Bratton's Idea

"Bratton's Idea" by Manly Wade Wellman is a short story written in the early 20th century, likely during the mid-1900s, that intertwines elements of science fiction with dark comedy. The narrative centers around an aging janitor named Old Bratton, who is obsessed with creating life through electricity. His ambitions and experiments take an unexpected turn when he acquires a ventriloquist's dummy, Tom-Tom, and infuses it with life through his mechanical inventions, leading to a series of chaotic and dangerous events in the world of show business and organized crime. In the story, Old Bratton's endeavors to animate Tom-Tom result in unintended consequences when the dummy gains a twisted form of sentience. As Tom-Tom embarks on a crime spree after Bratton's death, he wields his unwitting abilities to command a gang and orchestrate kidnappings, including that of the beautiful Shannon Cole. The tale unfolds with Ben Gascon, a ventriloquist, trying to uncover the connection between his former partner, Bratton, and Tom-Tom's sudden malevolence. As a cat-and-mouse game ensues between Gascon and the doll, the story explores themes of creation, ambition, and the darker sides of sentience, culminating in a climactic confrontation where the true nature of life and morality is sharply questioned. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Unknown and Strange Stories, Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary Weird Tales and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as "the dean of fantasy writers." Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction.