In Memoriam, Carol Emshwiller -- a look at her late short fiction

The remarkable Carol Emshwiller died, age 97, on February 2. She was one of the most individual voices in SF over a career of nearly six decades, beginning in the mid 1950s.  She also wrote contemporary novels set in the American West. 

I never had a chance to meet her -- and based on the voice in her fiction, and on the testimony of those who knew her, I dearly wish I could have. But I did have a chance, over the first several years of my time at Locus, to witness and review the truly impressive spate of short stories she produced in her 80s. And so, in her memory, it seems appropriate to post this selection of what I wrote about her work in Locus, with one bonus piece I wrote about her very first story.

Retro-Review of Future #28

On to the short stories, and finally something of real note. This issue includes the great Carol Emshwiller's first publication, "This Thing Called Love", a clever 2300 word story. Robert. A. W. Lowndes was central to Emshwiller's early career, with many of her first stories appearing in Future and in Science Fiction Stories. This story is slight but well done, and definitely shows Emswhiller's "voice", which I think one of the more characteristic individual voices in the field. The POV narrator is a woman of the future, who, like every other self-respecting person in the future, has a crush on an android actor. Her husband has the gall to suggest that the two of them emigrate to Mars as colonists -- but if she went, she'd be away from TV, and who would she love? Her husband? As if! No masterpiece, but a fine clever story.

Locus, March 2002

Two fine stories appear in the first half of February at Sci Fiction.  Carol Emshwiller has made a welcome return to the field in the past couple of years, mostly at F&SF.  "Water Master" is her first story for Sci Fiction.  The story is told from the point of view of a solitary woman at an isolated village. The village's water supply is regulated by the Water Master. The villagers distrust him, assuming he takes advantage of his position.  After a time of drought, unrest grows, and when the narrator learns that the villagers will send a delegation to force the Water Master to increase the water allocation, she goes to visit him in advance, to learn his secrets.  She learns some rather surprising things.  The end is nicely turned, and rather sweet.

Review of Leviathan 3, Locus, May 2002

Carol Emshwiller's "The Prince of Mules" reminded me just a bit of her recent Sci Fiction story "Water Master", in telling of a older single woman living in a dry rural place, who becomes intrigued by an isolated man who has something to do with water distribution. This is quite a different story, though, and it's a neat piece, telling in Emshwiller's characteristic deadpan voice of the woman's rather excessive obsession with Jake Blackthorn, who at least loves his mule.

Locus, June 2002

And of course Carol Emshwiller is always readable, and "Josephine" (Sci Fiction, May) is a sweet, odd, story about two residents of an old age home who try to escape. It works mainly because of the somewhat fuddled view of things we get from the POV character, the man of the couple who is fascinated by the title character but never understands her.

Locus, June 2003

The best story from the "in-genre" writers in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales is Carol Emshwiller's "The General", an affecting look at a man raised by his people's oppressors, who becomes the unsuccessful leader of a revolution, and then finds peace hard to attain. 

Locus, July 2003

"Repository" (F&SF, July), from the reliably brilliant Carol Emshwiller. A nameless, wounded, man, perhaps a soldier or a medic, finds himself in some sort of refuge from a war. "Who is the enemy. And more important, who are we?" He learns to hope to escape the war (what war?) … but is there any escape?

Locus, August 2003

Carol Emshwiller's "Gods and Three Wishes" (Trampoline) is a whimsical fable, about a young woman sent by her tribe to visit the gods and demand better treatment from them, who learns instead about luck and fate – and about making your own luck.

Locus, December 2003

Carol Emshwiller is a wonder, as productive now in her 80s as she has ever been. "Boys", from the January Sci Fiction, is a sad fable in which men and women live apart, the women maintaining cities while the men fight wars with men from other places. When the women make a stand against this way of things, an older man is tempted to stay with the woman he has come to love – but what of the pull of tradition, of what is thought to be "nature"? 

Locus, August 2004

Carol Emshwiller (it becomes clear) has been doing a series of stories about war. Two more have just appeared. In F&SF we see "The Library", about a man leading a band to his enemies' beautiful library, planning to blow it up. But his plans go awry and he falls for one of the librarians – with ambiguous results. Another Emshwiller war story is "My General" from the second issue of the new Argosy, in which a woman takes custody of a POW, a general, for the purpose of field labor. But she falls in love (or something similar). His response seems honest, but the result is sad – he ends up trying to stop the war with more fighting. Taken together these and others of Emshwiller's stories brim with compassion for their protagonists, and a sad and weary view of people who seem trapped into fighting for no discernible reason.

Locus, January 2004

Alchemy is a new fantasy magazine, nicely put together, and featuring an impressive table of contents for the first issue. Carol Emshwiller's "Lightning" is an utterly "Emshwiller" story, told in her unmistakable voice. An older woman is struck by lightning, and comes to with no knowledge of her identity. The story simply and wryly tells of her confused reaction to what we must assume are her own house and family -- little really happens, the story isn't really fantastical, but it's witty and a bit disturbing and just well done. 

