his omnibus surveys the whole career of C.J. Cherryh—best known for her intricate, interlinked novels—through the lens of her short stories, a less publicized component of her oeuvre. The stories herein saw print from 1977 to 2002 in a variety of sources. The book itself is divided into three sections: The first two-thirds reprint Cherry's previous collections—Sunfall (1981) and Visible Light (1986)—while the last portion assembles previously uncollected stories and those written since 1986. A brand-new story is appended to the Sunfall cycle.
With almost three dozen stories, this book resists handy summarizing. It's possible in this limited space only to hit the highlights. It should first be mentioned, given the SF remit of the reviewer, that a fair number of the stories are fantasies, not science fiction. "A Thief in Korianth" concerns the unlucky turn experienced by a young female cutpurse when she steals a wallet bearing an invaluable prize. Celtic material features in "Two Brothers" and "Gwydion and the Dragon." Fables and allegories are presented in "The Last Tower," "The Dark King" and "The Unshadowed Land." "Of Law and Magic" riffs humorously on the involvement of a lawyer in sorcerous affairs. And "Willow" tracks the homecoming of a weary warrior who meets a young girl and her mother who are not what they seem.
The Sunfall tales are linked by a common setting, a "dying earth" scenario where mankind huddles in the failing metroplexes of his brighter past. "The Only Death in the City" finds a young man who is willing to sacrifice his immortality for the sake of love. Bettine Maunfry has made the mistake of alienating her lover, the all-powerful Mayor of London, and now finds herself immured in a famous site, "The Haunted Tower." New York has been transformed into a unitary skyscraper of immense dimensions in "Highliner." And in "MasKs," the tale original to this volume, a young woman rejects being a pawn in the city's elaborate politics.
"Cassandra" won Cherryh the Hugo Award with its depiction of a woman plagued by apocalyptic visions. In "Companions," the last surviving member of an expedition to a deadly planet, Paul Warren, has only an AI named Anne for his friend. The secular mythology of an interstellar empire is threatened by the findings of a humble archaeological expedition in "Pots." For 20 years, mankind has warred against aliens known as the Elves; but finally, thanks to one open-hearted individual from each camp, the war might be coming to a close. But does each individual realize he is "The Scapegoat"? Finally, widely separated space prospectors manage to avert a tragedy in "The Sandman, the Tinman, and the BettyB" thanks to their online camaraderie.
Embracing the qualities of classic SF
Cherryh's novels, especially of late, tend to be overpacked, dense affairs, lumbering toward oft-delayed climaxes burdened with vast freights of alien anthropological invention. However, the stories under discussion today represent the opposite end of her talents, a different methodology. Economical, swift, varied, employing just the right amount of detail, they are all eminently readable and often accomplish the same thing the novels do in a fraction of the space.
Cherryh is plainly steeped in Golden and Silver Age SF, and her distinctive voice manages to pay homage to several classic themes and authors. A story such as "Wings," in which a bunch of spacefaring ghosts with a heavenly mission manage to hijack an experimental ship, could have flowed from the pen of Eric Frank Russell. The revelation in "Pots," that our 5-million-year-dead civilization has seeded hope in another, could come straight out of an Arthur C. Clarke story. One almost awaits the discovery of the baffling image of a cartoon icon in the strata of the dead planet, as in Clarke's "History Lesson." In "The Scapegoat," the valiant struggle to foster interspecies communication despite the fog of war might bring to mind stories by Frederic Brown, Philip K. Dick or even the young Harlan Ellison, with his Kyben cycle. And the Sunfall stories are cousins to Ballard's decadent Vermilion Sands (1971) or perhaps to the Instrumentality stories of Cordwainer Smith. In essence, then, Cherryh is steeped in the classics yet manages to find new spins on them in her own authentic voice.
But it's with "Companions," almost a short novel, that she really hits the highest marks. This Robinsonade manages to sustain suspense and pathos for nearly 80 pages despite being basically a two-character tableau (Paul Warren and his AI). Shades of Gene Wolfe's characteristic eerie landscapes infiltrate the text as well, to good effect.
Having assembled this monumental collection, perhaps Cherryh will let its virtues influence future novels from her fertile imagination. But not over-fertile, please.
