association-list

It’s hard for me to tease out what I don’t like here about this story from what I don’t like about its embed­ded assump­tions about human­ity, Amer­ica, and people.

Like some­one said a couple of sto­ries ago, I am dog-​​tired of first-​​person nar­ra­tives. I am tired of a lot of things, and this story man­ages to hit on a lot of them. So if you strip away the science-​​fiction aspects of the story, you have a slightly sexist and racist reac­tionary stick-​​figure of a pro­tag­o­nist wor­ship­ing his golden idol of a father because his father loves him less than his dogs. I’d have con­sid­ered the father-​​son rela­tion­ship here a cheap, sen­ti­men­tal trick in a better story. Here, the main char­ac­ter is so warped by this unlikely rela­tion­ship that he’s effec­tively emas­cu­lated, despite the fact that he has worlds more power than his father in every con­ceiv­able way. The only way to make the device more crass would be to move it into 1970s Amer­i­can Male Author daddy-​​issue ter­ri­tory by having the kid lust after Mona more and have a painful scene in which the kid dis­cov­ers that his daddy have been ‘com­fort­ing’ her in her grief, after her hus­band died. Suf­fice it to say that I find the char­ac­ters unbe­liev­able, schematic, and uninvolving.

The embed­ded assump­tions are maybe going to be less appar­ent or obnox­ious to the non-​​American people; it might even be West Coast spe­cific. Capitalist/​libertarian-​​oriented, dully US-​​centric, assum­ing that each tech boom will be fol­lowed by another, the coun­try is better than the city, manual work better than intel­lec­tual work, gov­ern­ment is evil when not incom­pe­tent, etc., etc., so on and so forth. It cir­cum­scribes the world declar­ing that while it might be dif­fer­ent, it can never really be better. I am against the golden age, as a human con­cept. The fact that we all feel it says some­thing about us, rather than some­thing about the world. If the story had been a dis­sec­tion of this feel­ing through its blink­ered and backwards-​​looking main char­ac­ter, it might have been some­thing inter­est­ing, but it doesn’t even remain unex­am­ined; it seems to be the explicit posi­tion of the story.

It could be that I am riding my own hobby horses into some­one else’s nar­ra­tive, and taking these things too seri­ously, but the fact remains that improve­ments in the state of the world do have real con­se­quences. To write a story in which the bet­ter­ment of the lives of bil­lions of people is side­lined by the quo­tid­ian drama of the decline of the aged is, in some ways, to entirely miss the point of using a science-​​fictional set­ting. No doubt there are issues of taste at the heart of it. Also there’s an elec­tion coming up, and that always gets my polit­i­cal juices flow­ing and my ide­o­log­i­cal anten­nae quivering.

Even putting aside the ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of the story, the fail­ures of char­ac­ter would be enough to damn it, all on their own. Prose-​​wise, it feels under-​​baked, larded with a few too many stock phrasings.

Sev­eral years ago, I wrote a story set in a post-​​singularity world, which bore a bit of a family resem­blance to ‘Elegy …’. Mine was pretty bad. There’s a posthu­man guy and another posthu­man about to tran­scend, and a bunch of people trying to stop her from doing it. I never did revise it fully, because I could never con­vince myself that the set­ting wasn’t pre­cisely iso­mor­phic to the same sit­u­a­tion reworked as a fan­tasy, or a super­hero story. Also it con­tained enough Ellisian verbal tics that I wor­ried that Warren would file suit. And also there are the ugly chunks of auto­bi­og­ra­phy and per­sonal opin­ion dropped in there. But those things are fix­able. There might even be a story worth telling in there, but I never could get over the foun­da­tional prob­lem that basi­cally that the set­ting didn’t say any­thing unique, and didn’t reflect inter­est­ingly on the story that I had to tell.

I sup­pose that that fail­ure was the begin­ning of the end of my flir­ta­tion with sin­gu­latar­ian fic­tion. I still enjoy a finely-​​wrought peice of it, but I never could make it work for me, and I was less impressed with work in the sub-​​genre there­after, having strug­gled with the set­ting issues up close and rarely seeing anyone solve them in a sat­is­fy­ing way.