Locus, July 2004

Sci Fiction for June has another of Carol Emshwiller's affecting stories about other intelligences, "Gliders Though They Be". In this case two species are involved, both apparently roughly humanoid. One species has wings sufficient for gliding, the other only nubs. A male from the wingless species disguises himself and infiltrates the others, charged with mutilating them, but he falls in love, and finds himself forced to compete in a gliding contest for his beloved's favor. 

Locus, December 2004

Sci Fiction in November features another strong "bird people" story by Carol Emshwiller. "All of Us Can Almost ..." reminds us that her intelligent, large, bird creatures are flightless. But they can almost fly, and small creatures of other species sometimes ask for a flight. The story concerns a female who foolishly promises to give a young boy a flight, with interesting results. Emshwiller gets inside her mostly alien characters' heads beautifully.

Locus, March 2005

Carol Emshwiller has another remarkable story in the March F&SF. "I Live With You" is a spooky piece about a person who moves into someone's house and sort of haunts them – to the point of eventually impersonating them and even starting a new relationship. The story is at once humourous and scary, creepy and almost sweet – and also a very effective character study.

Locus, December 2005

As of 2005, Carol Emshwiller has been a published SF writer for a half-century, but her January 2006 story “World of No Return” is her first Asimov’s appearance. And it’s fine work, about an alien long marooned on Earth, raised to keep himself separate from humans and to remember his heritage. But over the course of a long life, he forgets his parents’ stories of their home world, and he subtly (without knowing himself, perhaps) begins to miss contact with humans. All this comes to a head when he finds himself caring for a lonely old woman.

Locus, November 2006

The short stories are all fine work ... Carol Emshwiller’s “Killers” (F&SF, October-November) is a mordant story of our country ravaged by war, to the point that the protagonist’s town is almost wholly inhabited by women – leading to unexpected results when she finds a man, perhaps an enemy.

Locus, February 2008

Carol Emshwiller is another writer who began in the ‘50s and is still going strong – as with “Master of the Road to Nowhere” (Asimov's, March), a delightful and affecting story about a group of humans who live in animal-like packs, with only one adult male and a “harem” of females, along with the children. The males fight for domination, the losers going off to live alone in the wild. The story concerns one male, a leader of his pack but under challenge, who has fallen in love, strictly forbidden, with one of the women in his pack. 

Locus, October 2009

How do you define Fantasy, anyway? The simplest definition, to me, is “stories with magic”. (Defining magic perhaps a bit broadly: events unexplainable by science.) But as often noted there are some stories that are readily identified as part of the Fantasy genre but which have no magic. (Canonical example: Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner, though one ought to note that its sequel The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman) reveals that magic is part of that world.) These stories tend to be set in secondary worlds, either fairly detailed ones like the quasi-English setting of Swordspoint, or in lightly sketched unidentified geographies. The latter is the case with any number of short stories by Carol Emshwiller, particularly a long series examining war from the point of view of various people caught up in it. The latest of these stories (all unlinked, I should say) is “Logicist” (which actually seems possibly set in Ancient Greece). A teacher and his students are overrun when the enemy wins a battle they are witnessing. He ends up behind enemy lines, and is nursed to health by a woman with whom he begins to fall in love. But she is of the enemy! Where does his duty lie? 

Locus, February 2010

I’ll conclude with one online site, Fantasy Magazine. The selections for January include a couple about flying, or the dream of flying, that intrigued. Carol Emshwiller’s “Above it All” is about a woman who adopts an abandoned baby girl, a girl who can fly. She keeps the girl weighted down as long as she can, but of course eventually realizes she can’t stand in the way of her adopted daughter’s true nature. As with so much recent Emshwiller, its wry and warm at the same time.

Locus, July 2010

Now to the online magazines. Lightspeed, the new SF companion to Fantasy Magazine, has a wonderful Carol Emshwiller piece in July, “No Time Like the Present”. A group of wealthy people move into the narrator’s town, causing plenty of suspicion and resentment. The narrator, a teenaged girl, befriends one of the young girls among the newcomers, even while the rest of the town grows increasingly hostile. We realize quickly enough from whence the new folks come – it’s an old enough SF idea. And in the end that’s pretty much the story – but it resonates particularly well as told by Emshwiller, through her narrator, and the well-pointed slang, and the implications of this particular “invasion”. Emshwiller remains simply remarkable.

Ace Double Reviews, 113: Android Avenger, by Ted White/The Altar On Asconel, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 113: Android Avenger, by Ted White/The Altar On Asconel, by John Brunner (#M-123, 1965, 45 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

The occasion for this Ace Double review is Ted White's 81st birthday today, February 4, 2019. Ted White is a true SMOF. He published a fanzine beginning at age 15. He won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1968. He was co-Chair of the 1967 Worldcon, and his fannish credits could likely go on for pages.

He is probably best known to the casual SF fan (at least, fan of my age) as an editor -- an assistant at F&SF from 1963 to 1968, then for the next decade editor of Amazing and Fantastic, where he affected an improvement from the depths of the years right after Sol Cohen took over the magazines, to something at times approaching the Cele Goldsmith Lalli levels. (These were the years -- 1974-1978 at least -- that I subscribed to those magazines, and I appreciated Ted's rather pugnacious approach to them.) He then became an editor at the American magazine Heavy Metal (based on the French graphic magazine Metal Hurlant.)He was also a disk jockey for a time, and he is an accomplished musician.

