Catch 'Em in the Act

by Terry Bisson

Lou has a magic box.  It makes people do things they normally wouldn’t. And Lou likes to watch.

Terry Bisson’s 1990 short story “Bears Discover Fire” won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and his all-dialogue story “They're Made Out of Meat” is one of the most widely-reprinted SF stories of the last several decades. He has published several volumes of short fiction, including Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. His novels include Talking Man, Fire on the Mountain, Voyage to the Red Planet, Pirates of the Universe, and The Pickup Artist.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Crime, Fiction

32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 14, 2010

About the author

Terry Ballantine Bisson was an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), which which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as They're Made Out of Meat (1991), which has been adapted for video often.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It only had two buttons: SHOOT and PLAY. Not a lot of features. But the price was right.

Lou pointed it at his cat and looked in the viewscreen.

There was the cat. The picture in the viewscreen was black and white, with a little Date&Time display at the top. It was even grainy, like a real surveillance video.

Cool! Lou pressed SHOOT.

The cat took a crap in the corner, and then left the room, looking like a criminal. But cats always look like criminals.

since tor.com is taking a short break (meaning both "a brief break" and "a (brief) break from publishing the free shorts"), i went way back into the archives to find one i hadn’t read and found this little piece from 2008.

a fun, twilight zone-ish premise underdeveloped into an okay story: a lonely loser purchases a CRIMESTOPPERS™ VIDEO CAMERA, only to find that it doesn’t record crimes being committed so much as it causes people (and a cat) to commit crimes, recording them for all yer blackmailing needs.

the tone is decisively absurdist—very goofy and slapsticky, but its brand of humor may not appeal to contemporary readers, which seems weird to say about something written ten-and-change years ago, but i stand by it. it’s got strong incel vibes, casual animal death, lady-abduction, some wincingly-broad characterizations, and i suppose the charitable phrase for it would be "charmingly dated." it comes across more clumsy than intentionally offensive, but because it’s such a breezy skim of a story, when characters are defined and referred to by their most basic and stereotypical attributes: the pakistani 7-11 clerk, the fat white kid, the black guy buying salems and a lottery ticket threatening to kick the narrator’s ass, the little old lady…it’s not great.

my main gripe with it is that it’s a bit hacky. it seems raw and unfinished, like he came up with the idea for the camera and then hastily constructed a story around it that doesn’t go anywhere or say anything. there’s no real motivation given for why the narrator buys the camera in the first place:

Lou was almost thirty. He had a job and an apartment, but he was lonely. He didn’t have any friends. He didn’t know why; he just didn’t.

So he did what everyone who is lonely does: YouTube and eBay. One day it was eBay.

where he discovers the camera:

So Lou did what every lonely person with PayPal does. He clicked on BUY.

is ebay really qvc-for-men, where lonely dudes hang out, buying shit they don’t need? it’s a pretty flimsy catalyst driving the story.

and apart from the three characters mentioned above, whose respective arrivals to the narrative are all clumped into one chonk of the story, he doesn’t bother to disclose the race of any other character (one assumes they default white) or even describe them, beyond "the girl" who is "extremely pretty." we don’t even know what color the cat is. which, who cares, right? but the fact that he made a point to assign race to three characters makes the omission w/r/t other characters seem like lazy writing.

there’s no traditional story arc, no character growth, and why is this thirty-year-old man making such a romantic play for a "girl" who’s getting picked up at the mall by her mom every day?

i didn’t hate it, but it’s not a great introduction to his work. i’ve always been in love with the cover of this other book he wrote:



and maybe that one is better than meh.



read it for yourself here

come to my blog!

[Prabhjot Kaur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lou lives in an apartment with a cat and one day he buys a CRIMESTOPPERS™ VIDEO CAMERA from eBay. Whenever he presses shoot on the camera, who ever is in the camera's frame commits a crime. Lou then blackmails them and shares half the loot with them. He comes across three people and spends time with two of them but when the batteries run out, the cat gets shot and dies, those people turn on him and his loot money turns out to be counterfeit money.

It was an interesting concept that I really liked in the beginning but it fizzled out towards the end for me. Writing wasn't bad. Overall a good story that left me wanting more.

3.5 stars

[Badseedgirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a light, fairly funny story about the lengths a man will go to get a girlfriend and a couple of friends.

[MollyK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite grim yet karmic. Reminded me of an episode of Tales From the Darkside.

[Carolien · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.tor.com/2008/10/01/catche...

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

A video camera that not only catches the crime, but causes someone to commit one. An absurd concept, but Bisson’s often good with some pretty whacked-out ideas. The point of it is to illuminate something about the characters. Unfortunately, all of the characters here are pretty whacked themselves, so there’s no grounding here for the unreality to pierce. Amusing, but the result wasn’t what I had hoped to achieve by the end.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A camera with only two buttons: Shoot and Play. A strange compulsion to commit a crime when the camera is pointed your way and Lou, the owner, comes up with a plan to get everything he wants. But everyone knows crime doesn't pay.

A strange little story from Terry Bisson, "Catch 'em in the Act" is in turn funny and then sad. Coming across with some 'The Twilight Zone' vibes, the story ends with a nice little moral.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alleged humor. Didn't work for me. 1.5 stars.

[Ylva · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sort of ok but weird story about a possibly alien CrimStoppers camera. Disliked writing style.