This first appeared in David Gerrold's Alternities.
A lonely, middle-aged woman, whose reproductive years are coming to a close, uses a dictionary, using the words the make a man of her desire, her design. But it doesn't go as planned.
Discussion (with Spoilers):
I wanted to read his stories in a roughly chronological order, but I don't presently have his earliest, which he apparently considered too immature (written when he was fifteen).
This is his earliest story Bear collected for Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear series (clearly a misnomer), which appears in volume one, Just Over the Horizon.
He rewrote the fantasy for this new volume. He economized in some places, expanded in others, reshuffled the order a bit on occasion. Some choices seemed sage, but some less essential. A very few of his early stylistic and sound choices I wanted back in the text. Towards the end, the rewrite improved the text.
The imagination and wonder are relatively rich for his sophomore publication outing. It flips the genders on the old Pygmalion tale, albeit following George Bernard Shaw's version, more than Ovid's.
What makes it work is how he makes us care. We want her to succeed, which makes the tragedy sting.
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