Line #49 Creator/HenryKuttner


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/henry_kuttner.jpeg]]
2
3	Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915 – February 3, 1958) was an American author of [[ScienceFiction sci-fi]], {{fantasy}}, and {{horror}} short stories in the [[TheThirties 1930s]], [[TheForties '40s]], and [[TheFifties '50s]].
4
5	He was one of the "[[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft]] Circle", and contributed a number of elements to the Franchise/CthulhuMythos.
6
7	Kuttner liked the writing of fellow sci-fi author Creator/CLMoore, so a mutual acquaintance, H. P. Lovecraft, gave him Moore's address. Lovecraft failed to mention that 'C. L.' stood for 'Catherine Lucille', so Kuttner addressed his fan letter to 'Mr. C. L. Moore'. Even so, Kuttner and Moore fell in love and eventually married, frequently working as a CreatorCouple thereafter.
8
9	Among his works are the comedic Galloway Gallegher stories, which concern an inventor who reaches unimaginable heights of genius while drunk, which invariably causes trouble when he wakes up the day after with a hangover and no idea what his latest creation is supposed to do. These stories are collected in ''Literature/RobotsHaveNoTails''.
10
11	Some of Kuttner's works have been adapted for film. Written with Creator/CLMoore, their short story "The Twonky" was filmed in 1953, while "Literature/MimsyWereTheBorogoves" was adapted into ''Film/TheLastMimzy'' in 2007. Their "Literature/WhatYouNeed" was adapted as [[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E12WhatYouNeed an episode]] of ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone\|1959}}''. Kutter's "Literature/TheGraveyardRats" was adapted as a segment of ''Film/TrilogyOfTerrorII'' and an episode of ''Series/GuillermoDelTorosCabinetOfCuriosities''.
12
13	Kuttner is not as well-known as many of his contemporaries, mostly due to his death at the relatively young age of 42 and the fact that he wrote under at least 17 different pseudonyms.
14
15	----
16	!!Tropes that appear in Kuttner's works include:
17	* AfterTheEnd: ''Literature/TheBlackSunRises'' is set in the dark age following a nuclear war.
18	* AIGettingHigh: "Literature/TheEgoMachine" has a robot putting his fingers in a light bulb socket. Apparently, it's the robot's analogue of taking a shot of whiskey.
19	* AlternativeNumberSystem: In "Literature/TheIronStandard", the six-fingered Venusians use base-12.
20	* AssholeVictim: Virtually all the characters in Kuttner's comedy stories are completely self-interested and come to some misfortune, sometimes consequently but also sometimes merely subsequently. See also SadistShow below.
21	* {{Atlantis}}:
22	** The setting of the Elak of Atlantis sword-and-sorcery tales.
23	** Part of the backstory of the Hogben Family series, with the patriarch of the family supposedly being a survivor from Atlantis.
24	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: After exploiting "Norman", a slave with great psi powers but little to no willpower, John Fowler asks for the same powers. [[spoiler:His brain cannot handle it, and the upshot is that he gets sent back in time and ''is'' Norman.]]
25	* BecomingTheMask: In "Private Eye" by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, the main character radically changes his identity in order to give himself an alibi for a murder he is planning. Since the police have chronoscopes in the future, he needs to play the role to the hilt. At the end he realizes he liked his new identity better.
26	* BizarreBabyBoom:
27	** The 1953 novel ''Mutant'' has the "baldies", bald telepathic humans who were born after a nuclear war and subsequent fallout.
28	** A story called "Absalom" where more and more smarter and smarter children are born every generation. There is a problem with the older generations being envious and afraid.
29	* BrainInAJar: Bart Quentin, one of the central characters in “Camouflage,” has become a brain-in-a-box called a Transplant after a research accident. It doesn’t prevent him from fighting very effectively against an attempt to hijack the spaceship he’s plugged into.
30	* BrownNote: In "Nothing But Gingerbread Left", a semantics professor develops a German-language ditty so catchy that a person hearing it will be able to do nothing but [[EarWorm think about it]]. It is broadcast in occupied Europe as weapon against the Nazis.
31	* ChromeDomePsi: The 1953 FixUpNovel ''Mutant'' by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner compiled five short stories about a race of post-nuclear mutated humans called "Baldies" who are telepathic and completely hairless.
32	* CombatClairvoyance: A telepathic mutant in “The Piper’s Son” gets out of a duel after demonstrating how mind-reading would let him anticipate and counter all his opponent’s moves, no matter how instinctive.
