1/9/57 ****
A woman has heard, and understood, messages from a flying saucer. But she refuses to say what the message was. She's imprisoned, rejected, and ridiculed, but she still refuses to say what the alien space ship told her.
This is a very emotional story by Theordore Sturgeon.
Elaine Ross is very touching as the girl who hears the message from the flying saucer and Nat Polen is also convincing as the only person who understands her plight.
Simply one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever heard. Melancholy and wonderful.
Posted by
Kelly McCubbin on 07/03 at 05:18 PM
I never heard the radio play - or saw any television adaptation - but in the mid-sixties, when I was a junior high school outcast, I read the short story in some anthology or other (I was a BIG sci-fi freak). I wept... partly because it seemed finally someone, somewhere had understood my agony, and partly because the agony was finally gone. That was the day I learned the difference betwen solitude and loneliness - and that they need not be the same. Sturgeon, like Zelazny and Brunner, will probably never be recognized for the genius he was.
Posted by on 09/09 at 12:42 PM
I too read this story as a lonely kid in high school and it literally saved my sanity. Thank the deity of your choice, I was able to tell Ted what he had done for me before he died. I owe him a debt I can never repay, for not only did this story help me through a patch of sheer hell, it taught me the power of words, and gave me the hope that one day, perhaps, I might do the same for someone else.
Posted by on 12/27 at 04:29 AM