(Covers by Ed Valigursky and Gray Morrow)

And he is an SF writer, producing more than a dozen novels and a couple of dozen short stories (the most recent in 2017, so he's still at it.) One collaborative story got a Nebula nomination, but I'll confess that I've not really been overly impressed with the occasional story I've seen. But I hadn't read a novel, and I ran across this Ace Double, with Android Avenger, so I figured it was worth a try. (I admit I really bought the book for the Brunner novel.)

So, what is Android Avenger about? Well, it's about 40,000 words or a bit more! Sorry ... It's set in New York in the relatively near future of 2017 -- oh, wait a minute, that's the past now! Life is calm in this near future, apparently, mostly because anyone who shows unruly attitudes -- Deviants, that is -- is detected by automatic scanners, and executed. The narrator, Bob Tanner, is serving his periodic (every couple of years) duty as Executioner -- a thousand people gather in an arena, and press a button, one of which randomly activated the electric charge to kill the Deviant. This time, however, Bob is oddly affected by the execution, and he ends up going into sort of a fugue, which causes him to be picked up and scanned. The scanner finds nothing, but an X-ray determines that his bones are metal. Surely this will brand him a Deviant, so he escapes, using violence, which is certainly Deviant.

Soon he encounters a beautiful redhead, who warns him to be careful. Then he's attempting to return home -- but his home is too dangerous. And suddenly he finds himself gripped by a compulsion he can't control -- and he runs without volition (and at implausible speed) to a building wherein he finds and kills a man. Before long he's confronted by the sister of the dead man (another beautiful redhead!), and he learns that the original redhead is named, oddly enough, Hoyden. And then he is possessed by the mysterious force again and kills the sister.

By now you can see who the android avenger of the title is, though not why he's "avenging". The story continues at some pace, through some sudden changes of tone and scenery. He meets up again with Hoyden. They have sex. They fight. Then he runs away to another borough, takes on a new identity, and starts to live with the poor people there, who are outside the controlled system of the main part of New York. And things get stranger, and Bob, trying to understand his nature and purpose, finally comes to a confrontation with the being behind his problems ... Plus he gets his reunion with the lovely Hoyden.

It's all a bit -- maybe a lot -- silly, and disjointed. There are occasional nice bits of speculation, as for example about the moving roads in future (past, now) Manhattan. There's a certain ambition behind some of it, lost in the end by the need for action and by the hard to take ending. So -- not a particularly memorable book. There was a sequel, called Spawn of the Death Machine -- I almost wonder if White wrote it just so he could use that gloriously pulpish title.

(Cover by McKenna (not for The Altar at Asconel)

I've written a lot about John Brunner before, so I won't reiterate that. He is a favorite of mine, and I generally really like his early, shorter, less serious novels. The Altar On Asconel is in that category, but it's a bit late -- 1965, after he had begun producing work of more obvious ambition, such as The Whole Man from 1964. This novel is part of his so-called Interstellar Empire series, which also includes an early novella, "The Wanton of Argus", which became the very short Ace Double half The Space-Time Juggler; and another novella, "The Man from the Big Dark". The ISFDB also claims that his first novel, Galactic Storm (written when he was 16 or 17, and published as by "Gill Hunt") is part of that series. (I've not read that book, and I gather it's not easy to find.) It's about 55,000 words long. It was serialized in If, April and May 1965, as "The Altar at Asconel", in a cut version, about 42,000 words. I have the serial as well, and the cuts seem to be pervasive but rather minor -- a few sentences here and there, spread throughout the book. I don't know if Brunner or Frederik Pohl made the cuts.

The main character of The Altar on Asconel is Spartak, an academic on Annanworld, which was the university planet of the old interstellar empire. The empire has mostly collapsed, after 10,000 years, with many planets having reverted to barbarism, but a few, such as Annanworld, still retaining a decent tech level. Spartak's specialty is the history of the empire -- he knows, for example, that the starships humans use were all made by a previous, now disappeared, race -- and especially the history of one prominent world, his home, Asconel, which also has retained some technological underpinnings.

Spartak, along with his half-brothers Vix and Tiorin, agreed to leave Asconel on the ascension of their older brother Hodak to the position of Warden -- in order to avoid the possibility of clashes over the succession. But now, 10 years later, Vix has shown up on Annanworld with terrible news -- their brother Hodak has been assassinated, and a strange man named Bucyon has taken over as Warden. And he, with the beautiful Lydis and the misshappen Shry, rule the planet in the name of a god -- Belizuek, who demands human sacrifices. And it seems that nearly the whole population of Asconel has been conditioned, so that they accept their oppression happily.

