<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

"No Woman Born" is a 15,000-word story by C. L. Moore, about a woman whose disembodied brain is transplanted into a robot body. The story was first published in the December, 1944 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

Deirdre, a famous TV actress, dancer, and sex symbol was maimed a year earlier in a fire. Doctors saved her brain, but her body was irreparable. A scientist named Maltzer gave her brain a metallic, robot body. Her agent, Harris, visits her. He is taken aback by her metallic appearance, but he clearly recognizes her personality shining through the metal body. Deirdre is optimistic still, and she insists on making a comeback, in spite of her new appearance. Both Harris and Maltzer think it’s a bad idea, since she seems unprepared for the public’s inevitable rejection, but she goes on anyway. That night on television, she dances and sings, and the audience loves her, recognizing Deirdre’s old style. Deirdre goes on vacation for a few weeks, and when she comes back, Maltzer and Harris meet with her. Maltzer is convinced that the TV audience accepted her only as a novelty, but that eventually they will become a horrified mob and turn on her, and that he himself will be treated like Dr. Frankenstein. Maltzer goes to the window and threatens to commit suicide, but Deirdre says that she is more than what Maltzer made. She manages to pull him out of the window very quickly, starting from the other side of the room, and the speed of her movements surprise both Maltzer and Harris. She reveals that she now has superhuman abilities, which she demonstrates by using only her voice to close the window. Maltzer had thought his work was a failure, but she says that he succeeded better than even he knew. She doesn’t want to lose touch with humanity, but she feels that she has grown beyond them now.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944). In that anthology, Martin Greenberg calls this Moore’s “finest solo effort. The concept of the ‘cyborg’, part-machine and part-human, had existed in science fiction before this story was published, but no one had explored the potential of the idea until No Woman Born. It was also one of the first to examine the future of the arts in science fiction, and a classic story of anguish and rebirth.”

Compare this story, especially the last scene, with the last chapter of Theodore Sturgeon’s 1953 novel More Than Human, also about a superhuman being and his relationship to the humans from which he came.