{"id":2443,"date":"2016-02-28T13:21:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T18:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?page_id=2443"},"modified":"2024-05-06T16:52:22","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T20:52:22","slug":"job-offer-by-henry-slesar-1959","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?page_id=2443","title":{"rendered":"Job Offer, by Henry Slesar (1959)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Henry Slesar lived until 2002, and participated in the Internet age.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Joe and Sheila Birnham are terribly worried about their deformed son Wally. They&#8217;d always suspected that he was too ugly to ever get a job, or even be drafted into the army&#8230; until the day Wally got an offer to be in a freak show. It was insulting, of course, but the economy is going down the toilet, and there are cutbacks at his father&#8217;s job, so Wally very reluctantly takes the offer.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"n3f66c3f40\">\u00a0The son asked his Dad to play sports with him. <\/span>TWIST ENDING: Wally&#8217;s freakishness is that he&#8217;s physically normal and unmutated.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first story from the &#8216;101&#8217; anthology to which I can sincerely give a positive review. The twist ending may be a bit obvious with five-plus decades of hindsight, but the setting is outlined very cleanly and elegantly (think of the implications of the phrase &#8220;War Five&#8221;, or &#8220;Shelters&#8221;, or &#8220;plankton plant&#8221;), and Joe and Sheila are portrayed as genuinely loving each other and caring about their son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Henry Slesar lived until 2002, and participated in the Internet age. Joe and Sheila Birnham are terribly worried about their deformed son Wally. They&#8217;d always suspected that he was too ugly to ever get a job, or even be drafted into the army&#8230; until the day Wally got an offer to be in a freak &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?page_id=2443\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Job Offer, by Henry Slesar (1959)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":31038,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2443","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31032,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2443\/revisions\/31032"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}