THE START OF THE END OF IT ALL

Eighteen short fantastic fictions comprise Emshwiller's third superb collection (Verging on the Pertinent, Joy in our Cause): again, her improvisations include inventive fabulisms and feminist satires, many with a science-fictional spin to them. In the typical title story, whacked-out and laced with dream imagery, aliens approach the narrator: ``It is important and salutary to speak of incomprehensible things.'' They provide her (and other middle-aged divorcÇes) with a ``master plan'' to change the world by eliminating cats from it. One misunderstanding leads to another: ``And now the same old pattern. Another breakup, another identity crisis. It shows I haven't learned a thing.'' This pattern—the fantastic undercut by the commonplace—is used to advantage elsewhere. In ``Looking Down,'' a birdman gets captured. He mates with a mere woman and has a child, then teaches himself and his captors that, though not a god, ``I know ways to make her happy even so.'' In ``Glory, Glory,'' a wife on vacation with her husband is suddenly recognized by the natives as a goddess. The husband is at first amused, then taken aback: ``You're thinking very well of yourself, that's easy to see, but you know you never even finished college.'' The wife likes her new state, however, and finally abandons him. Other stories are less fantastic but remain metaphorically haunting: ``There is no Evil Angel but Love,'' for instance, is the story of an 80-year-old woman who falls in love, wondering why she ``never had a real life like everybody else.'' The ensuing ``affair'' is otherworldly, yet psychologically apt. Emshwiller's fabulisms court a sense of the sacred but cleverly undercut that sense with tongue-in-cheek playfulness. The ensuing deft balance between mystery and skepticism is touching— and often aesthetically triumphant.