Vix, along with his latest woman, Vineta, head to Delcadoré, near the heart of the old empire, to look for Tiorin. And they find him, but they also are shanghaied into transporting a mutant girl, rumored to have mental powers, into exile on the Galactic rim. This is accomplished by a crude conditioning, so they cannot even think about going to Asconel to try to free their planet from Bucyon and Belizuek. But the mutant girl's powers come in handy -- she is able to undo their conditioning, and after some struggle, she agrees to help them get to Asconel.

Once there they find the world in even worse shape than they thought. And then they encounter Belizuek, who seems a megalomaniac telepathic being. Vix and Tiorin are read to attack, but Spartak, with the help of the mutant girl, comes up with a more sneaky plan ... And, well, you know more or less how it ends. There is, of course, a revelation as to what or who Belizuek really is, and there's a final, fairly logical, fate for Spartak and the mutant girl (who is quite young -- there's no suggestion that Spartak fancies her).

All in all, this isn't one of Brunner's best efforts. I wonder if he really didn't have much interest in the project. There is less speculative interest, less original thinking, than in most of Brunner's early books. The plot is not very tightly constructed, and things are really too easy for Spartak and company. The end is rushed a bit, and also comes off rather flat.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Eugene Mirabelli

Eugene Mirabelli was born 3 February 1931. He's best known for his realist novels, such as Renato the Painter and Renato after Alba. I've only read The Language Nobody Speaks, from 1999, a very worthwhile short novel, with erotic elements, about a couple in 1954 and their chance encounter with an older couple. It is his fantastical short fiction that brought me to his attention -- about ten stories starting in 2003, in F&SF, Asimov's, and Not One of Us, sweet and highly imaginative work. I've reprinted a couple of these in my Best of the Year books. Here are my reviews from Locus:

Locus, September 2003

In the September F&SF I quite liked Eugene Mirabelli's sweet "The Only Known Jump Across Time", about a tailor who befriends a professor because of their shared interest in gardening. After the professor's death he meets his daughter, and courts her by means of inventing a time machine. Doubtless Gordon van Gelder will hear more complaints about publishing non-SF in his SF magazine -- the "jump across time" is no more than ambiguously SFnal, but this a beautifully told love story, and I'm glad to have seen it.

Locus, August 2005

In the August F&SF I also liked another of Eugene Mirabelli's sweet love stories, "The Woman in Schrödinger's Wave Equations". As with his previous F&SF story, "The Only Known Jump Across Time", this isn't precisely SF, but it does use scientific speculation, and a physicist main character, in telling an absorbing story about a physics student and two young artists: one a beautiful painter who isn't quite right for him, the other a sweet mosaicist who maybe is just right.

Locus, December 2008

In F&SF for December I also liked – even better, I think – Eugene Mirabelli’s “Falling Angel”, a straight-faced and bittersweet story of a young man who finds an angel in his apartment, and commences a passionate affair. But angels, in the end, are not really of this world. As ever with Mirabelli, there is an edge of ambivalence to the fantastic element – and edge that in this case enhances the interest in the story, which is involving and moving.

Locus, February 2009

Eugene Mirabelli is impressive again in the latest F&SF, with “Catalog”, a decidedly original story about a man who suddenly finds himself in an unusual, and weirdly commercial, world – encountering a centerfold come to life, and an offbeat rock band, and other odd things – all the while remembering the enchanting picture of a woman in an L. L. Bean catalog.

Not One of Us Summary for 2009

My favorite story this year was from #42, Eugene Mirabelli's "Love in Another Language", a sweet story about Shozo Sakurado, a Pacific islander trying to teach his almost vanished language to people in the US, eventually including Sally Raven, a Native American social worker (and Tlingit speaker) ... the story turns on Sakurado's real story, and Sally's reaction.

Locus, September 2010

Cities in clouds turn up again in Eugene Mirabelli’s “The Palace in the Clouds”, a delightful mad story of a boy’s encounter with the true Venice, relocated to balloon-borne “canals”, as one might say.

Locus, November 2012

At shorter lengths, Eugene Mirabelli's “This Hologram World” is a beautifully bittersweet piece about a physicist coping with the loss of his wife.

And here's a link to my review of The Language Noboday Speaks.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Thomas M. Disch

Thomas M. Disch was born on Groundhog Day, 1940, and so he'd have been 79 today. Sadly, he died (suicide) in 2008. He was one of the most interesting and incisive writers and critics of his time. I felt some sort of tribute in order. Unfortunately, most of what I've written about him is from very early in his career, with just a couple of snippets from later. So this doesn't cover my favorites among his work: the novel Camp Concentration, and stories like "The Asian Shore" and "Things Lost".

(I've also previously posted my review of his one Ace Double, Mankind Under the Leash.)


