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"Mewhu’s Jet" is a short story by Theodore Sturgeon, about an alien who has come to Earth, where he is adopted by a human family. The story was first published in the November 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

While a family is vacationing in a house out in the boondocks, a spaceship crash lands nearby. An alien survives, and the family calls him Mewhu. Mewhu has a jet propelled gadget which allows him to jump over buildings and land softly. The family’s daughter is able to communicate telepathically with Mewhu, and when Mewhu hurts his arm, the mother, a nurse, bandages him up. The father takes Mewhu to a small airport nearby, to meet with a friend who knows more about technical matters. The father demonstrates the parachute/jet gadget, and his friend is very much impressed. While waiting in the car with the daughter, the two of them gaping at the airplanes, Mewhu accidentally injests some aspirin. He becomes intoxicated by the aspirin, and hijacks an airplane. After crashing the plane, they take him to a hospital, where the doctor is obviously puzzled as to how to treat Mewhu’s alien physiology. Mewhu recovers, but Jack (the father) realizes now that Mewhu is just a child in his species, and he will be unable to help humanity decipher the gadget’s technology. And like a child, Mewhu has a child’s faith that the adults will send him home soon; he doesn’t understand that Earth lacks the technology to even figure out which planet Mewhu comes from.

Reprints

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946). It can also be found in Volume 3 of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, which includes a rough draft of an alternate ending, in which Sturgeon describes the world’s reaction to news of Mewhu. The editors also point out that this story may have provided some of the inspiration for the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Dramatic Presentations

In 1951 Sturgeon adapted this story for the television show Out There. It starred Dennis Alexander and Janie Alexander.

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