Dr. Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University
Texts:
Commentary:
Indeed, Dr. Hayward is really the Glaroon!
Heinlein, Robert A. "They." 1941. Science Fiction Terror Tales. Ed.
Groff Conklin. NY: Gnome Press Inc., 1955. 214-232.
The narrator shows all signs of paranoid schizophrenia, suspecting even Dr. Hayward (not the
character on All My Children) and his own wife Alice of being in on a plot to create the
illusion of an innocuous, fatuous world around him: "all this complex stage setting, all these
swarms of actors, could not have been put here just to make idiotic noises at each other" (218).
When alone, the narrator puts himself through a Cartesian self-examination, but recollections of
moments of realization and one particular instance when he chanced to catch "them" messing up the
matrix in terms of the weather (230-231) convince him of the truth of his assessment.
Heinlein, Robert A. "They." 1941. Science Fiction Terror Tales. Ed. Groff Conklin. NY: Gnome Press Inc., 1955. 214-232.