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The Vine: June 17, 2011

Submitted by on June 17, 2011 – 9:20 AM17 Comments

I’m on the hunt for a sci-fi short story. I read it in a collection of stories, but I can’t remember whether they were all by one author or an anthology. I seem to recall reading it sometime in high school or college, so that would be late ’80s/early ’90s. I don’t know if the book was new, then, though; I doubt it, as the setting read as a bit seventies.

Anyway. The story is about a bored, somewhat shallow/slovenly young housewife home alone with her baby. There’s a knock on the door and it’s a door-to-door salesman hawking his wares. He gives his spiel and sells the young woman some “miracle hair gro” gel. While he’s talking a ball, or some sort of sphere, somehow gets into the baby’s crib and he starts playing with it.

You get the impression that this guy is Not From Around Here, to say the least, but he seems about to leave without incident when he notices the missing ball. When he sees the baby has it, he grabs it away, turns down the woman’s offer to buy it and leaves in haste.

The rest of the story has the woman trying out the hair gro gel on her eyelashes and being “pleased with the results,” while, in the crib, the baby begins to cry with frustration.It turns out the ball was an intelligence enhancer and the baby is now the smartest person that ever existed, but because the ball was taken away he’ll have to wait until he’s at least four to take over the world. The last sentence is something like, “It was unbearable. Four years!”

I’d really like to read this again if anyone has any leads! Thanks!

Searching For Proto-Stewie

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17 Comments »

  • Robin says:

    Wow, I never heard of this story, but I will be anxiously waiting for the answer. Sounds like exactly the kind of sci-fi/magic/wishful thinking fiction that I love. Thank you in advance to whoever will give us the answer!

  • Natalie says:

    Um spoilers…

    Just kidding! That story sounds amazing. I wish I’d read it.

  • Matthias says:

    Aha, aha, I know this one! I remembered this story vividly, and I was almost certain I’d read it in a collection of sci-fi short-shorts back in, like, junior high (translation: a long, long time ago). The book stuck with me largely because it had a number of stories with an incredibly high squick factor. It turns out it’s still in print, and I was able to track it down on Amazon very quickly:

    http://www.amazon.com/50-Short-Science-Fiction-Tales/dp/0684842963

    Thanks to Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature and a quick scan of the table of contents, I can now tell you the story is: “Teething Ring,” by James Causey. The stories in this anthology are so short that you can actually get through the whole story on Look Inside, but even better, it’s apparently now in the public domain:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29625

    This is the first time I’ve been able to answer one of these things. I’m in heaven. Hope you enjoy rereading the story, Searching!

    “Harry Junior was sobbing bitterly into his pillow. He was sick with disappointment. Even the most favorable extrapolation showed it would take him nineteen years to become master of the world. An eternity. Nineteen years!”

  • funtime42 says:

    I recognized the story as one I’d read, but darn – the answer wasn’t the one I was hoping for! In the early eighties, I read a collection of SciFi stories about children which I can’t track down, and I was really hoping this was one of the stories in the book, and that the Great Tomato Nation would finally ID it.

    Google searches show up with SciFi FOR children, not about children. Ah well, quests are good for the soul.

    If you’d like to read a story in a similar vein, check out The Available Data on the Worp Reaction by Lion Miller, which is available on Google Books…

  • Matthias says:

    Worp Reaction: I remember that one a bit too. Cute story. It’s in the same anthology I linked to above (unclear from your post whether you were aware of that, funtime).

  • Cyntada says:

    “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”

    Y’all brought down Gutenberg hitting that link at once. Nice work!

    (Kidding… but of course I had to go read it too!)

  • Jen S 1.0 says:

    That is it! Amazing! And doubly so since I got about 85% of it wrong–brains, what are ya gonna do?

    Thanks to the Nation, and keep an eye on the kiddies…

  • Gillian says:

    Funtime42, this is a total stab in the dark, but the book of SF stories for children that stuck with me through the years from the 70’s, so much so that I had to track it down, was|”The Other Side of Tomorrow.” Any chance that’s the one you’re looking for? A highlights for me was the highly disturbing “Biskies Make A Growing Boy.” I never saw an escalator the same way afterwards.

  • funtime42 says:

    Gillian,

    Thanks for the suggestion – I remember Biskies very well (and it does have a freakout factor!). The anthology I’m trying to track down isn’t a children’s book. It is about children. I remember one story about a global intelligence test, and the consequences if you did too well on it, and another about a chess master who discovered the opponent he couldn’t beat was a five-year old. It was a hardback, white slip cover with green/blue/aqua doodly scrollwork on it. I know it was published pre-1984.

    The 50 Great SciFi stories anthology is chockful of great stories. I probably should have included an ‘also’ in my rec!

  • LisaJo885 says:

    @Matthias: and thank you for pointing me to the Gutenberg Project. Like I don’t have enough things in my TBR pile? I envision my productivity taking an even greater dive than it did when I discovered TN and GFY.

  • Sandman says:

    Another story in a similar vein is “Mimsy Were The Borogoves” by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (who wrote together under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett). Ignore the movie The Last Mimzy, very loosely based on it. It may be possible to find the text online, though I’m not certain the story is in the public domain. Causey’s story reminded me a lot of the Padgett story, which has its own prickly glamour.

  • sandyk says:

    Another title you might be interested in is “Children of Infinity” edited by Roger Elwood, published in 1973. All of the stories are about children (or teens anyway). I was haunted by some of these stories for years.

  • sandyk says:

    “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” is online in its entirety at
    http://mimsyweretheborogoves.webs.com/

  • Cat_slave says:

    @funtime42 The short story about the intelligence test is probably “Examination Day” by Henry Slesar (originally published in Playboy February 1958), but as it is a standard anthology item, I can’t say anything about where you read it.

  • Cat_slave says:

    Sorry, forgot the link. Examination Day can be found online for example here: http://gotchange.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/examination-day-by-henry-slesar/

  • Cat_slave says:

    @funtime4: Robert Westall has a short sci-fi story with a bit of the same theme, it’s called “The Vacancy”, originally published in The Haunting of Chas McGill 1983, but also a standard anthology item.

    (I happen to collect horror stories, sci-fi as well as classical, such as Gothic.)

  • TwoCats says:

    Funtime42, are you thinking of *Tomorrow’s Children*, edited by Isaac Asimov? I believe it’s currently considered a rare (i.e., way out-of-print) book, but it may be reprinted soon. I hope.

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