Hello all! I’m hoping the collective wisdom of the Straight Dope can help me out. I read this science fiction short story a few years ago, in a short story anthology (now, tragically, lost with many other books in a storage unit disaster). I have Googled to no good purpose. I don’t know the title or the author’s name.
The story opens with a scientist and his wife at home together, on Earth. He’s a jerk, and he treats her terribly, criticizing her and so on. He then leaves on an expedition for another planet. When he returns, he’s wonderful: kind, complimentary, loves her cooking, etc. The wife’s brother (I think - maybe the husband’s colleague, or both) begins to suspect that the man who came back to Earth isn’t the man who left; apparently the aliens who once lived on the planet the husband visited were telepathic, or able to switch bodies, and have become mind-only entities living in stones (?) on the planet. They occasionally try to steal the bodies of visitors.
Spoilers: it turns out that there is an alien in the husband’s body, and that the real man has been left in a stone on the alien planet. The wife decides she prefers the new husband, and when there’s a trial to prove he’s an impostor, she sides with the alien body snatcher. They live happily ever after.
This is a truly excellent story, and I would really love to find it. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
I forgot to mention: I am pretty sure this story is old-ish, maybe from the fifties or early sixties.
I can’t figure out which story this is, but I noticed an interesting coincidence. The plot you describe is similar to a medieval incident that happened to a peasant named Martin Guerre. There’s a book about this incident by a historian named Natalie Zemon Davis. She’s married to a science fiction writer (who was indeed writing in the period during which you say the story was published) named Chan Davis.
The story about Martin Guerre was filmed twice – once as The Return of Martin Guerre in French, starring Gerard Depardieu, the other time as an American film, transposed to the post-Civil War South under the title Sommersby and starring Richard Gere* and Josie Foster. The Depardiu film actually changed the story slightly from what is told in the book.
The theme of someone being possessed by aliens after a trip is such a hoary SF cliche that this one is even in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s entry on “cliches” (“You just haven’t been the same ever since your trip to Ganymede, dear!”). But the twist of having the wife prefer the possessed husband is one I can’t recall reading.
It is remarkably similar to the story of Martin Guerre, so much so that I tried searching for stories similar to that one, in the hopes that someone would have mentioned the story I’m looking for in reference to it. No luck!
It is totally a cliche, which is why this particular story is so interesting, as CalMeacham pointed out. It’s the only one I’ve found where the wife really likes the alien better.
RealityChuck, I’m sure that can’t be the one, although I am now interested in looking up your story, too! The one I’m looking for is much older than that.
Shinyquark, Andy L, and Wendell Wagner: thank you! That’s it, and I am so grateful. This has been bothering me for a while, and everyone in my family and circle of friends who reads science fiction has gotten a query about it. Again, thanks so much! And it’s a really good story, for those of you who haven’t read it. I recommend it - and now I know why it was so good: it’s Philip K. Dick.