Child's Play

Afterword

“Child’s Play” was my second published story and what might possibly be called my first science-fiction “success.” John Campbell accepted it for Astounding the day he received it; Ted Sturgeon asked to be my agent when I showed him the story’s carbon copy; it was the first piece by me to be anthologized (science-fiction anthologies were very rare birds in the 1940s) and it was to be anthologized many more times; finally, and almost miraculously, Clifton Fadiman went out of his way to say something nice about the story in the book review section of The New Yorker.

I started “Child’s Play” while I was a purser on a cargo ship, early in 1946. My brother had sent me the May issue of Astounding, containing my first published story, “Alexander the Bait,” and when it arrived in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, I showed it around quite proudly. My fellow officers, however, wondered why I made such a fuss over a printed tale by someone called William Tenn; again and again, I had to explain the concept of a pen name.

After many explanations they seemed to accept the idea, and the first mate suggested we go into Antwerp that night and have “a beer or two” to celebrate. I felt I had to agree, even though I had been warned by the radio operator that from the beginning of the voyage the three mates had been arguing over just how drunk they could get the Jewish purser.

I don’t know which of them won, but we all got back to the ship utterly, thoroughly, overwhelmingly soused. The first mate carried me up the Jacob’s ladder upside down with my legs locked around his neck and the rest of me over his shoulders. He took me to the purser’s cabin and dumped me in a chair in front of my typewriter desk. “If you are really William Tenn and can write stories that get published,” he said, waving a wobbly forefinger in the air, “prove it. Write one now.”

With the immense dignity of total drunkenness, I said, “I’ll do that. You just sit down here and just watch me do it.” He sat on my bunk and bleared at me.

I typed four pages and had to go to the toilet. When I came back he was sound asleep on my bunk, fully clothed, occupying all of it. He was an enormous Norwegian and there was no chance of moving him even a little. I staggered back to the chair, cradled my arms around the typewriter, and went out cold.

He was gone when I woke up the next morning.

But the captain was there, with a briefcase under his arm. “Get up, Purser,” he said. “We have to go to the custom house and officially enter the ship. I hear you tied a big one on last night. You must have a hell of hangover.”

I rolled over, sat up, stood up. I felt my head. “No,” I said, relieved and astonished. “Can’t say that I do. I feel fine.”

The captain stared at me. “You’re a wonder,” he said. “After what you drank! Are all Jews like that?”

What do you say to such a question? “Most,” I told him.

We got a taxi and went into Antwerp. It was a very hot day, and by the time we had finished the paperwork on entering the ship we were both perspiring heavily.

There was a cafe, L’americain, across the street from the custom house with a sign in its window advertising cold beer. “That’s what I want,” the captain said. “Could you go for one, too?”

I shrugged. We went into the cafe and ordered two small beers. The captain swallowed his and ordered another one. I sipped mine slowly, tilting my head back as I reached the bottom of the glass.

And then I found I couldn’t tilt my head forward any more. The glass slipped from my hand and smashed. I began following it to the floor, my back arching behind me.

Fortunately, the captain caught me as I fell. He and a waiter grabbed me and pulled me up and spread me out on top of the bar. I lay there, completely paralyzed, able to hear what was going on around me, feeling the night before’s spree return through every cell in my body.

That single glass of beer had brought my alcohol level up to optimum again. The barmaid, however, knew nothing of my nocturnal activities.

“Une biere! Une biere!” she chanted to everyone who came in, pointing to where I lay prone on the bar. “Settlement une biere!”

And everyone who came in explained it to everyone else who came in. They stood around me and marveled.

Eventually, the captain got me back to the ship and into my bunk—where I lay, unable to move, for six hours. When I was mobile again, I had a real hangover. I sat at my desk, I remember, holding my head between my hands and reading the totally unfamiliar manuscript in my typewriter.

I liked it. I liked it very much. I recognized it, of course. It was the beginning of a story by one of my very favorite science-fiction writers, Lewis Padgett. (I did not know at the time that Lewis Padgett was the joint pen name of the writing couple, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.)

Padgett’s work, to me, was like intellectual candy—I’d never been able to get enough of it. And I had started an honest-to-God Padgett story! If I could finish it, I would have the pleasure of reading a Lewis Padgett piece as it appeared in front of me, paragraph by paragraph, page by page.

The hell with the ship’s business! To hell with my hangover! I began writing.

Written 1946 / Published 1947