First published in Astounding Science Fiction (June 1951 issue), by Isaac Asimov, this Science Fiction novelette is about a suicidal genius.
The story begins with a cop describing why he's had to arrest an apparently crazy person. The crazy person turns out to be Dr. Elwood Ralson, a physicist working for a top-secret American research team. With his suicidal tendencies made clear, the government decides to hire a psychiatrist to help cure Dr. Ralson's delusions so that he can continue work on their top-secret project.
Dr. Gottfried Blaustein is introduced to Dr. Ralson and his psychoses. The government provides Blaustein with answers to the most casual inquiries into Ralson's job and environment. Meanwhile, Ralson explains his theories on why he feels Driven to Suicide; The world is a incubator for life, and humanity is being run through a bizarre experiment by some nearly-omnipotent aliens interested in their development, but the experimenters have installed limits in people's minds that cause self-destructive impulses to curb the advancement of science and technology that could see the human race grow out of their control, which he likens to a ring of penicillin in a petri dish cultivating a dangerous bacteria, keeping it from spreading too far.
Dr. Ralson offers several anecdotal pieces of evidence to support his beliefs, including the cyclical nature of empires and the high frequency of death in scientists who work on classified information. Nobody really seems convinced, and the government pressures Dr. Blaustein to bring Ralson back to work soon. The clock of doom ticks closer to midnight and America's best chance is developing force fields to repel atomic bombs.
"Breeds There a Man...?" was republished ten times; Beachheads In Space (1952), From Other Worlds (1964), Through A Glass Clearly (1967), Nightfall and Other Stories (1969), Writers Choice Volume II (1984), The Edge Of Tomorrow (1985), Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great Science Fiction Stories, Volume 13 (1951) (1985), Robot Dreams Collection (1986), The Asimov Chronicles: Fifty Years of Isaac Asimov (1989), and The Complete Stories, Volume 1 (1990).
"Breeds There a Man...?" provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Ending: Dr. Ralston completes the force field and then kills himself, leaving a note saying that it doesn't matter, because the work is complete — once civilisation can't wiped out by atomic war, humanity is "past the penicillin" and beyond recall. Blaustein is left wondering if he was right after all.He looked up at the stars.
Incubators? - As the Good Book Says...: Dr. Ralston quotes from part of Book of Psalms 90:4 ("For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by"), describing how a long-lived alien race might see humans as having lives as short as mayflies.[Ralston] jumped to his feet, shaking his fists above his head. "A thousand years are but as yesterday-"
- Blade Enthusiast: Inspector Darrity always carries a switchblade. He uses it to clean underneath his fingernails and to have something to play with in his hands.
- Deflector Shields: Atomic scientists are attempting to generate an energy field that repulses all matter. Due to all particles being deflected, a fully-powered field has a mirror-like shine to it. This is the only known defense against an atomic bomb."And what," asked Blaustein, gently, "is a force field?"
"I wish I could tell you. Right now, it's an equation on paper. Energy can be so channelled as to create a wall of matterless inertia, theoretically. In practice, we don't know how to do it." - Desires Prison Life: Dr. Ralston deliberately gets himself jailed in the hope that a prison environment will prevent him from acting on his suicidal urges.
- Determinator: A scientist keeps trying to invent an energy shield to defend cities from nuclear missiles. He does this despite an increasingly strong urge not just to end the research, but to kill himself. It turns out the Cold War is an experiment by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, who seek to prevent humans from breaking the parameters. Through extraordinary willpower, the scientist succeeds. Then, with great relief, he kills himself with a detective's knife.
- Distinguishing Mark: Dr. Ralston has a distinctive chemical scar on his cheek.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Dr. Ralston believes that people try to commit suicide because of aliens. He argues that it's an automatic thing, where "strains" of humanity are controlled by unknown effects from the alien experiments. Other people don't believe him, and dismiss evidence (such as the high-than-average suicide rate among atomic scientists) as being due to the stress of keeping their work secret.
