Mr F. is Mr F.
"Mr F. is Mr F." is a short story by British author J. G. Ballard. It first appeared in the August 1961 edition of Science Fantasy (Volume 16, Number 48).[1] It was later reprinted in The Disaster Area (1967), and then in the larger The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 anthology (2006).
Plot summary
"Mr F. is Mr F." is a bizarre tale concerning Charles Freeman, who, after discovering the fact while checking his health, is undergoing a strange metamorphosis, rapidly de-aging into the body of an increasingly younger child. As he gets younger he starts feeling more and more confident about himself. Although he first believes the condition is some psychosomatic illness, and initially hides his transforming body from his wife, he soon discovers she knows full well about his predicament, denying him escape from the house. It is strongly implied his wife understands it or is responsible for it (after the realisation that his wife's expected baby is in fact him), however it is never truly revealed what the origin of the condition is, so Freeman continues to get younger, becoming more childlike and tired in the process. After a while Freeman reaches the point where he looks like a toddler and eventually disappears into his wife's womb and his life ends at his conception.
References
- ^ "JG Ballard Book Cover Scans: 1960-61". The Terminal Collection. Retrieved January 6, 2009. [dead link]
External links
- Mr F. is Mr F. title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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- The Wind from Nowhere (1961)
- The Drowned World (1962)
- The Burning World (1964)
- The Crystal World (1966)
- The Atrocity Exhibition (1969)
- Crash (1973)
- Concrete Island (1974)
- High-Rise (1975)
- The Unlimited Dream Company (1979)
- Hello America (1981)
- Empire of the Sun (1984)
- The Day of Creation (1987)
- Running Wild (1988)
- The Kindness of Women (1991)
- Rushing to Paradise (1994)
- Cocaine Nights (1996)
- Super-Cannes (2000)
- Millennium People (2003)
- Kingdom Come (2006)
- "Mobile" (1957)
- "The Concentration City" (1957)
- "Track 12" (1958)
- "Zone of Terror" (1960)
- "The Sound-Sweep" (1960)
- "The Voices of Time" (1960)
- "Chronopolis" (1960)
- "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961)
- "Deep End" (1961)
- "Mr F. is Mr F." (1961)
- "Billennium" (1962)
- "Minus One" (1963)
- "The Recognition" (1967)
- " The Day of Forever" (1967)
- "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968)
- "Venus Smiles" (1971)
collections
- The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962)
- Billennium (1962)
- Passport to Eternity (1963)
- The 4-Dimensional Nightmare (1963)
- The Terminal Beach (1964)
- The Impossible Man (1966)
- The Overloaded Man (1967)
- The Disaster Area (1967)
- The Day of Forever (1967)
- Vermilion Sands (1971)
- Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971)
- Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories (1976)
- The Best of J. G. Ballard (1977)
- The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1978)
- The Venus Hunters (1980)
- Myths of the Near Future (1982)
- The Voices of Time (1985)
- Memories of the Space Age (1988)
- War Fever (1990)
- The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 (2006)
- The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 2 (2006)
and interviews
- A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)
- Extreme Metaphors (2012)
- Miracles of Life (2008)
- When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
- Crash! (1971)
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- Crash (1996)
- The Atrocity Exhibition (1998)
- Low-Flying Aircraft (2002)
- High-Rise (2015)
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