Weekly Short Story: Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim

Sometimes short stories can be memorable even though they barely take up any space, while others...equally impactful...can resemble short novels in their length.  One of my favorite science fiction anthologies is Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 4 (1942), DAW Books, 1980.  It goes back to 75 years ago with some of the best short fiction of that year, and I plan to review both long and short pieces from it.  This week I'm focusing on the six-page-long tale Mimic, by Donald A. Wollheim...who incidentally was the publisher of this series...

In biology, mimicry occurs whenever a species of life evolves to imitate the form, appearance, and/or motion of another...usually with the resulting benefit of escaping being eaten...or enabling it to eat others.  In Mimic, the unnamed narrator, employed as a museum curator's assistant, explains this fascinating aspect to biology very cogently...and then leads into the story.  There is a heavily cloaked man in black living in the heart of New York City.  He has lived there for years upon end, never talks to anyone, keeps to himself...and has an inordinate fear of women.  As far as anyone can see, he bothers no one, and people have pretty much become accustomed to his strangeness.  But the title of this story is "Mimic", and it's pretty clear that it relates in a major way to this character.  It is the unexpected twist at the end...common with these very brief stories...that gives it a much greater impact...

Although Wollheim was referring to mimicry as a product of natural selection enabling those life forms using it to survive in the wild, there is another type of it used in society.  People want to fit in and "survive", be it at school, work, or other social environments...but in order to avoid standing out and being subjected to rejection, many choose the tactic of "winging it"...acting as if they are as competent and integral members of their group as they think they should be to attain acceptance.  Yes, we humans have our own version of mimicry...

And now you can read Mimic for yourself...the copyright must have expired, for it is readily available on the Net: here is a link to it on the UNZ.org site: [link]...