The Short Story Thread

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Housing Problem" (Charm, October 1944) -- A young couple find out that the man who rents a room from them has something very strange living in his birdcage. It's interesting to note that this whimsical fantasy appeared in a woman's magazine rather than a pulp, probably because the demise of Unknown killed the market for light-hearted, modern-day fantasy. A story best described as "cute."

 

[Extollager]

"Housing Problem" (Charm, October 1944)

I think this story was reprinted in Read, a 1960s magazine that was produced for, and distributed free to, middle school students in English classes in America. Someone at Read saw sf as something that could get youngsters interested in reading. I've seen reprints there of Asimov's "Eyes Do More Than See" (I think) and Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," a cover story on 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. The magazine printed a one-page piece about space exploration written -- I think specifically for the magazine -- by Ray Bradbury.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"What You Need" (Astounding, October 1945) -- Variation on the "weird little shop" theme. In this one, the shop carries exactly what you need at the time. Source of the Twilight Zone episode of the same name. A rare example of the adaptation being better than the story. Since it appeared in a science fiction magazine, the shopkeeper has an inplausible gizmo than allows him to see possible futures. The television version makes the story pure fantasy, and it works better that way.

"Absalom" (Startling Stories, Fall 1946) -- Depicts the conflict between a genius father and a super-genius son. Seems to depict the replacement of homo sapiens with homo superior as ruthlessly inevitable.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Call Him Demon" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Fall 1946) -- In 1920, a group of children know that the "Wrong Uncle" is really part of a very strange and very dangerous being. Besides being a creepy horror story, this tale offers a great deal of insight in the psychology of children.

"Daemon" (Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1946) -- Narrated by a simple-minded who can see the daemons of people, as well as beings from pre-Christian mythology. A vivid, exotic fantasy.

"Vintage Season" (Astounding, September 1946) -- Famous story about tourists from the future. Beautifully written. Adapted into a 1992 movie I have not seen, variously known as Timescape (no relation to the novel by Gregory Benford), Disaster in Time, and Grand Tour: Disaster in Time.

"Dark Angel" ("The Dark Angel," Startling Stories, March 1946) -- A man learns that his wife is a superhuman mutant, growing from her "child" state to the full, almost unimaginably powerful "adult" stage. Interesting, with a twist at the end.

"Before I Wake" ("Before I Wake . . .," Famous Fantastic Mysteries, March 1945) -- Psychological fantasy in which a teenage boy, who has read about faraway places and imagines all sorts of fantasic things about them, is transported in his dreams. Includes a great deal of "local color" among Portugeuse fisherman on the Gulf of Mexico.

"Exit the Professor" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1947) -- Wild farce in which a scientist discovers a family of hillibillies with amazing abilities. These are so outrageous (extreme long life, invisibility, flying, etc.) that this reads more like fantasy than science fiction.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Big Night" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947) -- Old-fashioned space opera which depicts a grizzled old starship captain determined to keep his vessel going, even though teleportation threatens to make it obsolete. Rather unsophisticated compared to the other stories in the book.

 

[Extollager]

"Vintage Season" (Astounding, September 1946) -- Famous story about tourists from the future. Beautifully written.

It's stories like that one that help to justify the whole genre of sf, in that they give us a literary experience of manifest value that we could not have had from any other genre.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"A Wild Surmise" (Star Science Fiction Stories 1, 1953) -- A man visits a psychiatrist because he's convinced that the real world is a dream, and his dreams are real; but in his dreams, where he isn't human at all, he visits a non-human psychiatrist for the same reason. A "what is reality" story, not unlike early Philip K. Dick.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Don't Look Now" (Startling Stories, March 1948) -- A guy in a bar tries to convince another guy that the world is secretly run by Martians disguised as humans. A minor story, but with a nice mood of paranoia, which reminds me a bit of the story "Eight O' Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson (adapted into the 1988 movie They Live.) One element in the story may have been stolen for the Twilight Zone episode "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

"Private Eye" (Astounding, January 1949) -- In a world where the authorities can use technology to view everything you ever did in your life, how do you fool them into thinking that murder was self-defense? Besides the clever crime story plot, there is also a great deal of psychological depth and characterization. Nifty cover art:

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"By These Presents" ("Satan Sends Flowers," Fantastic, January-February 1953) -- A fellow makes a deal with the Devil for immortality in exchange for some of his subconscious memories. The intital premise may remind one of the Twilight Zone episode "Escape Clause," but it goes in a very different direction.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Home is the Hunter" (Galaxy, July 1953) -- In a future New York City, elite hunters stalk each other in Central Park, just for the glory of collecting the most heads. A dark vision indeed.

