“The Pear-Shaped Man”George R. R. Martin
(1987)
This fine story opens with a description of the title
character, a repulsive, slovenly, overweight figure
about whom we know nothing except for his physi-
cal appearance. It is suggested, however, that he is
one of a type, that he is not a unique individual.
The implications of this become obvious later.
Jessie, the protagonist, has recently moved into a
new apartment that she is going to share with her
friend Angela. She meets him during a cryptic en-
counter while moving in, a minor incident that
troubles her disproportionately, and is not happy to
realize that she lives directly above him.
When she next sees him in a supermarket, she
asks about him and learns surprisingly little, not
even his name, only that his diet is strange and
that he is possibly mentally retarded, nor can the
other tenants in the building tell her anything
other than that he has strange habits and never
lets anyone see inside his apartment. Since Jessie
works freelance at home doing cover paintings for
books, she runs into the pear-shaped man on nu-
merous occasions, and it is clear that he has be-
come attached to her in some fashion, a situation
she finds frightening. Her efforts to find out his
name so that she can check his background prove
completely fruitless.
Her situation worsens when she realizes that
some of the pear-shaped man’s unpleasant physical
features are being replicated in the male figures she
is painting, definitely not what is called for on the
cover of romance novels. He begins inviting her
down to his apartment in the basement to see his
“things,” an invitation she always declines angrily,
but he never takes offense. Her situation continues
to deteriorate. The pear-shaped man eats a distinc-
tive snack food that turns up wherever she looks,
including mixed into her underwear drawer.
Eventually, Angela’s boyfriend convinces her
that she needs to confront her fears in order to get
past them. Reluctantly, she agrees to try to go
down to the pear-shaped man’s apartment, where
she is promptly invited in, and finds herself in a
place every bit as slovenly and tattered as the man
himself. Some strange inertia holds her as he ap-
proaches, sheds his clothing, and then touches her,
and she passes out. Moments later she regains con-
sciousness, now in the body of the pear-shaped
man and barely capable of coherent thought,
watching in stunned horror as her former body
walks out to go on with the life she has lost.
Martin’s fiction has consistently avoided com-
monplace themes and plot devices. The “monster”
in this story is not a traditional one, nor is his na-
ture or origin precisely defined. He is, perhaps,
symbolic of the way in which we can lose our own
identities in our attempt to project the proper
image to others. We may not clearly understand
what has happened to Jessie or why, but we are left
with a distinctly disturbing image. “The Pear-
Shaped Man” won the Bram Stoker Award.Peter PanJ. M. Barrie(1904)
The history of the character Peter Pan, created by
James Matthew BARRIE, is somewhat complex. Bar-
rie’s first version was a play written in 1904 under
the title Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow
Up, and the novel version did not appear until
1911 and was originally called Peter and Wendy.
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens(1906) is actually an
adaptation of one sequence from an earlier work.
Barrie also later wrote a screenplay, but it was not
used for any of the subsequent movie versions.
The story has become one of the all-time chil-
dren’s classics, although its status is probably based
on the film and television versions rather than the
books. Peter is a young boy who is determined
never to grow up, a device used more recently to
great effect by Harlan Ellison in “JEFFTY IS FIVE”
(1977). He manages to avoid ageing by living in
Never-Never Land with a band of other children
who look to him for leadership. There he leads an
adventurous life battling Captain Hook, a villain-
ous pirate with an artificial hand. Wendy Darling
joins him briefly but chooses to return to our
world, where she grows up. As an adult she is vis-
ited by Peter, who is still a boy, and although she
cannot return with him, she allows him to take her
children to Never-Never Land.
Barrie was not always consistent in the various
versions, and in one case Peter’s immortality is
conferred upon him by fairies. He wrote other
work with fantastic elements, but nothing nearly as
popular. The first film version appeared in 1924,270 “The Pear-Shaped Man”