I’ve been reading stories in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 for three weeks. I’m starting to get a bit tired of them, not because of the content necessarily as I’ve enjoyed these last six stories, but of their length. The very short length of these stories has limited their scope and depth. That changes today as one of the stories is technically the length of a novelette and it has the kind of deep storytelling that I was looking for and it’s tremendous.
“On the Wall” by Jo Walton
Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)
Originally published in Strange Horizons (September 2001), edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj
This is my first time reading something by Walton but I’m already a big fan of her through her various non-fiction writing at Tor.com. I’ve been meaning to explore her body of work, but I simply seem to never get around to it. Because of that I welcomed the opportunity to get my first taste with this anthology.
“On the Wall” is part of the sub-genre of fantasy that focuses on various retellings of popular fairy tales. This one isn’t as much as a retelling as an embellishment to an existing story which she pretty much leaves alone, focusing on what she is adding. The focus is on the Mirror and the character that will grow up to be the Evil Queen. It’s an origin story of sorts, but one that informs the more familiar tale. The editors point out that Walton does this without undermining or deconstructing the story of Snow White. It’s likely not something I would have thought myself without their commentary, but having read it I can agree with their assessment.
Looking up the story at Strange Horizons I discovered that the original publication of “On the Wall” was accompanied by illustration from Colleen Doran. Sadly the images on the site are broken links and are no longer displayed. It’s pretty heartbreaking as I quite like Doran’s art and she often uses a style that nicely complements fairy tales.
Ranking: 3 stars
As with the other recent stories I’ve read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2, this one is very short. It’s approximately six pages in length and that somewhat contributes to it negatively as Walton doesn’t allow much room to explore these characters. She makes up for it by employing a haunting lyrical style of prose. It’s captivating and fitting for the story as it’s about magic and Walton uses her prose to cast a spell on the reader.
Ultimately I think the story works very well despite its short length since it’s a character piece of who the Mirror and the Evil Queen are prior to the time of Snow White and how they came to be the characters readers are familiar with. Expounding too much on this topic would run the risk of changing too much about who these characters will become. In that sense, it’s quite the balancing act. I’m left wanting more, perhaps a full retelling of the Snow White tale in this same style by Walton, as unlikely as that might be to happen.
“Hell Is the Absence of God” by Ted Chiang
Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)
Originally published in Starlight 3 (2001), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Sorry to disappoint anybody who was expecting me to break the trend of being completely unfamiliar with the works of nearly every contributing writer in Year’s Best Fantasy 2. Like many stories before, this one introduced me to the work of an author I know by name and reputation, but whose work I have never sampled: Ted Chiang. Based on this story and on my viewing of Arrival which was based on another short story of his, I need to beef up my library with more of his works. Exclusively a short story writer with only two collections in print that should be something that is quick to fix. The problem, however, isn’t in the acquisition of books, but in finding the time to read them all.
“Hell Is the Absence of God” is a much longer story that the last few I’ve read and written about for Short Story Sunday. The last five stories that preceded it were between six and ten pages. This one is around forty and the depth of storytelling that it allows Chiang is considerably more than those of previous stories. Sometime less is more (I’m looking at you multi-volume doorstopper fantasy series!), but other times you need that room to breathe. This is technically a novelette in length. It won the Nebula award for best novelette in 2003.
This story has a simple setup. It’s our world as we know it, but Chiang introduces one major difference and then examines the consequence of that differing element has on world. The difference here is that God exists. So do Heaven and Hell and angels. When angels visit the earthly plane it’s comparable to destructive natural disasters. People’s lives are irrevocably changed during these encounters. “Hell is the Absence of God” follows along three separate people after one of these angel visitation events has occurred.
Ranking: 5 stars
Chiang’s writing style is direct and without obvious flourishes. I wouldn’t call it dry, but it’s very different than Walton’s style which leaned more towards poetry. Chiang’s writing style reveals something about his day job which is that of a technical writer in the software industry. Perhaps his writing style is informed by his day job. Either way, it has an uncanny effect, almost hypnotic. Each sentence solidly builds on the preceding one which results in a compounding effect of narrative description which in turn creates a complex world which field tangible and lived in. I fully believed in the vision of our world being impacted changed by the presence of God and angels as well as the impact they have on people and society.
There’s no other way of saying it other than this story blew my socks off. On paper it’s not an idea that I find particularly interesting. Christian myths and religion are often used in fiction and generally speaking they don’t thrill me much. This one was surprisingly successful and I think it had to do with the focus being on the consequences of those things. Chiang takes a big idea and thoughtfully takes the reader on a journey that explores the consequences of having those fantastic elements in the real world. He does all of this in addition to providing three solid character studies and including strong thematic elements that give the reader plenty to think about.
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