Star-Crossed Lover — Reading Notes

(0 User reviews) 239

In Category - Other Worlds

Authors: Ritter, Bob [Illustrator], Stuart, William W. Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2016 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Science fiction; Short stories; Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Spouses -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 10,672

Reading time 47 min

Text sections 2

Before opening Star-Crossed Lover — Reading Notes, the edition data offers a quick orientation: 10,672 words, 47 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Science fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #51736

A man recounts how helping an old lady across the street led to a marriage with an alien who periodically discards her human body, leaving him to dispose of the remains. The story blends dark comedy with domestic horror, as the narrator's wife rebuilds his body without consent.

Read the complete public-domain text at its original source.

Read on Project Gutenberg

The narrator opens with a defensive, almost jocular confession: he is not a monster, despite the bodies buried by the garage. The story begins as a first-person account of how a casual act of kindness—helping a confused old woman cross a street—escalates into a bizarre marriage. The old woman, revealed to be an extraterrestrial, takes on a series of beautiful female forms, each of which she eventually abandons. The narrator’s tone is conversational, self-deprecating, and oddly matter-of-fact, as if he is trying to convince the reader (and perhaps a jury) of his essential normalcy.

A Narrator Protesting Too Much

The story’s voice is established in the opening lines: “So help me, I’m not really a fiend, a monstrous murderer or a Bluebeard.” The narrator insists on his ordinariness—he is “friendly, sociable, kindly, lovable to a fault”—even as he describes a trail of bodies. This disjunction between his self-image and his actions creates a darkly comic tension. He frames his predicament as a series of accidents set in motion by a single good deed. The reader is left to gauge how reliable his self-assessment is, especially when he admits to fleeting murderous thoughts toward the old woman before she takes his arm.

Alien Biology and Domestic Disposal

The wife’s alien nature is revealed gradually. She can change her appearance at will, discarding old bodies like worn-out clothing. The narrator’s main complaint is not the murders but the inconvenience: “she would keep littering up the house with her old, used-up bodies!” He digs graves by the garage, noting that the roses never improve. The story treats the disposal of corpses as a mundane chore, undercutting the horror with domestic triviality. When the wife rebuilds his body—replacing bones with alloy, rewiring his nervous system—he is initially outraged but soon admits the improvements are practical.

A Science-Fiction Marriage of Convenience

The relationship is transactional: the wife wants to learn about human customs (TV, flu), and the narrator gains a partner who is “all women to me” in appearance. The story’s humor derives from the clash between alien logic and human norms. The wife’s jealousy is triggered by a stray thought, and she retaliates by discarding her current body. The narrator’s protestations of love (“No matter who you are, I love you!”) are both sincere and absurd. The excerpts end with him falling off a roof and being unharmed due to her modifications, hinting at a deepening dependency.

Readers should attend to the narrator’s unreliable voice and the story’s tonal shifts between comedy and unease. The catalog subjects list “Man-woman relationships” and “Spouses,” but the excerpts show a relationship defined by alien biology and murder-as-housekeeping. The story resists easy categorization, using science fiction to explore themes of identity, consent, and the absurdity of domestic life.

That rainy Tuesday, I kept returning to the image of the wife shedding her body like a snake’s skin, and the quiet horror of the narrator clearing it away. It made me think of what waits on our own doorsteps—not aliens, but everyday collisions of grace and strangeness. The linked Doorstep — Themes and Context sat unopened beside my tea, and somehow, the rain and the mutability of love nudged me toward it.