"When I Was Miss Dow" is a short story by the American writer
Sonya Dorman. It was first published in ''
Galaxy Science Fiction'' in June 1966.
[. Retrieved 21 January 2019.] In the story, a being on a planet colonized by people from Earth is reformed as a female human, and has a relationship with a colonist which is more intense that expected.
Background
Sonya Dorman was a breeder of
akitas,
["Sonya Dorman". Brian Ash, ''Who's Who in Science Fiction''. Elm Tree Books, 1976.] which may relate to the element in the story about dog breeding.
Story summary
The story is written in the present tense. The narrator is one of the indigenous people of a planet recently colonized by humans from Earth; they have one sex, one brain lobe, and they can change their form. The Warden and the narrator's uncle ("by the Warden's fourth conjunction"), believing they should get on with the colonists, and that the narrator should bring back credits and
sulfa
Sulfonamide is a functional group (a part of a molecule) that is the basis of several groups of drugs, which are called sulphonamides, sulfa drugs or sulpha drugs. The original antibacterial sulfonamides are synthetic (nonantibiotic) antimi ...
s, advise him/her to change form. After "four days in the tank absorbing the female Terran pattern", and with a second brain lobe, he/she becomes Martha Dow, a botanist, and assistant to Dr. Arnold Proctor, the colony's head biologist.
He is studying kootas, dogs of this planet bred for racing. Some have a genetic defect which makes them become lame. The narrator's koota is X-rayed by Proctor, and he finds evidence of the defect. Proctor, seeming to take advantage of Martha's anxiety about the dog, starts to seduce her, and they begin a relationship. He assumes the narrator is a Terran; she realizes that the Warden registered her with the colony as such.
The Warden is angry about the narrator's liaison with only one man. "You were supposed to start with the Doctor, and go on from there." The Warden and the narrator's uncle are addicted to sulfadiazole and expected her to bring back credits additional to her pay. She finds that friends who have borrowed female patterns have not received a second brain lobe; she was given it, says the Warden, to make her more efficient.
The narrator enjoys being Martha. The Doctor dies suddenly one day, while the narrator is with him. She brings the body home and asks the Warden to put him in one of the cell banks; but he says a Terran cannot be recreated, so she returns him to his quarters, taking home a memento, Proctor's wooden carving of a murger bird. The Warden thinks it might be too late to return the narrator to his/her own pattern, but he/she is able to revert.
Reception
"When I Was Miss Dow" made first ballot for the
Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and was included in ''
Nebula Award Stories Two
''Nebula Award Stories Two'' is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in September 1967, with a Science Fiction Book Club edition following in ...
'', published in 1967. Over the following years it was translated into German, French, Spanish and Dutch. In 1995 it was nominated for a retrospective
James Tiptree Jr. Award.
[
]
See also
* Shapeshifting
In mythology, folklore and speculative fiction, shape-shifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through an inherently superhuman ability, divine intervention, demonic manipulation, Magic (paranormal), sorcery, Incantation, ...
* Gender in speculative fiction
Gender has been an important theme explored in speculative fiction. The genres that make up speculative fiction (SF), science fiction, fantasy, supernatural fiction, horror, superhero fiction, science fantasy and related genres (utopian and dysto ...
References
External links
"When I Was Miss Dow"
at the Internet Archive
1966 short stories
Fiction about shapeshifting
Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction
{{1960s-sf-story-stub