Puss Reboots: Blog: June 2010: The Man Who Did Something About It

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Reviews:
All Aboard the Dinotrain by Deb Lund
Are You Afraid Yet? by Stephen James O'Meara
Bailey's Day by Robert Haggerty
A Brief History of Time by Shaindel Beers
Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
Dead End by Helen R. Myers
Dreamstone by D. A. Hendrickson
The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
The Essential Basho by Basho and translated by Sam Hamill
Excuse Me... Are You a Witch? by Emily Horn
Farewell Atlantis by Terry Bisson
Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
Grampa's Zombie BBQ by Kirk Scraggs
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry
How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner
The Kayla Chroincles by Sherri Winston
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint
Little Quack's Hide and Seek by Lauren Thompson
The Man Who Did Something About It by Harvey Jacobs
Owly Volume 1: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Revolutionary War on Wednesday (Magic Tree House #22) by Mary Pope Osborne
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
Spot Visits His Grandparents by Eric Hill
The Texicans by Nina Vida
The Thanksgiving Door by Debby Atwell
Twister on Tuesday (Magic Tree House #23) by Mary Pope Osborne
Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo Dillon
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman
Veracity by Laura Bynum

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The Man Who Did Something About It: 06/08/10

By the title alone, "The Man Who Did Something About It" by Harvey Jacobs had me thinking of the Ben 10 episode "Tourist Trap." I can just hear the mayor warning the Tennisons to not touch It, photograph It or use electronic devices near It.

Of course though the "It" in "The Man Who Did Something About It" is completely different from the "It" in "Tourist Trap" but they do share an out of the way location and an alien / human interaction.

The big difference between the two is that in the short story, It is never defined. The mechanic believes he is doing something about it, but whatever it is, he doesn't say.

As the Filling My Head with Geh review notes, "The Man Who Did Something About It" has a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibe. It does in that the alien visitor is simultaneously more advanced but just as mundane as humanity.