In a previous newsletter, I spoke about stories that I recalled as being humorous when I first read them many years ago. To my disappointment, these same stories upon rereading had lost their amusement value, at least for me. For the most part, the works in question were by a specific writer, Robert Sheckley. The problem was not with Sheckley, but with the changes in my viewpoint brought on by the passing years. His writing was directed toward treating social issues from a satirical perspective. Unfortunately, many of the trends he predicted have come to pass and I now realize were never really amusing. Happily, I have returned to some other golden age authors that retain their humorous aspects. Two stories, in particular, managed to tickle my funny bone. The humor was somewhat of the slapstick variety, the premises being quite ridiculous. I consider this a small price to pay for some good laughs.
Henry Kuttner's short story from the early 1940s featured Gallegher, a very successful inventor with an alcohol problem. Gallegher's problem is not that he especially likes getting drunk, but that he has no choice. His difficulty is that he must drink himself into unconsciousness to produce his inventions. In “The Proud Robot,” he awakens to find that he has invented an advanced humanoid robot that calls itself Joe. The bad news is that he does not know what problem Joe was created to solve. It soon becomes evident that the robot's main occupation is to admire itself, which Joe accomplishes by constantly looking into a mirror. The situation soon becomes more and more complicated for Gallegher, for whom it becomes critical to discover the robot's purpose.
The other story that provoked my mirth reflex was by the writer Reginald Bretnor. Written in the 1960s, it was also a story that featured an odd character. Papa Schimmelhorn, like Gallegher, is a genus. On the surface, however, he is an idiot. While working at a physics institute in Switzerland as a janitor, he acquired vast knowledge without any conscious awareness of doing so. In the story “The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out,” Papa helps the American effort to win a war. He does this by producing a musical instrument, the Voodvork. While indeed winning the war, the Voodvork creates problems of its own. In addition, Papa's inability to explain how his device works and his interest in young women causes havoc in the military and civil bureaucracy.
Both Gallegher and Papa appear in collected series by their respective authors and are easily found on Amazon or Scribd. Kuttner's work with C.L. Moore was mentioned in a previous newsletter. The Gallegher stories are collected in the book Robots Have No Tails. Originally the stories were written under the pseudonym of Lewis Padgett. This name was used for collaborations of Kuttner and Moore, although in a later introduction, Moore claimed to have no part in the Gallegher stories.
Bretnor was also well known for producing many short-short stories that were less than a page in length. They featured the adventures of Ferdinand Feghoot in his travels around the Galaxy. Each story ends with an outrageous pun. For many years the pieces were featured in the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Anthony Boucher. They appeared under the name Grendel Briarton, an anagram of Bretnor's name. According to Wikipedia, the collected works appeared under The Compleat Feghoot, a rare and out-of-print book. The Schimmilhorn and Feghoot stories are available in The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack, also available at Scribd and Amazon.