The other day, Daniel and I were talking about science fiction short stories. We were talking about really great science fiction short stories, and taking them apart and trying to figure out why they were great. (Those of you who know Daniel know that he likes to do this sort of thing.)

We'd talked over a few old faves, like Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes, and Blish's Surface Tension, as well as various works by Gibson and Sterling. And then I mentioned Alfred Bester's Fondly Fahrenheit. And it turned out that Daniel hadn't read it. Quite sensibly, he asked me what it was about.

"Well," I say, "it's about this guy who has a android that kills people when the temperature gets above a certain number of degrees Fahrenheit."

Daniel nods. "And?"

"Well, except that it turns out at the end that the guy is crazy, and really it's him killing people. Maybe. Sort of."

Daniel has that patient look on his face, the one he gets when I've said something patently absurd and he's waiting for me to tweak it into something that makes sense. "Okay, but why is it cool?"

I blither some stuff: it's a morality fable about over-reliance on technology. It's about transference. It's, like, really well written and stuff. Daniel's still got The Look.

"No, wait. Never mind all that," I say. "Here's why Fondly Fahrenheit is cool. It starts like this: 'He doesn't know which one of us I am anymore...'"

The Look is magically replaced by a big grin. "Oh! You're right. That is cool!"

So, we move on in the discussion, and pretty soon I bring up Mimsy Were the Borogoves by Lewis Padgett (a.k.a. C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner). And Daniel hasn't read that one either.

I take a deep breath. "Okay, so, like, there's this alien, and he builds this kind of time machine -- well, I guess it's sort of a time machine, but it sends stuff to other dimensions as well. And to test it, he sends off a box of his son's old toys. Well, actually, he sends off two boxes. And they don't come back, so he says the heck with it, and forgets all about it. And the first box gets found by Alice Liddel and ends up inspiring Jabberwocky. And the second box gets found by this kid named Scott. And see, the box is full of alien educational toys, and Scott and his sister learn how to travel to another dimension using the toys, and they disappear."

"Yeah," Daniel says. "That *is* cool."

This leaves me reflecting on why some stories sound really cool in plot synopsis, and others just sound stupid. Though I suspect in the case of Mimsey Were the Borogoves, the key words of coolness were "box full of alien educational toys," and everything else was actually superfluous.

Anyway, the next story I brought up was James Tiptree, Jr.'s Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death, and I'm just really glad that Daniel had read that one, because I wouldn't know how to begin to synopsize that one intelligently.