Where did this originate from? I know it was the plotline of a movie made about three or four years ago, the name of which completely escapes me. In case you’re unfamiliar, it goes something like this: a mysterious person presents you with a box that has a button on it. If you push the button, somebody you don’t know will die, and you will be given a very large sum of money. Do you push the button or not? I know the question predates the movie, because I clearly remember reading a short story in elementary school which presented this exact scenario. This would have probably been about 1971 or 1972, or thereabouts. It was in a children’s magazine aimed at an older elementary-aged audience. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure the magazine was named The Reader or The Weekly Reader. Does anybody know the name of the story and its author, and if so, is that story the source of the hypothetical question, or does the question predate that story and originate from an even older source?
Well, the one I know was printed in Playboy in 1970 :eek: but it’s possible both versions have a common “ancestor” that’s closer to that plot than the one listed in the Wiki article (which involves killing by just thinking about it, apparently, and without mention of the “and you’re next” possibility).
It was the plot of one of the episodes of the revived 80s Twilight Zone, one of the few good ones.
“Oh well we will give it to someone else…someone you don’t know.” :eek:
I think Jack Lemmon in “How to Murder Your Wife” presented the idea of a magic button that would kill someone when he was on trial for trying to murder Virna Lisa (so it was though).
The recent movie you’re thinking of, by the way, is The Box. The director was Richard Kelly, better known as the director of “Donnie Darko”.
The concept was used in an old Agatha Christie story, whose name I cannot find. The plot of the story revolved around killing a person unrelated to the killer in any way in order to achieve what the killer wanted, which I no longer remember. But the dilemma was described as “Killing a Mandarin in China”: would you kill a random unknown person across the world somewhere if it would give you riches.
From Wikipedia:
I remember seeing a different version: a guy stumbles into an office and is offered the button by the person behind the desk for a large amount of money. Or he can leave the room. He eventually presses the button whereon the person is revealed to be the Devil, the floor underneath the guy collapses, and the guy goes to Hell, where, of course, the money is useless. The Devil, musing to himself, reveals that behind the door was Heaven.
Button, Button, as well as many of the other short stories featured in the 80’s incarnation of The Twilight Zone, were anthologized in a single paperback volume – IIRC, its title had the word “tomorrow” in it. We used it as a text in my high school freshman English class, ca. 1977.
I watched the 80’s TZ during my college years – every episode I saw had a story from that anthology I read in the 9th grade. I’m convinced the show’s producers had a copy of that book.
Probably Black Button. Another earlier thread on the subject, including talk about the Twilight Zone episode.
“Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving, for ever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”
That’s the one.
Comic version.
This is interesting; I’m scrolling through a list on tv.com of all first-season episodes of the 1980s reincarnation of The Twilight Zone. Another episode named Examination Day aired that season. The plot involved a 12-year-old child undergoing a government-administered IQ test, with the plot twist being that
examinees who score too high are euthanized by the totalitarian state.
I also read that story in the same children’s magazine, at around the same time. I wonder if they were the original stories, or if they were rewritten to be ‘dumbed down’ for an elementary school-aged audience.
Looks like The Weekly Reader is still very much in existence and thriving. I’m guessing that they also published your high school text. I’ll see if I can pinpoint that one as confirmation.
This one probably belongs in Cafe Society rather than General Questions. Moved.
samclem, Moderator
That comic kinda reminds me of this video that the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal guys did.
I remember hearing this story as an episode of Radio Mystery Theater. Checking Wikipedia, I see it was “The Chinaman Button” written by Henry Slesar and broadcast on January 20, 1974.
Maybe; however, our text was a paperback.