MR. SPOCK IS DREAMY!

BY ISAAC ASIMOV

A revolution of incalculable importance may be sweeping America, thanks to television. And thanks
particularly STAR TREK, which, in its noble and successful effort to present good science fiction to the
American public, has also presented everyone with an astonishing revelation.

I was put onto the matter by my blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful daughter, who is just turning twelve
and who, in all the practical matters that count, is more clear-sighted than I.

It happened one evening when we were watching STAR TREK together and holding our breath while
Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock faced a menace of overwhelming proportions.

Captain Kirk (for those, if any, who are not STAR TREK fans) is a capable hero and a full-blooded
human. Mr. Spock is half-alien and is a creature of pure reason and no emotion. Naturally Captain Kirk
responded to every danger with an appropriate twist of his handsome and expressive face. Spock,
however, kept his long, serene face unmoved. Not for an instant did he allow emotion to dim the
thoughtful gleam of his eye; not for a split second did he allow that long face to grow shorter.

And my daughter said, “I think Mr. Spock is dreamy!”

I started! If my daughter said Mr. Spock was dreamy, then he was dreamy to the entire feminine
population of the world, for my daughter is plugged into that vague something called “femininity” and
her responses are infallible.

But how could that be? Mr. Spock dreamy? He had a strong face, of course, but it was so solemn and
serious, so cool; his eyebrows were drawn so outward and upward, and his large ears came to such a
long, sharp upper point.

How could he compare with full-blooded Earthlings with normal ears and eyebrows, who were suave,
sophisticated, and devilishly handsome to boot? Like me, for instance, just to pick an example at
random.

“Why is he dreamy?” I asked my daughter.

“Because,” she said, “he’s so smart!”

There’s no doubt about it. I have asked other girls and they agree. Through the agency of Mr. Spock,
STAR TREK has been capitalizing upon a fact not generally known among the male half of the
population.

Women think being smart is sexy!

Do you know what this means to me? Can you imagine what a load of guilt it has taken off my back?
Can you imagine what a much greater load of vain regret it has put on my back?

But, heaven help me, it wasn’t my fault. I was misled. When I was young I read books about children;
books for which Tom Sawyer was the prototype. Anyone else old enough to remember those books?

Remember the kid hero? Wasn’t he a delightful little chap? Wasn’t he manly? He played hooky all the
time and went swimming at the old swimming hole. Remember? He never knew his lessons; he swiped
apples; he used bad grammar and threw rocks at cats. You remember.

And do you remember that little sneaky kid we all hated so? He was an unbearable wretch who wore
clean clothes, and did his lessons, and got high marks, and spoke like a dude. All the kids hated him,
and so did all the readers. Rotten little smart kid!

As I read such stories, I realized that because I had known no better I had unwittingly been committing
the terrible sin of doing well at school. Oh, I did my best to change and follow the paths of rectitude
and virtue, and dip girls’ pigtails in inkwells and draw nasty pictures of the teacher on my slate, and
steal a pumpkin—but girls didn’t have pigtails and I didn’t have a slate and nobody I knew across the
length and breadth of Brooklyn’s slums had any idea of what a pumpkin was.

And when the teacher would ask a question, I would, quite automatically and without thinking, give the
right answer—and there I would be. Sunk in vice again! Talk about a monkey on your back!

There was no way out. By the time I was in high school I realized I was rotten clean through and all I
could do was hope the FBI never saw my report card.

Then, somewhere late in high school, I became aware of an even more serious difficulty! I had been
noticing for a while that girls didn’t look quite as awful as I had earlier thought. I was even speculating
that there might be some purpose in wasting some time in speaking to one or two of them, if I could
figure out how one went about it. I decided the place to learn was the movies, since these often
concerned themselves with this very problem.
Remember those movie heroes? Strong, solemn, and with a vocabulary of ten easy words and fifteen
grunts? And remember the key sentence in every one of those pictures?

You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you. Some girl is interested in the movie hero. She sees something in him she
does not see in any other character in the film, and I was keenly intent on finding what that something
might be.

To be sure, the hero was taller and stronger and handsomer and better dressed than any other male in
the picture, but surely this was purely superficial. No female would be in the least attracted to such
mere surface characteristics. There had to be something deep and hidden, and I recognized what this
might be in that key sentence I mentioned.

The woman says to her girl friend, “I love that big lug!” Or sometimes she says to the hero himself, “I
love you, you big lug!”

That was it! Hollywood was of the definite opinion that for a man to be attractive to women he had to
be a big lug. I ran to Webster’s (second edition) to look up the word and found no less than eight
definitions. Definition number eight was: “A heavy or clumsy lout; a blockhead.”

It was school all over again. I could manage being clumsy but I could never keep up that blockhead
business long. I’d be doing fine for a while, glazing my eyes, and remembering to say “Duh” when
spoken to. But, sooner or later, at some unguarded moment, I would say something rational, and bitter
shame would overcome me. It was no use; I could never attain that glorious lughood that would have
put me at ease with women.

I got married at last, somehow. My theory is that the young lady who married me must have seen that
under my suave man-of-the-world exterior, there was a lout and a blockhead striving for expression. So
she married me for inner beauty.

Then came television. Remember the husbands in the situation comedies? Stupid, right? Have you ever
seen one who could tie his shoes without help? Have you ever seen one smart enough to put anything
over on his wife? Or on his five-year-old niece for that matter?

That was one thing all situation comedies had in common—the stupidity of the husband. The other
things were the smartness of the wife and the depth of her love for her husband.

These points can’t be unconnected, can they? Anyone can see that the only deduction to draw from this
is that wives, being smart, love their husbands because they are stupid.

All I can say is that for years and years I have done my best to be a stupid husband. My wife, loyal
creature that she is, has assured me over and over again that I have succeeded beyond my wildest
dreams and that I am the stupidest husband who ever lived. She seems so sincere when she says it, and
yet I have always had to ask: Is it merely her kind heart speaking? Can she be just flattering me?

And then, then, came this blinding revelation. Here I had been watching STAR TREK since its
inception because I like it, because it is well done, because it is exciting, because it says things (subtly
and neatly) that are difficult to say in “straight” drama, and because science fiction, properly presented,
is the type of literature most appropriate to our generation.

But it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. Spock was sexy. I had never realized that such a thing was
possible; that girls palpitate over the way one eyebrow goes up a fraction; that they squeal with passion
when a little smile quirks his lip. And all because he’s smart!

If I had only known! If I had only known!

But I am spreading the word now. It may be far too late for me (well, almost), but there is a new
generation to consider! Men! Men everywhere! Don’t list to the lies! I have learned the secret at last. It
is sexy to be smart! Do you hear me, men? Relax and be your natural selves! Stop aiming at lughood.
It’s sexy to be smart!

Just one thing bothers me. Can it be Mr. Spock’s ears? Webster’s (second edition) gives that blockhead
definition as its eighth. Its definition number two for the same word is “ear.” Could it be that when a
girl says, “I love you, you big lug,” she means the man’s ears are as big as Mr. Spock’s?

Well, just in case, while I’m being smart, I’ll also let my ears grow.