I love short stories
I seem to have lost my attention span for novels. I haven't been able to keep my mind on anything longer than a novella in a month. I really hope this is temporary.
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2006
This is an uneven collection- aren't they all?- but there are some real gems in here. Triceratops Summer, by Michael Swanwick, is sweet and atmospheric. The Edge of Nowhere, James Patrick Kelly, says some interesting things about creativity and originality and the sources and importance thereof. The Inn at Mount Either, James Van Pelt, has just a fantastic setting and I would kind of like more stories there. Search Engine, Mary Rosenblum, is a future with no privacy and an invasive government- much done, but still good. The Jenna Set, Daniel Kaysen, is just funny.
The Policeman's Daughter, Wil McCarthy, is an absolutely fascinating moral and legal exploration starting from the technological ability to store exact copies of a person and duplicate them at will (do you wish to restore the backup of before you had your heart broken? If you restore a version of yourself, what rights does that person have? Can you kill him again at will?) It's exactly the kind of "take a premise and exhaust the implications" hard SF that I think is the real heart of the SF-short genre.
Finally, The Fate of Mice, Susan Palwick, is one of the best short stories I've read in a long time (or at least, the one that appeals to me most). An intelligence-enhanced lab mouse, given an electronic set of vocal cords, wrangles with his own captivity and mortality. More than that, though, it's explicitly intertextual. Our Rodney learns about Algernon and what happens to him, and learns about many other mice in human stories. His final determination to escape captivity is largely driven by one question: Why don't human stories ever care about the fate of mice?
This is where I admit that the allusion to the mice who chewed through Aslan's ropes kind of made me sniffle.
Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
This is the larger collection made up of the smaller "Garden of Forking Paths" and "Artifices" collections. It's got the really famous ones I'd read before (Library of Babel, Forking Paths), and it introduces a lot more of Borges tradmark Things- obsession with randomness, labyrinths, infinity, circularity, also his tactic of presenting detailed reviews and analyses of fictional books and fictional authors (The Modern Word has a whole bibliography of all of Borges ficitonal books-within-stories. It's fascinating). Three Versions of Judas is the most powerful of those- it's startling, shocking even, made all the more powerful by that dispassionate second-hand format. Some of the stories are incredible- the Theme of the Traitor and Hero, and also Death and The Compass. Some of them suffer from my lack of familiarity with Argentinian culture- The End, for example. The already incredible Library and Garden take on new weight when read with other stories obsessed with randomness (Lottery in Babylon) and circularity (Circular Ruins). It also has The South, which Borges called his best short story ever- I am seriously missing something there, obviously, and will have to research and get back to it.
There is a great article online dealing with Borges stories and the internet- interlinked stories as hypertext, non-linear reading, non-existent allusions as dead links, etc. It seems cutesy, but outlines some fruitful ways of reading him.
The two things that strike me particularly about lots of these stories are Borges' fantastic mastery of the adjective, and his strange sense of place. Let's have us a quote, shall we? This is the first sentence of The Circular Ruins. The translator calls it "perhaps the most famous opening sentence in Spanish literature," and so defends his almost word-for-word translation.
No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe as it sank into the sacred mud, and yet within days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come there from the South, and that his homeland was one of those infinite villages that lie up-river, on the violent flank of the mountain, where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and leprosy is uncommon.
There doesn't seem to be much else to say about his mastery of the adjective, after that sentence. When was the last time you saw prose like that? When was the last time you felt such all-encompassing mystery and fascination from such simple, matter of fact text, prompted by only two or three strange, perfectly chosen words? The unanimous night indeed!
And as for his sense of place... Borges is not concerned with realistic local color, that's for sure. History of Iniquity had stories set in Buenos Aires, New York, the American West, Japan, and China. Only in Buenos Airies is there any attempt to concern himself with food, dress, architecture, or any such details. Certainly, his stories set in Argentina have these details, and they are understated and pervasive and convincing, but they are never the main point. The stories of elsewhere have no such details. There is no attempt made, whatsoever, to convince me that we actually are in New York or China. We are told so, that is all. The people's actions are different between these cities, their cultural ideas obviously different, but only in the broadest and most stylized strokes. The story is the thing, and these are universalized stories with no particular rooting, completely absent any sense of place at all (it is done deliberately and skillfully, of course, or that would be a major failing of the collection). Basically, when a Borges story happens somewhere in particular, he seems utterly unconcerned with place.
Oh the other hand, when his stories happen someplace ELSE, he does this... thing. In once sentence we have "bamboo canoe"- an impossibility that combines American Indian associations (small bands hunting and gathering) with Chinese (a vast and heavily populated land, exotic). We are north of the "infinte villages that lie up-river, on the violent flank of the mountain"- this is a land with a wild and savage backcountry, closely connected both to a river- that essential giver of civilization- and also a mountain that may be a volcano, is at least something wild and fierce. Conflict between opposties twice already. In this hinterland, "language is uncontaminated by Greek and leprosy is uncommon"- meaning that we now are in some strange, in-between place, which is dealing with the infusion of Greek civilization and drama and religion and philosophy, and also the infusion of leprosy (the disease of population concentration and social stratification, insufficient hygenie and care for the poor, uncaring cities) while at the same time looking back to a time uncontaminated by both of these. We are nowhere in particular- but we are in an exotic yet familiar land, trapped between opposites, wrestling with the loss of the idealized past, returning to a place that was once held by the wild gods still worshipped in the unchanged South. In one damn sentence! He does much the same thing with, for instance, casual reference to "the isles of Babylon," and many others. So much genre writing is concerned with world-building, but this is, in many ways, the opposite skill- a feel of a place with no details, meant to alude and not convince. It knocks me flat.
