“The World of Arlesia” [first appearing in F&SF] is another too-complex story
that requires rereading to get what has actually happened. (I do love complex
stories, but they require more set up.) A couple attend a double-header [Didn’t
they called them double features? Perhaps she means to highlight the
sports-like nature of what they are attending] “movie” [anticipating virtual
reality?] where they go to an underwater world. However, the wife witnesses an
entirely different world.
One example of writing infelicity [the guide is trying to
con our narrator into becoming one of many recumbent women, although what is
happening to the women is never clear—perhaps something Matrix-like]:
“I won’t,” I said. “You’re trying
to do something to me, something to my mind. I won’t go in there.”
“Ah, well,” she said. She dropped
my wrist and was silent.
So we have a vague menace [“something”] that is easily
dispatched. The next time a mad scientist has a vague evil plan or a cut-throat
thief tries to steal something he’s not sure about, just say, “I won’t let you”
and that will take care of everything. Despite this, it’s still worth a gander.
“The Little Red Owl” first appeared in Weird Tales and was reprinted by Peter Haining. Uncle Charles tells
frightening stories to his nephew and niece—a story where the little red owl,
their hero, dies. The children, aghast, deny this has happened. The uncle is
forbid from telling new stories, but he plans revenge, having professionally
made a sweet coloring book that tells the same story.
It is a little spooky, adding a necessary change in point of
view that some will take issue with, which also takes the key dramatic moment
off-stage. It would probably work best on the screen—an anthology of horror
stories like Cat’s Eye or Tales from the Crypt—the trick being to
make an owl look both sweet, heroic, and terrifying.
A rather moving and ambiguous piece, “The Hole in the Moon”
[first appeared in F&SF—printed
and reprinted by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas], is simple yet
ambitious. Men have been destroyed by a disease that sits dormant in women, but
kills men although one can tell a woman who is diseased by her pitted skin. A
machine or robot woman arrives (at least, she suggests this in her description
of her “sisters”) and she can only be made real if this man loves her. He is
conflicted by wanting to love her and drive her away, threatening violence. She
leaves. A narrative gap allows a few different events to have
happened—intriguing possibilities. And his decision may lead to a few different
consequences—none of which exclude his final, moving decision. The editor,
Ramsay Campbell, points out the ambiguity that the protagonist could be insane,
but that’s not the most interesting of possibilities. The minor flaw in this
tale is that his loneliness and desire should have been set up immediately—not
to mention nigh magical nature of her construction (via his desire—see this
discussion of genre romance). Still, it’s surprising that this tale has not
been reprinted more often.
In yet another genre bar story, “The Causes” [first appeared
in F&SF, also appears in
Greenber’s edition of her Best-of,
and reprinted Darrell Schweitzer, George H. Scithers (an SF bar anthology) and
Robert P. Mills] has one character after another describe why the world seems
apocalyptic to the “main” character, George—going through Greek, Christian, and
other causes. The ending saves the story, but if you aren’t a fan of world
apocalypses, it’s skippable. Maybe read the first tale and skip to the ending
to get the gist. However, Robert P. Mills seems to beg to differ in the tale’s
quality by collecting it in a ten-year retrospective for F&SF. Introducing the tale, he wrote, “No collection of fantasy
and science fiction can be considered representative if it fails to include a
superior example of the bar-fantasy.” In other words, the above editors all
included it because it was a bar story. It is a decent example, but what about
superior examples of the Rana pipiens
fantasy?
From the pages of Weird
Tales, “The Island of the Hands” has an intriguing premise about seeking
his wife’s lost ship. His plane goes down at her last coordinates and he wakes
from unconsciousness. The island was invented to recreate things lost, so they
find people dancing with simulated partners, simulated babies, simulated
gems—none of which have much reality. He goes down to the mists to create the
wife he lost.... The tale is stirring up until he wanders the mist, and it
seems to lose itself there, wandering too long, which seems an unusual lapse
for St. Clair. The tale finds itself—or a version of itself—but it becomes
something else, ambiguous in a bad sense. Campbell, in the introduction,
latches on to secondary characters for what the tale is up to. I also suspect
that the true protagonist is not the main character but not the one he
selected. If true, it’s a more interesting, ambitious and ambiguous in a good
sense although that would mean that island doesn’t have the rules it was said
to have (even in a straight reading, where the main character is the
protagonist, the island breaks the rule of what it said about the mist).
No comments:
Post a Comment