onnie Willis loves Christmas. She says as much in the introduction to
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, a collection of eight holiday
tales out just in time for the season. Ideal for private reading
or sharing
with an audience, these are stories that will add laughter and
warmth to a
season whose energy is often drained by bouts of rushed shopping and
unwanted obligations.
The stories take aim at the usual Willis targets--consumer fads,
selfishness and plain old bad manners. In "Miracle," a woman named Lauren is
hounded by the Spirit of Christmas Presents, who wants to grant
her heart's
desire for the holidays. Lauren is certain she already knows what that
is--to impress a colleague at the office party--but the spirit
won't take no
for an answer. Pursued by her least favorite Christmas movie and unable to
buy gifts without having the Spirit transform them, she finds herself
dragged further and further from this romantic goal. In "Newsletter," an
intrepid pair of investigators attempt to figure out why people
are suddenly
becoming polite and reasonable despite the holiday crunch. Have they been
taken over by aliens? And if that's true, should anything be done about it? Both stories are romantic
comedies in the best Willis tradition, and they will have readers laughing out
loud.
Not all of the stories are light and irreverent. "Inn" and
"Epiphany" are
distinctly religious and thoughtful, showing compassion for both modern
humanity and the suffering of Biblical figures. "In Coppelius's Toyshop,"
deals with the fate of one especially unpleasant holiday shopper.
And "Catspaw"
is as much mystery as SF, with the murder and mayhem that implies.
Thoughtful but not sentimental
Longtime fans of Willis' work will recognize many of these
stories, six
of which first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. This familiarity is no
particular hardship--it is wonderful to have these stories
gathered in one
place. Readers who have dug through their old magazines every
year in search
of "Miracle" or "Adaptation" will be glad to have this collection at their
fingertips. Anyone who missed the stories the first time around will be
equally happy to encounter them now.
The stories' charm is the trademark Willis refusal to fall into
sugar-sweet sentiment. Miracle and Other Christmas Stories
is full of
ungracious relatives, uncharitable reverends and grasping authors. These
antagonists rarely get their comeuppance. The stories' main characters are
usually lucky to salvage a small victory from the holiday confusion. "In
Coppelius's Toyshop" is the notable exception, and it stands out as
both the harshest of the stories and the least complex.
As genre fiction, the stories are also terrific. The invasion story,
"Newsletter," takes the body-snatchers concept seriously rather than going
the usual route and attempting parody. "Catspaw" addresses questions
currently being debated in the field of animal intelligence. Most of the
other stories are, strictly speaking, fantasies--a higher proportion of
fantasy to SF than is usually found in a body of Willis' work. That
said, they are good fantasies and well worth reading.
If there is anything to criticize in this collection, it is that it's
too short--more stories would certainly have been a welcome
addition. But
Willis compensates by offering a gift at the book's end--a list
of Christmas
books and movies to enjoy on cold December nights. It is this generous
spirit, of both the writer and her stories, that will keep
readers returning
to Miracle and Other Christmas Stories every year.
umans are adaptable. What's more, they have a talent for altering their environment to suit themselves. So building a home on the water world Typhon should have been a snap for colonists from Skandia. But volcanic eruptions and typhoons engulf the new colony. Help from Skandia never arrives. And every baby born on Typhon is deformed.
One colonist is determined to discover Typhon's secrets. Per Langstaff refuses to bow to the colony's authorities, ignoring his assigned tasks and pouring his energy into deciphering the planet's biology. Per's past is more than murky. In fact, if he tries to remember or to speak of it, crippling headaches force him to silence. While studying the ketos, an orca-like species, he finds himself defending them from attack by another colonist. As the colony unravels politically and emotionally, the typhoon season strikes again, and Per is swept away with the deaf girl Dilani and the legless boy Bey Sayid.
The trio manage to get aboard a life raft, but they're lost in the storms. The ketos provide what help they can, but it's from entirely another direction that salvation--if that's what it can be called--will come.
For a scholar of the Round People--an intelligent squid-like race--has been observing these strangers from "the Dry." He's drawn to them, at first by curiosity, then by compulsion. He's been bitten by god--god in the form of tiny, stinging jellyfish, which instill him with an irresistible need to bring the strangers to a certain spot on the ocean floor.
As Dilani and the scholar Subtle begin to learn each other's sign language, the group draws ever closer to Subtle's god. The humans are sick, and the stings of the godbits are making them weaker. To continue means death...or transformation.
"How many ways does this world want to kill us?"
Author Toni Anzetti does everything right with Typhon's Children. She packs the book with exploration and adventure, and she brings readers into a first-contact scenario...with more than one species. What's more, she's not afraid to imagine an alien point of view.
While it explores the strange new underwater world of Typhon, the novel also presents a bunch of believable characters who have harsh problems to face. From page one, the stakes are life and death for Dilani, Per, Subtle, and the others, and Anzetti endows her characters--human or not--with human traits and weaknesses. Dilani, for example, has a lot of growing up to do, and readers want her to have a chance to do so.
Anzetti's prose is sure and strong. She's got a story to tell and, for the most part, she delivers an emotional payload without falling into the easy trap of overwriting. Subtle's alien voice provides a poetic component: "And if there was death in the water, bitter beneath the sweetness of the mating scent, it only served to buoy up their joy, as the vast deserts of the Deep held up the light and warmth of the sky edge."
The book reaches a satisfactory conclusion, yet a few loose strands promise more to come. Per's past is a beckoning mystery. The fate of other colonists remains to be seen. And how much does the government of the home planet Skandia have to answer for? Anzetti's a talented writer and Typhon's Children is a stirring SF adventure--bring on part two!
