 First edition | |
| Author | Richard Matheson |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Mitchell Hooks |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Gold Medal Books |
Publication date | 1956 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 192 |
The Shrinking Man is a science fiction novel by American writer Richard Matheson, published in 1956.[1] It has been adapted into a motion picture twice, called The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957 and The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1981, both by Universal Pictures. The novel was retitled The Incredible Shrinking Man in some later editions.
In 2012 it was included (under the original title) in the Library of America two-volume boxed set American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe.[2]
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Transcription
Jake! Jake! Jake, where are you? Oh hello…Vsauce, I’m Paul. How ya doin? What a surprise! I wasn’t expecting you so soon. You’re probably wondering where Jake is right? Well this is awkward, I think maybe I shrunk him. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find him and it’s not like shrinking down to the size of an ant can be bad thing…right? Ya know, describing things is usually Jake’s department but I do wonder... What Would Happen if You Were Shrunk? Oh Vsauce, you found me. Thank goodness because being reduced in size to half an inch tall is pretty bad for you. If you were to be scaled down to such a degree there are a few directions it might go. Let’s suppose that only your size would change but your mass, the amount of matter you’re made of, stays the same. Which would mean that you’d be dense…about 150,000 times more than the densest material we’ve ever found on Earth, Osmium. Being that dense would be a massive problem. With your ant-sized proportions, you’d be exerting all that weight over the same area as just 1 pixel on the display you’re currently looking at. Hello! Only materials like diamond or carbon fiber could sustain such pressures without cracking due to your presence. In fact, your density is on scale with a white dwarf, a star that’s used up all its Hydrogen and collapsed in on itself due to gravity. Imagine the entire mass of the Sun fitting into something as relatively small as the Earth. What? What? He's too small. I can't hear what he's saying. Really, I can't even read his lips. What are you saying? We can't...repeat what you just said...nope...no, I can't tell. But your voice is so high pitched and cute. I love it. Say it again just for my entertainment It’s not my fault, Paul! At this size your vocal tract would be very small so the vibrations would have much smaller wavelengths. Typical male voices have frequencies of 85-180 Hz but a shrunken man would talk at higher frequencies of 12-26 kHz. Since that’s at the top end of the spectrum you wouldn’t even hear most of the words, in fact, digital audio for video can't contain any frequencies above 24khz due to the Nyquist limit. If I stay between 12 and 24 kHz it would sound something like this. The human ear can hear frequencies between roughly 20Hz and 20kHz. If parts of what I am saying seem to be missing, it’s just that you can’t hear them. All very interesting but this is us speculating that your mass would stay constant while being shrunk. If that were the case, none of this would matter because your body would be crushed by the inability to support your entire weight. Soooo let’s go try the other second option. If our mass scaled proportionally with our body we’d weigh 0.03 grams, that’s about the weight of 10 snowflakes. As you can imagine even a slight breeze of 8.5mph, about the same speed of a full size human exhaling, could whisk you away. A sneeze would be even more damaging at 100mph. However, you might be able to outrun it. If we were able to scale ants up to human proportions they’d be cruising around at 52mph. In fact almost all micro-sized creatures would be moving really fast. The fastest recorded animal relative to its size is Paratarsotomus macropalpis, a sesame-seed-sized mite. It travels at 322 body lengths per second, the equivalent of a human running at 1,300 mph. And now that you are the size of insect you’d be faster as well thanks to the Froude Number. The Froude Number is equal to the centripetal force involved to make your legs swing, divided by the gravitational force on your legs. So by shrinking yourself down and keeping your Froude number fixed, you’d actually take 12 times more steps than if you were full sized. Add to the fact your strides would be 66% bigger, you’d be 20 times faster than normal. I should probably figure out a way to bring Jake to regular size but this is just so fun. You're so fast, Jake. Running around like a bug. Run, Jake! Run! One thing that could slow you down is water. At our ant scale fluids act 21,000 times thicker than we’re used to – it’d be like trying to swim through chocolate syrup…but less delicious. The good news is that you’d be able to walk on water. It’s surface tension would be able to support you without breaking. Ants do this all the time and also form tightly knit rafts to carry themselves across rivers. As long as the surface tension doesn’t break, you won’t suffer a slow horrible watery death. Let’s go back to your increased speed and energy because it comes at a cost. Your metabolism would be ridiculous. To keep up with how quickly you move and the fact that the surface area of your body is relatively much larger than your actual body you’d be losing a lot of heart, so you’d have to eat...a lot...like every hour of every day. Your likelihood of survival isn’t great. But wait...I think I have an idea about how I can get back to normal size, HEY PAUL! *sneezes* Jake? Jake?! Oh...Oh, Jake I am so sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry. Let me just get you off the lens. Oh..oh no. Jake...I'm just gonna go, OK? Um, but as always, thanks for watching. for watching.
Plot summary
While on holiday, Scott Carey is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1⁄7 inch (3.6 mm) per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.
