La Befana by Gene Wolfe (Galaxy, January-February 1973) opens with an alien called Zozz arriving at a human settler’s household on Christmas Eve. There Zozz waits for the man of the family, John “Bananas” Bannano, to come home.
Once Bannano arrives there are several conversations that run in parallel about (a) the family’s emigration to Zozz’s planet (b) the mother-in-law, who goes into the room next door to avoid Zozz, and (c) a story about a witch eternally dammed to look for the baby Jesus/Messiah.
The last line draws this together somewhat with (spoiler) the mother-in-law saying she’ll only have to search until tomorrow night.
This is either a simple idea complicated by the various lines of conversation (in one or two places it’s hard to work out who is talking to who), or I missed the point. Either way, I suspect it is a slight piece.
* (Mediocre). 1,450 words.
The Breakdown by Marjorie Bowen
The Breakdown by Marjorie Bowen (Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales, 1976) sees a young man called Murdoch get off an unserviceable train. Then, rather than wait for a conveyance to his acquaintance’s house, he decides to walk. During his journey we find out that part of the reason for Murdoch’s visit is that his friend owns a portrait of a young woman who Murdoch is attracted to—although she is long dead.
Later, the winter weather worsens, and Murdcoch comes upon a spooky house called The Wishing Inn. Murdoch decides to stay the night and, when he asks the proprietor about the inn’s name, he is told that wishes come true on Xmas Eve. Sure enough, the woman in the portrait arrives at the inn looking for her lover.
Murdoch speaks to her, and goes to help her look, and they later end up in a carriage riding to an unknown location. Then Murdoch realises she is not really there and jumps out. He ends up in a village graveyard, and stumbles upon the woman and her lover’s gravestone.
Fortunately, Murdoch’s friend is at the church, and takes him home. The next day Murdoch gets told the story of the woman and her lover. The final twist comes when the narrator meets the acquaintance’s sister—who looks like the woman in the portrait.
This isn’t bad but it’s a contrived sequence of spooky events that you can mostly see coming—with a convenient co-incidence for an ending.
* (Mediocre). 3,200 words.
Unawares by Hildegarde Hawthorne
Unawares by Hildegarde Hawthorne (New England Magazine, December 1908) opens with elderly couple sitting together on Xmas Eve; they talk about how they wish they had had a child, something they would have appreciated at this time of year. During their conversation, a young girl called Desiree turns up at their door, and starts calling them Grandpa and Grandma. They take temporary care of the child, and give her presents and read her stories, etc.
After this one-two setup, the story ends the next day (spoiler) with a neighbour coming to the house to find the couple dead, but with a smile on their faces.
I think the intent here is probably to show that couple get a dying wish, but the ending leaves a sour taste in the mouth. The piece is also more of a punchline than a story.
* (Mediocre). 1,750 words.
A Proper Santa Claus by Anne McCaffrey
A Proper Santa Claus by Anne McCaffrey (Demon Kind, 1973) opens with a young boy called Jeremy painting a cookie (which he eats) and drinking a glass of Coke (which he drinks). As the story develops we see more of his artistic creations, and realise that he isn’t imagining all this but has an ability to make what he paints come to life:
Although he dutifully set out trick-or-treating, he came home early. His mother made him sort out his candy, apples, and money for UNICEF, and permitted him to stay up long past his regular bedtime to answer the door for other beggars. But, once safely in his room, he dove for his easel and drew frenetically, slathering black and blue poster paint across clean paper, dashing globs of luminescence for horrific accents. The proper ones took off or crawled obscenely around the room, squeaking and groaning until he released them into the night air for such gambols and aerial maneuvers as they were capable of. Jeremy was impressed. He hung over the windowsill, cheering them on by moonlight. (Around three o’clock there was a sudden shower. All the water solubles melted into the ground.)
As the story develops, Jeremy is unable to produce work that satisfies his teacher’s requirements, and this comes to a head with her criticism of his Santa project. This gives him “so overwhelming a sense of failure” that “he couldn’t imagine ever creating anything properly again”.
I suppose the message of this piece (criticism of children’s creative endeavours can be destructive) is valid enough, but I’m not sure that it provides a good story.
* (Mediocre). 3,300 words.
The Outpost Undiscovered by Tourists by Harlan Ellison
The Outpost Undiscovered by Tourists by Harlan Ellison (F&SF, January 1982) is a Three Wise Men update that begins with one of them, Melichor, getting out of a Rolls Royce and inflating an air mattress. There then follows a certain amount of kvetching among the three (Melichor peppers his speech with Yiddish words, and the other two are later described as “Nubian” and “Oriental”). Then they eat, and later go to sleep.
They are woken the next day by the stench caused by the creatures of the underworld, which have reached their location and are overtaking them. So they gather their belongings and get back in the car.