I strug­gle too much, a lot of the time, with the under­ly­ing mean­ings of sto­ries, both the ones I try to write and the ones I read. I don’t think that SFF is required to be alle­gory at all times, or even most of the time. I don’t sub­scribe to Gibson’s theory that all SFF is built around a re-​​framing of some con­tem­po­rary issue or the cur­rent zeit­geist. But I sup­pose I at least expect an argu­ment, a lesson, a pos­si­ble issue, or some­thing to think about.

This story was good. It was coher­ent, it man­aged not to over-​​explain, it was about real-​​feeling people and real­is­tic rela­tion­ships. Rajaniemi has the storyteller’s spark. It was a bit baggy, like it was told at the gran­u­lar­ity of a novel, rather than a short story. It’s sat­is­fy­ingly low on expo­si­tion. There are many moments where the writ­ing is quite nice.

There are two takes on the ending, I think. Either the sky-​​people planned the entire affair to go off the way it did, or they didn’t. I like the former theory better. A bit of the­ater, allow­ing Koso­nen to move on and his son and the quan­tum girl to finally go free in a way that makes them less dan­ger­ous to the people around them (pre­sum­ably they’re reduced some­what by trans­la­tion into poet­i­cal form). The set­ting here then is a neat bit of work, but doesn’t really get behind the story and push. It’s stronger if you’ve read “Deus Ex Homine”, I think.

If the latter is the case, then the story is unfin­ished, the ending makes very little sense, the setup is stupid, and Rajaniemi is betrayed by the allure of his set­ting, much like I was.

There’s a longer dis­cus­sion to be had, now that the sin­gu­lar­ity thing is just about wound down, but I am not sure that this story is the right tee for kick­ing it off.

Story here, for dis­cus­sion here.

As opposed to the first two sto­ries here, I slot­ted this one into my ‘inter­est­ing fail­ures’ cat­e­gory. I did this mostly because I think that it’s a tol­er­a­ble story and a great exam­ple of a major error in genre fiction.

The story here moves along quickly, with deftly sketched char­ac­ters straight out of steam­punk cen­tral cast­ing. We’ve a valet with a secret, an expe­di­tion into an inter­dicted coun­try, vaunt­ing over­con­fi­dence, and even­tu­ally an awak­en­ing to a grave danger. Every­thing flows smoothly and is topped off by a fine action sequence.

And yet… The story is some­how weight­less, taking each ele­ment of the sub­genre that is uses out of the box and plac­ing it just so. Noting new is orig­i­nated and noth­ing is actu­ally said (I sup­pose that one could argue that the state­ment is that aggres­sive hege­mo­niz­ing swarms are bad, or that indi­vid­u­al­ity is impor­tant, or that loy­alty is more impor­tant than kind, but all these seem to go with­out saying). We are told a story. It is fluent, com­plete, and hollow, con­cerned pri­mar­ily with manip­u­la­tion of scenery and fur­ni­ture. No ele­ment of the stan­dard build­ing blocks is ques­tioned, or goes unused (it’s even hinted that some­where out there are magi­cians, although we never seem to see any).

It could be, as some­times seems the case with BCS, that we’re read­ing an open­ing chap­ter or pro­logue, refit­ted into a stand­alone piece while the larger work lan­guishes in draft, but if so, this one needs the coun­ter­weight of the main body to give it weight.

I see a few ways in here, craft-​​wise.

1: Mis­di­rec­tion

One way swings around that delib­er­ately provoca­tive ending line. We’re asked to fully reimag­ine the movie from the per­spec­tive of the all-​​invading alien mon­ster, pro­tean, agres­sively hege­monz­ing. A mon­ster for whom the very rape cannot have any mean­ing. In the com­ments, Watts says,

Yeah, I went back and forth on that line for exactly the reason you sug­gest: a metaor­gan­ism with­out sex wouldn’t know what rape was. Which is why I intro­duced the “rapist” dialog with Childs’ search­light a couple of scenes ear­lier, during which the mis­sion­ary admits to levels it cannot under­stand in that word. But it does learn con­no­ta­tion of “forced pen­e­tra­tion of flesh”.

