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The Counterfeit Man / Alan E. Nourse
Paper back edition. Perfect spine. Bright clean cover has light shelf and edge wear. Text is perfect. Same day shipping First Class.
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First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Alan E. Nourse
257 books41 followersAlan Edward Nourse was an American science fiction (SF) author and physician. He also wrote under the name Dr. X
He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science.
Alan Nourse was born to Benjamin and Grace (Ogg) Nourse. He attended high school in Long Island, New York. He served in the U.S. Navy after World War II. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951 from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He married Ann Morton on June 11, 1952 in Lynden, New Jersey. He received a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania. He served his one year internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington. He practiced medicine in North Bend, Washington from 1958 to 1963 and also pursued his writing career.
He had helped pay for his medical education by writing science fiction for magazines. After retiring from medicine, he continued writing. His regular column in Good Housekeeping magazine earned him the nickname "Family Doctor".
He was a friend of fellow author Avram Davidson. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1964 novel Farnham's Freehold to Nourse. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Nourse's wife Ann.
His novel The Bladerunner lent its name to the Blade Runner movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella, Blade Runner (a movie).
His novel Star Surgeon has been recorded as a public domain audio book at LibriVox
His pen names included "Al Edwards" and "Doctor X".
He died in Thorp, Washington.
He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science.
Alan Nourse was born to Benjamin and Grace (Ogg) Nourse. He attended high school in Long Island, New York. He served in the U.S. Navy after World War II. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951 from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He married Ann Morton on June 11, 1952 in Lynden, New Jersey. He received a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania. He served his one year internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington. He practiced medicine in North Bend, Washington from 1958 to 1963 and also pursued his writing career.
He had helped pay for his medical education by writing science fiction for magazines. After retiring from medicine, he continued writing. His regular column in Good Housekeeping magazine earned him the nickname "Family Doctor".
He was a friend of fellow author Avram Davidson. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1964 novel Farnham's Freehold to Nourse. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Nourse's wife Ann.
His novel The Bladerunner lent its name to the Blade Runner movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella, Blade Runner (a movie).
His novel Star Surgeon has been recorded as a public domain audio book at LibriVox
His pen names included "Al Edwards" and "Doctor X".
He died in Thorp, Washington.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 22, 2017
I've never heard of this author elsewhere except a few short stories on librivox, but he's worth reading if you're lucky enough to find or inherit a copy. Sort of 'Twilight Zone' vibe, as are many of these old (1950s) shorts. A bit more towards 'horror' than regular SF, and prescient of the 'alienation' theme to come a decade or two later.
January 24, 2015
Pretty much any anthology will contain one or two weak stories, or at least stories that are not to your taste. Not this one - I thought every story to be at least very good, and some of them are great!
Pretty much any single-author anthology runs the risk of many of the stories feeling rather similar... repetitive even. Not this one. Nourse adopts many different styles to espouse many different ideas, and carries it all off with aplomb.
If you want a well-written, interesting selection of typical magazine sf stories stories of the 1950s era, you won't do much better than this book.
Highly, highly recommended.
Pretty much any single-author anthology runs the risk of many of the stories feeling rather similar... repetitive even. Not this one. Nourse adopts many different styles to espouse many different ideas, and carries it all off with aplomb.
If you want a well-written, interesting selection of typical magazine sf stories stories of the 1950s era, you won't do much better than this book.
Highly, highly recommended.
November 8, 2018
My main reason for acquiring this book in a second hand bookshop some years ago was that it is a collection of short stories by an author I had come across previously in two contexts: I recalled reading a novel by him, The Universe Between, plus I had heard that the film Blade Runner, based on PK Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, had taken its name (by agreement) from Nourse's novel, The Blade Runner.
The short stories, all except one, date to the 1950s (one was published in the early 60s) and this accounts for a lot of their, to current tastes, dated nature. The characters are basically one dimensional and the interest is in the ideas and how these are developed plot-wise. The first in the collection, from which it takes its name, reminded me strongly of John W Campbell's 'Who Goes There', published in 1938, which was first filmed in the 1950s and later as The Thing. The basic premise of someone who looks human but is actually a hostile alien creature capable of copying any living creature down to the celluar level, lurking in a closed community - in this case, a spaceship returning to Earth - is the same as in Campbell's story, although it is developed differently with a closing twist. The story deals with the resulting paranoia, from the doctor's viewpoint particularly, and doctors feature in quite a few other stories in this collection. I gather that Nourse himself was a medical practitioner.
