The Dark Land by C. L. Moore

First appeared in Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales. Reprinted by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia for a feminist anthology.

Jirel, on her death bed after receiving a pike-wound to her side, cannot be healed. As she is about to enter death with a priest to deliver last rites, she is whisked away to a new world.  

Commentary (with Spoilers)

Jirel is miraculously healed in the new world. However, it is by Pav, King of Romne, a kingdom with strange borders and ways of moving through it. She is not grateful, and he seems full of himself. He allows her to seek a weapon to fight him. If he should win, he gains her. If not, she gains her freedom.

She encounters a witch, described not unlike Jirel was described on her deathbed--white and death-like ("the face of Death itself") yet somehow attractive (Jirel is near the mountains she claimed to throw herself off of if Pav should somehow win her). The witch claims that Jirel is her rival, so presumably she had been or at least desired to be Pav's companion, lover, or queen. 

Despite the announcement of their rivalry, Jirel accepts the witch's advice on how to defeat the king--to put out the flame around his head with the flame around her head which he'd given to her. Presumably, the act is a humbling or breaking down of his ego. He protects her despite this, presumably because he might not be able to stop the witch from killing Jirel, a rival on the loose. 

Does Jirel like him now? Well, he's watched and admired her from afar. He's saved her life twice. She may or may not have cottoned to him as a partner (her first "lover" had done far less to merit her love, though), but surely she understands him differently.

Father Gervase is an interesting figure--some sort of Christian priest, presumably. He appears in two tales. With good advice in the first, he warns against certain action, which we learn to be wisdom--at least to an extent. His appearance here is probably to lend credence to the belief that, when her bed is empty, she was snatched by the devil himself. 

That may be her own perspective when she arrives. It seems that she likely has another feeling when she leaves. 

Christian imagery runs through the opening. It doesn't appear to be meant to make her be a Christ figure, but just to recall similar scenarios. She has a spear in her side as Christ had. And she spends time in another realm before returning to her own. Perhaps this is meant to signal that she'd visited Paradise--or a kind of--and, rejecting it, was ejected.

This is the first story to challenge Jirel's perspective, that her judgment of others or perspective may be flawed. This actually goes a long way to explaining Jirel's actions in the first two stories. The story foreshadows this perspective with "[t]he great two-edged sword which she wielded so recklessly in the heat of combat." 

Moore takes the sword away and this forces a new kind of confrontation, which would likely have been useless in this situation, anyway.  The witch calls her a "presumptuous fool" whom she promises to kill:

"Blind, hot, earthly woman, with your little hates and vengeances, how could you have reigned queen over Romne that is Darkness itself"

Perhaps as stated near the beginning, Pav is a kind of devil, but he seems awfully kind to be a devil. Perhaps he is a middle ground, or perhaps it is a place run by heaven and hell. Whatever it is, it's never really clarified. But comparisons to the afterlife are plentiful. 

On second thought, it seems Jirel is just happy to be back, which no one can blame her for. She left home where she was in control in multiple ways. Whether the events of the tale impacted her may not be visible until a later story--in the same way this story illuminates the reading of the first two. Perhaps not, though.

It's unclear yet what the stories are addressing--perhaps other stories of love between men and women in the genre, or perhaps her own encounters (the men often manipulate reality, which might mean writers, and she did marry the writer Henry Kuttner). Or is she addressing women, addressing possible misunderstandings? Or perhaps she's addressing society with an upper-class barbarian--too civilized, or not civilized at all.

"A Prize in Every Box" by F. J. Bergmann

First appeared in Writers of the Future 36, edited by David Farland.

A small family keeps buying a new cereal, mostly because it has coupons that make the next box cheaper. But suddenly the prizes inside get stranger and more wonderful--even potentially deadly or disfiguring.

Comment with some spoilery bits:

This story updates the Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore's oeuvre. The opening is a masterwork of gripping the reader and not letting go. This mastery may have to do with Bergmann's background in poetry--the ability to capture the reader in a small space. Poetry and fiction are different if related skill sets, and it isn't often you see one crossing between the two genres.

It begins intriguingly enough:

We begged for the brand-name cereal as seen on TV, in aluminum-silver cylindrical boxes lined up the supermarket shelves like a phalanx of spaceships, with twice the nutrition of oatmeal. Hints about the prizes appeared in commercials: wind-up robots, tiny books, toy-store gift certificates, even the keys to a mansion... and other, special prizes.

Lots of goodies in here to make me bite. The "as seen on TV" has a nostalgic dimension, and it hints at what engages the speaker. It's hard to tell if this is the future or the past, though. 

A problem that occurs to me on the third read: over-promises. It suggests a larger scope than is covered here. Could this be an opening to a novel version? Once I got to the ending, I definitely wanted a novella.

Two other problems: When has cereal ever had this huge of a promotion budget? Why aren't other kids having similar experiences? They may not be. But we should know this, one way or another. The mansion seems problematic, but does that figure into the larger version of this story? 

We tried to include cereal as a "basic food group."

Love it. Great humor--whether the speaker is or is not aware of it. We get a strange description of the cereal and the coupons that keep the mother buying, and I'm still in the game. But it's not until this mysterious line that I'm finally sold and ready to roll with author where she's headed:

The nutritional information on the side of the boxes was phrased in an unusually convincing manner, however: 120% USRVTOL-recommended levels of aractozone! Results of recent studies published in the Journal of Developmental Confrontation suggest that this compound promotes general rectitude, reticence, and well formed stools.

 Yes! Yes! Yes!

I ran with this family as they discovered different prizes and how they worked. Except the ending tapers off, mostly because it doesn't address certain issues:

1. Who is behind the cereal, and why? 
2. How many people on the planet are affected and what's happening to it as a result? The title and the cereal's promotion budget suggests the whole planet is involved. Surely, this would conversation topic at every child's cafeteria table. However, the students in the classroom and bus seem oblivious.
3. What are the children's goals and how do these cereal prizes impact those?

To answer these questions would require a novella. Perhaps a novel could work if the scope were widened sufficiently. The opening may suggest a wide enough aperture. When the story takes place might suggest more necessary widening.

This might have worked as a short story if the answer to #1 and #2 were closed off. Maybe the cancer situation was the crisis moment with a sort of climax in solving the problem were kept in family--no bullies. The bullies open up question #2--a good tool for enlarging the story into a novella or novel.

I do hope we see more of this family in a larger tale. If it weren't for the ending, this might have been my favorite.

Bergmann's work has appeared in Pulp Literature, Abyss & Apex, and elsewhere. Her poetry has won the Elgin and Rhysling awards.

Careers Subsidize Science-Fiction Addiction

"I see [acting] as subsidizing my used-book career, my book buying" [and book sniffing] -- Paul Giamatti

SF Writers mentioned: Avram Davidson, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven.

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Audio: Four Stories by Melanie Tem:


1. Come Live with Me
2. Cousins
3. Margaret's 'Possums
4. Siguanaba y Sombreron