Fondly Fahrenheit

"Fondly Fahrenheit" is a science fiction short story by Alfred Bester. First published in 1954, Bester adapted it for television as "Murder and the Android" on October 18, 1959. The production cast included Kevin McCarthy, Rip Torn, Suzanne Pleshette and Telly Savalas and was nominated for a 1960 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The central element of the plot is that a rich playboy, James Vandaleur, and his expensive "multiple aptitude android" have become two aspects of a single insane personality. Vandaleur's father is dead, having lost the family fortune, and Vandaleur only has the android which, if it works correctly, can bring in more than enough income to support him in the manner to which he had become accustomed.

Plot

On a warm humid planet, vast paddy fields raise a huge crop of rice. In these fields men are searching for a lost child. They find the young girl dead, and under her fingernails is blood. Android blood. It's a very hot day.

James Vandaleur flees with his android. The android has progressed from acts of defiance, to random destruction, to murder. Each time they flee, each time with less money. They take a space liner to another planet. Vandaleur hires out the android and becomes the plaything of a rich older woman. Vandaleur uses a false name, but she easily identifies the man and his android. In the hot furnace room of her jewelry manufacturing business, the android pours molten gold over her, killing her horribly and painfully. In the heat, it capers, twiddling its fingers and singing an old song.

:"Oh it's no feat to beat the heat.":"All reet! All reet!":"So jeet your seet":"Be fleet be fleet":"Cool and discreet":"Honey..."

From a pair of inquisitive students trying to solve the android mystery, to an old scholar who makes the connection between the temperature and the android's crimes, the two kill again and again. A "psychometric consultant" diagnoses the problem as synesthesia complicated by projection. The android's insanity infects Vandaleur, or possibly it is the other way around. Naturally Vandaleur kills the consultant. He aims to flee to a cold planet, but before he can the two are tracked down by police. In the resulting chase the android perishes in a wildfire, capering, singing and twisting its fingers as the heat sets off its madness.

Vandaleur escapes to a cold planet, and tries to live off the earnings of a simple robot instead of an expensive android. But the robot is twitching and humming, and now it has taken a young girl for a walk. And so the last line of the story is:

:"Cool and discreet, honey, in the dancing frost while the thermometer registers 10 degrees fondly Fahrenheit."

An interesting plot device involves the narrative shifting constantly from third-person narrator to first person in Vandaleur, first person the android, and a plural first person. The opening paragraph sets the mood:

:"He doesn't know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life, and die your own death ... or else you will die another's."

The mood is maintained by repetition of phrases. When the android kills, the tagline to the episode is a remark on the temperature: "And the thermometer .... registered 98.1 degrees beautifully Fahrenheit." Fragments of a song the android sings underscore other events in the story. In many ways it is a horror story in a science fiction context.

ee also

*"The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964", an anthology of the greatest science fiction short stories prior to 1965, as judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America