Some other stories I found rather inconclusive. The better ones were 'My Friend Bobby' about the relationship of a little boy, who is a telepath and perhaps more, to his dog Bobby, and 'Image of the Gods' about a colony planet visited by a now tyrannical Earth, where I liked the native Dusty lifeforms with whom the colonists had formed friendships. Some of the stories came across as unbelievable, such as the future in which unions have taken such control of business that they are running businesses into the ground and management have to clock in and out, or the tale of two groups, originally from the same planet, where one has been chasing the other across the universe to try to destroy them just because the despised enemy are peaceful music lovers, and that this has been going on for thousands of years stretched my disbelief too far.
Although the view of women is quite stereotyped as per the era in this era, Nourse avoids including racist stereotypes - basically by seemingly having no ethnic characters at all! (Though the general blandness of the characters doesn't prevent a reader from imagining some to be ethnic minorities.) But given the overt racism I've encountered in other fiction of this period it was at least a break from that. However there is one story in which an outmoded view towards physical disability is the twist which 'explains' why a character can't escape her situation.
There was nothing really outstanding in this collection, so for me this is an OK read, a 2 star.
The short stories, all except one, date to the 1950s (one was published in the early 60s) and this accounts for a lot of their, to current tastes, dated nature. The characters are basically one dimensional and the interest is in the ideas and how these are developed plot-wise. The first in the collection, from which it takes its name, reminded me strongly of John W Campbell's 'Who Goes There', published in 1938, which was first filmed in the 1950s and later as The Thing. The basic premise of someone who looks human but is actually a hostile alien creature capable of copying any living creature down to the celluar level, lurking in a closed community - in this case, a spaceship returning to Earth - is the same as in Campbell's story, although it is developed differently with a closing twist. The story deals with the resulting paranoia, from the doctor's viewpoint particularly, and doctors feature in quite a few other stories in this collection. I gather that Nourse himself was a medical practitioner.
Some other stories I found rather inconclusive. The better ones were 'My Friend Bobby' about the relationship of a little boy, who is a telepath and perhaps more, to his dog Bobby, and 'Image of the Gods' about a colony planet visited by a now tyrannical Earth, where I liked the native Dusty lifeforms with whom the colonists had formed friendships. Some of the stories came across as unbelievable, such as the future in which unions have taken such control of business that they are running businesses into the ground and management have to clock in and out, or the tale of two groups, originally from the same planet, where one has been chasing the other across the universe to try to destroy them just because the despised enemy are peaceful music lovers, and that this has been going on for thousands of years stretched my disbelief too far.
Although the view of women is quite stereotyped as per the era in this era, Nourse avoids including racist stereotypes - basically by seemingly having no ethnic characters at all! (Though the general blandness of the characters doesn't prevent a reader from imagining some to be ethnic minorities.) But given the overt racism I've encountered in other fiction of this period it was at least a break from that. However there is one story in which an outmoded view towards physical disability is the twist which 'explains' why a character can't escape her situation.
There was nothing really outstanding in this collection, so for me this is an OK read, a 2 star.
March 17, 2012
Nouse was a M.D. so a lot of his stories are about psychology. They are science fiction, but much more dramatic and dark than other robot and future war sorts of stories. Some are downright scary. I had chills reading the title story.
The author wrote stories for a number of magazines so each stands alone. You could read one story and put the book aside for a while then come back and begin another without a problem. His character development is very good as good story writer tend to be.
This is an oldie, but a goodie that I recommend to SciFi lovers and people who just like short stories.
The author wrote stories for a number of magazines so each stands alone. You could read one story and put the book aside for a while then come back and begin another without a problem. His character development is very good as good story writer tend to be.
This is an oldie, but a goodie that I recommend to SciFi lovers and people who just like short stories.
