Fri 28 Jan 2022
SF Stories I’m Reading: ALFRED BESTER “Galatea Galante, the Perfect Popsyâ€.
Posted by Steve under Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[4] Comments
ALFRED BESTER “Galatea Galante, the Perfect Popsy.†Novella. First published in Omni, April 1979. Reprinted in The Best of Omni Science Fiction, edited by Ben Bova & Don Myrus (1980) and The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9, edited by Terry Carr (Del Rey/Ballantine, 1980). Collected in Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (Vintage, 1997).
The word “biodroid†may be as new to you as it was to me, but it didn’t me take long to figure out what one is, and Dominie Regis Manwright is the number one craftsman in the field of making them, and always to his client’s complete specifications. He’s commissioned in this highly amusing tale to create just that: a young and attractive woman, perfect in every way: intelligent but compliant, perceptive but instantly available; that is to say, completely perfect in every way.
But as Manwright explains to his client, such a woman would also be completely boring. What he suggests is a “wild†factor, a random ingredient that would also make her interesting. Which of course, when Galatea comes of age, it does.
Keep in mind that this story was written when men’s magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse were at their peaks of popularity. This rollicking romp of a story may have a harder time of it being accepted for publication today, based as it is on the emphasis on the male perception of the ideal woman, much less ending up in a “Best of the Year” anthology (and the lead-off story, to boot). Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m right, we the readers today are the losers for it.
But it should also be noted that it was Omni (a slick magazine with connections with Penthouse, and generally assumed to be rather sophisticated) that first published it, not Analog or Asimov’s. I never bought the magazine myself, thinking that the fiction in it was always outweighed by the scientific articles in each issue, of which I had much less time for at the time.
January 28th, 2022 at 7:48 am
Alfred Bester’s work often suffers from sordid sexism in its treatment of women.
I’ve never been able to understand why so many people treat him as a giant of science fiction. Most of what I’ve read just isn’t that good, either in its sf ideas or their story telling.
On the other hand, haven’t yet read THE DEMOLISHED MAN.
January 28th, 2022 at 8:46 am
I have to disagree concerning Alfred Bester. THE DEMOLISHED MAN and THE STARS MY DESTINATION are in the running for any list of the best SF novels and his short fiction is often of very high quality.
One of my top favorite SF writers.
January 28th, 2022 at 5:02 pm
Walker, I second the motion.
January 28th, 2022 at 11:02 pm
Third on the Bester novels, and isn’t the point of this story a sort of worm turns situation where things don’t turn out quite the way the client expects thanks to that “wild card” factor?
Ironically nothing ages quite as badly as SF when it comes to social norms since writing about the future from a contemporary point of view is always fraught with pitfalls.