"Or Else" (Amazing Stories, August-September 1953) -- An alien comes to Earth and demands that two Mexican peasants stop trying to kill each other over a water hole. A grim satire on warfare.

"Year Day" (Ahead of Time, 1953) -- In the near future, people are overwhelmed by advertising, but can pay a very high price for escape. An excellent story which would have been perfect for Galaxy. Surprisingly, it had no magazine appearance until it appeared in the Kuttner collection noted above.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"A Cross of Centuries" (Star Science Fiction Stories 4, 1958) -- An immortal is worshipped in the far future as the White Christ who saved humanity from destroying itself during the last war; but the memory-enhancing treatment he must undergo every century to avoid senility reveals an uncomfortable truth. A daring story in its use of religious images.

"Two-Handed Engine" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1955) -- In the future murderers are followed by huge robot "furies" who execute them after an unknown length of time. An interesting allegory of crime and guilt.

 

[J-Sun]

I was going to make a post but then it got too long. For the long version, go here. For the ultra-condensed version: del Rey wrote several great stories, virtually all the best of which are in The Best of Lester del Rey, including "Helen O'Loy" (1938), "The Day is Done" (1939), "The Coppersmith" (1939), "The Wings of Night" (1942), "And It Comes Out Here" (1951), "For I Am a Jealous People" (1954), "The Seat of Judgment" (1957), and "Vengeance Is Mine" (1964).

Quoting the conclusion from the long page: "So if you're really inspired to dig into del Rey, it can be fun and worthwhile in a way but he's really not a "completist" author. I do strongly recommend The Best of and one version or other of "Nerves" (novella version available in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol.IIA) as essential, though."

 

[J-Sun]

Thread's even busier than usual lately.

I've finished Allen Steele's Sex and Violence in Zero-G and the quickest way to deal with it would probably be to just isolate what isn't excellent. All the stories in this collection are "Near Space" stories (set in his first future history) and it opens with one barely fictional story ("Walking on the Moon") and "The Diamondback Jack Quartet" subseries of bar tales which are all fine. They demonstrate his gritty realism and blue-collar approach to space and are entertaining and grow to have more depth. Near the end of the book, and original to it, is a 2-3 page fake manual called "0.0G Sex: A User's Guide" which tells the user how to properly use the "fornicatoriums" in space. It's got its elements of humor but it's the one thing that could have safely been cut without loss.

Otherwise, while almost no story is without something one could see as a flaw, the thing's almost entirely gold. It really gets started with the sixth story which was his first published story, "Live from the Mars Hotel", about three guys goofing off playing tunes on Mars who become sensations on Earth. Again, the themes of blue-collar work and an appreciation for the Grateful Dead and the simultaneously romantic and gritty unromantic notion of space is all in this one. "The Death of Captain Future" won the Hugo and probably did so because of the metafictional element (which probably turned me off the first time I read it) but it's actually an excellent story regardless. It's a tale of how a loser who lived in a fantasy land of Captain Future adventures became a hero after all. It's followed up by a slightly less good (and more backstory-heavy) sequel called "The Exile of Evening Star" which follows another unwilling adventure of two of the characters from the first story. "Working for Mister Chicago" and "The War Memorial" have more immersive approaches and elegiac tones than many of the tales and work very well - the first details some pitfalls of having your head frozen when you die (and of thawing them out) and the second is a remarkably vivid evocation of an unknown soldier.

A slight step down (in the "Evening Star" ballpark, but still very good) are "Shepherd Moon" about the artist and his conflicting loves, "Kronos", a deeply flawed but still-mesmerizing tale of the Space Plague, "Zwarte Piet's Tale" which reinvents Santa Claus on Mars, and the long novella (published in the UK as a book), "The Weight". This story is also not flawless but I had recently read some more or less good things but always had the feeling I'd rather be reading something else. It was during this tale of a reporter learning to pull his weight on a ship making the moon-Jupiter run (and the weight the others pull and pull for humanity) that I realized that there was nothing else I'd rather be reading at that moment.

All in all, a great, must-have collection and especially all those stories (9 of 15 great, 14 of 15 good - c.417 of 420 pages) mentioned above.

Sidenote: there is an expanded version which costs a million bucks and includes four or five more stories and is hopefully better proofread than the Meisha Merlin original edition. There are a couple of typos but it's the weirdest thing I've ever read: there are dozens of transposed words and hundreds of missing words. As far as I could tell, it was never more than a word per sentence or so, so I always felt like I could mentally supply the missing word but it's just another terrible case of bookmaking for a $16 dollar 1999 trade paper - and they also infuriatingly put Steele's name and the title of the book at the top of each page rather than the story title on one of them, which would actually be useful for reference. Bad font and margins, too. So you know the stories are good when that kind of crap retreats into the background anyway.

