Metamorthosis - help!

[kupkwiaty]

I have to write an essay, but I can choose a topic. As a science-fiction fan, I want to write about something interesting (that is sci-fi, of course!). A short story by Clifford D. Simak called "Desertion" gave me an idea - why not write something about metamorphosis. I want to write about metamorphosis and different aspects of it and how it affects perception of the world, feelings, mind etc. And all authors have to be English native speakers (so don't bring up Kafka's "Metamorphosis"). My essay must have up to 4000 words so i can compare only like 2 stories (two metamorphosis). I don't know many "metamorphosis-transformation" stories, so I would be really happy if you recommended me some good stories, that you think would "fit" to my essay. Thank you all!

 

[chrispenycate]

A relatively frequent subject for SF. indeed.

Do you need to work from short stories? If not, virtually every Jack L Chalker novel is based on this theme; the relationship between physical form and character, or mental operation.

I'll try and put my brain in gear and come up with some more suggestions, if possible in the short story (and sticking to SF, not fantasy) realm.

 

[kupkwiaty]

I don't have to work only from short stories. I will get Jack L Chalker's "Dance Band on the Titanic" and start reading as soon as I can. Thank you for your suggestion and I'm waiting for more

 

[clovis-man]

Sticking with Clifford Simak, "Drop Dead" is an interesting little tale of unexpected metamorphosis. I'm sure it's in a short story collection somewhere.

 

[Metryq]

One of my favorite "metamorphosis" stories is Frederik Pohl's Man Plus. Computer models predict an end-of-the-world crisis, unless something defuses the tensions. The computers say that starting a colony on Mars is the optimum solution, but the only way to achieve this in the limited time is to turn a man into a Martian—a cyborg who can live on the surface with only a fraction of the life support supplies a normal man would need.

Astronaut Roger Torroway is second backup and considers his odds of undergoing Man Plus conversion very slight. Then the first cyborg dies when the first backup becomes unavailable, and Roger finds himself in the hot seat. Little by little, as Roger undergoes a series of surgeries, he loses his humanity, his manhood and his wife, his human senses—even his sense of time can be altered by the machines that turn him into man-plus. The project planners always told the volunteers that they'd be rebuilt as human once they returned to Earth and the mission was over, but Roger knows this will be a one-way trip.

 

[Pyan]

Try Alan Dean Foster's Sentenced to Prism.

 

[kupkwiaty]

In "Drop Dead" by Clifford Simak there is a metamorphosis, but it is not what I'm looking for (because it is never said what were the crew's feelings when they were transformed,or how their mental operations are changed).
I really liked "Man Plus", especially how Roger had to learn to use his new abilities, just as if he was a child again. I also liked the plot twist at the end of the story. But Roger was a cyborg - he was man plus extra hardware, but he still was a human being. It is closer to what I was looking for than "Drop Dead", but it is not "it".
Do you know any "metamorphosis" stories which have complete transformation (with the transformed person's feelings included)?

 

[Oskari]

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

or, more recently, the movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (yeah, I'm still buzzing over that one).

The Ugly Duckling

 

[kupkwiaty]

No movies. Only literature. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde thats a good idea. I guess I will have to reread it. The Ugly Duckling - that's thinking outside the box, but the protagonist has to be human (at the beginning that is).

 

[Oskari]

Another interesting literary area to explore are the myths, especially the Greek/Roman ones. I'm sure their covered really well on Wiki.

 

[j d worthington]

Another interesting literary area to explore are the myths, especially the Greek/Roman ones. I'm sure their covered really well on Wiki.

The problem with those is that they don't fit the OP's specification:

And all authors have to be English native speakers (so don't bring up Kafka's "Metamorphosis").

Which is a bit disappointing, as otherwise I'd suggest Kit Reed's (if memory serves) "Sisohpromatem" as a matching tale. (It can be found in volume II of Moorcock's Best SF Stories from New Worlds.)

It depends, too, on what sort of metamorphosis we're talking about here. Gully Foyle undergoes a metamorphosis, after all, in The Stars My Destination; Charlie Gordon does so in "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes; yet I think this is not the type of thing you're looking for. You also have protagonists undergoing a rather different type of metamorphosis (both physical and mental) in Michael Moorcock's early novel, The Blood Red Game (a.k.a. The Sundered Worlds) -- one which, it is hinted, will eventuall be experienced by the entire human race. Then again (save for your other statement about being human at the beginning) you could go for Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man", wherein a robot undergoes a metamorphosis to become fully human, even at the cost of mortality. Harlan Ellison has dealt with the subject more than once, in such tales as "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin", "The Place with No Name", the comic "Gnomebody" or "I'm Looking for Kadak", the stark "All the Sounds of Fear", the poignant "Nothing for My Noon Meal", or the pyrotechnic "The Region Between"... to name only a few (it is, in one form or another, a fairly persistent theme in Ellison's work, metamorphosis and/or transformation).

