{"id":281,"date":"2021-01-13T12:40:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T12:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=281"},"modified":"2021-01-29T15:28:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T15:28:43","slug":"the-ziggurat-by-gene-wolfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=281","title":{"rendered":"The Ziggurat by Gene Wolfe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Ziggurat<\/em><\/strong> by Gene Wolfe (Full Spectrum<\/em> #5, edited by Tom Dupree, Jennifer Hershey, Janna Silverstein, 1995) wasn\u2019t, given that the last two stories of his I read were Seven American Nights<\/em> and The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em>, exactly what I was expecting, and the piece initially feels more like something from Stephen King. To that end, the beginning is not only evocative of place\u2014a snowed-in log cabin in the woods\u2014but also of character\u2014Emery is estranged from his wife Jan and is waiting in his cabin for her and their children to arrive, along with the divorce papers she is bringing for him to sign. While he tidies up before their arrival he broods about this, and also thinks about a visiting coyote1<\/sup> he has been feeding and trying to tame:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coyote had gone up on the back porch!
After a second or two he realized he was grinning like a fool, and forced himself to stop and look instead.
There were no tracks. Presumably the coyote had eaten this morning before the snow started, for the bowl was empty, licked clean. The time would come, and soon, when he would touch the rough yellow-gray head, when the coyote would lick his fingers and fall asleep in front of the little fieldstone fireplace in his cabin.  p. 391 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While he is outside, Emery also gets the impression he is being watched from the woods, a feeling that is confirmed when he sees a flash of a mirror . . . .
The rest of the first half of the story proceeds at a brisk pace. Emery gets dressed and goes to the area he saw the light, only to look back at his cabin to see he is being burgled. When he shouts at one of the small, dark figures, they raise the rifle they have taken from cabin and shoot. He takes cover. Five minutes later Jan and the three kids arrive, but when Emery hurries back he sees the interlopers have vanished. He decides to keep quiet about what has just happened.
The next part of the story switches temporarily from thriller to family soap opera, with a conversation between Emery and Jan about the details of the their divorce (and an allegation of child abuse by Emery on the twin girls). This culminates in Emery\u2019s refusal to sign the papers, and Jan and the two girls leaving the cabin (unlike the twins, Brook is Emery\u2019s biological son and he stays). Shortly after the mother and daughters exit Emery and Brook hear a scream, and rush outside to see the burglars under the hood of the car, seemingly once again looking for parts (as they did with Emery\u2019s Jeep earlier on). There is a struggle, and a shot is fired: the interlopers flee. After the family regroup, they realise one of the twins, Aileen, is missing.
Emery then drives through the snow towards the lake to see if he can find her, eventually coming upon the burglars, who are dark-skinned and petite young women. They have Aileen, but Emery manages to trade the car for her\u2014although the women don’t speak throughout the exchange\u2014and, after another scuffle during which he is shot (a flesh wound in his side), father and step-daughter walk back to the cabin.
At this point (a third of the way through) the story starts becoming SFnal: Aileen says that she has been in a ziggurat (she later clarifies that it wasn\u2019t actually an ancient terraced structure, it just had the same shape), where she was stripped and examined, shown pictures of things she didn\u2019t recognise, and given food before she slept for a while. Emery is puzzled, and tells her she has only been gone a couple of hours.
When they get back to the cabin domestic hostilities resume as Emery undresses to tend his wound, and the girls are told not to look:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan snapped her fingers. \u201cOil! Oil will soften the dried blood. Wesson Oil. Have you got any?\u201d
Brook pointed at the cabinet above the sink. Emery said, \u201cThere\u2019s a bottle of olive oil up there, or there should be.\u201d
\u201cLeen\u2019s peeking,\u201d Brook told Jan, who told Aileen, \u201cDo that again, young lady, and I\u2019ll smack your face!
\u201cEmery, you really ought to make two rooms out of this. This is ridiculous.\u201d
\u201cIt was designed for four men,\u201d he explained, \u201ca hunting party, or a fishing party. You women always insist on being included, then complain about what you find when you are.\u201d  p. 425<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is more of this kind of thing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privately [Emery] wondered which was worse, a woman who had never learned how to get what she wanted or a woman who had.
\u201cYou actually proposed that we patch it up. Then you act like this?\u201d [said Jan.]
\u201cI\u2019m trying to keep things pleasant.\u201d
\u201cThen do it!\u201d
\u201cYou mean you want to be courted while you\u2019re divorcing me. That\u2019s what\u2019s usually meant by a friendly divorce, from what I\u2019ve been able to gather.\u201d\u00a0 p. 426-427<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEmery, you hardly ever answer a direct question. It\u2019s one of the things I dislike most about you.\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s what men say about women,\u201d he protested mildly.