They later turn back the Forces of Chaos and overcome other minor difficulties before arriving at a Hyatt hotel, where the Saviour is with his parents in a “moderately priced room”. There, they argue over what his name should be.
A weakly humorous non-story.
* (Mediocre). 1,450 words.
Cyber-Claus by William Gibson
Cyber-Claus by William Gibson (The Washington Post Book World, 1991) is set in the near future and begins with a house AI detecting activity on the roof on Xmas Eve. The defences are activated and the owner prepares to confront the intruders.
This very brief piece ends (spoiler) with house AI identifying eight quadrupeds and one biped on the roof—and then the latter starts to come down the chimney . . . .
A lightweight squib.
* (Mediocre). 550 words.
Time Traveller’s Shoes by Yuliia Vereta
Time Traveller’s Shoes by Yuliia Vereta (Parsec #1, Autumn 2021) opens with an intriguing short hook before becoming a long description of the narrator’s friend Herbert, a childhood prodigy who is blunt to the point of rudeness with other people. We see this play out in various scenes from Herbert’s childhood, mostly at school, from which he eventually gets expelled. Later in life he gets married, but his wife subsequently divorces him because of the many experiments he undertakes at home.
After more than four thousand words of back-story about Herbert (about half the length of this piece) we eventually get to the science fiction, when he visits the narrator’s house and states that he has managed to make one of his mice disappear but can’t replicate the experiment. Then Herbert vanishes while the pair are in the garden.
Years pass. The narrator’s business thrives and his children grow up. One day, while he is looking in an old book, the narrator sees Herbert in a photograph taken in 1913 (fifty years earlier). Further investigation reveals the man in the photograph invented a revolutionary steam engine and wrote a treatise about time as a fourth dimension.
These discoveries drive the narrator to teach himself science and investigate Herbert’s inventions but, eventually, he realises that his intellect isn’t up to the task. Then a young schoolteacher arrives in town and takes an interest but, at the end of the story, he also vanishes.
I was a bit perplexed at why this story was selected for publication—it isn’t structured like a modern work (the long section at the start detailing Herbert’s character and history feels like something from H.G. Wells), the time-travel idea is unoriginal, and there is virtually no story beyond a couple of people vanishing. Or any resolution. Not only is the story set in 1963, it feels like it was written then too. All that said, I’ve read worse in pro SF magazines.1
(Mediocre). 8,200 words. ParSec website.
1. The writer is Ukrainian, so English is perhaps her second language, but the copy-editor should have asked her to get rid of some of those commas and simplify some of the sentences:
That morning when Herbert, a good friend of mine, came to me, again, the third time that week, was the most usual Tuesday morning one could ever imagine. His theories did not let him sleep at night, which happened pretty often, but this time everything was different. This time it was real.
Since early childhood, I was his only friend and the most appreciative listener—in all honesty, I didn’t always understand what he was saying and what he was even talking about, but, unlike other people, I didn’t have anything against it.
I met Herbert on my first day at school. Those huge thick glasses he watched the world through made his eyes look even bigger than they were and a little goggled. But even without them, he looked pretty weird, which did not do him any good in high school. He was different from all the rest of the children, too different to be part of the crowd and remain unnoticed wherever he went. Frankly speaking, it never mattered to him, just like everything else- everything but science. p. 32
The Lichyard by Harrison Valley
The Lichyard by Harrison Valley (Parsec #1, Autumn 2021) begins with a man called Emil carrying the corpse of a man called Taff to the Lichyard. They squabble along the way:
“Why’re you complaining? You paid me to get you to the Lichyard as fast as possible!”
“I didn’t realize I’d be staring into the sun the whole time.”
“What do you want from me? It’s evening, and the Lichyard’s in the east.” There are two voices but one set of footsteps. “Besides, the sun can’t hurt you. You don’t even have eyes.”
“Yet it is blinding.”
“And?”
A man walks from an alleyway, talking over his shoulder.
Lashed to his back, a grey and dusty burden bounces limply with each step. A human skull lolls over toward the man’s ear, and from between decayed teeth come the words, “I’m dead. Don’t I deserve compassion?” p. 29
En route Emil loses the three coins he needs to put on Taff’s eyes and mouth when he buries him, and so he comes up with a plan to steal those from another corpse when they get to the graveyard. However, when they arrive, matters play out differently (spoiler): Emil buries Taff without the coins but, when the undertaker arrives, he changes his mind. However, when Emil digs down to retrieve the body he finds it has disappeared. Then the undertaker is shot by an old person in a tree, and Emil is told to take the corpse back to where he lost the coins.
There are a couple of good images and scenes here (the quarrel at the beginning, the Lichyard, etc.) but these haven’t been turned into a coherent whole.
* (Mediocre). 2,500 words. Parsec website.