The problem isn't going to be a lack of sources, but an overabundance, really....

 

[dask]

How about ALTERED STATES by Paddy Chayefsky?

 

[kupkwiaty]

The problem isn't going to be a lack of sources, but an overabundance, really....

But I'm not looking for any story with metamorphosis in it, I'm looking for story from a perspective of a person that is undergoing a metamorphosis.
So the stories have to be based on "the relationship between physical form and character, or mental operation." Moreover, the stories have to be written by an English native speakers. So it's not that easy to find that kind of story....

 

[Vertigo]

the relationship between physical form and character, or mental operation.

Paolo Bacigalupi's short story The People of Sand and Slag (from Pump Six and Other Stories)- would I think meet that criterion but the story is set after the metamorphosis rather than during it.

As Dask says Altered States might be another appropriate one.

Maybe even Michael Crichton's Sphere?

 

[kupkwiaty]

"The People of Sand and Slag" was a good read, but I really want the stories that I'm looking for to have this "undergoing a metamorphosis" part included, because this is what I'm really looking for.
I have never read Altered States, but I have seen the movie and I know why you think it is "an appropriate one" (I think the monkey part is my favorite part of Altered States), but I'm rather looking for short stories.

 

[Vertigo]

Another possibility would be a some of Neal Asher's Cormac books. There is a character named Skellor who gradually gets taken over by an alien technology - transofmed into something very much not human but this transformation really spans two books so not exactly a short story.

However a similar theme pops up in a story called Acephalous Dreams in Neal Asher's book of short Stories The Gabble and Other Stories.

 

[j d worthington]

But I'm not looking for any story with metamorphosis in it, I'm looking for story from a perspective of a person that is undergoing a metamorphosis.
So the stories have to be based on "the relationship between physical form and character, or mental operation." Moreover, the stories have to be written by an English native speakers. So it's not that easy to find that kind of story....

On the last point... all the stories I mentioned are from native English speakers, so that wouldn't be a problem. On the earlier point... that narrows things a bit, but it still leaves some of them as viable possibilities. For example: Ellison's "All the Sounds of Fear" relates the story of an man who, becoming an actor, takes on the personality of the various roles he plays, to the point where he finally commits the sort of murder a character he is portraying would commit. (His "taking on the personality" includes physical alterations, by the way.) Institutionalized (and therefore cut off from the influences which have, essentially, made up his life), he undergoes a recapitulation, a reverse process whereby layer after layer is peeled away from him, until he undergoes a final, horrific, physical and mental transformation.

"The Region Between" begins with a man opting for euthenasia, and the remainder of the tale is his gradual apotheosis and transformation... and to say more about this piece would be next-to-impossible in short compass, given the techniques used to tell the tale. And, as I said, a great deal of Ellison's work uses these tropes as ways of addressing his larger themes of self-transformation of one form or another.

Again, though, it depends on whether you're looking for something directly from a first-person narrative stance (which would narrow things down considerably) or simply about a person undergoing the process....

 

[clovis-man]

Sticking with Clifford Simak, "Drop Dead" is an interesting little tale of unexpected metamorphosis. I'm sure it's in a short story collection somewhere.

I'm sure this is poor netiquette (quoting myself), but I found that the story I mentioned can be found in Simaks collection: All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories (1962).

The story of some people on an interplanetary expedition who happen upon creatures that, when eaten, cause the person to become that which they have just consumed.

An audio version from the old "X Minus One" radio show can be found and audited here:

http://www.archive.org/details/XMinus1B

 

[kupkwiaty]

On the last point... all the stories I mentioned are from native English speakers, so that wouldn't be a problem. On the earlier point... that narrows things a bit, but it still leaves some of them as viable possibilities.
Again, though, it depends on whether you're looking for something directly from a first-person narrative stance (which would narrow things down considerably) or simply about a person undergoing the process....

I know that all the stories you mentioned are from native speakers. My previous post was just a reply to you saying that the problem is overabundance of sources. I haven't read stories then, I just said that I think that it is not that easy to find a story meeting my criteria. I guess the stories don't have to be from a first-person narrative stance - the important thing is that it describe the relationship between physical form and character and mental operations.
I agree with you that Ellison's "All the Sounds of Fear" is a story meeting the criteria. The other story ("The Region Between") I have to get and the I can reply. Thank you for giving me suggestions, I'm really grateful. And I'm waiting for more!

 

[j d worthington]

There's also Anthony Boucher's "The Compleat Werewolf", for a rather lighter approach....