Sex and/or Mr. Morrison

"Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" is a short story by Carol Emshwiller from Harlan Ellison's science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions. It has been republished in Emshwiller's 1974 collection Joy In Our Cause, in Pamela Sargent's 1975 anthology Women of Wonder, in Emshwiller's 1990 collection The Start of the End of It All, in Lisa Tuttle's 1998 anthology Crossing the Border, in Michael Bishop's 2009 anthology Passing for Human, and in the 2011 Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1; it has also been translated into French and Dutch.[1]

Plot

An elderly woman becomes obsessed with her tenant, Mr. Morrison — who may be more than she had imagined.

Reception

The SF Site called "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" "one of the creepiest and most memorable stories" in Dangerous Visions.[2] Algis Budrys said that it was the best in the collection and "one of the finest short stories I have ever read", and Lewis Call described it as "a celebration of desire for the alien".[3] L. Timmel Duchamp has stated that, upon rereading the story after "many years", she was no longer able to bring herself to accept that Mr. Morrison was an extraterrestrial disguised as a human, and instead perceived the narrator as a mentally ill voyeur;[4] similarly, James Nicoll said that although he felt that Emshwiller "intended her narrative to be touching", he perceived the story as "a depiction of an unwarranted trespass".[5]

References
  1. Sex and/or Mr. Morrison at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database; retrieved May 23, 2016
  2. Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories / The Mount / Carol Emshwiller - Featured Review at the SF Site, by Rich Horton; published 2003; retrieved May 23, 2016
  3. BDSM in American Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Lewis Call; published October 19, 2012, by Palgrave Macmillan (via Google Books)
  4. What's the Story? Reading Two Early Stories by Carol Emshwiller, by L. Timmel Duchamp; originally published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #9, September 2001
  5. By Women, About Women: Women of Wonder, book 1 - review, by James Nicoll; at JamesDavisNicoll.com; published February 21, 2015; retrieved May 23, 2016
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