‘Flies’ – Isaac Asimov

Page Count: Eight Pages.

After working my way through the last couple of hundred pages of ‘Into the Narrowdark’, my next read needed to be something completely different and a change of pace as well. You know where I’m coming from ;o) With that in mind then, I took the jump from epic fantasy, straight into a slice of science fiction that I hadn’t read in almost forty years… (Note to self: Stop thinking about how long it has been since you’ve read certain books, you’ll just upset yourself)

Wikipedia very kindly let me know that Isaac Asimov’s short story ‘Flies’ first appeared in the June 1953 issue of ‘Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction’, eventually ending up as part of the Asimov collection ‘Nightfall and Other Stories’. And that’s where I first came across ‘Flies’, poring over the books on my Dad’s shelves. He was cool with me reading a little Asimov and while I got a few short stories under my belt, it was ‘Flies’ that stuck with me and the other day, I figured I was well overdue a re-read.

I shouldn’t be buying a whole book just for one short story but that’s exactly what I did here :o) One day, I’ll get round to finishing all the other short stories but for now, lets talk a little about ‘Flies’.

Dr John Polen meets a couple of his friends at a college reunion, some twenty years after graduation. While Polen’s work in the field of behavioural science makes interacting with his old friends a torturous affair, it may finally answer an old problem that one of his friends has even now. Would Polen ever be able to tell him though?

For me, ‘Flies’ is still a story that’s all about the questions that are left unanswered rather than the exploration of its concept. Don’t get me wrong… Without that exploration of a man whose work has literally taken over him, there would be no questions to ask but the leap that Asimov suddenly takes casts the story in a whole new light and was as much of a surprise now as it was back then when I first read it. What starts out as an unremarkable meeting of friends steps up a gear and became a lot more foreboding, with delicious little hints of otherworldly horror. And before I knew it, ‘Flies’ ended and I was asking the same question I had all those years ago. What if…?

I’ve always chosen plot over concept and in ‘Flies’, Asimov makes exactly the same choice to great effect. In the other tales of his that I read years ago, Asimov takes the opposite approach and I suspect that’s why ‘Flies’ has stuck with me while I have trouble remembering what the other stories were.

I’m sure I’ll come back to the rest of ‘Nightfall’ sooner rather than later, either to dip into into individual tales or to read the whole book. In the meantime, ‘Flies’ remains as effective, in its purpose, as ever and I’m glad I took the time to give it another read.