Thursday, May 6, 2010

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The Children's Hour" (as by Lawrence O'Donnell) (novelette, love story, free): Earth as playpen for kids of super-aliens!

This is supposed to be one of the better known stories of authors, though I cannot see why. It's not a bad read, but the best works of these authors tend to be superlative.

Story summery.

A job qualification requirement made Sergeant James Lessing undergo psychoanalysis. And the good doctor, Lieutenant Dyke, discovers a major block in his mind - something that his unconscious keeps suppressing.

Slow work over many sessions with unravel what the unconscious doesn't want to see. His courtship of Clarissa - a very unusual girl, with an even more unusual "aunt"...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, March 1944.
Download full text.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John W Campbell, Jr.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore (as by Lawrence O'Donnell); Fiction from 1940s.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

THis is manifestly NOT an easy story to either read or grasp its meaning. Some of the scene shifting may be deliberately misleading. But there is a kind of power in the plot as it moves the relationship of Sgt. Lessing and Clarissa through the sundry real and imaginary settings. It certainly should rank fairly high in any compilation of "different" SF stories under the editorship of John Campbell.