No scholar ever wore his learning more modestly than C. S. Lewis; no essayist ever got to the point more matter-of-factly; no story-teller ever conveyed greater happiness in his own "making," as he might have called it. And probably no writer would have been more ruthless in pruning various incomplete odds and ends of his literary estate, if he had been able to get round to it. One is bound to have mixed feelings about the attempt of Walter Hooper (Lewis' former secretary and a trustee of the estate) to salvage the uncollected and unfinished fiction. The present volume includes two stories which were never published in Lewis' lifetime, two which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and two fragments of longer narratives. The first of these, The Dark Tower, is by far the most impressive thing in the collection, apparently the beginnings of an unfinished sequel to Out of the Silent Planet. The basic premise—a parallel world with a two-dimensional time going not only backwards and forwards but "eckwards" and "andwards"—is delightful, and the groundwork of the plot is laid out with such confidence that one wonders how Lewis could have borne not to finish it. At the other end of the gamut, a fragmentary retelling of Helen and Menelaus' return from Troy is oddly bereft of energy. "Forms of Things Unknown," cast in the form of a rather trivial moonexploration story, works a splendid and wholly unexpected change upon a more frightening myth; "The Man Born Blind" plays clumsily but movingly (and chillhillingly) with the idea of newly acquired sight. The two M.F.S.F. stories remind us of a less welcome Lewis: the patronizing and avuncular pigeonholer of other people's departures from the path of true belief. This Lewis is intermittently visible through the whole collection—sneering at "modern" young women who discuss sex frankly, trivializing a grown man's homosexual impulse into a schoolgirl crush, smugly imagining the "shoddiness" of an inoffensive girl's mental universe. Time has dealt both kindly and unkindly with Lewis. One is keenly aware that the English language has not changed for the better in the thirteen years since his death. It is a pleasure to listen to this voice again, but not always to hear what it is saying.
Pub Date: April 18, 1977
ISBN: 0156027704
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1977
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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