Daniel Keyes was an American author best known for his Hugo award-winning short story and Nebula award-winning novel Flowers for Algernon. Keyes was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000.
Keyes was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. At age 17, he joined the U.S. Maritime Service as ship's purser. He obtained a B.A. in psychology from Brooklyn College, and after a stint in fashion photography (partner in a photography studio), earned a Master's Degree in English and American Literature at night while teaching English in New York City public schools during the day and writing weekends.
In the early 1950s, he was editor of the pulp magazine Marvel Science Fiction for publisher Martin Goodman. Circa 1952, Keyes was one of several staff writers, officially titled editors, who wrote for such horror and science fiction comics as Journey into Unknown Worlds, for which Keyes wrote two stories with artist Basil Wolverton. From 1955-56, Keyes wrote for the celebrated EC Comics, including its titles Shock Illustrated and Confessions Illustrated, under both his own name and the pseudonyms Kris Daniels, A.D. Locke and Dominik Georg.
The short story and subsequent novel, Flowers for Algernon, is written as progress reports of a mentally disabled man, Charlie, who undergoes experimental surgery and briefly becomes a genius before the effects tragically wear off. The story was initially published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and the expanded novel in 1966. The novel has been adapted several times for other media, most prominently as the 1968 film Charly, starring Cliff Robertson (who won an Academy Award for Best Actor) and Claire Bloom. He also won the Hugo Award in 1959 and the Nebula Award in 1966.
Keyes went on to teach creative writing at Wayne State University, and in 1966 he became an English and creative writing professor at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, where he was honored as a professor emeritus in 2000.
Keyes' other books include The Fifth Sally, The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Touch, Unveiling Claudia, and the memoir Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey.
I'm fair with books. I give every book I read a 3-chapter chance. If the book I'm reading is falling on its face before the end of chapter 3, I'll put it down and move on to the next in my near-toppling to-read stack. Please understand I rarely do this. I can't remember the last book I gave up on after 3 chapters. I'm not a picky reader, but I do expect a lot from the books I read. Which is why I tend to choose wisely. Luckily this choice was from the library.
I won't go into the many reasons why I ended up giving up on this book. Generally, the dialogue was awkward, I didn't really care about any of the characters I was given, there were typographical errors throughout, and it was most certainly not the "A Psychological Thriller" that was promised on its cover.
I will say that I gave this book more than a 3-chapter chance. I gave it a 36-chapter chance, which I've NEVER done before. I really wanted this book to get better. I WILLED it to get better. But chapter by chapter it simply and sadly didn't.
If there was a "Didn't Finish" or "Abandoned" category available in the goodreads bookshelves, I wouldn't use it often, but I certainly would have used it for this book.
On to the next book in my wonderfully precarious stack! Happy reading!
Was it so bad? Not so bad for a na茂ve spy thriller, I guess. All the trappings are in place: CIA, FBI, 2 other organizations, lots of action鈥� and one mentally ill character. Why not? That's Keyes' style. But as for Keyes, the author of 鈥淔lowers for Algernon鈥�...yeah, it was just that bad. If 鈥淔lowers for Algernon鈥� deserves 5 stars, then I give this novel 5 stars less.
Okay, Keyes. If you are going to write about mental illness, then do your damn research. Schizophrenia is not borderline personality disorder is not multiple personality disorder (aka dissociative identity disorder [DID]). And I am not even entirely sure if they can all occur in the same person. I suppose that they could but that individual would be extremely debilitated and highly unlikely to be able to function as "well" as the "heroine" in this book did.
Good lord. If you are a stickler for psychology/psychiatric disorders being portrayed accurately, do NOT read this book. The protagonist apparently is a multiple (i.e., has DID), but throughout the book the terms "schizophrenia," "schizophrenic episode," "borderline personality disorder," and "borderline episode" are all used interchangeably.
I don't even have anything to say about the plot. I couldn't concentrate on it well enough due to the horror that was research gone wrong. Please, if any of you are going to write a book that includes a protagonist with mental illness, Do. Your. Research. There is nothing more ignorant and appalling than an author who chooses to write about a topic in which he has NO experience... and doesn't even adequately do his research.
The Asylum Prophecies is about a 3-way battle between the US government and 2 terrorist organizations for one very mentally challenged girl. (Most defiantly not what I expected it to be.) The consistent view of people's thoughts in this book was annoying if not repetitive, with everyone only wanting sex even if they swore vows of chastity 18+ odd years ago. The success (or failure depending on which side your on) of a terrorist plot is top priority and we all need to get laid by the next person of the opposing gender we see....right. In the end it was pretty much torture finishing it only to be disappointed in the conclusion, although about the only good conclusion it could have. Overall this book was one long drawn out waste of time, the only reason it got two starts is because I have read worse.
While otherwise a good book, I couldn鈥檛 get past the portrayal of BPD. I am diagnosed and have struggled with BPD and this book completely misrepresents what it鈥檚 like. Raven is seen as crazy and extremely manipulative to an extreme, and while that is somewhat based on truth, it is an offensive picture of a very real disorder that causes a lot of pain for the person with the disorder. This book made me sad, I don鈥檛 want people seeing me the way Raven is described because I couldn鈥檛 be further from that.
Interesting story, twisting plot, unpredicted characters... The story deserves to be read and it definitely worth the time spent on reading. However, it is less touching than "Flowers for Algernon".