33	* ConquerorFromTheFuture: "Endowment Policy" has a variant: [[spoiler:a person tries to set his own past self as the world dictator]].
34	* ConspiracyTheorist: Satirized in ''Don't Look Now''
35	* DarkWorld: The setting of the novel ''The Dark World'', an alternate version of Earth which has drifted into a fantasy world, although the magic is given a [[ClarkesThirdLaw scientific explanation]].
36	* DealWithTheDevil:
37	** In "By These Presents", a man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for immortality and invulnerability -- with two conditions, the combination of which gets him in the end.
38	** "Threshold", a man gets two wishes from the devil. The first wish is fulfilled once he passes a blue door, the second once he passes a yellow door, then the devil will mark him as his, and then, once he passes a third door, the devil will have him (not his soul; the devil cares not for such things, he merely wants to ''eat'' the man). The man manages to determine the third door is red, and is now confident he can stay ahead of the devil. [[spoiler:The devil's mark turns out to be color-blindness]].
39	* ForWantOfANail: "What You Need" by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) features what might be called a "nail salesman". He provides, for a significant fee, rather mundane items to a restricted clientele. These items turn out to be exactly what the clients need shortly thereafter (for example, a man receives a pair of scissors, which he uses to snip his tie when it gets caught in machinery; had he not had the scissors on him at the time, he would have been killed).
40	* GeneticMemory: In ''The Mask of Circe'', a 20th-century descendant of the mythic hero Jason gains his ancestor's memories.
41	* HeroicFantasy:
42	** ''Elak of Atlantis''
43	** ''Valley of Flame''
44	** ''The Dark World''
45	* IgnoreTheDisability: Discussed in "Nothing But Gingerbread Left".
46	* LaserGuidedKarma:
47	** The Furies are programmed to enforce this in ''Two-Handed Engine''.
48	** In "The Prisoner in the Skull", [[spoiler:Fowler exploits this major telepath devoid of volition for his own gain, only for it to turn out that "Norman" is really Fowler himself given powers his brain cannot handle and sent back in time]].
49	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" is a line from the surreal first verse of the poem "Literature/{{Jabberwocky}}", the secret meaning of which is a plot point in the story.
50	* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: "Literature/WhatYouNeed": Despite the protagonists not noticing the store before, the proprietor insists that he's been there; it's just a very low-key place.
51	* MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight: "Endowment Policy"; see ConquerorFromTheFuture for details.
52	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "The Iron Standard", Venus is ruled by the tarkomars, which are what centuries of MotiveDecay would turn a union or guild into. Anything that even looks like it could threaten their power has to be suppressed.
53	* OffWithHisHead: Done posthumously by the headhunters in ''Home Is the Hunter''.
54	* PinealWeirdness: Magic in ''The Dark World'' is really PsychicPowers caused by using NinetyPercentOfYourBrain and "the ancient third eye that is the pineal gland".
55	* PrideBeforeAFall: Implied with Goebbels' reciting the Gingerbread Left rhyme in his head--but only to prove that he was stronger than it.
56	* ProportionalAging: The Hogbens. The narrator is a boy who looks and behaves like a teenager, and lost count of his age during [[UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell Cromwell's]] times, while his younger brother is teething at the age of four hundred.
57	* SadistShow: The default tactic of Kuttner's comedy stories is to make the protagonist suffer and suffer without surcease.
58	* TomeOfEldritchLore: The Book of Iod, in his Franchise/CthulhuMythos stories.
59	* ThoseWackyNazis: Get knocked for a loop by "Nothing But Gingerbread Left".
60	* VenusIsWet: In "Literature/ClashByNight" and ''Fury'', Venus is an ocean world where the landmasses are dominated by uninhabitable jungle, forcing the colonists from Earth to live in underwater cities.
61	* VorpalPillow: In "By These Presents", a man kills his disabled mother this way after selling his soul to the Devil.
62	* WasOnceAMan: Gnomes in ''A Gnome There Was''
63	* WellIntentionedExtremist: The neo-Viking leader in ''The Black Sun Rises'' started out this way.
64	* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: A theme in "Camouflage", which features a cyborg implanted into a starship as its central character.
65	* WorthlessYellowRocks: In "The Iron Standard", a spaceship crew is starving on Venus because gold and silver are too common there, the society is too conservative to buy any of their devices, and the main medium of exchange is iron, which they only have as alloys.
66	* {{Zeerust}}: Inevitable.

Context Creator / HenryKuttner