Monday, April 30, 2007

"Sleeping Beauty" (short story): A cure for your snoring problems!

Welcome the modern equivalent of the great Druid from the village of Indomitable Gauls. The maker of impossible potions. Because this one is modern, he injects them into your body via a syringe rather than making you drink it. But that is about the only difference.

Enjoy in this lovely piece of humor.

Story summary (spoiler).

A man gets ultimatum from his wife: do something about your snoring, or we are parting ways!

There is an additional complication: the man is to inherit a small fortune bequeathed by an uncle five years down, but only on condition that he has never been divorced till the time he gets the money! Can you count the number of movies with some variant or other of this constraint? I know there are a lot in Hindi.

OK - so he approaches the druid - an uncle who is a professor of biochemistry, or something.

Uncle is aware of the will. He extracts a bit of money immediately, & a contract to a part of fortune that will eventually come. In return, he promises to do what he can.

A while later, the snorer is injected with a newly brewed drug by professor. But he is not told that he is the first guinea pig of the wonder drug. Result is magical. Snoring is completely cured. So is the sleep!

Our snorer will never need to sleep again.

Part of the following story is concerned with speculation of how you will use all your extra time if you never needed to sleep.

But another fatal problem is surfacing. Because our man doesn't sleep, he cannot spend much time in bedroom with his wife. He gets out about midnight, & keeps himself occupied with nightly adventures.

Wife is not amused. She would rather have her snorer back!

Another visit to professor. An antidote is delivered. Unfortunately, the professor dies soon after administering drug - in a lab accident.

And, of course, need-to-sleep problem is cured, without snoring, & far better than anyone had hoped for! Our snorer never need to be awake again! Becomes a Kumbhkaran, the demon who loved to sleep - even truer than the original.

No one is complaining, least of all the wife who gets to enjoy the fortune without being burdened with a man of extremes.

Fact sheet.

Sleeping Beauty, short story, review
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Genre: Comedy
First published: 1957
Rating: A
See also: Other Clarkian comedies.

This story appears in the following collections.

  1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
  2. "Tales from the White Hart"

4 comments:

Unknown said...

It is very useful for the people who suffered with snoring problem.Snoring may disturb your bed room partner also. Snoring is one of the sleeping problems.Sleep makes the mind and body fresh. The beginning for all the problems in the body is lack of sleep. If a person does not have proper sleep, then there is some problem with his mind or body. Sleep apnea is basically a condition that affects most people causing them to stop breathing for around 10-20 seconds as they sleep. The sleep apnea cannot be identified by the same person since it occurs during sleep. So if someone complaints about you for snoring, inform your partner or your family member who sleeps along with you to notice your sleeping condition during sleep. If you had sleep apnea, there are lots of medical procedures and devices to cure sleep apnea in a natural way.

Admin said...

The problem is that I don't know if I snore or not. However, every night I found myself having a difficulty to fall asleep, even if I have sleep apnea. So, I should feel very tired in the evening, which is true.
However, when I'm in bed and turn off the light, a lot of things come to my mind and I cannot fall asleep. I found this particularly strange in a person who has a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea.

read more said...

Love it/hate it is how I classify this med. 7 years, doc's get you hooked and then now they say they're worried about abuse. Huh? Watch out and take these posts seriously. You can get hooked, you will do weird things and you will wonder how you can live without it.

Richard C. Lambert said...

The maker of impossible potions. Because this one is modern, he injects them into your body via a syringe rather than making you drink it. But that is about the only difference. how much is pure sleep