Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes received the Hugo Award (1959 short story) and Nebula Award (1966 novel). This is a science fiction classic on the subject of disabilities. The protagonist, Charlie Gordon, has an IQ of 68. Even after sixty years, this story raises important and interesting questions about attitudes towards disabilities and the value of intelligence at either end of the bell curve.
The story is about Charlie who starts with an IQ in the lowest 2% and receives an operation which puts him in the upper .001%. The first thing you might wonder is why these two points are not symmetrical? What does this say about our views of intelligence?
If you haven’t been exposed to this story (there is an Academy-Award-Winning movie Charly, and other adaptations), you might wonder whether you should read the short story or the novel.
The novel makes one improvement over the short story. In the short story, Charlie works in a factory with 840 people. In the novel, this is changed to a much smaller bakery where his relationship with the workers makes more sense.
However, the novelization required many additions which distract from the impact and clarity of the short story. The change that I found most disturbing is the addition of many social/psychological subplots. The short story is primarily about intelligence, while the novel raises the questions about the interactions between intelligence and autism spectrum disorder, and intelligence and the response to abusive parenting. Certainly, there is no correlation between ASD and intelligence… I found the novel confusing and distracting.
What does the novel add? In the novel, Charlie has an abusive mother and poor bowel control. The novel also adds two problematic sexual relationships. The novel implies that these issues are partially caused by low intelligence and cured by increased intelligence.
If you haven’t read this classic, I highly recommend the short story. It was widely anthologized (I found it on my bookshelf) and is available on the Internet (The Internet copy I found is not the original).
Publication history from Wikipedia
The short story was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1959). It was reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 9th series (1960), the Fifth Annual of the Year’s Best Science Fiction (1960), The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 (1970), among others.
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