The Counterfeit Man
Encyclopedia
The Counterfeit Man is a collection of science fiction
short stories by Alan E. Nourse
, published in 1963
by Scholastic. Several of the stories have a medical
or psychological
theme:
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short stories by Alan E. Nourse
Alan E. Nourse
Alan Edward Nourse was an American science fiction author and physician. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science. His SF works generally focused on medicine and/or psionics.-Biography:Alan Nourse was born August 11, 1928 to...
, published in 1963
1963 in literature
The year 1963 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*First United States printing of John Cleland's 1749 novel, Fanny Hill . The book is banned for obscenity, triggering a court case by its publisher.*Leslie Charteris publishes his final collection of stories...
by Scholastic. Several of the stories have a medical
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
or psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
theme:
- The Counterfeit Man - title story. The medical officer of an exploratory spaceshipSpacecraftA spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
returning from GanymedeGanymede (moon)Ganymede is a satellite of Jupiter and the largest moon in the Solar System. It is the seventh moon and third Galilean satellite outward from Jupiter. Completing an orbit in roughly seven days, Ganymede participates in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively...
determines the crew has been infiltrated by at least one highly malicious shapeshiftingShapeshiftingShapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...
alien. He attempts to force the intruders, who can almost perfectly mimic human physiologyPhysiologyPhysiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
down to the cellular level, to betray themselves. Succeeding with one, he ejects it into space, gaining the cooperation of the expedition commander. Upon arrival at Earth, the doctor sabotages the ship to temporarily strand it in orbit, going ahead in a shuttle - with proof in hand - to order a quarantine. When the ship lands, the entire crew is however accounted for; the incredulous doctor storms back into the ship to search it himself, only to be ambushed and killed by the remaining alien, who has taken on his own guise and who, emerging, heads into the surrounding city. - The Canvas Bag - A drifter with only a vague recall of his own past stops in a town and falls in love, which prompts him toward introspection. Examining his rather fuzzy memories, he realizes - to his shock - that he is over 150 years old. Having cursed his mother and his home, he has been punished with eternal homelessness, saddled with immortality, forgetfulness, and an irresistible thousand-year compulsion to wander the Earth. The girl he loved chases him down at the bus stop at the last minute, choosing to wander with him.
- An Ounce of Cure - a short, absurdistAbsurdist fictionAbsurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events...
satiricalSatireSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
piece on Nourse's own medical professionMedicineMedicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
: a middle-aged man goes to his doctor seeking treatment of his foot pain, but instead becomes trapped in a maelstrom of arcane diagnostic procedures and endless referrals to increasingly ridiculous specialists. Eventually the patient gives up on conventional medicine and goes to a beturbaned Eastern mysticGuruA guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
instead. - The Dark Door - a former psychological experimenter, trapped in deeply paranoid persecution fantasiesParanoiaParanoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
, appeals to his former mentor for help. The mentor, operating on a sinister hidden agenda, instead imprisons him in a machine resembling an early conception of a VR rigVirtual realityVirtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
, subjecting him to a series of psychotic delusions. The purpose of the abuse is apparently to try to use trauma to force the subject to rediscover a vital finding he had uncovered during his earlier experimental work, which may be what had driven him insane to begin with. - Meeting of the Board - another satireSatireSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, this one set in a future in which American industry has been badly compromised by workers purchasing full joint-stock ownership of their companies, mismanaging them into a state of stolid uncompetitiveness. For its humor, the story relies on the role-reversal of workers abusing and mistreating management, until the white-collar employees go on strike, withholding managerial services. - Circus - a very human-like alienExtraterrestrial life in popular cultureIn popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...
is stranded on Earth, and futilely tries to convince Earthlings that he is an authentic extraterrestrial. Unfortunately the only human who will believe him is an SFSFSF may refer to:* San Francisco, California, United States* Science fiction-Sports:* Small forward, a position in basketball* Stade Français, a French rugby union team based in Paris* Superleague Formula, a motorsport racing series...
writer, who over coffee in a diner gently informs the visitor that - due to his profession - no other human would find him credible on the subject. - My Friend Bobby - a disturbing story told in first person, by a young boy who can read minds. His father is mostly absent, and his power causes his mother to slowly come to fear and hate him, his only companion being his collieCollieThe collie is a distinctive type of herding dog, including many related landraces and formal breeds. It originates in Scotland and Northern England. It is a medium-sized, fairly lightly built dog with a pointed snout, and many types have a distinctive white pattern over the shoulders. Collies...
Bobby, with whom he has formed a telepathic link. - The Link - a cultured, gentle alien society has spent millennia fleeing from planet to planet, one step ahead of "the Hunters," their long-separated militaristic cousins, with whom they had fought a long-past war on their mutual homeworld. A young man and woman elect to stay behind on the aliens' current homeworld, which is being abandoned in the face of an advancing Hunter war fleet, to meet the pursuers face to face for the first time in ages. They hope to sue for peace, but find the Hunters implacable and cruel, lacking empathy or culture. Ordered to sing for the Hunters' commander, they are accused of trying to telepathicallyTelepathyTelepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
subvert their listeners, and are tortured for information until they erase their own minds in despair. However, their captors - oddly and subtly affected by their music - decide to dump them in the wilderness of the abandoned world, instead of killing them. The ending implies an "Adam and EveAdam and EveAdam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
" scenario. - Image of the Gods - the hardscrabble human agricultural colonyColonyIn politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
on the hostile world of Baron IV is informed that EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
has undergone a regime change, apparently for the worse, and that they must accept a new military governor, whose first act is to unreasonably increase their agricultural-export quota. The colonists refuse the order and attempt to offer armed resistance, with the unexpected aid of Baron IV's primitive but helpful alien autochthones, the Dusties, who - they learn - have come to worship them as gods. - The Expert Touch - a reluctant experimental subject is tricked by his doctor into a painful battle against his inner demons, as part of a scheme to find the key to human sanity; the ordeal leaves him perfectly sane, but also - and perhaps as a consequence - highly unhelpful.
- Second Sight - a young woman is the only true psychicPsychicA psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
on Earth. She is pressured by her government handlers to take part in an experiment to try to induce her powers in other similarly handicapped people - the ending reveals that she is deaf and blind, all of her senses being entirely psionic.