"The Belonging Kind" 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 uni ...

short story by

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and c ...

authors

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, hi ...

and

John Shirley John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...

. It was first published in the horror anthology ''

Shadows A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, ...

4'' edited by Charles L. Grant in 1981, later to be included along with several other stories in Gibson's collection ''

Burning Chrome "Burning Chrome" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer William Gibson, first published in '' Omni'' in July 1982. Gibson first read the story at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, to an a ...

''. It was written prior the conception of the Sprawl universe in which several of Gibson's novels and stories are set, taking place in a setting much more like contemporary American life.

Plot summary

Michael Coretti is a dull, scholarly man who studies and teaches

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

and social interaction theory. He frequently visits bars to help dull the tedium, even though he never feels at ease among the crowds. One night, he meets a woman named Antoinette who seems to fit in perfectly, adapting her speech patterns to match any conversation partner. Coretti follows Antoinette to various other bars and clubs, watching as she drinks and talks with a male companion; her appearance and clothing shift to let her fit in wherever she goes. He begins to spend more of his nights searching for her in one bar after another, and his teaching deteriorates to the point that he loses his job. When Coretti sees Antoinette's companion pay a cabdriver with money formed from a pocket within his body, he realizes that the two are not human. He follows them to a room in the hotel where he has been staying, but flees in horror upon finding a crowd of creatures just like them, who can live solely on alcohol and change their appearance and behavior to blend in at any bar they enter. He takes a night job and finds lodgings at a boarding house, but after three weeks he receives a telephone call inviting him to join "the belonging kind." Abandoning the job and his room, he discovers that he has taken on their non-human characteristics and settles in at a bar for an evening of secret mating with Antoinette.

References

External links

"The Belonging Kind"
at the William Gibson Aleph 1981 short stories Cyberpunk short stories Horror short stories Short stories by William Gibson {{1980s-sf-story-stub