29 May 2017
Sydney rightly extols the writing talents of his collaborator Willie Patterson, who seemed to be able to turn his hand to stories of almost every genre, from a classic space epic like OVERLORD , a tense suspense story like SURVIVAL , a playful satire like THE WONDROUS LAMP and even to comedy, the best case in point being THE CHANGELING. This is a beautifully written story , and is more in the mould of the absurdist comedy of ,say ,Flann O’Brien whose novels At-swim two-birds and The third policeman are classics in the absurdist genre. CHANGELING includes the same serious and epic tone while the comedy element is situational . One has to remember that at the time of the story’s release in 1967 the phenomenon of Alien adduction was still new , the first reported case being in the USA in 1961 and rapidly followed by several others . Although dismissed by the psychiatric community as a kind of delusion it had quite a strong purchase on the popular imagination. Patterson took this theme but completely subverted it , telling his story from the point of view of three rather bored aliens. Thus this disturbing phenomenon is turned on its head. An alien abduction certainly takes place ,but in this case as a result of a drunken bet by aliens, whose boredom with their long term surveilance mission to Earth leads them to gambling and strong drink to pass the time. A baby is abducted from a cottage hospital and his mind substituted by that of one of the aliens – not for any research purpose but merely as a dare!
When the huge alien ship is spotted by the nursing staff in the hospital grounds, they call the police. But in contrast to the units of tanks and ground troops who respond to the Martian landing in the much earlier MARTIAN INVASION , this time two policemen on bikes( another nod to Flann O’Brien?) appear to counter the extra-terrestrial threat. Again everything is played straight. Because the changeling baby is so precocious for his age, psychiatrists and other experts are called in for their opinions and Willie Patterson has great fun in showing up their absurdities. The absurdist climax is reached, when, fearing a loss of communication with their transplanted alien colleague, his fellows conspire to send him a communicator disguised as a large teddy-bear. Hawke, who at this point has been called in to offer his opinion, realizes that the toy is an alien artifact and proposes to take it apart. Suddenly the bear speaks and informs those present that it will self-destruct if
tampered with, but through it the Earthmen can communicate with the aliens. We are left with a beautifully bizzare image of Hawke and the Earth security experts negotiating with a teddy-bear. The whole story is played deadpan and serious which makes the comedy element so much more satisfying. Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman was published a year before CHANGELING appeared and according to Sydney , was a book that his collaborator was familiar with : another example of Willie Pattterson’s amazing ability to tap into material from a wide variety of sources and hone them to his own needs. Skipper Prossitt
