Margaret St. Clair (1911–1995)

Okay, I admit it: I bought this because of the cover art. It was at the Eastercon, and it was like a quid. And I knew I could review it for SF Mistressworks (when I resurrect the blog, that is). I’d previously read a collection by St Clair, and some of her other stories in various women-only anthologies, but I think this was by first novel by her… And it wasn’t at all what I expected. In fact, it read more like Doris Piserchia than the St Clair I’d expected. The story is set after a show more plague – world-wide possibly, US-wide certainly; it’s hard to tell with US sf novels – in a California which has returned to a tribal agrarian culture. Sort of. The protagonist, Sam McGregor, is a bit of a rebel and doesn’t understand why the young men of the tribe must always dance under the instruction of the android Dancer. So he’s sent on a Grail Quest, which means driving down the coast in search of some sort of epiphany. Instead, he begins to relive the lives of people from earlier times, including a dead young woman being autopsied, and the inventor of the androids. To be honest, not a single bit of this novel made the slightest fucking sense. McGregor meets up with the daughter of the android inventor, who also appears to have something to do with “bone melt”, the disease which basically depopulated California, or the US, or the world. St Clair seems to have no clear idea of her story or what she wants to say. The result is a novel that doesn’t read so much as if St Clair made it up as she went along but more like a novel she couldn’t be bothered to turn into sense. It was her last. show less

This book has a compressed elegance sadly absent from the current overstuffed fiction scene: it does the job, and then stops. It does not tell you what it us going to tell you, tell it to you, and then tell you more than once what you've been told, on and on, for three or ten or more volumes. I should point out one very obvious point that is never mentioned in the critical literature I have seen: the story tracks that of Dante's Inferno, something that becomes clear enough by the time the show more hero reaches Level I, and is emphasized with a final resolving chord in the last sentences of the book. show less

As Amazon describes it : Twenty short stories from the trailblazing sci-fi writer Margaret St. Clair.

This is a 2021 collection. There is an earlier hard to find 1985 book with the same title with mostly different stories. Twenty short stories that are examples of good quirky 1950's science fiction. The little bits of St. Clair's writing I have run across in anthologies in recent years made me interested, so I was happy to see this new collection. She mostly wrote short fiction although show more there were also some novels by her, notably The Dolphins of Altair which I remember seeing when I was young. The vast majority of her fiction appeared between 1946 and 1962. We have 20 stories here and they are:

1. New Ritual, first published in The magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1953 under pen name Idris Seabright

2. Starobin, first published in Future Science Fiction #34, Fall 1957. You can see and read it here: https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/sffaudio-usa/mp3s/StarobinByMargaretSt.Clair...

3. Flowering Evil, first published in Planet Stories, Summer 1950. where is Planet Stories when you need it - well, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64745/64745-h/64745-h.htm

4. Thirsty God, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1953 under pen name Idris Seabright

5. The Death of Each Day, , first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1958 under pen name Idris Seabright

6. The Anaheim Disease, first published in Science Fictions Stories January 1959

7. Roberta, first published in Galaxy magazine, October 1962

8. Stawdust, first published in The magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1956 under pen name Idris Seabright

9. The Heirophants, First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949

10. Prott, first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1953

11. The Man Who Sold Rope to Gnoles, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1951 and later appeared in a large number of anthologies.

12. Fort Iron, first appeared in Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1955

13. The Nuse Man, first appeared in Galaxy magazine, February 1960
and a follow-up story
14. The Airy Servitor, first appeared in Galaxy magazine, April 1960

15. The House in Bel Aire, first appeared in If, January 1961

16. Birthright, first published in Fantastic Universe, April 1958

17. The Death Wish, first published in Fantastic universe, June 1956

18. The Gardener, first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949

19. Personal Monster, first published in The magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1955 under pen name Idris Seabright

20. The Everlasting Food, first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950

These are stories that you can feel the 1950's in them. You get in a rocket and zoom across the galaxy. Men from the future with super gadgets. They tell you a story. They have little twists. They are entertainments. Some of the stories such as 'Thirsty God' are just plain weird and I can't help but wonder what possessed the author to write it. Then, we get a poignant anti-war story like 'The Death of Each Day.' Then, 'The Anaheim Disease' a sort of alternate history woo-woo set during the 1918-1919 flu epidemic. These are mostly science fiction, with bits of fantasy, horror and whimsy. 'The Man who sold rope to Gnoles' contains all of those things.

St. Clair is different than most 50's authors, I'll say that. Some of these stories are appearing in this collection for the first time since their initial magazine appearance. There are a few too many twisted and oddball stories for my taste and so I can't say that I really liked this collection as a whole, but I can appreciate it. There are several excellent stories in here however. show less

Margaret St. Clair wrote some odd stories, but I a pretty sure this is the oddest. Many characters living multiple chunks of different persons lives in what is probably, but not necessarily, a post-holocaust California. This situation may be caused by take-over by our android robot overlords, or over-use of Native American hallucinogens, or a police state seeking to push the population back to some sort of control after the breakdown of society.