Which is enough, I figure, to save that last line. And my ass.

The typ­i­cal con­ven­tion to signal that a word being used is for­eign is to put it in ital­ics. Watts, or Clarkesworld, hasn’t done so here, but I think that it might have been useful to do so, just to empha­size that the crea­ture doing the talk­ing doesn’t actu­ally under­stand the con­cept, but I figure it isn’t strictly nec­es­sary. There’s an argu­ment to be had there, as the con­ven­tion is cer­tainly used earlier:

Later I hid within the bipeds them­selves, and what­ever else lurked in those haunted skins began to talk to me. It said that bipeds were called guys, or men, or ass­holes. It said that MacReady was some­times called Mac. It said that this col­lec­tion of struc­tures was a camp.

The final line sig­nals that we’re not being told the story that we expect we’re being told. We spend the entire story metic­u­lously repick­ing each piv­otal moment of the film, explain­ing why the mis­sion­ary isn’t at fault, how the harm it caused all springs from incom­pre­hen­sion. But at the last we see the rever­sal: the mis­sion­ary does mean to have us all, to release use from death and our tiny, brutish suffering.

The last line is there to tell us that we’re explor­ing ‘evil’ from the inside and that while we’re seeing the other side of the story, the inte­rior inter­pere­ta­tion is entirely con­so­nant with the exterior.

It’s a neat trick.

2: Pacing

Another way to look at it is how to tell a story that most of the read­ers already know in a way that’s com­pelling. Reimag­in­ing is often a ster­ile exer­cise (imag­in­ing is often a ster­ile exer­cise), but find­ing a moti­va­tion for the crea­ture, work­ing a back­story that fits the facts on the ground and enriches, rather than usurps the polt. Whe shuf­fle back and forth between two strains. Missionary-​​as-​​Childs, walk­ing into the long night and think­ing through its expe­ri­ences; and a retelling of the events in the movie, rein­ter­pereted through the newly invented backstory.

Left alone, nei­ther of these threads would work. A simple recount­ing of the story of the movie would leave us bored. What does it matter if the crea­ture is there, sor­row­ing at the hos­til­ity that it encoun­ters? By the same token, its reflec­tions on the dif­fer­ences between its nature and that of the world that it finds itself in are hollow with­out the con­text of the fram­ing story. Com­pellingly writ­ten, sure, but noth­ing but a deci­sion and a small, quiet death happen. It takes a dif­fer­ent kind of artistry to raise this sort of intro­spec­tion out of the level of the dull. It’s unclear whether or not Watts can manage it, but here, hung of the scaf­fold­ing of the other thread, it becomes a sail, rather than a baggy pile of canvas.

3: Crit­ter gonna get ya

Some­thing of the ever­green pop­u­lar­ity of this genre of story is that it makes for almost auto­mat­i­cally com­pelling cinema. Hon­estly, it’s pretty hard to fuck it up too bad. Your char­ac­ters can be paper thin or gilt card­board and no one is going to care. Faults are excused and ratio­nal­ized away by the stark moral dilemma of need­ing to get rid of the mon­ster that is killing every­one one by one. No one really cares that MacReady is a swag­ger­ing jack­ass with silly hair, he’s as close as we’re going to get to a hero, so we’ll root for him as long as he lasts.

One of the things that makes The Thing so sticky in the memory is that the crit­ter might already have got you, but you haven’t real­ized it yet. It’s a break from the stan­dard con­ven­tion. Later betray­als might not be telegraphed, as is a core of the form, because the char­ac­ters are never sure which side they’ll shortly be on.

