（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Man of Steel, Women Of Kleenex.doc

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex By Larry Niven Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text. Hes faster than a speeding bullet. Hes more powerful than a locomotive. Hes able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why cant he get a girl? At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger! An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steels adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame. Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems. Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks. As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint. What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his secret identity. But Supermans sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real. The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon. I What turns on a kryptonian? Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the