The start is a nice satire of war time employment conditions. It's a bit contrived that he can build his "Twonky" from completely unfamiliar parts, and that no one else at the factory pays any attention to what he's doing. But then again, he can craft the element tungsten from something else. Whew! Yeah, he's a master craftsman, all right! The inconsistency here is that he's such a specialist, he's been making these for years, and a stretch that he makes it look identical to the other stuff being made. But I'll suspend for now.
When we move to the household that this twonky ends up in, it's an interesting examination of 1950's middle class. For instance, it's cute that opposite of James Bond, the husband wants his Martini stirred, not shaken. I hadn't realized that Martinis, and concern about their preparation, were so iconic of the 50's. I was a growing up child in the 50's. I do remember my folks hosting cocktail parties in the evenings. I remember them as boring because they were all adult talk. I remember whiskey being the drink I knew most about in the 1950's because the cowboys on TV shows would saunter into saloons, order that, get those funny little glasses handed to them, and down the drink in one swallow.
The combination phonograph and radio the twonky disguises itself as is huge, the size of a small couch. I remember dealing with these in my childhood, the later ones also had a TV included. (smaller portable TVs and stereos got common in the 1970's, as transistors became widespread.)
Again interesting how much hyper-psychology was a part of 30'-40's science fiction lore. It's as much a standard as space travel and nuclear power, and just as varied in its implementation. The common element seems to be hypnotizing or otherwise getting to the brain through the eyes.
The contemporary lifestyle points in this story are interesting. This takes place early enough that train is standard travel, not plane, but they use a car to drive to the train station (called a depot). There's a single home telephone in the hall. Transpiration and communication have changed, but the feelings that some family are half crazy seems to be similar to contemporary.
Nice cool reaction depicted to a walking around machine that can wash dishes and light cigarettes. Classic for this era is all the drinking and cigarette smoking. Continued nice depiction of a low-key experimentation with what seems to be a weird household appliance. We have two grown men investigating it and discovering they can investigate it pretty hard because its surface is too tough for them to damage. These guys don't panic. They accept and decide to call the manufacturer in the morning. A nicely non-standard depiction of such an occurrence.
Interesting... it just hit me: As I'm reading about this Twonky taking steps to improve the man's life, I'm seeing a variant on my Taj Mahal Girls, but a much more Big Brotherish version -- rather than stroking instincts it's censoring inputs and blocking thoughts.
Some pure mumbo-jumbo about the robot concept and the robot brain, which means not a clue yet as to how to make either happen. This pre-dates Robbie the Robot of Forbidden Planet, who became the icon.
Good evolution of the story. This Twonky is doing subliminal stuff as well as obvious stuff, and the writer is handling discovering that well.
That is, until the ending. The ending comes across as contrived. The Twonky starts vaporizing people, and the wife tries to take it out solo rather than calling in the cavalry. And the house where this happens is rented out with no signs of legal hassle with missing people. Another inconsistency comes up with this ending: Why is a human visitor making this Twonky, not some other other Twonky? It seems to have enough capability. And the human-style visitor should have been dumbed down enough by its own Twonky experiencies to not have the kind of individualistic "can-do" initiative it would take to build one in such an alien place.
These final inconsistencies take this down to just a medium-good morality tale in my eyes. In the end its fun mostly for its depiction of what early 1940's non-war-related middle class lifestyle felt like to people living in the early 40's. (it was published in 1942)