To some extent, to offer the critter’s per­spec­tive is to defuse the ten­sion some­what. Part of the fear comes from the fact that you never know where the threat is going to come from. I think that Watts does the best thing here. He doesn’t try. He knows that most of the read­ers will know how it comes out, that even if they haven’t seen the movie, they’ll know the form, know the stan­dards. He allows the move­ment and ten­sion of the story to come from a course of rev­e­la­tion walked in a void in the exist­ing story. Who will the crea­ture get next stops being impor­tant. At the time of the telling, every­thing is already over, or almost. Who it will get next stops being the ques­tion, and it starts being, ‘What will it decide, and what will that mean?’.

4: Con­clu­sions

This story more than most is ensnared in nets within nets of mean­ing, right from the workd go. “I am going to rewrite The Thing from the alien’s per­spec­tive”, is a simple enough state­ment. But since the source text for this remix exists in the way it does, you already have threads about cancer and para­noia and our unre­li­able biol­ogy and the feel­ing that death is hunt­ing us all down one by one anyway, all before you write a single word. The colo­nial­ist stinger in the tail adds another layer of dif­fi­culty. I guess what I mean here is that I can’t get past the excel­lence of form and all of the accreted mean­ing to what Watts is trying to actu­ally say. Which may be noth­ing, hon­estly, other than that it’s a fun thing to try and rewrite The Thing from the alien’s perspective.

Sub­ter­re­nan Press Magazine

The Nat­u­ral­ist by Mau­reen McHugh
Under the Moons of Venus by Damien Brod­er­ick
Brown­ian Emo­tion by Tom Holt
Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi
Return: An Innkeeper’s World Story by Peter S. Beagle
The Bod­hisattvas by Gord Sellar
What We Take When We Take What We Need by Daryl Gre­gory
Har­bor­ing Pearls: A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick
Her Deep­ness by Livia Llewellyn
Second Jour­ney of the Magus by Ian R MacLeod
The Bohemian Astrob­leme by Kage Baker
At the Store by Neal Bar­rett, Jr.
Flu Season by Bar­bara Roden
The Heart of a Mouse by K. J. Bishop
The Library of Babble by Michael Bishop
The None­such by Brian Lumley
The Taborin Scale by Lucius Shep­ard
A Burglar’s-Eye View of Greed by Lawrence Block
Amor Vincit Omnia by K. J. Parker
Ghosts In My Head By Cory Doc­torow
Six Blind Men and an Alien by Mike Resnick

Clarkesworld Mag­a­zine

Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at Space/​Time by Cath­erynne M. Valente
Mes­sen­ger by Julia M Sidorova
Beach Blan­ket Space­ship by Sandra McDon­ald
The Asso­ci­a­tion of the Dead by Rahul Kanakia
Futures in the Mem­o­ries Market by Nina Kiriki Hoff­man
My Father’s Sin­gu­lar­ity by Brenda Cooper
A Jar of Good­will by Tobias S. Buck­ell
A Sweet Call­ing by Tony Pi
Between Two Drag­ons by Yoon Ha Lee
Jan­u­ary by Becca De La Rosa
Alone With Gand­hari by Gord Sellar
The His­tory Within Us by Matthew Kres­sel
Torquing Vacuum by Jay Lake
The Lan­guage of the Whirl­wind by Lavie Tidhar
The Things by Peter Watts
All the King’s Mon­sters by Megan Arken­berg

Futur­is­mic

Or We Will All Hang Sep­a­rately by Nancy Jane Moore
Your Life Sen­tence by C C Finlay
Miguel and the Viatura by Eric Gre­gory
Wind­sor Exec­u­tive Solu­tions by Chris Nakashima-​​Brown and Bruce Ster­ling
Out Walk­ing the Streets by Eric Del Carlo
Tupac Shakur and the End of the World by Sandra McDon­ald
Biting the Snake’s Tail by Silvia Moreno-​​Garcia
White Swan by Jason Stod­dard