 

[Bick]

Sidenote: there is an expanded version which costs a million bucks and includes four or five more stories and is hopefully better proofread than the Meisha Merlin original edition.

Many thanks for the review J-Sun. I probably wouldn't stretch to a million dollars for a paperback. However, when I searched the interweb, I found Book Depository selling the expanded version for $30 (99.997% off)! I couldn't find the non-expanded cheaper version though.

 

[J-Sun]

Very welcome.

30 bucks, to me, rounds off to "a million". Here's a copy of the first edition for 15 bucks (though it describes the condition as "standard" which I guess is bad): abebooks. But, yeah, it does start escalating so rapidly as to make more sense to get the expanded edition after that. I mean, it may make more sense in the first place - one of the expanded stories is "The Emperor of Mars" which was another Hugo winner and is another really good story (though, again, probably winning the Hugo just for pushing the right metafictional fan buttons) but that's available in the Dozois anthology, for instance. I'm not familiar with the other expanded stories, though.

It's a crime these things aren't sitting in grocery store racks published by Ace for 7.99.

 

[Bick]

It's a crime these things aren't sitting in grocery store racks published by Ace for 7.99.

Indeed!

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

An unusual publication which I have found in many used book stores over the years is a periodical called Short Story International. In appearance, it looks more like a tall, wide, thin paperback than a magazine. As the name implies, it publishes stories from around the world. I am currently working my way through issue number nine (August 1978.) The year which follows each story title below is the one supplied by Short Story International, but since many of these stories have been selected from other anthologies and single-author collections, they may have been first published earlier than the dates given.

"At the Galahad" by Hal Porter (Australia, 1962) -- At a fancy old hotel, long past its best days, two of the many elderly lady residents get into a fierce battle over who will sit at a particular table during meals. Narrated in an arch, darkly satiric style which will not appeal to all readers, but an effective depiction of the passions which can be ignited over trivial matters.

"The Milky Way" by Jack Reynolds (China, 1974) -- A Western doctor in pre-Mao China treats a woman whose breasts produce an enormous amount of milk. Full of local color, and the author's view of the Chinese seems to be a slightly condescending attitude of amused affection.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"My Favorite Saint" by Joan O'Donovan (UK, 1970) -- An English woman married to an Irishman has to deal with her husband's elderly great-aunt coming to live with them. Mostly an affectionate character study of the stubborn, old-fashioned old woman.


"The Fake" by Romain Gary (France, 1964) -- A wealthy art collector exposes a painting owned by a rival collector as a forgery, leading to an act of revenge. You'll probably predict the ending of this acid little tale.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Temple by the River" by Leon Comber (Hong Kong, 1972) -- A loose translation/retelling of one of many traditional Chinese tales about the ancient magistrate Pao. Here he investigates an apparently accidental drowning. It's interesting to compare this with the traditional Western crime story. The identity of the killer is known to the reader; the murdered man returns as a ghost, setting the investigation in action; and the "detective" solves the crime by tricking the killer into confessing.


"Jamal the Constable" by G. S. Sharat Chandra (India, 1975) -- An apprentice policeman learns how to look the other way when his boss, the magistrate, indulges in his vices. A simple tale of hypocrisy, with lots of local color.


"The Goose and Jans Kwak" by Elka Schrijver (the Netherlands, 1976) -- The narrator encounters a sinister woman who seems to know everything about everyone in the village, as well as her equally unpleasant goose, who wanders freely throughout their homes. Somewhat predictable fantasy, but nicely done.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Before the Wolves Come" by Hugh Munro (UK, 1977) -- Typical futuristic disaster story about a nuclear experiment that releases something that dissolves all metal into powder. Perhaps better appreciated by folks who aren't very familiar with SF. (An odd implausibility is that the metal-dissolving thing also causes a severe decrease in human fertility, but has no effect on animals.)


"The Perfidy of Maatland" by Alan Parton (South Africa, 1975) -- The author of the famous novel Cry, the Beloved Country once again deals with the reality of apartheid in his homeland, as the new white administrator of a university for Africans tries to use more liberal methods than his predecessors. Simple and effective.


"How to Ride a Water Buffalo" by Pira Sudham (Thailand, 1974) -- Brief character study of a pair of young peasant boys, as the older tries to teach his silent brother. Not bad.