The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths, then causes friction in his marriage and family life, because he loses the respect his family has for him because of his diminishing physical stature. Ultimately, as the shrinking continues, it begins to threaten Carey's life as well; at seven inches (18 cm) tall, he is driven outdoors, where he is attacked by a sparrow in his garden; the conflict drives him through a window into the cellar of his house. He has to survive on tiny scraps of food and bits of water. At one point he has to try and jump to reach a hanging spar of wood one-half inch (13 mm) away—a leap whose distance seems over four feet (1.2 m) away to him. A cat goes after him when he is about 4⁄7 inch (15 mm) tall. He is forced to engage in a victorious battle with a black widow spider that towers over him, which Carey ultimately kills.
As Carey continues shrinking, he realizes that his original fear that he would shrink into non-existence is incorrect; that he will continue to shrink, but will not disappear as he originally feared, his epiphanic thought being, "If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence."
Structure
The story is told in a fractured timeline style, beginning with Carey's exposure to radiation and then shifting between his minuscule form trapped in the cellar of his home and looking for food while battling the spider; and the time and events leading up to his finding himself there. The novel is arranged in 17 chapters, with occasional segments documenting Carey's shrinking, using subheads describing height: 68", 64", etc., ultimately leading to 7" in Chapter 15, wherein the entrapment in the cellar is finally described.
Inspiration
Author Richard Matheson says he was initially inspired to write the story from a scene in the comedy film Let's Do It Again. "I had gotten the idea several years earlier while attending a movie in a Redondo Beach theater. In this particular scene, Ray Milland, leaving Jane Wyman's apartment in a huff, accidentally put on Aldo Ray's hat, which sank down around his ears. Something in me asked, 'What would happen if a man put on a hat which he knew was his and the same thing happened?' Thus the notion came."[3]
Analysis
The novel raises questions of what it means to be a man in 1950s white middle class suburban America, and the fears associated with not acting like a man, as imagined through the fantastical idea of slowly shrinking in height.[1] As Scott Carey shrinks, he experiences estrangement with his own body, and in his relationships with people around him.[1] As he shrinks in size he loses confidence in his masculinity and becomes intimidated by his wife, child, and even pet cat.[1] His place as head of the house ebbs away until he is banished to the basement, unable to go to work. Normal objects appear alien and threatening, such as the oil burner that causes him pain from the sound, or the spider which chases him.[1] As Jancovich says:
His fears are presented as the result of his failure to recognize and dispense with his concepts of "normality", particularly those concepts of normality which are associated with the role of the "normal" middle-class masculinity in the 1950s.[1]
Carey's notion of masculinity is based on his notion of man's superiority over women, and he fears losing his privileges along with his height.[1] He sees himself becoming something other, a child or feminine, such as in the scene with the child molester in the car, or beaten-up by the local roughs.[1] He compensates by lusting after the adolescent baby sitter, but this backfires when he is caught and shamed, leading to a deeper blow to his ego.[1] He fears becoming an object of desire by others, such as in his fears of becoming a media spectacle.[1] "He fears losing his superiority and significance as a man, and becoming subordinate to others' power and authority."[1] The novel turns on his ability to overcome these fears, characterized by attempting to find food, kill the spider and escape the basement, and in the process achieve a new normality beyond his former strait-jacketed white middle class suburban role as family man.[1]
See also
Reception
Dave Pringle reviewing The Incredible Shrinking Man for Imagine magazine, stated, "Enjoy the believable domestic details which follow as the protagonist finds he is no longer a man to his wife and ends up as a scurrying insect beneath her feet. It is like Kafka transposed to an Ideal Home selling."[4]
Reviews
- Review by The Editor (1956) in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1956[5]
- Review by P. Schuyler Miller (1956) in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1956
- Review by Damon Knight (1956) in Future Science Fiction, #31, Winter 1956-1957
- Review by Villiers Gerson (1957) in Fantastic, February 1957
- Review by P. Schuyler Miller (1970) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1970
- Review by Peter Brigg (1979) in Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review, November 1979
- Review [German] by uncredited (1982) in Reclams Science Fiction Führer
- Review by David Pringle (1988) in Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels
- Review by Nicholas Mahoney (1989) in Paperback Inferno, #78
- Review [French] by Christo Datso (1999) in Galaxies, #14
- Review by Chris Hill (2001) in Vector 217
- Review by uncredited (2003) in Vector 229
- Review by Darrell Bain (2005) in My 100 Most Readable (and Re-Readable) Science Fiction Novels
- Review by Charles Dee Mitchell (2014) in Big Sky, #3: SF Masterworks 1
- Review by J. P. Lantern (2014) in Big Sky, #3: SF Masterworks 1
- Review [French] by Bruno Para (2017) in Bifrost, #86
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Mark Jancovich. Rational fears: American horror in the 1950s, Manchester University Press ND, 1996. Pg. 158-63
- ^ Dave Itzkoff (July 13, 2012). "Classic Sci-Fi Novels Get Futuristic Enhancements from Library of America". Arts Beat: The Culture at Large. The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
- ^ Stephen King's Danse Macabre, Chapter 9, Pg. 201
- ^ Pringle, Dave (December 1983). "Book Review". Imagine (review). TSR Hobbies (UK), Ltd. (9): 35.
- ^ "Title: The Shrinking Man".
This page was last edited on 11 June 2023, at 04:55