Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester

    “Fondly Fahrenheit” is a classic science fiction short story written by Alfred Bester who wrote two mega-masterpieces of science fiction, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination. The Demolished Man shared the #1 spot on my Classics of Science Fiction list with Dune by Frank Herbert and More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, and The Stars My Destination was #13. Alfred Bester was a writer’s writer among science fiction authors. Bester only visited the science fiction field in his long career, just long enough to write a couple classic novels and a handful of equally good short stories before moving on – so he’s not well known to young SF readers of today.

    Wonder Audio hopes to change that by publishing a fine audio presentation of “Fondly Fahrenheit” for the iTunes and Audible.com generation, along with a handful of other classic SF short stories by Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vane, Poul Anderson and Jerome Bixby.

    Alfred Bester wrote weirdly flamboyant styled stories in a field noted for dull writing and far out ideas, and “Fondly Fahrenheit” stands out with its multiple viewpoint POVs. This story, first published in August 1954 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has been heavily anthologized ever since, including The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1. Robert Silverberg even used “Fondly Fahrenheit” as an example story to deconstruct in his book about writing science fiction called Science Fiction 101 or Worlds of Wonder. (Don’t you just hate it when they rename a book?)

    Alfred Bester wrote science fiction in the 1950s, during a time when social and psychological issues were just as important as space opera and time travel, and “Fondly Fahrenheit” features a Sweeney Todd deranged android that sharply contrasts with the clean and wholesome Asimov robots. This is a strangely adult story marketed in a genre mainly targeting the adolescent, and in a strange way can be considered disturbing, both in subject matter, but also to the field of science fiction of its day. Like I’ve implied, I considered Bester weird, stranger than A. E. Van Vogt, but not as far out as Philip K. Dick whose career came after Bester’s. “Fondly Fahrenheit” is an android story and pairs well with Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel the brilliant Sci-Fi film Blade Runner was based on.

    I don’t believe in retelling plot elements when recommending a story so you’ll have to go read it, or better yet, snag the audio copy. Pat Bottino does a good job of making the multiple-aptitude android sound crazed, and his reading gives the story a good creepy feeling. Listening really helps accentuate the dual first-person POV, the shifting first-person POVs and the third-person story telling. The story does everything a MFA writing teacher tells you not to do.

    Let’s hope Wonder Audio succeeds and produces a long list of classic short SF on audio. I’m curious how marketing single short stories will work out. Infinivox is also working the same market of audio short SF&F, but with more recent stories, including some longer novella work like “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress. Both are companies that sell on Audible.com, but I didn’t see Infinivox on iTunes.

    I would think short SF&F would be great for the iPod age, but I worry about the pricing. Audio book pricing is strange and inconsistent to begin with. Do you price digital downloads the same way you price cassette and CD collections? Is the three hour “Beggars in Spain” worth $8.81 or 1 credit at Audible.com when the full eleven hour novel Ender’s Game is also one credit, and $19.58, but often on sale for $9.95? Of course Audible insanely charges 1 credit for some audio books that just last a few minutes.

    James Patrick Kelly sells his short stories on Audible.com by the story and by the StoryPod of 13 stories bundled together. I often buy short story collections on Audible.com and I look at the total time to judge how to spend my credit. If a collection is over 8 hours I consider it a bargain. Wonder Audio and Infinivox may need to bundle their stories into theme collections on Audible.com and see how they sell for a single credit compared to selling the stories separately.

    On the other hand, I’ve always wished that short stories would become as popular on the Internet as MP3 songs, so kids would collect them for their iPods and trade them. This doesn’t work with DRM systems, such as those used on iTunes and Audible.com. We’ll have to see if Amazon.com doesn’t develop a market for short story MP3s like they have for music. Publishers need to accept and market to the natural instinct of people wanting to share their favorite songs and stories.

    If audio short stories were sold for $2 in MP3 formats would they become popular enough to make them a commercial success? You can’t charge too much for them – songs go for 99 cents and TV shows for $2, so I doubt kids would value short stories more than an episode of Lost. The classic printed short story is a dying art form. I’ve always wondered if audio short stories could be marketed to appeal to the young and bring back their popularity. With the rise of the MP3 player this makes this idea possible but it’s a chicken and egg problem to solve. Kids don’t know about short stories, so they won’t try them on their iPods.

    People pass around songs, jokes, short films, crazy photos and such in email attachments. I wonder if flash fiction stories can be squeezed into the same number of megabytes as a song or short film and sent as an email attachment which could help seed the idea. Give these away with the encouragement to pass them on but put notices at the end, for longer stories visit our website at such and such. Comedy shorts like David Sedaris would be a good start. It’s just an idea, but I wish some publishers would give it a try.

JWH