Fantastic, January and February 1964

Let's discuss the three Tom Disch stories first. Three? Yes, of course, because "Dobbin Thorpe" was a pseudonym Disch used for three stories in Amazing and Fantastic -- the two here, and one of his classics, "Now is Forever" (Amazing, March 1964). "Death Before Dishonor" is a brief mordant story about a somewhat loose young woman who fools around with a tattoo artist one night, and also gets a tattoo -- which proves a problem when the main she's promised to be faithful to sees it. The conclusion is horrific but a bit unconvincing -- really, this is not Disch at his best at all. "Minnesota Gothic" is rather better. Another story in the horror mode, about a young girl who encounters a woman she becomes convinced is a witch. Especially when she finds the woman's dead brother ... not so dead. But the little girl has powers too, which in the hands of an amoral little girl might be pretty scary. Finally, "A Thesis on Social Forms and Social Controls in the U. S. A." is a mock essay supposedly produced towards the middle of the 21st Century which suggests satirically the form of society at that time, explicitly riffing on Orwell's dicta from 1984: "Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace" and adding "Life is Death, Love is Hate", with such notions as compulsory slavery every fifth year for adults aged 21 to 51. It's a pretty decent piece of pure Dischian satire.

Amazing, March 1964

Finally, a major story by a major writer. Wait a minute, you might say: Dobbin Thorpe? Who he? Well, Dobbin Thorpe was a pseudonym used by Thomas M. Disch for three early stories that appeared in Amazing and Fantastic. I have no idea why he used a pseudonym. He was a Goldsmith discovery: with Zelazny and Le Guin one of the really significant writers nurtured in her magazines, and many other Disch stories appeared in Amazing or Fantastic under his own name.

“Now is Forever” was probably Disch’s first story to make a real splash. It was reprinted in the first Wollheim/Carr World’s Best SF, under Disch’s real name. (“Descending”, later that year in Fantastic, is probably even more significant, and it was reprinted in Judith Merril’s Year’s Best.) “Now is Forever” considers a theme taken up by many writers, notably Damon Knight: the disastrous effects of a matter replicator on the economy, and indeed on humanity. It follows Charles Archold, a banker who has, of course, been ruined by the ability of anyone to make anything with a replicator (called a Reprostat here). He comes to his bank, talks with his old black janitor Lester Timburly, finds the place squatted in by nihilistic teens, is pressed to open the safe with all the money, as the teens dance and party and plan to die … Things come to a wholly plausible dark conclusion, with Charles’ wife Nora and the janitor Lester and the teens and Charles himself all deluded in their own ways by the meaninglessness of this life of easy abundance. The story stumbles a bit towards the end, telling too much perhaps, but then twists the knife nicely at the close.

Amazing, August 1964

Finally, Disch's "Dangerous Flags", subtitled "Another Adventure of the Green Magician", is early Disch, very satirical but not really to as good effect as he was it his best. For one thing, the satire is unrelieved by any sympathy for its target, or any understanding -- it ends up thumpingly unconvincing. A small town has a problem with Coal Gas seeping into its cellars, and the Green Magician offers a solution. But a nasty teacher objects, and kills the Green Magician -- which doesn't go at all well, for her or for the town.

Galaxy, September 1965

The final two stories are from major authors, and are both quite good. They are also on the same theme, more or less: overpopulation. I often joke that it was a law that every issue of a '50s magazine had to have a story about atomic war or its aftermath. (I say I joke, but try it sometime -- it really does seem like very nearly every SF magazine issue from the '50s had at least one such story.) Now I'm thinking that from the mid-60s through the early '70s there was perhaps a similar law about overpopulation. At any rate, here we have an excellent story from Thomas M. Disch, "Problems of Creativeness" (9500 words), which became part of his novel 334. Birdie Ludd is a not very intelligent young man whose girlfriend want to get married and have a baby. But only people with sufficient education, creativeness, or otherwise demonstrated worth to society, are allowed to have children. Birdie is, not to sugarcoat things, pretty stupid, and not creative at all. The story follows his attempts to demonstrate creativeness, after his failure at college ...

Locus, April 2002

Disch's piece, "Torah! Torah! Torah!: Three Bible Tales for the Third Millennium" (F&SF, April), takes a skewed, revisionist, look at "The Naming of the Birds", "A Case of Child Abuse" (the sacrifice of Isaac, of course), and "Jahweh's Wife" – or, why we never hear of her.  These pieces are clever and funny, as well as slyly pointed.

Capsule on The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of

A few years ago Thomas M. Disch published The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, a critical review of the history of SF and of SF's cultural position. The book got a lot of notice, and I believe it even won a Hugo. I hadn't read it until just now. I think it's a fairly entertaining and interesting book. Disch's main thesis is that SF has fully permeated American Culture, and that much of the wackier elements of American culture can be laid at SF's doorstop. I don't think he really makes his case fully -- he does a fair amount of cherry-picking in his choice of SF books to analyze. And the book is full of mostly tiny but annoying errors -- things like getting dates and publications sequences wrong. Every so often he seems to have plainly misread a book -- his take on Banks' Culture, for instance, seems particularly wrongheaded. All that said, he makes some interesting points that are worth thinking about, and his critical view of various books is often illuminating. And some of his personal stories, often a bit catty, are quite fun as well.  I found his story of the collaboration technique of Walt and Leigh Richmond particularly amusing -- apparently Walt would sit in the room with Leigh, and telepathically transmit his story ideas to her, while she would type up the result.  Hmmmf! (Gardner Dozois used to recount the same story about the Richmonds.)

