Charles Beaumont’s fascinating short story “In His Image” is a wonderful bit of American science fiction with a shocking twist ending (a perfect addition to The Twilight Zone). Peter “Pete” Nolan is experiencing strange situations. We begin with him pushing a woman in front of a subway train as she rambles on about reading the Bible. Later, it is revealed that Pete is in love with a woman named Jess, and they are to be married. They depart together from the city and arrive at his house, but now something has changed. The whole area seems different, and no one seems to recognize Pete. Mrs. Cook, for example, has apparently been dead for three years even though Pete remembers seeing her only a week and a half ago. Somehow his whole hometown of Coeurville, New York seems to have aged twenty years. Pete also possesses the inexplicable urge to kill Jess. Why? He accidentally injures himself while picking up a rock and gazes down at his arm:

“He carefully pulled a flap of skin down three inches below the wrist, and focused his eyes. Beneath the flap of skin, where veins ought to have been, and cartilage, and bone, were hundreds of tiny flexible rods, jointed and gleaming, and infinitesimal springs, turning, and bright yellow coils” (152).

Pete’s story is about a “perfect artificial man” who suddenly becomes aware of his own artificiality. When he meets his creator, Walter, Pete learns that he was somewhat accidentally created albeit with flaws, especially with the impetus to start killing humans. Pete demands that Walter create a new version, one that can be happily married to Jess, blissfully unaware of the problems associated with the original Pete… In a brief coda, Pete and Jess are now happily married as they toast to their new life together. Outside, a newspaperman shouts: “Subway killer still at large!”  

Beaumont, Charles. Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2015).  

Note: In the Foreword to this essay collection, Ray Bradbury offers some lovely reflections on the life of Charles “Chuck” Beaumont, from initially meeting a sixteen-year-old Beaumont at a bookstore in Los Angeles (talking about Terry and the Pirates comic collection, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant), to helping Beaumont publish his first short story and embark upon a successful literary career –“His life revolved around a special desk which he had designed and had built by one of the finest cabinetmakers in the West. His files were beautifully stashed, labeled, and stuffed with a half-million notions, idle fancies, half-grown or full-grown dreams…” (xiii). His was a life that was cut short too soon –a great tragedy for American science fiction.

Ray Bradbury offers the following reflections on Charles Beaumont’s funeral:

“The friends of Charles Beaumont, at gravesite, felt… above all that a time was over, and things would never be the same. Our old group would meet less often, and then fall away. What was central to it, the binding force, the conversational fire, the great runner, jumper, and yeller, was gone” (xiv).  

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here for my review of “In His Image” Twilight Zone episode    

“It was an old ship, very old, very tired. And slow.”

Later adapted into the season four Twilight Zone episode “Passage on the Lady Anne,” Charles Beaumont’s original short story entitled “Song For A Lady” grants us permission to board the Lady Anne, an aging relic of a ship embarking on its final voyage. Eileen and Alan are celebrating their honeymoon aboard the Lady Anne, however upon boarding the ship, they notice that all the other passengers appear to be elderly couples –the McKenzies, the Burgesses, Van Vlyman, Sanders, and Captain Protheroe.  

After an evening of dancing, the elderly passengers announce they will be casting Alan and Eileen adrift in a dinghy while the Lady Anne sails away. In shock, Alan and Eileen are left in quietude as they listen to the sound of water slapping against the lifeboat. As the Lady Anne sails away, it explodes in a fiery inferno before sinking beneath the waves, much to the newlyweds’ chagrin. It is an ominous and deliberately ambiguous ending which leaves our protagonists adrift at sea after witnessing something which was supernatural.        

Beaumont, Charles. Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2015).  

Note: In the Foreword to this essay collection, Ray Bradbury offers some lovely reflections on the life of Charles “Chuck” Beaumont, from initially meeting a sixteen-year-old Beaumont at a bookstore in Los Angeles (talking about Terry and the Pirates comic collection, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant), to helping Beaumont publish his first short story and embark upon a successful literary career –“His life revolved around a special desk which he had designed and had built by one of the finest cabinetmakers in the West. His files were beautifully stashed, labeled, and stuffed with a half-million notions, idle fancies, half-grown or full-grown dreams…” (xiii). His was a life that was cut short too soon –a great tragedy for American science fiction.

Ray Bradbury offers the following reflections on Charles Beaumont’s funeral:

“The friends of Charles Beaumont, at gravesite, felt… above all that a time was over, and things would never be the same. Our old group would meet less often, and then fall away. What was central to it, the binding force, the conversational fire, the great runner, jumper, and yeller, was gone” (xiv).  

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here for my review of “Passage of the Lady Anne” Twilight Zone episode    

“Children have become far too intellectual which, as I trust I needn’t remind you,
is a dangerous thing.”

