Daniel Keyes (August 9, 1927 – June 15, 2014) was an American author well known for his Hugo award-winning short story and Nebula award-winning novel Flowers for Algernon. Keyes was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000.
The short story and subsequent novel, Flowers for Algernon, is written as progress reports of a mentally disabled man, Charlie, who undergoes experimental surgery and briefly becomes a genius before the effects tragically wear off. The story was initially published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and the expanded novel in 1966. The novel has been adapted several times for other media, most prominently as the 1968 film Charly, starring Cliff Robertson (who won an Academy Award for Best Actor) and Claire Bloom. He also won the Hugo Award in 1959 and the Nebula Award in 1966.
Daniel Keyes' Flowers For Algernon had
such a huge impact on me that one summer, when I had decided that I
wanted to make films and was going to film school, I wrote a short
adaptation of it in Filipino. I wrote the script down in an old
Sterling notebook -- with a blue kilometrico ballpen ( I remember
this because it was the only brand with a pen body thin enough to
side into the notebook's spiral) -- the blue one with the wire spiral
and had planned to use it as a project when I went to UP Film that
year. Sadly, the project never reached a stage beyond the now lost
notebook.
Thank you, Mr. Keyes.
Digital illustration; 2014