THE DEEP ONES: "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby

"It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby

Discussion begins August 27.

First published in Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2 1953



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.fys.ku.dk/~thoeger/its-a-good-life.pdf
http://ciscohouston.com/docs/docs/greats/its_a_good_life.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41109

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Tomorrow's Children

MISCELLANY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bixby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life
http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/goodlife.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lLYHBdMFCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkJcFGvNgcY
http://tinyurl.com/mhelyo7

I reread this one only a couple of weeks ago. I'd purely by chance read to that point in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories.

Online for me this time. Since there are two versions online, I'm not going to lug The Weird out of the public library again.

Reread it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, just like I did with last week's story.

The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories for me.

Just read it in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories.

Online for me: apparently there are at least two versions of the story, and additionally the telescript and the later filmscript. I'm curious whether different versions shape individual reactions in distinct ways.

ETA To that add: at least one radio script, and adapted for the original Star Trek episode, "Charlie X".

Read it y'dy night in The Weird (probably the best single investment this group has inspired me to). Pleasantly disturbing.

A case where lack of explanation works very well - Anthony just is, the villagers don't know why and neither do we.

I was only familiar with this story via the 1961 and 1983 TV and movie adaptations. I was a bit taken aback, then, by the original tale which is amazingly bleak and claustrophobic. The central metaphor of the rat devouring itself perfectly represents what surely must be the last little pocket of humanity left. That Anthony is a mad god opens up so many truly awful possibilities... the reader's head spins.

I was not familiar with this one, a real gem. For me the story works on a number of levels:

1 - It's written well, as AndreasJ observes as much due to what's not there as what is. But also the word choice and scene selections. I'm thinking of that rat KentonSem points out (which was different, apparently, in the original Twilight Zone episode: I think giving an animal three heads before wishing it into the field). The horrific scene is over so fast as he rushes us into another, but the effect lingers.

2 - The ambivalence. Did Anthony destroy the rest of the universe, or just move the village into its own cosmic bubble? It doesn't much matter, but the mind gapes either way.

3 - The effective illustration of narcissism, and its effects on those around the narcissist. I was given to thinking about those who live with a loved one who is narcissistic, how that warps the relationships and the reality for those living that way.

4 - Similarly, it's a provocative dramatisation of life under totalitarianism.

But all that aside, a classic story and premise, done well. Made my stomach turn in strangely pleasant ways.

The purple eyes of the freak psychic thaumaturge recur in the recent FreakAngels by Warren Ellis (free online here). I wonder if it was a deliberate allusion by Ellis.

If it had been new, this story would have fit into the Cthulhu's Reign anthology, I think.

>10 elenchus:

The ultimate totalitarian scenario, that's for sure!

>11 paradoxosalpha:

If it had been new, this story would have fit into the Cthulhu's Reign anthology, I think.

I can see that. Do you mean the story as is, or with some more specific Cthulhoid tweaking? Thanks for the Ellis link.

I was amused to learn that Anthony, the proper name, became popular in Europe in part due to the popularity of St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of finding lost things and people.

I'm sure I first read this story in my teens and felt a little short changed because there wasn't a clever clever plot twist to rescue the families - probably a combination of swallowing the John W Campbell dictum that a science fiction story can propose a problem, but must also solve it, and discomfort with real emotions of the characters - they are not two-dimensional characters, or stoic loners that a 13-year old nerd can (laughably) identify with...

The story also manages to include quite a few archetypal '50's themes - Bixby must have expected Anthony to be understood as a mutant resulting from radiation, and yes his reign is a "mad god" totalitarianism, but I'd point out that the dangers to the individual from the left and the right (old fashioned fascism, but also big business and the coerciveness of advertising, plus of course HUAC and McCarthyism) were being examined in the fiction of the period.

I'm more impressed with this story now than I was 30+ years ago.

>12 gwendetenebre: Do you mean the story as is, or with some more specific Cthulhoid tweaking?

I mean as is. A reader who knows the "Dunwich Horror" lore, including the idea of the Old Ones using human procreation to return, could read this story as following a Necronomicapocalypse.

This story was the most horrifying thing that... Um, that is, it's good! It's a good story!

(Sorry - couldn't resist)

In all seriousness, of all the fictional hells I've visited over the years (and, with my fondness for dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and horror fiction, that's quite a few), this may be the one that I would least like to live in. I was thinking that most of the characters in this tale (except for Anthony) act as though they're on the verge of a psychotic break; of course, living with Anthony, they probably are.

