Eddie McDermott

Eddie sits through Carner's lecture on avoiding cliches with mounting indifference, sneering at the earnest horn-rimmed student and stifling yawns while the instructor explains why aliens need understandable emotions. By the end he drops the class outright, defending his right to call Jupiter's red spot malevolent and his Venetian Threngener a monstrosity. His stubborn preference for fiction over journalism sets up the collision between raw imaginative appetite and disciplined craft that the story explores.