Birthday Review: The Finishing School, by Muriel Spark

Birthday Review: The Finishing School, by Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark was born Muriel Camberg on February 1, 1918, and died at the age of 88 in 2006. She was born in Edinburgh, lived in Rhodesia after her marriage to Sidney Spark in 1937, and left him and their infant son after realizing that her husband was prone to violence. She returned to England in 1944. She began writing poetry and literary criticism after the War, and her first novel appeared in 1957. She may still be best known for her 1961 short novel (most of her novels were quite short) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Besides that novel, my favorites among her books are Memento Mori and Loitering With Intent.

Muriel Spark wrote strong novels up to the end of her life. Her last novel appeared when she was 86. This is The Finishing School. Like most of her novels, it is very short (in the neighborhood of 30,000 words), and sardonic in tone. It invites comparison with her most famous novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, in being about a school and about the relationship of a teacher to the students. Indeed, the review I read in the Atlantic Monthly at the time it first appeared continued from its discussion of The Finishing School into a long reconsideration of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The Finishing School is set at College Sunrise, a school run by Rowland Mahler, a 29 year old who had a long ago success with a play and is now frustratedly trying to write a novel, and his wife Nina Parker. The school moves each term -- in part, it is suggested, to escape bill collectors. It is in Switzerland this term. There are nine students, apparently all around 17 years old, presumably having finished high school or the European equivalent, and now being "finished" -- either to head on to University or to other pursuits. One of the students, Chris, is writing an historical novel about Mary Queen of Scots.

The fulcrum of the novel is Rowland's jealousy of Chris. It becomes clear that this jealousy, ostensibly of the likely smashing success of his novel, has a homoerotic component. (Even though both parties are apparently heterosexual -- Rowland is married, though his wife is having an affair and plans to leave him, while Chris seduces several women during the course of the book.) Rowland spends much of his time fantasizing about killing Chris. Chris, meanwhile, ignores his classes, writes his novel in secret, and entertains visits from publishers and film producers.

Flitting around this central conflict are the problems of the other students and staff. One girl plans to become a minister (shades of the nun-to-be in Prime), another's father is suspected of smuggling, a couple are trying to arrange to get married to one or another of the boy students. The staff are involved as well, sleeping with the students on occasion, and planning their own futures. And the neighbors, a young woman and her somewhat older nephew, are also drawn into the intrigue.

It is told, as ever with Spark, in a very spare fashion. Several months pass quickly, odd people are described doing odd things in the most deadpan of fashions, and by the end we know them fairly well and we know their fates. It is dryly funny, enjoyable to read and archly believable despite all the unusual characters. It is not, I think, nearly as good as Spark's best work -- in part it is not really about as much, I don't think -- but it is a fine piece of fiction.

The Translator, by John Crowley

The Translator, by John Crowley

a review by Rich Horton

John Crowley is one of my favorite authors, but I am familiar primarily with his Science Fiction and Fantasy. He has also written impressive realistic (or near-realistic) fiction. I finally rectified a major omission in my reading by getting to The Translator, from 2002. (I still haven't read Four Freedoms.)

The Translator is set primarily in 1962, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Christa (Kit) Malone is a new student at a Midwestern college (it could almost have been my school, the University of Illinois, though it could have been Illinois State, or somewhere else, or purposely unspecified). She is an aspiring poet -- indeed, the book opens with a prologue in which she meets JFK at a ceremony recognizing high school poets.

But I should say first that the story is framed from three decades in the future, in the newly non-Soviet Russia, where Kit is visiting St. Petersburg, for a conference on a poet named Falin. Falin had been exiled to the US, and had taught briefly at Kit's college -- and Kit's first book of poems included a section of translations of Falin's poems. At this conference, then, she tells the story of her involvement with Falin to her hosts. We also know, because of this future viewpoint, that Falin disappeared shortly after the main events of the book -- he drove away from the college, and his car was found in a river -- he was presumed killed accidentally, perhaps a suicide, though of course some people assume murder, or even that he escaped to a new life.

Back in the past -- Kit's life is more tangled than just being a college freshman. She's  late to enroll, because she became pregnant in high school, and had to delay matriculation while at a Catholic institution having her (eventually stillborn) child. And her much loved brother Ben has joined the Army, and gone to Vietnam, in the "advisors" period before it became a real war (as if!) -- and Ben is killed, in what the Army calls an accident. All this is essentially prologue to the heart of story -- but powerful and very affecting prologue.

At school Kit decides, partly at random, to take the class in Poetry that Falin is teaching. This leads to her getting closely involved with him (inappropriately so, one might say). One thing they do together, of course, is work on translating some of his poems. Kit also learns a good deal about Falin's early life in Russia -- a rather horrifying time as basically a feral child, lost or abandoned by his parents and "adopted" by a group of similarly situated children. And something, too, of some of Falin's major work, particularly a series of poems about a sort of alternate, or parallel, Russia.At the same time Kit gets involved with a group of radicalized students (their main cause is Fair Play for Cuba.)