Beneath Cease­less Skies

Prashkina’s Fire by Vylar Kaftan
The Shades of Mor­gana by Dean Wells
The Ter­ri­to­ri­al­ist by Yoon Ha Lee
Throw­ing Stones by Mishell Baker
The Six Skills of Madame Lumiere by Marissa Lingen
The Isth­mus Vari­a­tion by Kris Mil­ler­ing
Mem­o­ries in Bronze, Feath­ers, and Blood by Aliette de Bodard
Remem­ber­ing Light by Marie Bren­nan
The Jewels of Mont­forte, Pt. I by Adam Corbin Fusco
The Jewels of Mont­forte, Pt. II by Adam Corbin Fusco
Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride by Sal­adin Ahmed
The Secret of Pogopo­lis by Matthew Bey
As the Prairie Grasses Sing by Sarah L. Edwards
And Other Such Delights by James Lecky
The Circus of King Minos’ Masque by Michael J. DeLuca
Pawn’s Gambit by Adam Heine
Know­ing Nei­ther Kin Nor Foe by Nancy Fulda
Wait­ing for Number Five by Tom Crosshill
Sanji’s Demon, Pt. II by Richard Parks
The Leaf­smith in Love by K.J. Kabza
Sanji’s Demon, Pt. I by Richard Parks
In Memo­riam by Alys Ster­ling
A Skirt of Many Colors by Cather­ine Mintz
Pale by Kathryn Allen
To Slay with a Thou­sand Kisses by Rodello Santos
The Motor, the Mirror, the Mind by T.F. Dav­en­port
Giz­zard Stones by Garth Upshaw
Shat­ter­ach Gates by Paul Daly
A Ser­pent in the Gears by Mar­garet Ronald
Bell­wether by A.C. Smart

Strange hori­zons

Ghost of a Horse Under a Chan­de­lier by Georgina Bruce
Where It Ends by Swapna Kishore
Father’s Day by Jen Larsen
The Bright and Shin­ing Par­a­sites of Guiyu (part 1 of 2) by Grady Hen­drix
The Bright and Shin­ing Par­a­sites of Guiyu (part 2 of 2) by Grady Hen­drix
The Red Bride by Saman­tha Hen­der­son
Out of Sombra Canyon by Kyri Free­man
How to Make Friends in Sev­enth Grade by Nick Poni­a­towski
The Night Train by Lavie Tidhar
Kifli by Rose Lem­berg
Wait­ing by Eilis O’Neal
On Not Going Extinct by Carol Emsh­willer
Worlds Apart by Mar­laina Gray
WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!! (part 1 of 2) by Meghan McCar­ron
WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!! (part 2 of 2) by Meghan McCar­ron
The Free­dom by K M Lawrence
Birds by Ben­jamin Parzy­bok
Middle Aged Weirdo in a Cadil­lac by George R. Galuschak
The Duke of Vertumn’s Fin­ger­ling by Eliz­a­beth Car­roll
Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra by Van­dana Singh
Mer­ry­thoughts by Bill Kte’pi
The Kiss by Lauren LeBano
Who in Mortal Chains by Claire Humphrey
Small Bur­dens by Paul M. Berger
Sun­down­ing by Joanne Mer­riam
Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions by Sal­adin Ahmed
After We Got Back the Lights by Eric Del Carlo
Cory’s Father by Francesca For­rest
The Mad Scientist’s Daugh­ter (Part 1 of 2) by Theodora Goss
The Mad Scientist’s Daugh­ter (Part 2 of 2) by Theodora Goss
The Blue Wonder by Chris Kam­merud
Four Lies from the Mouth of God by Megan Arken­berg

Light­speed

How to Become a Mars Over­lord by Cath­erynne M. Valente
The Zep­pelin Con­duc­tors’ Soci­ety Annual Gentlemen’s Ball by Genevieve Valen­tine
No Time Like the Present by Carol Emsh­willer
Amaryl­lis by Carrie Vaughn
The Cas­san­dra Project by Jack McDe­vitt
Cats in Vic­tory by David Barr Kirt­ley
I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno by Vylar Kaftan

