I must have read Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Ugly Little Boy” back when I was in high school, and I wasn’t terribly impressed with it.

Most likely I read it as the last story in his collection Nine Tomorrows, and I may have just been rushing to get to the end and not really paying much attention to the details of the story. That does often happen to me. I had thoroughly enjoyed several of the earlier stories in that book which had made lasting impressions on me.

In any case I never felt the need to re-read it.

At least until recently, when I was going through Asimov’s autobiography and came across his comments about its origins and his opinion of it. And his daughter Robyn’s opinion of it when he offered it to her to read as a sample of his work.

Perhaps it was worth another look.

On re-reading it, I decided that it is a pretty good Asimov story, not up there with my personal favorites perhaps, but still much better than my original verdict those many years ago.

The story is about a scientific experiment where a young Neanderthal boy (“Timmie”) is brought into the present day, but because of the nature of the time travel device, he must be confined to small area. A nurse (“Edith Fellowes”) is hired to watch over him, and the story revolves around the growing bond between the child and the nurse. A third character (“Dr. Hoskins”), the head of Stasis, Inc., is the nurse’s antagonist but is presented in a sympathetic light, as are most of Asimov’s antagonists; he rarely depicts a genuine villain.

In an interview with James Gunn in 1979 Asimov had this to say:

Now “The Ugly Little Boy” was something I had written on a dare. No one had made it to me, I made it to myself. I got tired of having people tell me that I had no women in my stories. That’s true, I rarely have women in my stories, and that’s a matter of choice—I’m not at ease with women in my stories, largely because I started writing long before I’d had so much as a date with a girl. Women were strangers and aliens to me and I never quite got over that. Even though in real life they are no longer strangers and aliens. But I got tired of hearing people say that, and so, to show myself, I decided to write a story in which a woman was the chief character, but not a woman like Susan Calvin, who is rationality personified, but a woman with emotions. So I sat down to do that, and that’s what came out. It’s not necessarily what I planned—it just worked itself out that way. It’s one of the few stories I’ve written that routinely makes women cry. At least I’ve received phone calls and letters from people saying that they’ve read “The Ugly Little Boy” and it made them cry at the end and invariably I answer and say I am pleased because it made me cry when I wrote it—which it did. […] So, I suppose I can do it. [Write stories about characters.] I can do it, but I don’t necessarily tend to, because what I concentrate on mostly is the problem.

At some point Asimov recorded several of his stories, including this one.

At the end of reading the story, Asimov added this comment:

In the case of this particular story I have received letters from people who say that they cried when they read the last part of the story, and I always answer and say well I’m glad they did because I cried when I wrote it and in fact I cried when I just read it, so I guess it means something to me.

I can hear the the tears in his voice when he’s reading. Not that it’s a super tear jerker, but it might bring a lump to your throat. It did to mine. Then again today’s readers are somewhat jaded and might not react in quite the same way.

Here is Isaac reading it:

And here is a web site with the full text of “The Ugly Little Boy”. It takes Isaac about 90 minutes to read the story out loud but you can probably read it to yourself in about half an hour. Or follow along as he reads it.

The story was originally published in the September 1958 issue of Galaxy Magazine under the editor’s title of “Lastborn”, a title that Asimov loathed, and as soon as he reprinted it in his own story collection, he restored his preferred title. You can find the Galaxy version archived online as well.

In 1977 there was a 26 minute television dramatization made of the story in Canada.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article on Asimov’s story “The Ugly Little Boy” concerning the 1977 Canadian television dramatization:

In 1977, “The Ugly Little Boy” was made into a 26-minute telefilm in Canada. The film was directed by and stars Barry Morse. London-born actress Kate Reid played the role of Nurse Fellowes. Guy Big, in his last role, played the boy. The film is noteworthy for its fidelity to the short story, as well as the pathos between Timmy and Nurse Fellowes which garnered praise from both fans and reviewers. The film was named to the ALA Notable Children’s Films list in 1977.

I disagree with that assessment.

Below I have the YouTube video of the Canadian telemovie. Read the story and watch the telemovie and judge for yourself.

Here is why I think the telemovie is lacking.

First of all, the movie looks like a science fiction movie, whereas Asimov’s story does not read like one. Of course, it is science fiction, but Asimov dispenses with the time travel gizmos and other gimmicks in a very few sentences, just enough for the reader to understand what is going on, and then the rest of the story concentrates on the relationships among the characters. In other words, once the reader gets into Asimov’s story proper, it’s a story about people. The telemovie never lets the viewer forget that it’s a science fiction story with “futuristic” settings and electronic music and sound effects.

While the movie does have a beginning, middle, and end that sort of vaguely follow the Asimov story, it leaves out most of the details. Probably necessary in a 26 minute film. It would have taken at least an hour to do justice to Asimov’s story.

In the film, Dr. Hoskins loses all his nuance. Instead of the sympathetic antagonist that we find in the Asimov story, he becomes just another cold, unfeeling stereotyped scientist, almost a mad scientist, in fact. He’s a simple one dimensional nerd in the script and in the way Barry Morse portrays him.

Finally, although Dr. Asimov must have been well aware of the the Canadian film (they couldn’t have made it without acquiring the rights) nowhere does he ever allude to it. Not in his autobiography or any of his other writings, at least as far as I can find. So I can only infer that he didn’t hold a very high opinion of it either. Or perhaps he forgot that it even existed. [Update: see here.]

All that said, as science fiction films of classic stories go, it isn’t awful (it just isn’t very good). It doesn’t completely change the point of the story, it merely loses all the subtlety that Asimov put into it. 

Oh yes, notice that Isaac’s name is misspelled by the person who uploaded it, a common problem that Asimov faced all his life.