This is sort of a variation on Greek mythology, isn't it? In the Greek myths, the gods often behave like children. In "IAGL", the god actually is a child.

Perhaps even more interesting than the story's antecedents are its descendants: Carrie, Claremont/Byrne/Austin's Dark Phoenix Saga (which especially applies if one takes in to account housefulofpaper's mutation thesis), Alan Moore's Miracleman (I'm thinking here of the Gotterdammerung depicted in issue #15 of that series), the recent film Chronicle (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706593/) - all depictions of just how horrifying god-like power can be, and all (I think) with more than a little bit of "It's a Good Life" in their DNA.

>11 paradoxosalpha:

If it had been new, this story would have fit into the Cthulhu's Reign anthology, I think.

Which, coincidentally, is my current reading matter. Cthulhu's Reign, True Detective, "It's a Good Life"... gee! I'm just Mr. Cheerful these days.

>16 artturnerjr:

This story was the most horrifying thing that... Um, that is, it's good! It's a good story!

(Sorry - couldn't resist)

:-D

Things could be worse. Maybe Anthony isn't such a mad god after all. Despite his godlike powers (did he have them all along, or did they develop gradually?), underneath he's really just a child existing in 1953. Now, imagine if the story took place in 2014 with all the terrible garbage that is inflicted on a lot of kids by the media and in real life. Anthony might truly be mad in that case!

>17 gwendetenebre: did he have them all along, or did they develop gradually?

All along, evidently, since he whisked Peakville away from the rest of the universe (or, perhaps, simply destroyed the rest of the universe) on the day of his birth.

>18 AndreasJ:

Ah, right. Thanks. So he wouldn't have been remotely close to being a normal child of 1953. But it still could have been worse - a few short decades later and he might have been inflicted/infected with Grand Theft Auto and post-ironic hipsterism!

I'm not sure I've actually read the story before this, only seen The Twilight Zone adaptations. According to http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bixby_jerome, there was a follow up episode called "It's Still a Good Life" for the third incarnation of The Twilight Zone.

Like everyone I was struck, way more than the tv versions, that this was a political parable: central planning, scarcity, recycled goods, separation from the rest of the world, desperate insistence that things are good to avoid punishment. It doesn't matter Anthony has good intentions. His actions are horrible.

I did like the weird revelation that this is a pocket universe, sort of, to make it modern, North Korea completely isolated.

I did do a web search using "Jerome Bixby" and "communism". There seems to be a whole lot of political ruminations mentioning this story.

>20 RandyStafford:

I also noted the follow-up episode, which apparently features Anthony as an adult father with a child, who has inherited his powers. I may read (view?) it later, but reflecting on that updated premise, I realise that for me so much of the horror is bound up in the child. Anthony's wicked the way we imagine brats can be, and capricious, and willfully destructive ... but as artturnerjr mentioned above, more in the way of Greek gods than an embodied Evil. For all that, it brings to mind HPL and cosmic horror, because it's all so irrational and outside the typical human moral universe.

Perhaps Bixby preserves all that with the adult Anthony, but I rather expect he'll veer toward the personified caricature of evil which would ruin the concept for me.

I don't get it as a parable. There's not much central planning, it's just a small community that's holding together in a way that a small community would be forced to in such circumstances. I have to wonder if for many of the people of 1953, scarcity and a lack of new goods wouldn't have reminded them of the Great Depression.

>22 prosfilaes: Let me clarify. I reacted to it as a parable. I'm not sure it was intended as one.

As to central planning, McIntyre makes a move in that direction "to get Anthony to make things the villagers needed". His advice is rejected, but the power to decide what resources the community will have rests with Anthony though it is, of course, a power blunted and warped by his ignorance and immaturity. But, if you wanted to push the political parable, aren't most central planners doomed by their ignorance?

But, as I said, I don't necessarily think Bixby intended a political meaning. Your suggestion is good as to an echo of the Great Depression -- though the poor people of Peaksville (an ironic name, that) don't even have a fresh liquor supply and no radio broadcasts to amuse them. In fact, their lot is truly awful in that they don't even have the consolation of making some kind of art, just pounding out piano tunes that Anthony likes or his tv "shows".

It's like letting the same kidvid run over and over ... but that's a good thing!