How Interesting: A Tiny Man
"How Interesting: A Tiny Man" is a 2010 science fiction/magical realism short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in Realms of Fantasy.
Plot summary
A scientist creates a tiny man. The tiny man is initially very popular, but then draws the hatred of the world, and so the tiny man must flee, together with the scientist.Reception
"How Interesting: A Tiny Man" won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, tied with Kij Johnson's "Ponies". It was Ellison's final Nebula nomination and win, of his record-setting eight nominations and three wins.Tor.com calls the story "deceptively simple", with "execution is flawless" and a "Geppetto-like" narrator, while Publishers Weekly describes it as "memorably depict humanity's smallness of spirit". The SF Site, however, felt it was "contrived and less than profound".
Nick Mamatas compared "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" negatively to Ellison's other Nebula-winning short stories, and stated that the story's two mutually exclusive endings are evocative of the process of writing short stories. Ben Peek considered it to be "more allegory than anything else", and interpreted it as being about how the media "give everyone a voice", and also about how Ellison was treated by science fiction fandom.