THE DEEP ONES: "The New You" by Kit Reed

"The New You" by Kit Reed

Discussion begins on November 13, 2019.

First published in the September 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2019/05/the-new-you.html
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/newyou.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?73132

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Mister Da V. and Other Stories
Weird Women, Wired Women
The Future Is Female!

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Reed
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-kitchen-sink-is-boring-an-interview-with...
https://www.sfsite.com/07a/kr227.htm
https://tinyurl.com/yyr9tjam

... and now I'm wondering about the mechanics of a mermaid riding sidesaddle ...

Always beware of coffin-shaped boxes! This immediately brought The Twilight Zone to mind, but not the TV show, which would have had an obvious moral message, but instead the TZ magazine of the 80's, where curiously ambivalent but not humorless tales like this were the norm. The cast-off "old" versions of Martha and Howard brought to mind the pod-husks of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but having these remain cognizant and mobile was a great touch.

I liked this one too, a witty doppelganger tale. Sure, I expected the instruction manual to be ignored, but I didn't expect the consequences.

I'm not sure how we are to judge Marnie. Does Martha's success at everything -- except having handsome young men hanging around her -- Marnie does mean pre-New You Martha could have done the same things? That it was just a matter of self-confidence?

On the other hand, Marnie and Martha (post-transformation) both seem to have similar ideas on what kind of Howard they want. Does that version of Martha manipulate Marnie into getting a new Howard? Are we to find this a common flaw in both women? Is Reed even attempting a pointed observation on human nature or just wringing a novel twist on advertising promises?

I also liked how this didn't end up a heavy-handed morality tale. The body horror big-W Weird went well with the small-w weird of its unpredictability.

I don't see that I need to read a full novel of this idea, though, but there's a suggestion that Reed went there.

>4 RandyStafford:

Is Reed even attempting a pointed observation on human nature or just wringing a novel twist on advertising promises?

A little of both, I think. And the story does raise a lot of interesting, if unanswered questions.

>5 elenchus:

The body horror big-W Weird went well with the small-w weird of its unpredictability.

Good way to put it! I agree that this short story is just long enough to accomplish what it needs to.

>2 alaudacorax:

They're riding in a vacuum, no gravity or friction to topple her or fret the unicorn!

>7 elenchus:

Aha! Didn't think of that ...

Good story. It had me tensed from the time she first ordered the thing, but at the end I was thinking of it as darkly funny.

On first reading, though, I really don't know whether Reed was commenting on society on simply intent on making a nice, quirky story. If she was commenting, I really don't know what she was saying. I probably need to re-read.

Incidentally, I didn't know what American Beauty was--though I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that it was a rose--but its presence in the tale resulted in my mind's eye seeing Howard as Kevin Spacey. Which, sort of, skewed things a bit ...

>9 alaudacorax:

I've never seen the film--I understand from Wikipedia that the rose features heavily in it.

>9 alaudacorax:

I note that Martha seems to have gained something, psychologically, by losing Marnie. I'm not sure if Marnie has lost or gained by losing Martha--she seems presented as pretty shallow, but so was the original Martha-Marnie, if in a rather different way. I don't know where I go from there ...

>9 alaudacorax: If she was commenting, I really don't know what she was saying.

I'm of a similar mind on that. It's as though pointing out the absurd situation is commentary enough, and everything beyond that is merely to heighten the absurdity.