Fan­tasy Magazine

And the Blood of Dead Gods will Mark the Score by Gary Kloster
Stem, Stone, and Bone by Deb Taber
Per­haps this is Kushi’s Story by Swapna Kishore
Vio­lets for Lee by Desi­rina Boskovich
The Seal of Sulay­maan by Tracy Can­field
The Stable Master’s Tale by Rachel Swirsky
Aban­don­ware by An Owom­oyela
Stere­ogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of Her Glory by Paul M. Berger
Lost Dogs and Fire­place Archae­ol­ogy by Chris Howard
The Slavesinger by Louise Marley
Daha’s Son by Keffy R. M. Kehrli
The Spon­ta­neous Knot­ting of an Agi­tated String by Lavie Tidhar
Wishes and Feath­ers by Patri­cia Russo
The Some­times Child by Car­o­line Yoachim
Lighter than Air by Norman Spin­rad
Exile by Karen Heuler
Whisper’s Voice by Elena Glea­son
Hi Bugan ya Hi King­gawan by Rochita Loenen-​​Ruiz
Saving the Glee­ful Horse by KJ Bishop
In the Emperor’s Garden by Jay Lake and Shan­non Page
The City of Lob­ster, or, The Dancers on Anchor­age St. by Alex Dally Mac­Far­lane
Bear­ing Fruit by Nikki Alfar
A Stray by Scott William Carter and Ray Vukce­vich
Tenientes by Nathaniel Williams
The Arma­ture of Flight by Sharon Mock
Stranger by Patri­cia Russo
After the Dragon by Sarah Mon­ette
my mother, the ghost by Willow Fagan
Above It All by Carol Emsh­willer
The Wing Col­lec­tion by Eilis O’Neal

shareable.net

The Guy Who Worked For Money by Ben­jamin Rosen­baum
Play­ing to Type by Mary Robi­nette Kowal
Play­ing Against Type by Mary Robi­nette Kowal
A Type of Favor by Mary Robi­nette Kowal
The Exterminator’s Want-​​Ad Bruce Ster­ling
The Jammie Dodgers and the Adven­ture of the Leices­ter Square Screen­ing by Cory Doc­torow

tor.com

Four Horse­men, at Their Leisure by Richard Parks
The Final Now by Gre­gory Ben­ford
Fare Thee Well by Cathy Clamp
Fangs for Hire by Jenna Black
[Eve of Sin City by S. J. Day](http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/07/eve-of-sin-city The Courtship of the Queen by Bruce McAl­lis­ter
The Cock­roach Hat by Terry Bisson
The Cage by A. M. Del­la­m­on­ica
[Bogie­man by Carole Nelson Douglas](http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/07/bogieman Olga by C.T. Adams

Apex Mag­a­zine

Fair Ladies by Theodora Goss
Four Is Me! With Squeeeeee! (And LOLer) by Nick Mamatas
Arti­fact by Peter Atwood
Shrödinger’s Pussy by Terra LeMay
Laika’s Dream by Holly Hight
Sol Asleep by Naomi Libicki
The Last Stand of the Ant Maker by Paul Jessup
City of Refuge by Jerry Gordon

This week’s short story club story is The Shangri-​​La Affair by Lavie Tidhar, who I’d never heard of before.

It’s really quite good.

I was struck from the first by the con­fi­dence of the nar­ra­tive voice. The story fol­lows an unnamed pro­tag­o­nist from a quite close third-​​person per­spec­tive through a future war in South-​​East Asia, con­cern­ing a par­tic­u­lar MacGuf­fin in the form of a peace plague (the Shangri-​​La of the title), virally trans­miss­able fellow-​​feeling that stops hos­til­i­ties in their tracks. We only get to see its effects for a moment before every­thing is blown to atoms by the unseen back­ers of our name­less view­point char­ac­ter. The story’s prime emo­tional con­flict is his strug­gle between destroy­ing the peace plague and let­ting it spread. Finally, he decides that peace not chosen is no peace worth having. This strug­gle would have more res­o­nance if we had some theory as to how the peace plague works. If the reader were allowed another view­point on whether or not the plague nul­li­fies free will, it very well might deepen the effect of his choice. The doubt it still there, but I think that it’d be better if it were made a bit more explicit.

