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HUGO Winning Author Daniel Keyes Has Died
camperdave writes Author Daniel Keyes has died at 86. Keyes is best known for his Hugo Award winning classic SF story Flowers for Algernon and the film version Charly. Keyes was born August 9, 1927 in New York. He worked variously as an editor, comics writer, fashion photographer, and teacher before joining the faculty of Ohio University in 1966, where he taught as a professor of English and creative writing, becoming professor emeritus in 2000. He married Aurea Georgina Vaquez in 1952, who predeceased him in 2013; they had two daughters.
Sad, but he was 86. I am just not sure of the "News for Nerds" angle here...
At first I thought this was about Daniel Keys Moran
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I remember reading this book in 8th grade. In all honesty, this is the only book I remember reading middle school. This may have been the first book to physically effect an emotion in me, and I loved it. And now, I feel an emotion again, a feeling of sadness because the author has passed away. Daniel Keyes will truly be missed, may he Rest in Peace.
I have to admit that I haven't read any of his other stories, but Flowers was certainly an important one.
When I first read it, I was a smart/nerdy kid, and I thought that being smart was the most important thing in the world; naturally, something that could make you smarter would be the best thing imaginable, and then having that blessing taken back would be the worst. Flowers planted a seed of the idea that increased intelligence (whatever that means, really) wouldn't necessarily be an unalloyed blessing.
Still have it on my shelves
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Rest in peace you inspiration of mankind.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It's a little ironic; this post:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/06/17/1746223/century-old-drug-reverses-signs-of-autism-in-mice
describes a drug that might produce just the sort of short-term brain boost that he described.
Go in peace friend.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
That has been my all time favorite story from the first reading.
I had a mini project looking for other variants of the same idea because Keyes got there first and hit an important theme.
Some other entries:
The Six Million Dollar Man - Burning Bright (1974) William Shatner ... Josh Lang
Phenomenon (1996) - George Malley - John Travolta
And a couple of newer movies that I am out of energy to track down.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That novel was nothing but a gimmick, with the stupid writing style changing as he got smarter. The plot was lame and predictable. Glad to see he won't be producing anymore shitty novels in this world.
Hello, flamebait. When you die, your comments will not be missed. This reply is the most use your life has ever served. Give to the poor now while you still can.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
It's Hugo, not HUGO. Hugo Gernsback, you know?
For your life has enriched mine.
Was better known. A lot. And it's sort of like Robert Blake's story, only in this one the wife kills the husband and gets away with it.
Agreed. I hated this book, and cringe whenever someone mentions it as an example of great writing.
Perhaps one of the more important works in the geek lexicon of art. The book and the film were very inspirational for me. For the first time as a child, I understood and could relate to that thing we have called pattern recognition. The moment in the film at the chalkboard was etched into my mind -- that that is is that that that is not is not is that it it is. Understanding the differences between people, and understanding them in their depths without glorification, is such a positive thing.
We are lucky to have art such as this and for all you old folks (over 30, naturally), ask the geek kids you work with or know to read the book or see the film. They may never have heard of it!
"Hey may have hit it best, but he was far from first. Poul Anderson's Brain Wave [wikipedia.org], for example, came out in 1953-54. I think there were a lot of even earlier examples, but I don't have them at my fingertips."
Okay, fair. I might have slipped up on my wording.
It's been decades since my old days as a young'un reading all the old Pre/Gold/Silver age stuff. I certainly know who Poul Anderson is, but that exact story is the kind of thing that used to be really tough to find. It's still a little tricky, maybe six web links in Amazon can do it, but back even in the 80's trying to find a then-thirty-year-old story was really tough and I wouldn't have known it even existed to hunt it down.
D. K. and Flowers showed up because it was aggressively highlighted in some school class's curriculum. To be sure, it was worth the exposure, but that's different from trying to make a quick post and hold it to "researcher standards". At 1958 it is reasonably close to the top of the chain and I bet the writers of my examples had at least a phone call advising them "You know you're re-making Flowers for Algernon, right?"
But then there's your note, and if you moved the theme just a little, you might even get some slightly different earlier but not unrelated takes on the theme.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Why was this voted down? It's a hilarious emulation of Keyes' style.