Book Review: The Incredible Shrinking Man

Usually Sunday is Abnormal Signs day, but I still haven't quite got that worked out, so you'll have to live with a book review.  And not a really good book either, though it did have its moments.   You'll see what I mean.

Source: Amazon.com

The Incredible Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson

I read this a few weeks back, shortly after finishing Volkogonov’s biography of Lenin (see my other review).  To be honest, this book, following so closely on the heels of that one, left me feeling a bit depressed.  Neither this book or Lenin's biography are really what I’d call “fun” reading.  Not that they weren’t both good, but both have heavy and somewhat sad plots to them.  The only difference being that the story of Lenin’s life and rise to power was truth, and this work is fiction (at least I hope so).

Matheson, by way of background, is the same guy who gave us the book I Am Legend.  That book happens to be among my favorite vampire tales and, coincidentally, I feel that the Wil Smith movie of the same name didn’t really do the story justice, though I do enjoy it just the same.  Then again, Matheson’s original story is also dated, and its emphasis on the “vampire new world order” at the end was dissatisfying.  But I’m getting off topic here.  The point is that Matheson’s works are good in my estimation, but that he writes pieces that have a tougher time standing up to the passing of time.  Also, he seems to have an obsession with sex.  But I’ll explain that observation more fully in a moment.


The Incredible Shrinking Man is an interesting take on sci-fi, and also a commentary on the idea of disconnect from one’s own life.  The protagonist of the story is exposed to both radiation and toxic insecticides (as we discover later) and the combination causes him to begin to shrink by a set amount each day.  I believe the number was a seventh of an inch each 24 hour period, but it has been too long since I read it now to recall the specifics.  This shrinking begins to affect his existence when it is first noticed, and over time it begins to have a crippling affect upon his life - as would be expected.

The various challenges our hero goes through include a diminishment of romantic attachment - and therefore intimate relations - with his wife (for obvious reasons - he begins to feel as though she treats him like a kid instead of a mate), an attack by ruffian teenagers, losing his job due to his stress level, and eventually going to the scientific community and the newspapers (this is based in the 70s, thus not the internet as it would be today) for help and money to pay the bills.  This leads our hero to feel like a side-show freak.  Speaking of side-shows, he does meet a woman at the carnival that his wife and daughter want to attend, and has a one night stand with her.  It is... awkward.  I can see the reason for the inclusion - the need for companionship with someone who is like you and understands you - but the whole incident, like the majority of the story, is just sad.

Speaking of sex, there is a really odd section of the story in which the protagonist starts living in the basement of his home during the day so that he won't be seen by his daughter's babysitter.  At first the girl, who is sixteen if I recall correctly and is somewhat homely, is of no interest to our hero, but as he begins to get sexual frustration from being eighteen inches tall and practically alone in the world... well, things get weird.  Err.. more weird.  It starts with him staring at her out the basement window whole his daughter and the girl play in the sprinklers, and ends with him sneaking around his own home to spy on the girl as she acts quite inappropriately for a babysitter (if I ever found out someone who was supposed to be watching my daughter was taking long showers and lounging around naked, I'd fire her butt on the spot).  She catches him at it finally, but since he is only twelve inches tall at the time, the results are simply that the babysitter thinks she is seeing leprechauns and is quietly dismissed from her job.

Anyway, the whole section is... well the best thing to describe many elements of the book is "awkward."  The story is told primarily via flashbacks, as the point in which the book begins is when our protagonist is about an inch tall and is running from a black widow spider in what has become a very dangerous basement.  Imagine gigantic obstacles that we take for granted - chairs, garden hoses, cardboard boxes, paint cans - and a lack of resources such as food and water.  Life is a constant struggle for our guy.  This present tense is the interesting part of the book, as it is full of action and the need to find means of survival as he continues to shrink by a seventh of the inch a day.  For instance, when the hero is around eighteen inches tall, he smacks the black widow and breaks one of its eight legs off.  The spider is his nemesis throughout the rest of the story, until he kills it shortly before shrinking down to "nothing."  It's like St George and the dragon by the end.  The battle with the spider in the sand hills is a heart-pounder.

The fear of this last facet of the story - the fear of shrinking away to nothing - is one of the book's major driving factors.  The protagonist is faced with the dilemma of shrinking down to literally nothing.  He is afraid that when he goes below a common measurable height (below "zero") that he will cease to exist.  It adds to the depression that the character feels throughout the story.  The flashbacks to his pre-basement life are all varying degrees of sad.  Sadness that his marriage is ending due to extreme changes in circumstances, sadness that he doesn't fit in his world, sadness that he doesn't know himself anymore.  The book is depressing.  I can't put it any way other than that.

I'll stop here, because I think I've covered it well enough.  The end of the book is the only real bright point to the over-arching "dramatic" plot, and it is hard to get to after all the stuff you had to slog through.  The book would make an interesting psychological examination of the human condition more than a fun read.  The end is good, but poignant.  There is life below zero.  That is the point.  Life continues to be a challenge, no matter what your size.  Blah blah blah.  By the time you get there, you're so depressed that you don't feel like celebrating.

Learn more about The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson on Amazon.com 

The parting comment:

Source: LOLsnaps.com

 If you've ever stepped on one, you know the truth when you've read it.