The story isn’t per­fect, of course. There are only token female char­ac­ters and the people that we encounter for the most part are generic Men of Action and Con­se­quence. The plot is at least four decades old and the tone is taken straight from smeary spy novels set in war­zones far away from the home front, with­out any real engage­ment with the con­se­quences of the war on the people who live there. What virtue the piece has lies in the clev­er­ness of its syn­the­sis of these ele­ments, and I think that it suc­ceeds very well (that said, I tend towards syn­the­sis ( see update below ) in my tastes, per­haps to a fault, Gene Wolfe and Michael Swan­wick being favorites of mine).

Since read­ing it, I’ve gone on some­thing of a Tidhar binge, and what is out there on line really strikes me as qual­ity stuff, some of it better, I think, than this par­tic­u­lar piece, 304 Adolf Hitler Strasse over at Clarkesworld being the best of the stuff online, in my opin­ion, at least that I’ve found. I also went out and bought Hebrew­Punk and ordered The Book­man, so I may be in the throes of an irra­tional enthu­si­asm. Look­ing for­ward to what he pro­duces in the future.

UPDATE: see here for a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the ter­mi­nol­ogy that I’m using above.

“Tiny Feast” by Chris Adrian.

I missed the first week and some spir­ited dis­cus­sion of a fairly weak story, so it may be that this story, weak in another way, might spur some sim­i­larly inter­est­ing discussion.

I thought that this one was well writ­ten, but oth­er­wise failed on most other levels. I have to admit some bias, in that I have essen­tially no inter­est in fan­tasy specif­i­cally fea­tur­ing fairies. It’s a trope at this point that has been so bru­tally overused that it’s hard to imag­ine it having any sort of res­o­nance with anyone at this point. I real­ize that my point of view clearly isn’t shared, so I’ll try to put it aside. The story imag­ines one of the changelings taken by the fairy court, Oberon and Tita­nia and the whole lot, get­ting leukemia and going into treat­ment. In terms of play­ing the con­flict in a humor­ously dead­pan way and depict­ing the process in an accu­rate way, the author gets high marks, but as a story it never really gets any­where, or says any­thing, or really has any char­ac­ters. Any one of those could be fine, of course, but at some point the story just falls down, when you decline to pro­vide your read­ers with any reason to care.

If we’re to read this straight, Oberon and Tita­nia are fairies and so at least some­what alien and dis­tanced from human con­cerns. It’s never clear why either of them should care about this par­tic­u­lar changeling over any other, other than he’s sick. The author never both­ers to make them human char­ac­ters, nor does he manage to make them con­vinc­ingly alien. They speak on one hand from a desire for the story to move for­ward, and on the other from a desire by the author to make the story humorous.

Over the course of the sto­ries, inter­ac­tions are detailed, scenes are set, jokes are con­structed and deliv­ered. The boy sick­ens, recov­ers, sick­ens more, and dies. Noth­ing else actu­ally hap­pens. No point is deliv­ered, nor is one pos­si­ble to infer, given the half-​​assed inhu­man­ity of the characters.

It strikes me that the author had a neat idea for a story, then didn’t real­ize that his con­ceit didn’t have legs enough to stand alone at such length. Maybe he had some inkling, hence the jok­i­ness, the places where it’s over­writ­ten. Halfway to Rem­brandt Comic Book ter­ri­tory, more or less. Still, in the end, it stacks up to more or less noth­ing inter­est­ing, and the author, while clever and skilled, simply isn’t writ­ing at the level where you’ll stick around to listen to him talk­ing about any­thing, just because the prose is so good.

And so we reach the end with­out me having said much inter­est­ing or clever, but I feel that the con­ceit here doesn’t stand up to crit­i­cism any better than it stands up to read­ing; that it is, in fact, a con­ceit and only pro­vides the critic with his thinnest gruel, styl­is­tic analy­sis. I am hoping that I’m miss­ing some­thing, and that some of the other com­menters will pro­vide a view of the story that illu­mi­nates a more inter­est­ing angle from which to view the story.