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2006
This is an uneven collection- aren't they all?- but there are some real gems in here. Triceratops Summer, by Michael Swanwick, is sweet and atmospheric. The Edge of Nowhere, James Patrick Kelly, says some interesting things about creativity and originality and the sources and importance thereof. The Inn at Mount Either, James Van Pelt, has just a fantastic setting and I would kind of like more stories there. Search Engine, Mary Rosenblum, is a future with no privacy and an invasive government- much done, but still good. The Jenna Set, Daniel Kaysen, is just funny.
The Policeman's Daughter, Wil McCarthy, is an absolutely fascinating moral and legal exploration starting from the technological ability to store exact copies of a person and duplicate them at will (do you wish to restore the backup of before you had your heart broken? If you restore a version of yourself, what rights does that person have? Can you kill him again at will?) It's exactly the kind of "take a premise and exhaust the implications" hard SF that I think is the real heart of the SF-short genre.
Finally, The Fate of Mice, Susan Palwick, is one of the best short stories I've read in a long time (or at least, the one that appeals to me most). An intelligence-enhanced lab mouse, given an electronic set of vocal cords, wrangles with his own captivity and mortality. More than that, though, it's explicitly intertextual. Our Rodney learns about Algernon and what happens to him, and learns about many other mice in human stories. His final determination to escape captivity is largely driven by one question: Why don't human stories ever care about the fate of mice?
This is where I admit that the allusion to the mice who chewed through Aslan's ropes kind of made me sniffle.
Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
This is the larger collection made up of the smaller "Garden of Forking Paths" and "Artifices" collections. It's got the really famous ones I'd read before (Library of Babel, Forking Paths), and it introduces a lot more of Borges tradmark Things- obsession with randomness, labyrinths, infinity, circularity, also his tactic of presenting detailed reviews and analyses of fictional books and fictional authors (The Modern Word has a whole bibliography of all of Borges ficitonal books-within-stories. It's fascinating). Three Versions of Judas is the most powerful of those- it's startling, shocking even, made all the more powerful by that dispassionate second-hand format. Some of the stories are incredible- the Theme of the Traitor and Hero, and also Death and The Compass. Some of them suffer from my lack of familiarity with Argentinian culture- The End, for example. The already incredible Library and Garden take on new weight when read with other stories obsessed with randomness (Lottery in Babylon) and circularity (Circular Ruins). It also has The South, which Borges called his best short story ever- I am seriously missing something there, obviously, and will have to research and get back to it.
There is a great article online dealing with Borges stories and the internet- interlinked stories as hypertext, non-linear reading, non-existent allusions as dead links, etc. It seems cutesy, but outlines some fruitful ways of reading him.
The two things that strike me particularly about lots of these stories are Borges' fantastic mastery of the adjective, and his strange sense of place. Let's have us a quote, shall we? This is the first sentence of The Circular Ruins. The translator calls it "perhaps the most famous opening sentence in Spanish literature," and so defends his almost word-for-word translation.
No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe as it sank into the sacred mud, and yet within days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come there from the South, and that his homeland was one of those infinite villages that lie up-river, on the violent flank of the mountain, where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and leprosy is uncommon.
There doesn't seem to be much else to say about his mastery of the adjective, after that sentence. When was the last time you saw prose like that? When was the last time you felt such all-encompassing mystery and fascination from such simple, matter of fact text, prompted by only two or three strange, perfectly chosen words? The unanimous night indeed!
And as for his sense of place... Borges is not concerned with realistic local color, that's for sure. History of Iniquity had stories set in Buenos Aires, New York, the American West, Japan, and China. Only in Buenos Airies is there any attempt to concern himself with food, dress, architecture, or any such details. Certainly, his stories set in Argentina have these details, and they are understated and pervasive and convincing, but they are never the main point. The stories of elsewhere have no such details. There is no attempt made, whatsoever, to convince me that we actually are in New York or China. We are told so, that is all. The people's actions are different between these cities, their cultural ideas obviously different, but only in the broadest and most stylized strokes. The story is the thing, and these are universalized stories with no particular rooting, completely absent any sense of place at all (it is done deliberately and skillfully, of course, or that would be a major failing of the collection). Basically, when a Borges story happens somewhere in particular, he seems utterly unconcerned with place.
Oh the other hand, when his stories happen someplace ELSE, he does this... thing. In once sentence we have "bamboo canoe"- an impossibility that combines American Indian associations (small bands hunting and gathering) with Chinese (a vast and heavily populated land, exotic). We are north of the "infinte villages that lie up-river, on the violent flank of the mountain"- this is a land with a wild and savage backcountry, closely connected both to a river- that essential giver of civilization- and also a mountain that may be a volcano, is at least something wild and fierce. Conflict between opposties twice already. In this hinterland, "language is uncontaminated by Greek and leprosy is uncommon"- meaning that we now are in some strange, in-between place, which is dealing with the infusion of Greek civilization and drama and religion and philosophy, and also the infusion of leprosy (the disease of population concentration and social stratification, insufficient hygenie and care for the poor, uncaring cities) while at the same time looking back to a time uncontaminated by both of these. We are nowhere in particular- but we are in an exotic yet familiar land, trapped between opposites, wrestling with the loss of the idealized past, returning to a place that was once held by the wild gods still worshipped in the unchanged South. In one damn sentence! He does much the same thing with, for instance, casual reference to "the isles of Babylon," and many others. So much genre writing is concerned with world-building, but this is, in many ways, the opposite skill- a feel of a place with no details, meant to alude and not convince. It knocks me flat.