You know, it’s been over a week since I talked about literature. And folks seem to enjoy those blogs so let’s do another one.
L. Sprague de Camp has been one of my fallback authors during Covid. While I read some of his actual novels (namely The Reluctant King trilogy but I’ll probably reread the Incompleat Enchanter at this rate) but I’ve also been picking through anthologies of classic science fiction for his short stories.
I decided that The Blue Giraffe was the perfect short story to talk about. If you don’t want any spoilers, just go and read it now.
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No, seriously, go and read it. It’s really good.
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The Blue Giraffe answers the question ‘What if the Island of Doctor Moreau was a comedy?’ I didn’t know that was a question that even needed to be asked but de Camp did a marvelous job answering it.
The protagonist finds in darkest Africa the effects of a mad scientist’s machine that creates radiation that causes somehow safe mutations in all the surrounding wildlife. After some misadventures, he turns the darn thing off.
The first thing that is notable about the story is the tribe of intelligent baboon people, who are also the source of a lot of the hijinks, including the main character dealing with a potential forced marriage. As opposed to be being crude primitives, they are pretty much regular folks, complete with snark and jealousy and such. For 1939, that is nifty.
The other bit that stayed with me was the framing story, with the protagonist years later exposing to his son why he’s adopted. I was expecting his adopted son to not be human. No, the most ordinary explanation instead. After being exposed to all that radiation, it wasn’t safe for him to have kids. And that’s part of de Camp’s magic. There’s a practical, grounded element that makes the fantastic even more fantastic.
The Blue Giraffe isn’t my favorite de Camp work but it is what I’d recommend to someone to help them decide if they want to read more of his stories.
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