Either that, or I’m just losing patience. There’s a fine line between rewarding insight and punishment by obscuring. Now, I’m not against working with a story, but these writers, I feel, ask too much. Reginald McDwight, “Homunculus”–Not as subtle as the Harrison, but still too much for me to want to read it again and try to find out what the point was.Steve Rasnic Tem, “Skin (poem)”–A couple of good images, but the whole didn’t coalesce for me.Harrison is subtle, and I don’t care to pick him apart to understand him. I really don’t know how anyone call sell anything so subtle–or is it me? Am I just dense? No. John Harrison, “Anima”–As everything I’ve ever read by Harrison, I find myself interested by the writing, but bewildered by the concepts. Craig Curtis, “Queequeq”–Cute concept, although slightly reminiscent of Ellen Guon’s “Stable Strategies for Middle Management.” And for all its “telling,” what comes across is the “showing.” This may be because when the first person narrator tells, he is doing it through “show.” This is probably why first person is so easy to do, yet so hard to do right.Not to my taste, although I can see its appeal for the literati. Very southern type fiction–like Faulkner or O’Conner–where the most important things are the ones not said. Jack Cady, “The Tinker”–Fantasy? I don’t think so.Emma Bull, “Silver and Gold”–Excellent fantasy, with touches of the fairy tale, but also a nice measure of reality–much like that of Tolkien, for whom this story was written as a tribute.That exception? Ed Bryant’s “Human Remains,” which I read in workshop. Due to the fact that I have not been reading the magazines in recent years, all of the stories in this volume (with one exception) were new to me, so what follows is a story-by-story discussion.
I’ve been picking up both of these collections since they first started appearing, and I’ve never been disappointed. Like the Dozois SF collection, the Datlow/Windling collection is the fantasy/horror short fiction collection to get if you only get one a year.
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