Kid Stuff
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Kid Stuff is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the September 1953 issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction and reprinted in the 1957 collection Earth Is Room Enough. Asimov wrote the story in January 1953, intending it for a new magazine called Fantastic, but it was rejected by Fantastic's editor, Harold Browne. Asimov then submitted it to H. L. Gold, who accepted it for a new sister magazine of Galaxy Magazine called Beyond Fantasy Fiction.
The story concerns a fantasy writer named Jan Prentiss who finds that a foot-long talking insect has materialized on his desk and declared itself to be an elf. The elf reveals that its kind are telepathic, and that during the last ice age they used human brains as psychic amplifiers to augment their own abilities. However, since the Industrial Revolution, the elves have avoided mankind, since they are unable to manipulate electricity. Prentiss' elf, however, is a mutant who can manipulate electricity. It needs to use Prentiss' brain as a psychic amplifier, though, since Prentiss, being a fantasy writer, is one of the few humans with a mind sympathetic enough for the elf to control. When Prentiss balks, the elf threatens Prentiss' wife and ten-year-old son. When Prentiss' son comes home from school, the elf tries to take control of his mind, too; but the boy, being a modern 1950s child, doesn't believe in "kid stuff" like fairies. The elf is unable to control him, and the boy crushes the elf with his schoolbooks.