The setting is some point in the future –humans have already landed on Mars, citizens watch tapes rather than read books, and nobody sleeps anymore. Mary Cuberle and her mother Zena pay a visit to a doctor’s office where Mary is scheduled to receive The Transformation, a medical procedure designed to “beautify” teenage girls, such that they may look like all the girls in society men undergo their own separate Transformation). The goal of this future world is homogeneity. However, Mary wants to remain unique. Her father, a rocket man, tragically died in “the Ganymede Incident,” but while still alive he used to tell his daughter Mary that she was beautiful without The Transformation.

In the end, she is taken while sleeping and compelled to undergo the Transformation. She watches all the bland, commonplace people walking around: “All the beautiful people. All the ugly people, staring out from bodies that were not theirs. Walking on legs that had been made for them, laughing with manufactured voices, gesturing with shaped and fashioned arms” (183). As with its counterpart Twilight Zone episode, Charles Beaumont’s “The Beautiful People” uses a clever bit of science fiction to offer a blistering incitement on many present-day social ills –conformity, the beauty industry,     

Beaumont, Charles. Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2015).  

Note: In the Foreword to this essay collection, Ray Bradbury offers some lovely reflections on the life of Charles “Chuck” Beaumont, from initially meeting a sixteen-year-old Beaumont at a bookstore in Los Angeles (talking about Terry and the Pirates comic collection, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant), to helping Beaumont publish his first short story and embark upon a successful literary career –“His life revolved around a special desk which he had designed and had built by one of the finest cabinetmakers in the West. His files were beautifully stashed, labeled, and stuffed with a half-million notions, idle fancies, half-grown or full-grown dreams…” (xiii). His was a life that was cut short too soon –a great tragedy for American science fiction.

Ray Bradbury offers the following reflections on Charles Beaumont’s funeral:

“The friends of Charles Beaumont, at gravesite, felt… above all that a time was over, and things would never be the same. Our old group would meet less often, and then fall away. What was central to it, the binding force, the conversational fire, the great runner, jumper, and yeller, was gone” (xiv).  

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here for my review of “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” Twilight Zone episode    

“The birth of a city… the death of a world.”

First appearing in If Magazine in 1954, Charles Beaumont’s “The Jungle” explores social-political tensions between “primitive” tribalism contra the tireless march of urban civilization. It is also a bit of an indictment of global humanitarianism. It follows one Western leader named Richard Austin, who has helped to build the vast city of Mbarara in Africa. However, the city goes against the wishes of local tribes so Mr. Austin has a curse placed upon him by a toothless Bantu shaman named Bokawah. As a result, Mr. Austin is now plagued by unbearable animal noises and the haunting pulse of a banging drum inside his head. Also, his wife lies on her deathbed with what some scientists suggest is Malaria, but Mr. Austin suspects shamanry is the culprit.

“He sat in the darkened room and listened to the drums; to the even, steady throb that really neither rose nor diminished, but held to that slow dignified tempo with which he’d become so familiar” (12).

One night, Mr. Austin wanders out into the city and eventually toward a village where he speaks with the shaman Bokawah, but Austin refuses to end the construction of the city. Bokawah reveals a voodoo doll of Austin’s wife Mag. Terrified, Austin rushes back through the city, returning to his apartment where he safely closes himself inside and instead of Mag, he finds a feasting lion on his bed where his wife once lay –thus he faces some measure of supernatural punishment for trampling upon Native African tribes and their land. This is a fascinating little macabre tale about ancient spiritual magic confronting the promise of modern urbanization. There are a few notable changes between the short story and the Twilight Zone episode –such as the name of the protagonist (Alan Richards in the show, but Richard Austin in the story) and the fact that his wife is not suffering from Malaria in the episode. Either way, both the story and the episode contain similar themes of hubris and the all-too often false promise of missionary zeal.

Beaumont, Charles. Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2015).  

Note: In the Foreword to this essay collection, Ray Bradbury offers some lovely reflections on the life of Charles “Chuck” Beaumont, from initially meeting a sixteen-year-old Beaumont at a bookstore in Los Angeles (talking about Terry and the Pirates comic collection, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant), to helping Beaumont publish his first short story and embark upon a successful literary career –“His life revolved around a special desk which he had designed and had built by one of the finest cabinetmakers in the West. His files were beautifully stashed, labeled, and stuffed with a half-million notions, idle fancies, half-grown or full-grown dreams…” (xiii). His was a life that was cut short too soon –a great tragedy for American science fiction.

Ray Bradbury offers the following reflections on Charles Beaumont’s funeral:

“The friends of Charles Beaumont, at gravesite, felt… above all that a time was over, and things would never be the same. Our old group would meet less often, and then fall away. What was central to it, the binding force, the conversational fire, the great runner, jumper, and yeller, was gone” (xiv).  

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.