Flyboys by Stanley Schimidt
Flyboys by Stanley Schimidt (Analog, July-August 2020) is a sequel to his novel Night Ride and Sunrise (Analog, July-August to November 2015), and opens with an alien called “Bob” watching his son Junior make his first flight from his mother’s home to an all-male settlement called Surfcrag. During the pair’s transit there, and also from later on in the story, we learn that (a) the flying adult males live separately from the females on this planet, (b) they are nocturnal and eat flying insects, and (c) that humans have settled on other parts of their continent. We also find out about a recent conflict between the humans and the aliens which ended with an agreement to peacefully co-exist (as the humans are stranded on the planet and cannot leave).
The day after Junior has been welcomed to the lodge at Surfcrag, Bob is approached by another male called Highguard, who tries to recruit him to a movement that will drive the humans off their land (during this we learn that there is yet another, malevolent, group of humans on a different part of the planet). Bob tells Highguard he will have nothing to do with his plans.
Shortly after this conversation Junior disappears, and the story then alternates between his point of view and Bob’s. Junior is taken by two males to another place called High and Mighty, where Highguard makes another recruiting effort. Junior isn’t having any of it though, and escapes, giving his pursuers the slip before he goes to hide with his mother in Surfcrag:
He found Sylvie in her shop, absorbed in tinkering with a new variation of her steam engine.
He rushed right in after a hasty “Here I am” from the hall. He closed the door behind him as he said, “Hi, Mom.”
She looked up with a quick kaleidoscope of emotions on her face: surprise, confusion, delight, and deep concern. “Junior?” she said, in Shetalk, since that was what she could speak.
“What are you doing here? You just left. What brings you back so soon?” She looked him up and down, and the concern became dominant. “What happened to you?” She hop-slithered down off her workbench and skittered over on her four short legs to paw and sniff at him.
“I’m all right,” he said reassuringly, in He-talk (since that was what he could speak). “But something’s come up. Maybe a danger for all of us. I need to talk to you.” He gestured toward her bench. “Why don’t you climb back up there and make yourself comfortable?” As she did, he hopped onto one of the room’s two male-perches so they could talk on each other’s eye level.
“Okay, first,” he said, “you want to know what happened to me because I look like I’ve been through some ordeal. It’s not quite that bad, but I’ve been flying longer, harder, and faster than I should without a break. Two guys were chasing me. Bad guys, in my opinion, and I think you’ll agree.” p. 64
The passage above illustrates some of the story’s problems. First, it reads like clunky YA; second, aliens speaking and acting like a 1950’s American suburban family is a real suspension-of-disbelief killer (the physical differences, sex-separation, nocturnal flying, and insect eating all feel pretty much tacked on); third, it has pages of talking heads who describe things that have already happened in the story.
The rest of the this piece doesn’t improve (spoiler): Junior goes to see his girl, Coppersmith; Bob contacts the humans to inform them of the threat from Highguard, and also to ask for help in locating his son; Bob and a human called Luke find Junior after a helicopter search; the matter goes to the alien council—who then catch and try the conspirators. The story ends with clash-of-culture speeches from Highguard and Junior (who is renamed Peacesaver).
There is too much dialogue in this, and too much running around; it’s also derivative, and longer than it needs to be. All in all it resembles a dull story from a 1960’s issue of the magazine.
* (Mediocre). 21,000 words.
The Piper by Karen Joy Fowler
The Piper by Karen Joy Fowler (F&SF, January-February 2021) opens with the narrator recounting a childhood memory of the day that the king and queen came through his village; the narrator’s sister was given a disk with the king’s symbol, a red dragon, on one side.
The story then moves to the current day, where we get some brief information about the village and the narrator’s marriage plans before learning that the king has gone to war. The army subsequently passes through town, and the narrator and his friend Henry are recruited.
The pair endure a long, hard march to the sea and at one point the company shelter in a cave. When the narrator goes to relieve himself he finds a passage that takes him back to the surface. He sleeps there and, when he wakes the next day, he sees the skeleton of a dragon (“the king’s dragon”) embedded in a nearby rock face. The commander sees it as a sign.
When they finally arrive at the coast (spoiler) the narrator decides to desert and go back to his village. En route, he wonders what he’ll tell his family and neighbours on his return:
I would have to explain to the village why I was back and everyone else gone, and it couldn’t be a story that made me a coward, a deserter, and a man who didn’t love his king. I wasn’t yet sure how this story would go, but I wasn’t really worried about that. I had twelve whole days to work it out and I could already see its bones. p. 256
I can understand why a departing editor (who is off to write his own tales) might use this as the final piece in their last ever issue, but the arc of this story seems pointless: young man goes to war, changes mind, goes home. Littering it with dragon images doesn’t much improve that.
* (Mediocre). 3,000 words.