When the aliens come...
When the deathrays humm...

Myystic Spiral freaking well summed up the general state of science fiction writing in the late 1950's. Much of the writing cast its eyes skyward, sending phallic shaped ships into the stratosphere, or battling invading armies of alien creatures who always arrived in inverted pie pans and for some reason insisted on enslaving the silly little creatures on the third planet of the tiny star on the unfashionable western spiral of the galaxy.

In 1959, Daniel Keyes moved science fiction from outer to inner space when he wrote the short story "Flowers for Algernon" for the magazine "Fantasy and Science Fiction". His tale (later expanded into a novel, and a movie) took the reader on a journey inwards, into the mind of a man named Charly, who is described as living in an "intellectual twilight" and transformed into a genius by means of an operation. By letting the Charly write the tale, the reader takes a journey into his mind, and travels between the distant worlds of ignorance and intelligence, innocence and knowledge. The moronic, and the moral.

It seemed to me that any visitor to Lawndale would quickly observe another individual who could also be described as being in an "intellectual twilight". What if the same thing happened to him?

So, I said, what the hell. Let's find out.

And that journey is chronicled herein.