | Lady Anne Browning | Wife of the inventor |
| François Delambre | Arthur Browning | Brother of the inventor |
| Commissaire Charas | Inspecteur Twinker | Investigator in the murder case |
| Henri Delambre | Harry Browning | Son of the inventor |
Content of the story
In the middle of the night Arthur Browning - the narrator - received a call from his sister-in-law Anne: his brother was dead, she had killed him and he should please call the police. When Arthur and Inspector Twinker arrive at the crime scene, a factory in the immediate vicinity of his brother Sir Robert Browning's laboratory, they find his body under a drop hammer . The press completely crushed his head and arm. The act remains a mystery, because the wife confesses to the killing, but does not want to say anything about the reasons or background. Whether it is related to the work of the inventor, who researched secret projects on behalf of the government, also remains unclear, as he destroyed records and equipment before his death.
Eventually Anne Browning is declared mentally deranged and sent to an institution, her son Harry is placed in the care of his uncle. Anne remains calm, speaks little, and spends her time catching flies, examining them closely, and then releasing them again. The investigating inspector Twinker is faced with a puzzle.
A time later, the nephew tells his uncle that he saw the fly his mother was looking for. She has a white head and a strange leg. Arthur suspects that this fly may be the key to breaking his sister-in-law's insistent silence. He visits her in the institution and tells her about the strange fly, whereupon Anne becomes completely disconcerted and asks him urgently to kill the fly. Arthur refuses to go into this until he knows the circumstances and threatens to inform the inspector. Eventually Anne agrees and hands Arthur the notes describing the events that led to her crushing her husband's head under a machine hammer.
In the document, she reports that Robert was working on a disintegrator / reintegrator, a device that can be used to transfer matter. After initial difficulties, he actually succeeded, first with objects and then with living beings, although one of the first experimental animals, a cat, had disappeared during transmission. When he finally tries to transmit himself, he has the catastrophic mishap that a fly happens to be in the transmission booth and the result of the transmission is a person with a fly's head and hand and a fly with the correspondingly reduced human body parts. He sees the only possibility of salvation in finding this fly and repeating the transmission together with it.
However, he can no longer speak and show himself to anyone, not even his wife. He told her in writing that an accident had happened and that she had to find a certain fly. Finally he lets her into the laboratory, but covers his head with a cloth. Anne implores him to try again with a transmission, but the result is even worse than before. When he comes out of the reception booth he trips and the cloth slips off his head. Anne sees a cat's head with fly eyes and a trunk. Apparently parts of the cat that had previously disappeared have found each other again. It is now clear that there is no rescue and Anne agrees to help Robert remove all traces, including the disfigured parts of his body. In conclusion, she writes: “It was not difficult to do my job because it was not my husband but a monster that I had to kill. Bob was already dead. I only carried out his last will. "
The following day Arthur receives news of his sister's suicide. In the evening Inspector Twinker comes to visit and Arthur shows him the document. Both declare that this is evidence of the madness of the dead. After they burn Anne's writing in the fireplace, the inspector casually mentions that he saw Arthur at his brother's grave:
- "You saw me ...?" [Asks Arthur.]
- "Yes, I saw you bury a matchbox."
- "Do you know what was inside?"
- "Probably a fly."
- “Yes, I found her this morning. She was caught in a cobweb in the garden. "
- "Was she dead?"
- "Not quite yet. I took it ... and crushed it between two stones. She had a… completely white head. "
Film adaptations
- The Fly (Original title: The Fly , Director: Kurt Neumann , USA 1958)
- The return of the fly (Original title: Return of the Fly , Director: Edward Bernds , USA 1959)
- The Curse of the Fly (Original title: Curse of the Fly , Director: Don Sharp , Great Britain 1965)
- The Fly (Director: David Cronenberg , USA / Canada 1986)
- The Fly 2 (Director: Chris Walas , USA 1989)
expenditure
- First printing: The Fly. In: Playboy , June 1957.
- First edition: The Fly. In: Judith Merril (Ed.): SF: '58: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy. Gnome Press, New York 1958.
- French first edition: La mouche. In: George Langelaan: Nouvelles de l'anti-monde. Robert Laffont, Paris 1962.
- First German translation: Die Fliege. Translated from the French by Karl Rauch. In: George Langelaan: The fly and other stories from the fantastic reality. Scherz, Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 1963.
- Paperback edition: dtv # 306, Munich 1965, pp. 6–33.
- Single edition: Die Fliege: a fantastic story. Translated by Karl Rauch. Fischer Taschenbuch # 9314, 1088, ISBN 3-596-29314-6 .
Web links
- La mouche in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)