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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.
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.
Its perhaps not as newsworthy as the passing of Asimov, but its in the same general category.
Flowers for Algernon is easily one of the best and most influential short SF stories I've ever read.
The movie on the other hand, is pretty forgettable... its very much a 70s movie.
He was a Hugo Award winner, whose fiction reflected technology, the effects of technology on human lives, and the nature of the human heart and human mind. I think it fits very well into Slashdot's stated goals.
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.
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.
It's okay, Charlie. You'll forget it completely before long.
Many nerds were forced to read his book in grade school before going on to a non-English-lit major and making several times the salaries of the teachers who forced them to read it.
And arguably are the better for it. (I remember the book fondly.)
Just about everything you read in High School is "forced" on you. I still appreciate the teachers who taught me, who knew full-well the majority of their students would out-earn them.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The movie on the other hand, is pretty forgettable... its very much a 70s movie.
It's all taste, I suppose, but the '70s was a fantastic film era IMO. It was the era where Hollywood embraced subversion to government and corporations, encapsulated by such films as Network, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, A Clockwork Orange, MASH, Dog Day Afternoon, and, of course, The Life Of Brian.
I haven't seen Charly, but calling it "very much a 70s movie" is high praise indeed!
More like serendipitous, but yeah, nice catch.
I think the story affected me most as Charlie was on the downhill side, after his intelligence peaked. He could recognize what was happening to him, struggling desperately to find an answer that would stop the degradation. It was profoundly upsetting.
Dark Reflection