"Goldfish Bowl" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American author

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

, first published in ''

Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...

'' in March 1942, and collected in one of Heinlein's anthologies, ''

The Menace from Earth "The Menace From Earth" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in the August 1957 issue of ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction''. Plot summary The story is set in the near future, when t ...

''.

Plot summary

In the story, two scientists and a navy ship investigate two massive pillars of water in the Pacific to discover if they are a natural phenomenon or, as one of the scientists conjectures, created by intelligent beings. His belief is based on another strange recent occurrence in the Pacific: "

Lagrange Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangiabathysphere The Bathysphere (Greek: , , "deep" and , , "sphere") was a unique spherical deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934. The ...

, an energy sphere appears; it engulfs him, and he disappears. The other scientist, still believing that there is an intelligence behind these phenomena, decides to take the other's place and ride in the bathysphere up the water column in hopes of finding his colleague and/or further insight. The two men find themselves in an utterly featureless (and inescapable) environment where they are provided solely with bland food and water. Eventually they are placed together, and they conclude that they are in the hands of other intelligences, possibly alien or possibly a much higher form of Earth life. From the complete lack of communicative contact, they decide that they are not even being studied but are merely being kept as pets, similar to the pet goldfish kept by one of the men. They may even have been put together in the hope that they will breed, suggesting that their captors know nothing of human biology. When one of the scientists dies and his body is removed, the survivor believes that the only way back home is to die. Believing that it is imperative to warn humanity, he methodically scratches a message on the only medium available to him: his skin. The message is "Beware. Creation took eight days", the implication being that man was created only on the sixth day and a higher earthly being was created on the eighth. His body is ultimately recovered from the ocean, but the message is not understood.

Reception

Floyd C. Gale ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Edit ...

of ''

Galaxy Science Fiction ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editi ...

'' praised "Goldfish Bowl" as one of the "up-to-the-minute masterworks" of ''The Menace from Earth''.

References

{{reflist 1942 short stories Short stories by Robert A. Heinlein