That's the first part of the book -- part II brings events to a climax, centered around the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book foregrounds the feeling people apparently had at the time -- that a nuclear war, and even the end of the world, might really be imminent. All along, as well, Kit's feelings for Falin, and his for her, are intensifying. It's never entirely clear whether they actually have sex -- it is clear that Falin is concerned that his feelings for Kit are wrong, though the real source of the danger he feels she's in is also a bit ambiguous. For Kit has been approached by a man who is apparently a US agent of some kind -- it seems that some people are wondering if Falin is really as anti-Soviet as he appears -- could his exile be a front, and could he be a spy?

All this could be pretty mundane -- and still effective -- but in this novel it is heightened -- by Crowley's amazing prose, for one thing, but also by the themes behind the themes -- the nature of translation, for one; and the responsibility of poets -- and everyone -- to intervene, to be the better angels of their nations, as opposed to the darker ruling angels. In the end this novel is quite beautiful, quite profound, powerful and moving and a plea, above all, for peace, and for what understanding is possible between people who can only speak through translations.

To finish, perhaps a couple of quotes. Here's Falin, in class, speaking about Housman's poem usually called "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now": "do you see: the only other figure in the poem is very last word, and it compares white blossoms to tree in winter, covered with snow. With snow, when all blossoms and leaves will be gone. In the very moment of his delight the poem reminds him, and us, that time will pass, blossoms will fall. ... And it may well be that it was not Housman's thought but the poem itself that produced this meaning, that the poet reached next-to-last line and this rhyme arose of its own accord, with all these meanings. Yes I am sure, sure it did. A gift that came because of rhyme, came because rhyme exists. Because poetry is what it is. And because this poet was faithful." That's pretty significant, of course, because in translating rhymed poetry the poem may give you a different rhyme -- with a different meaning. And what is most faithful? To accept the new meaning in the new language? Or to force what you can of the original meaning in the original language, even if that betrays poetry in the new language?

And another quote from Falin, in a letter to Kit: "Well we have kissed at that frontier, my love, haven't we? We ourselves. I have come into a world where West is away, where freedom does not rhyme with fate, and where alone you can be found. So it is enough, and must be; for unlike Alice I know no way back."

There's much more of course, bravery and sadness and love, and a whole lot of seamlessly fresh and lovely prose. A wonderful novel.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Will McIntosh

Today is Will McIntosh's birthday. Starting not long after I started at Locus, he produced an impressive spate of really fine short stories, including "Bridesicle", which won the Hugo. He turned to novels (of course! -- though he still publishes fine shorter work) in 2011, both YA and adult. Here's a selection of my Locus reviews of his work:

Locus, March 2005

Will McIntosh, in "Totems" (Interzone, February-March), offers a fine human/alien love story, concentrating on a human woman desperately trying to recover the hundreds of carvings made by her alien lover – for a rather strange reason.

Locus, November 2005

Interzone continues to refine its design, in particular its artwork. The October issue, #200 in the magazine’s impressive history, is really spiffy-looking. There is more fiction than usual as well, and the quality is very high. Will McIntosh’s “Soft Apocalypses” is set in the near future. The narrator has broken up with his girlfriend and is going to a VR speed-date – meeting a bunch of women virtually for brief interviews. McIntosh sharply portrays his character – basically decent if a bit shallow – his past, his old girlfriend, and a few of the women he meets; and at the same time sharply portrays the decaying future. Very well done.

Locus, November 2006

Aeon is an electronically distributed magazine with a provocative personality of its own. They publish a mix of poetry, features including science articles by Rob Furey and essays by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and a wide variety of generally exotic fiction. I thought the best story in issue eight was Will McIntosh’s “Oxy”, set in a far future where environmental change and human change result in people with distinctly separate personalities coexisting.

Locus, November 2007

On Spec has now reached its 69th number. In this issue I really enjoyed Will McIntosh’s “Perfect Violet”, one of a few recent stories dealing with the idea of selling and buying memories. Kiko is an impoverished young woman barely scraping by by selling her memories – but the losses are terrible, including a romance that was quashed by her father. Hope comes when her former lover finds her again … and when she can come to term with her memories (or lack thereof) of her father.

Locus, December 2007

Somewhat depressingly, I note that a newish online magazine, Darker Matter, is closing up shop after 5 issues. Number five was their best, with in particular a good far future story by Jason Stoddard, “True History”, about manipulation of history and identity by posthumans, and a fine Will McIntosh piece, “Young Love on the Drowned Side of the City”, set after a plague has mostly wiped out the adults and the surviving children have reached their teens. The protagonist is shown playing irresponsible teenaged games with his cohort, but his relationship with the girl he’d like to be his girlfriend shows perhaps a bit more to his character.

And to a true survivor in online SF: Strange Horizons. In October Will McIntosh contributes a lovely sweet romantic fantasia, “One Paper Airplane Graffito Love Note”, about a sailmaker in a timeless sort of town who falls in love with a sculptor. But the sculptor has two issues – she believes her life story is being repeated stolen for fiction, and … well, let the story reveal that. The central love story is not anything new – but nicely told – what makes the story special is the grace notes, such as the sudden fashion of graffiti confessions that takes over this town.