December 23, 2013
These ten stories serve as a great sampling of some very cool sci-fi concepts; all ten could almost exist in the same universe, where 'copter-cars, warp travel, and psionic powers are explored and exploited by often dystopian powers that be. I found myself impressed at the breadth of the investigation into these science fiction mainstays, and especially at how well they hold up even 60 years after being written.
A good read for any sci-fi fan, especially stories like My Friend Bobby, Meeting of the Board, Image of the Gods, and Second Sight, in which some profound concepts are explored.
A good read for any sci-fi fan, especially stories like My Friend Bobby, Meeting of the Board, Image of the Gods, and Second Sight, in which some profound concepts are explored.
June 24, 2016
I've read this collection several times, and I enjoy the variety in the stories. The Counterfeit Man and The Dark Door are probably my two favorites, as they feature two things I rather like - evil that can hide in plain sight, and a blurred line between truth and insanity. The Link is also a favorite, as it really resonates with me for some reason. I tend to read one story at a time from books like this, so that I can take a bit of time to ponder what I just read before moving on to the next tale, and this collection is good for provoking thought on a lot of different fronts.
February 5, 2017
Good examples of 1950s science fiction, you can see the genesis of many ideas and themes that later authors have developed further.
August 17, 2017
Some of the first scifi I ever read.
According to the name on the top, it used to belong to my middle school english teacher... whoops.
According to the name on the top, it used to belong to my middle school english teacher... whoops.
October 18, 2020
Read Counterfeit in the Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus. Creepy story about a shape-shifting alien that infiltrates a spaceship heading back to Earth. Good cat and mouse with a cool ending.
January 8, 2017
This is a collection of short stories from an obscure author which were published in some of the lesser known pulp magazines in the 1950s. The title story, The Counterfeit Man, is the best of the collection. It's the story of a survey team returning from an exploration mission to an alien planet. The ship’s doctor believes that, while on the planet, one of the crew has been covertly replaced by some type of shape shifting alien life form. Initially, the alien has only the external form of the crewman but as time progresses it emulates human life more and more completely, down to the cellular and chemical level. The doctor has to devise a medical test to prove his theory to the captain in order to stop the ship from landing and releasing the alien into the Earth’s population. It’s a serviceable story and reasonably well written.
The other stories in the book are of similar quality but generally uninteresting compared to the better science fiction of the era. The author clearly has little general scientific knowledge but focuses on medical science (Nourse was an MD, so this was his field). Nearly all the stories have some aspect of medical science as part of the plot. Overall, it's an okay read but I don’t recommend the book.
The other stories in the book are of similar quality but generally uninteresting compared to the better science fiction of the era. The author clearly has little general scientific knowledge but focuses on medical science (Nourse was an MD, so this was his field). Nearly all the stories have some aspect of medical science as part of the plot. Overall, it's an okay read but I don’t recommend the book.
January 11, 2010
Alan E. Nourse wrote sf books and short stories from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies.
I have read several of his novels and several collection of short stories. He is a competent write, but with a few exceptions, I would rate most of his work three stars. Average sf stories, adequately handled--but without the spark that would lead me to rate this work four stars.(With one outsanding exceptions--his YA novel "Raiders from the Rings" is great--see my review on that for detail).
The book contains eleven short stories--notable ones are " My Friend Bobby" and "Second Sight".
Nourse's books are mostly out of print, but worth trying him if you find any. You won't be up all night turning pages; but you won't be bored either.
Quite suitable for any juvenile sf fan also; an easy intorduction for sf newcomers.
I have read several of his novels and several collection of short stories. He is a competent write, but with a few exceptions, I would rate most of his work three stars. Average sf stories, adequately handled--but without the spark that would lead me to rate this work four stars.(With one outsanding exceptions--his YA novel "Raiders from the Rings" is great--see my review on that for detail).
The book contains eleven short stories--notable ones are " My Friend Bobby" and "Second Sight".
Nourse's books are mostly out of print, but worth trying him if you find any. You won't be up all night turning pages; but you won't be bored either.
Quite suitable for any juvenile sf fan also; an easy intorduction for sf newcomers.
December 20, 2007
read 03.30.84
February 25, 2010
An enjoyable enough collection of stories for whiling away an hour or two, but there were no particularly memorable stories there.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews