Cherry Wilder (1930–2002)

Sometimes a book carries such startling content and weighty matter that it overcomes poor presentation; conversely, a telling of freshness and beauty can elevate simple into sublime. "The Luck Of Brin's Five" is the latter. Wilder's talent lay in storytelling, and this is told very well indeed, in its phrasing, pacing, and in perspective. Narrative point-of-view profoundly influences the way a tale comes across and can make or break SFF; what we have here is a First Contact story not only show more presented from an alien's perspective, but through the narration of an alien child. How brilliant is that?

Probably best considered YA nowadays, 'TLoBF' is fairly lightweight in plot and stakes; there's no great sturm und drang, and the violence is minor (and largely fisticuffs). While the Moruians really aren't terribly alien in physiology or communication, the cultural world-building is excellent: Ursula Le Guin-level, really. And the p-o-v allows for the reader to be informed of the cultural mores as the child narrator is getting reinforced; I actually laughed out loud at an early scene in which Dorn (the kid) is dubious about Diver (the human) not because he's an alien, but because he's a _grown-up_ ! Great stuff.

Seems there are sequels from this New Zealand-born Aussie author. Tracking down these lost gems sounds like a good idea to me. show less

I bought this book quite a number of years ago because I fell in love with the cover illustration, which is by my pal Nick Stathopoulos. Some while after that I corresponded briefly with Wilder about something else entirely; she was, she told me, intensely broke and intensely depressed, the two being not unrelated. Since then, this extraordinarily talented Oz author has died. So much can happen between buying a book and reading it.

Dealers in Light and Darkness is one of those relatively show more rare collections you shouldn't try to devour in a single gulp, which is what I tried to do until I realized I was ruining my own pleasure -- like a glutton at a feast; I read the rest of the book a story at a time, and enjoyed it much more. Wilder's tales have a sort of visionary quality, a sense that what you're reading is just a part of a very much larger whole which she could see as clearly as if she lived in it. Whether the societies into which she offers windows in these ten stories are otherplanetary, post-holocaust, or in one instance high-fantasy, what makes the stories so compelling -- and so challenging (this is not a collection for fainthearts) -- is that these societies have different underlying preconceptions, different mores, from our own; part of the joy of reading the stories here is unraveling what those mores are.

Not all of the tales work. "Looking Forward to the Harvest" (upon an element of which Nick based his cover illustration) is a rambling tale that gives the impression Wilder had several good story ideas and tried to ram them all into the same piece, one after the other. "Odd Man Search", one of several stories which have androids-passing-as-humans as a trope, seems confusing not because it's a confusing world that Wilder's depicting but because she herself was confused in the writing. "Old Noon's Tale", the high fantasy (or just possibly science fantasy) entry, was nicely written but didn't do it for me.

But the rest of the stories in this collection are the kind that would each, individually, be the standout entries in any anthology in which they appeared. This was why I had to take a break from the book: I was becoming glutted on too much rich food. The long story "The Ballad of Hilo Hill" is perhaps the best of the lot. It's set among the descendants of the humans whose ship, generations ago, made an emergency landing here, and who are now still at the stage of evolving their own culture while slowly expanding their knowledge of the world and its other intelligent occupants; what's brought home to us is that, because of their alienness, communication and mutual understanding is borderline impossible. The story itself is of a young balladmaker trying to piece together the fantastic voyage a near-senile old man made many years ago; and also of our habit of rushing to judgement too swiftly.

The title story, "Dealers in Light and Darkness", is set on the same world but not in the same era. (I'm still not sure if it's later or earlier.) A clairvoyant boy who has declined the role of Messiah for which his life was being moulded -- complete with miraculous birth -- by a trio of shapeshifters, and who has suffered hysterical blindness as a consequence, is grilled by a sort of Pontius Pilate figure (albeit it a benign one). It emerges that the shapeshifters, for purposes ineffable, were grooming not one but several Messiahs in the hope that one of them would be the one. What will happen when their successful model comes into his own is left tantalizingly just beyond the end of the story.

In "Something's Coming Through", set in a not-so-far-future Earth, a western man must come to terms with the fact that there is nothing he can do about the fact that his stepdaughter and her swain have been sentenced to death in an African country for using alcohol and tobacco. In "Kaleidoscope", a knockout of a story, realities from different historical eras, one of them post-holocaust, collide; this is the kind of sf Somerset Maugham might have written had it ever occurred to him to do so. "A Woman's Ritual" is a witheringly good ghost story, in which a wifebeater gets his comeuppance. In "The Dreamers of Deliverance" an isolated community is so convinced of the clairvoyance of its members' dreams that it continues to believe the rest of the post-holocaust world is still a radiation-infested hell even though, in reality, the rest of the world is well on the way to picking itself up.

All in all, this is a very fine book indeed. show less

I first read this book in my early teens, and it made quite an impression on me. I was a bit nervous about rereading it but I needn't have worried.

I had forgotten the entire plot and it is like reading it for the first time - what I do remember is the social system - families are formed by five people - three young adults (a female and two males or a male and two females), an older person, and someone who is called the Luck - someone who is physically or mentally disabled or otherwise show more different. So the title is about the person who is the Luck of the family or Five formed by Brin. And what's more, the people on Torin are marsupials, not mammals.

When their first Luck dies, they find their new Luck in a human who has come to explore the planet Torin and has got separated from his companions. He must learn their customs so as not to give himself or the Five away. This means plenty of excitement and though a short novel, it is full of incident.

One I think I will keep for rereading... and if I could only track down other books by Wilder! show less

Aidris is the princess of a troubled land, ruled by dual monarchs of the Firm and Zor. When Aidris's father, King of the Firn, and her mother are assassinated, she must go into hiding so she can, one day, fight for her right to the dual throne. Disguising herself as a common soldier in the neighbouring land of Anthron, she discovers her heritage of magic and mystery.