Locus, January 2008

From Asimov’s for January, There is also nice work from Will McIntosh: “Unlikely”, a sweet story about a odd statistical coincidence: if the two main characters spend time together, it seems that their city’s accident rate decreases. Or so the statistics say. Which means that Joseph and Tuesday are thrown together in the name of science – “Not that this was a date”, though. Oh yeah?

Locus, May 2008

Will McIntosh’s “The Fantasy Jumper” (Black Static, February) has a striking and rather horrifying central idea – at a sort of fair or carnival one booth allows you to create an artificial person, who can look like just about anyone – yourself, your girlfriend, a tailored creation, even a celebrity (if the license is available). This “person”, then, jumps to its death. The story follows a few customers – a rather creepy guy who takes all too much pleasure in the deaths; a guy who just wants to talk to the women he “creates”, and a girl whose girlfriend has broken up with her, and who finds a way to use the booth as a sort of revenge. Short, very imaginative, and powerful.

Locus, June 2008

Will McIntosh’s “Linkworlds”, published in two parts in March at Strange Horizons is a quite intriguing story representing a somewhat fashionable new sort of SF: stories told in a straightforwardly science fictional manner, set in quite artificial universes. This story is told from the POV of an autistic (it seemed to me) young man (named Tweel, oddly enough, though I could not detect any other link to “A Martian Odyssey”) living on a world inside a bubble. Various worlds, of differing natures, float through this bubble, occasionally coming close enough to another world to “link” and to allow trade and travel between the worlds. But trade and travel, alas, also imply the potential of war – a potential unexpectedly enhanced when Tweel is able to help improve the navigation of the “linkworlds”. He and his adopted world must find a peaceful response to the threat of conquest. Nice, clever, work, if somehow so artificial that the ending seems not quite meaningful.

Locus, September 2008

Will McIntosh continues to impress with stories showing an impressive imagination. In “Midnight Blue” (Asimov's, September) finding curious spheres in the right comination confers special powers on people. These spheres, once common, have become very rare, leading to a market for them – with, again, the rich generally getting richer. Jeff is a highschool kid, not one of the rich or popular ones, but when he finds a particularly rare sphere, his life changes. What works best is the tricky resolution McIntosh engineers. Like Rosenblum, this story is more about economics at its heart than about its fantastical idea.

Locus, January 2009

At the January Asimov’s “Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh is a rather cynical examination of the prospects for resurrection of cryonically preserved people. It seems the expensive process must be sponsored, and one way is to agree to marry whoever revives you … which is a bit of a problem for the lesbian heroine, who rather hopes that her preserved lover can also be revived. Nothing brilliant here, but a clever look at a potential downside of this speculative tech.

Locus, January 2013

This whole issue of Asimov's is quite strong. “Over There”, by Will McIntosh, is first rate SF horror, told effectively in parallel point of view, as a physics researcher runs an experiment which seems to split the universe into parallel streams – though people can experience what their other universe counterpart is experiencing. But one universe is menaced by unexplained “dragons”, which freeze anyone they touch – leading to terrible agony for the counterparts in the other universe. The researcher and his wife end up on the run in both places, as people look for revenge on the people responsible for this disaster – and things are complicated further because the wife is pregnant. In the end, the Sfnal aspect is simply an enabling strategy for a wrenching personal drama – and a very effective one.

Locus, March 2016

Lightspeed's January issue features "The Liar's Tour", by Will McIntosh, which posits the means of visiting the souls of the dead via cryogenic sleep. Ben has been obsessively revisiting his dead girlfriend ... which is a problem for his relationship with his live wife. Things proceed to an affecting and believable conclusion. The title concept (about a tour that Ben's girlfriend conducts through Savannah) is pretty cool, and it's one of those stories with no villains -- just earned sadness.

Locus, April 2017

Even better, in the March-April Asimovs – one of the stories of the year so far – is “Soulmates, Inc.”, by Will McIntosh. Daniel is recovering from a breakup with Emily, and so he starts using Soulmates, and he gets a really intriguing contact from Winnie, whose profile seems absolutely perfect for him. They start talking online, and things are going wonderfully, but somehow Winnie is never available for a face-to-face meetup. We can figure what’s going on quickly – and with Emily’s help, so can Daniel. He realizes “Winnie” is artificial, only an online construct, and he assumes at first that she was created by Soulmates to lure him to sign up, but after a while he realizes she’s an independent AI. He reacts in anger, and takes steps to get her erased. But what if “Winnie” can take revenge as well? The story is scary, and morally provocative, and resolved with honesty. Daniel in particularly is a wholly believable character, really well captured.

Locus, May 2018

In Lightspeed for April Will McIntosh’s “What is Eve?” is an enjoyable YA-flavored story of a group of smart students sent off to a strange isolated school, where they encounter their new classmate, Eve, a very odd – and scary – creature indeed. Readers immediately will gather that she’s an alien – but what sort of alien and why is the question. The answer is clever and interesting – and Eve is given a meaningful voice: nice work, if the viewpoint character’s actions seem a bit predictable.