- Ross, an engineer working on secret atomic research, walked into the path of an oncoming car after he finished constructing a prototype force field. This is entirely unexpected and had no prior symptoms of suicide. This causes some of the government agents to wonder if Ralston might be correct about the aliens.
- Facial Markings: Dr. Ralston has a distinctive chemical scar on his cheek.
- Get into Jail Free: Dr. Ralston goes to a police station to get himself jailed because he doesn't want to kill himself, but has a powerful urge to commit suicide. When the officer on duty tells him he can't be thrown in jail without committing a crime, he quickly racks up three charges; resisting an officer, assault and battery, and malicious mischief.
- History Repeats: One of the symptoms that Dr. Ralston identifies as due to malign alien influence is the way that historic empires would be destroyed by war/disease during the height of their power. He is convinced that the aliens observed that a group showed too much vitality and ability, and therefore caused a war to destroy the possibility of their further development. He is convinced the Cold War is their plan to end the current "high-culture" experiment.Ralston: I asked why was there not a post-Periclean Athens of higher accomplishments still, and he told me that Athens was ruined by a plague and by a long war with Sparta. I asked about other cultural spurts and each time it was a war that ended it, or, in some cases, even accompanied it.
- Instant Illness: For the most part, the government agents don't believe in the mysterious aliens that Dr. Ralston blames for his suicidal tendencies. The most convincing argument in their existence is the sudden suicide of the engineer who worked on the prototype Deflector Shields. They had never even heard of Dr. Ralston, much less his ravings about aliens and penicillin, but after completing their work on the prototype, they walked into the path of an oncoming car for a quick death. More disturbingly, despite being grievously wounded and in awful pain, he managed to smile and declare he felt much better.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: Dr. Ralston finds himself so much smarter than everyone around him that he has trouble tolerating their inability to grasp "simple" concepts. His psychiatrist describes this isolation to the project manager as analogous to a force field."Whatever difference there is between his mind and that of others, it has built a wall between him and society as strong as the force field you are trying to design. For similar reasons, he has been unable to enjoy a normal sex life. He has never married; he has had no sweethearts."
- Mental Health Recovery Arc: Dr. Ralson is the mental patient, a physicist who is Driven to Suicide, but instead of following the story from his perspective, we see the efforts of the people around him to help him overcome the urge to self-harm and continue developing force fields for the American government during the Cold War.
- Mr. Smith: When Dr. Ralston gets himself thrown in jail, he gives "John Smith" as his name."... Well, sure it's a phony. Nobody is named John Smith. Not in a police station, anyway."
- No Antagonist: The conflict is all internal; Dr. Ralson is attempting suicide yet doesn't actually want to die. Although he claims these suicidal tendencies come from aliens, there isn't any strong evidence for his claim. The main conflict in the book comes from the other characters trying to help him recover so that he can complete his work on force fields.
- The Shrink: Dr. Gottfried Blaustein, a psychiatrist, is hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to help one of their top scientists overcome their suicidal tendencies.Dr. Gottfried Blaustein was small and dark and spoke with a trace of an Austrian accent. He needed only a small goatee to be the layman's caricature of a psychiatrist.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Humanity is an alien experiment which must occasionally be reset by large-scale destruction. The Cold War is the prelude to another reset, but if humanity can develop an energy shield to protect cities against nuclear bombs, they may be able to escape alien control.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Dr. Ralson believes that aliens are conducting experiments with civilizations all over the universe, and Earth's is close to a point where measures are being taken to shut it down.
- The Watson: Because most of the characters are scientists specializing in one field or another, they trade the role of "audience asking for explanations" around so that no one character is asking all of the questions.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Most of the people trying to help Dr. Ralson don't believe in his "alien experimenters", but Dr. Blaustein, his psychiatrist, points out that it doesn't matter if the aliens exist or not, so long as Ralson associates his suicidal tendencies with advanced science/technology."But," said Grant, "he's dying of something imaginary."
"All right. Say that he is. But he will be really dead just the same, no?"
