{"id":568,"date":"2021-02-16T12:54:34","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T12:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=568"},"modified":"2021-03-15T14:27:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:27:29","slug":"the-handler-by-damon-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=568","title":{"rendered":"The Handler by Damon Knight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The Handler<\/em><\/strong> by Damon Knight (<em>Rogue<\/em>, August 1960) sees a TV actor called Pete go into a bar and glad-hand all the people who have just finished work on a successful TV show, ending with these individuals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cSol and Ernie and Mack, my writers, Shakespeare should have been so lucky\u2014\u201d One by one, they came up to shake the big man\u2019s hand as he called their names; the women kissed him and cried. \u201cMy stand-in,\u201d the big man was calling out, and \u201cmy caddy,\u201d and \u201cnow,\u201d he said, as the room quieted a little, people flushed and sore-throated with enthusiasm, \u201cI want you to meet my handler.\u201d&nbsp; p. 11 (<em>The Year\u2019s Best SF #5<\/em>, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>At this point Pete becomes motionless, and a dwarf\u2014his \u201chandler\u201d\u2014climbs out of Pete\u2019s body. The party cools, and everyone drifts away. The dwarf is called Fred and he tries to chat to people but is either ignored or rebuffed (as well as his physical appearance he is nowhere as extrovert a personality as Pete). Then, while Fred is having a beer and trying to be friendly, one of the writers bluntly suggests that he gets back inside Pete. When Fred does this Pete comes to life, and the party restarts.<br>After his initial appearance Fred is variously described as \u201clittle man\u201d; \u201cwas a very small man, almost a dwarf, stoop-shouldered and roundbacked in a sweaty brown singlet and shorts\u201d; \u201chad a perspiring brown face under a shock of black hair\u201d; \u201cwas about forty, with a big nose and big soft brown eyes\u201d; \u201chis voice was cracked and uncertain\u201d. Fred also has \u201cknobby hands\u201d; \u201csad hound-dog eyes\u201d, etc. If Knight was trying to make the wider point that people react to our outer selves rather than our inner ones, he rather buries this idea under a mass of description that appears to make the piece about little more than people\u2019s reaction to other\u2019s physical attractiveness (and possibly manner).<br>The whole idea struck me a bit silly.<br>* (Mediocre). 1,600 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Handler by Damon Knight (Rogue, August 1960) sees a TV actor called Pete go into a bar and glad-hand all the people who have just finished work on a successful TV show, ending with these individuals: \u201cSol and Ernie and Mack, my writers, Shakespeare should have been so lucky\u2014\u201d One by one, they came [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[21,161,159,160,12],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-damon-knight","tag-21","tag-161","tag-damon-knight","tag-rogue","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}