The Story Writer or, A Failed Review of a Short Story Collection
I picked up some of DAW’s Annual World’s Best SF short story collections, after finding them for cheap on eBay. I’ve been on a sci-fi kick lately so I figured I’d go to one of the grandfathers of the genre to see where it all started. This series ran from 1972 up to 1990, and I’ve got books 1980, 1984, 1985, and 1986.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I started the 1980 edition with an open mind. This book come out swinging. There’s an introduction written by Donald A. Wollheim himself, which immediately starts with him talking about “primitive” societies in and around India. Wollheim and friends marvel at how “backwards” and “antiquated” these “simple” people are and how they reject modern life and “die early” as a result. Then he talks about how the oil industry is wrecking the planet and how we should switch to solar energy and how everyone should have access to education.
Ow! Sorry, I think I got whiplash there.
The stories themselves don’t have much to recommend them. One is by a young George R.R. Martin, and there’s an Orson Scott Card story in here too. But they’re mostly pretty dull. The only story I have much of anything to say about is The Story Writer by Richard Wilson. It’s a fascinating one that fans of trippy, fourth-wall breaking stories are going to love, and one I’m going to have a hard time explaining.
But first, give a warm welcome to our first guest of the night – context! Most of the writers in this collection are young. Not so with Richard Wilson. He got his start in the 1930s and mostly wrote short stories. He’s not well-known these days, he wasn’t even that big back then.
What’s more interesting, though, is that he and Wollheim were some of the founding members of a group calling themselves the “Futurians.” This is a fascinating bunch of people, all award-winning science fiction writers and artists who not only met regularly to discus the genre and craft, but many of them lived together in communal houses and published their own fanzine for a while. The group lasted from 1938 to 1945 when most of the members were either drafted to fight in World War II or had moved out of New York City. Many of its members were socialists and communists, including Fredrik Pohl who joined the Communist Party USA in 1936. Conversely, Isaac Asimov was also a member, and, well, there was that whole “primitive” stuff in the intro, so...
Other members included James Blish, Damon Knight, Cyril M. Kornbluth, and Judith Merril. During their time in the club, they mostly worked as editors, and pushed hard to make science fiction more of a literary genre than the pulp magazine fare it was known for at the time. Their future work laid the groundwork for modern science fiction, with its emphasis on imaging a brighter future and exploring political themes.
Thank you so much for joining us context, you really weren’t necessary today, but we appreciate you nonetheless. Give it up for context, everybody!
As you’d expect from a story tilted The Story Writer, this is a story about a writer who writes stories. It starts perfectly, showing the life of William Wylie Ross, a retired writer. He never wrote the next great novel, something he’s slowly come to terms with in his life. He’s done well for himself though, writing several books and getting a job writing a popular TV show which still gets him nice royalty checks all these years later. The first third of this story is him enjoying his quiet life. He gets a small house in Uuuuuuuupstate New York, not Utica, no, Albany, and he’s just chillin’.
One day he was helping a friend set up a booth at a flea market and noticed she had an old typewriter for sale. He sat down and started writing on it, when someone came up to him and he wrote a little story about her. Since then, he got his own stall he sits at with a typewriter, offering to write stories about whoever comes by for $1 (which I'm pretty sure was a small fortune when this story is set). He writes a couple of stories, including a cute one about a Polish kid trying to teach him the language. It’s great, a slow-paced, meditative look on what “success” is and how a man is trying to live a happy life.
As you start to wonder why this is in a book of science fiction stories, a stranger in a cowl appears speaking cryptically. Ross asks if he wants a story, but the stranger only says “you tell me.” Intrigued, he comes up with a backstory for him, calling him John Street, and that he’s an alien who lives in a parallel reality Earth.
From there, the story becomes this bizarre, fourth-wall shattering self-insert fan fiction as Ross (who is clearly Wilson) writes this elaborate story about Street and his people coming to him (Ross) for help, and in-story Ross has to figure out what they want and how to help them, while we sometimes cut away to real-life Ross (a stand-in for Wilson) talking to the stranger.
It’s a twisty, trippy story and easily the best of this collection. I guess its no wonder I love this story, it’s about a writer and why he writes. Thanks to this framing, we see the writer’s brain at work, coming up with this complex story on the spot and the feeling that Ross needs to tell it. He talks about the craft of writing, of just getting the idea on the page and editing it later, calling back to other writers and stories, how he comes up with names and plot lines. I am absolutely here for that.
I’m not here for the rest of these stories, though. You can tell these were written decades ago with how dated their concepts feel. Despite being the only set in a specific time period, The Story Writer is ironically the only one that feels timeless. Martin's story, The Way of Cross and Dragon, is kinda fun. It’s about Space Christians, led by Space Pope, decimating civilizations for daring to not worship their god, but it’s pretty one-note.
Options by John Varley explores a world were people can change their gender with ease, but it reads more like Great Value Left Hand of Darkness. The weird thing is that people don’t change their bodies, they instead grow a WHOLE CLONE OF THEMSELVES and switch between their two bodies whenever they want to change genders. You’d think the concept of growing a clone and robbing them of their identity, personality, and freedom would be a big deal, but it’s glossed over without comment.
Orson Scott Card shows up with Unaccompanied Sonata and its exactly what you’d expect from him – an overbearing, totalitarian government is persecuting good, hardworking men, there’s a child messiah figure whom everybody loves and worships because they’re so good at what they do, who later sacrifices himself for the greater good.
There’s also a story about a girl having a period and the sun blowing up, one about a great-grandma unfreezing and become a slave driver, and one about a human mother on an alien game show. Trust me when I say I made these stories sound way more interesting than they actually are.
I’d like to track down more of Wilson’s work. One of his few novels, The Girls from Planet 5, is about a woman getting elected President of the United States and being so good at her job that men freak out and all move to Texas and immediately declare their independence from the US. (This book was written in 1955, by the way.) They prove their manliness by dressing like cowboys and trading their cars for horses. Later, all-female aliens invade Earth, and the Texas man-babies get mad that the President doesn’t immediately declare war on them. Its cover is glorious, too.
I also found this review for his 1969 short A Man Spekith, about the last human alive after something destroyed Earth. He was sent to space at the last second onboard a trailer with broadcasting equipment and microphone, a thousand gallons of bourbon, a record collection, and a sentient robot. He floats through space, drunkenly playing records and having philosophical conversations with the robot. I mean, I can’t not read this story now (if I can find it, anyway).