\u201cWomen are being diplomatic. Men are rude.\u201d
\u201cI suppose you\u2019re right. What did you ask me?\u201d
\u201cThat isn\u2019t the point. The point is that you ignore me until I raise my voice.\u201d  p. 430<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Emery finally agrees to take his wife and daughters into town and, for the next part of the story, it is just the two men, Emery and Brook, who are left to deal with any remaining problems back at the cabin. (Apart from a couple of phonecalls, the weather conveniently keeps the local sheriff and the other authorities away.)
As they drive back, Emery does some more pontificating to Brook on the nature of women (\u201cFor women, love is [. . .] magic, which is why they frequently use the language of fairy tales when they talk about it.\u201d). Then there is talk of \u201cBrownies\u201d (fairies) and the like, and an information dump where Emery speculates (spoiler) about the women landing the \u201cziggurat\u201d in the lake; that they are afraid of men and want to leave the area; and a possible time-distortion effect that would explain Aileen\u2019s experience.
They sleep, and when Emery wakes up the next morning he realises Brook isn\u2019t there. When he goes outside to find him he discovers one of the women has killed him with the axe. After he covers the body and puts it by the woodpile, he then calls the undertaker and sheriff. Then he calls the mobile phone in Jan\u2019s car: one of the women answers, and Emery tells her he is going to kill them for what they did to his son.
The last section of the story sees the climactic encounters between Emery and the women, which take place in both the ziggurat\/space-time ship (where he fights a woman with an axe) and in the cabin (where the other two ambush him, and he kills one and injures the other.
The final scene has him tending the wounded woman: Emery tells her he us going to burn the ziggurat and that she will just have fit into current day society. While she sleeps he plans a new company which will exploit the time-travellers\u2019 technology. He also determines to make the woman, who he calls Tamar, his new wife. Emery talks to himself while she sleeps, saying that they\u2019ll have a family, and build a house on the lakeside to take advantage of the still functioning time distortion device. She squeezes his hand, and the story ends.
Now the unfortunate thing about reducing this story to a plot summary is that it makes it sound like something that A. E. van Vogt might have cobbled together in one of his wilder moments, and I\u2019d have to concede that at times it does have a whiff of that about it. However, it is a very readable piece. The problem is that is it a mixed bag, and the second half is not as good as the first. Part of this is due to the wild plot, and the way that key information is delivered (apart from the dumping a lot of this in the middle section, I\u2019m not sure that there is a clear mention of a ziggurat in the middle of the lake until he goes into it later on). Then there are the Emery\u2019s actions and his character: the former seem borderline reckless and\/or idiotic at times, and he comes over, at best, as a complex character, or, at worst, as having patriarchal, misogynistic, and abuser tendencies. Whichever side you come down on regarding Emery\u2019s character, this is something which threatens to bend the story into a no-man\u2019s land between a dark, mainstream examination of a complicated man, and a highly entertaining SFnal potboiler (or as I found out later, make the account the delusions of a madman2<\/sup>). At times it\u2019s an uneven mix.
These reservations notwithstanding, it is a fast paced read with some good description and characterisation, and, if you don\u2019t pay too much attention to the bonkers plot, and the distractions of Emery\u2019s character, it\u2019s a pretty good read. I enjoyed it.
***+ (Good to Very Good) 27,200 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. No doubt the coyote reference is Wolfe inserting himself into the narrative as per The Fifth Head of Cerberus<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. After posting this review, one of my Facebook group members posted a link to a draft of an article by Marc Armani (a Wolfe scholar) which describes what the story is really about (spoiler): Emery is delusional and has killed\/raped the members of his family (or something like that). I wonder what my blood pressure was when I read the line \u201cIf we accept that Wolfe might occasionally present delusion as objective narrative fact [. . .] then some aspects of \u201cThe Ziggurat\u201d become easier to contextualize.\u201d
I think I am now officially past caring about what this story, or any of Wolfe\u2019s work, is about. But those of you who like walking on quicksand, knock yourself out.
The discussion thread and link to the Armani article are here<\/a> (although the Armani link may have expired by now\u2014buy the book).
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ziggurat by Gene Wolfe (Full Spectrum #5, edited by Tom Dupree, Jennifer Hershey, Janna Silverstein, 1995) wasn\u2019t, given that the last two stories of his I read were Seven American Nights and The Fifth Head of Cerberus, exactly what I was expecting, and the piece initially feels more like something from Stephen King. To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[89],"tags":[5,46,86,90,12],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gene-wolfe","tag-5","tag-3-3","tag-full-spectrum-5","tag-gene-wolfe","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}