How to Make Friends by Jim Harmon
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"How to Make Friends" by Jim Harmon is a science fiction short story written in the early 1960s. The narrative centers on William Manet, an overseer on Mars who grapples with profound loneliness in his isolated job at an Atmosphere Seeder Station. The story explores themes of companionship, desire, and the underlying absurdity of human connections in the face of existential solitude. As the plot unfolds, Manet's solitude drives him into a
psychological struggle, and he eventually encounters a character named Trader Tom who offers him a "Socialization Kit" designed to create friends. Inside the kit, Manet finds various components and a manual titled "The Making of Friends and Others." In his humorous yet tragic attempts to create meaningful relationships, he constructs Ronald, a mundane companion, and Veronica, a less-than-astute female figure. However, when he tries to build Victor, who becomes his adversary, the story culminates in a poignant realization about companionship and the nature of friendship. Ultimately, Manet finds that challenges and conflicts can be more engaging than the shallow, vacuous connections he initially sought. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Harmon, Jim, 1933-2010 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | West |
| Title | How to Make Friends |
| Series Title | Produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962 |
| Credits |
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 77.2 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Mars (Planet) -- Fiction |
| Subject | Loneliness -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 50818 |
| Release Date | Jan 1, 2016 |
| Last Update | Oct 22, 2024 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 311 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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