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kleonard's review
4.0
I love these stories of the fantastic by Margaret St. Clair and wish they'd been more widely available sooner. Her writing is sharp and concise, and her stories are excellent forays into SFF, including the more human elements of the genre. The collection is marred only by a terrible and stiff introduction by Ramsey Campbell, who seems intent on telling readers that "male writers did it first" in regard to everything St. Clair wrote. So skip the intro and jump right into the stories.
honeymonster's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I really liked these short stories. A lot of the time you think you know where they are going, but you don't. And some of them really messed with my mind. Good shit, Margaret.
sisteray's review
5.0
So I went into this curious about St. Clair and came out a huge fan.
The first two stories are classical 50 pulp weird fiction. Premise, set-up, twist. But then she gets really weird. So many of these stories had me in awe of what I was reading. Everything was delightfully whacked out. Even though a bunch of these stories were written in the 50s they frequently felt like they were from the late 70s or 80s. She was pushing the edge way beyond what you'd expect from the 50s.
The great thing about her approach is that she is happy to explore some bonkers concept and rather than wasting any time trying to explain why things work, she just focuses on the human interaction of whatever concept is introduced.
I don't want to spoil any of these stories by describing them, but so many are not only wild but some of them are amazingly predictive of future media consumption.
I've tracked down a couple other short story collections to try to fill in the gaps.
The first two stories are classical 50 pulp weird fiction. Premise, set-up, twist. But then she gets really weird. So many of these stories had me in awe of what I was reading. Everything was delightfully whacked out. Even though a bunch of these stories were written in the 50s they frequently felt like they were from the late 70s or 80s. She was pushing the edge way beyond what you'd expect from the 50s.
The great thing about her approach is that she is happy to explore some bonkers concept and rather than wasting any time trying to explain why things work, she just focuses on the human interaction of whatever concept is introduced.
I don't want to spoil any of these stories by describing them, but so many are not only wild but some of them are amazingly predictive of future media consumption.
I've tracked down a couple other short story collections to try to fill in the gaps.
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