posted 16 May 2001

The Start Of The End Of It All: Short Fiction by Carol Emshwiller
Mercury House, San Francisco, 1991
reviewed by Gwyneth Jones

Gwyneth Jones, writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy, has written more than 29 novels for teenagers, mostly using the pseudonym Ann Halam, and critically acclaimed SF novels for adults, notably the Aleutian Trilogy: White Queen (co-winner of the James Tiptree Memorial Award); North Wind and Phoenix Café. Her short story collection Seven Tales And A Fable won two World Fantasy Awards, and her critical writings and essays have appeared in many publications, including Nature, and New Scientist. This year's publications and honors include: the Richard Evans Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in SF, nomination for the Lanarkshire Teenage Fiction Award, nomination for the Lancashire Children's Book of The Year Award for the horror novel Don't Open Your Eyes (as Ann Halam). Jones also has stories in Dark Terrors Five and The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories By Women. Dr Franklin's Island (as Ann Halam) was published this year along with Bold As Love (as Gwyneth Jones), which is due out in August . Find out more about Bold As Love, (a dark fairytale set in near future England) at www.boldaslove.co.uk

A lovelorn octogenarian longs to be 70 again. An elderly US tourist becomes an Indian goddess, much to the chagrin and disbelief of her husband, as he keeps reminding her, she didn't even finish college. An ex-wife returns to disrupt her husband's neat existence, equiped with a pair of huge, magnificent seagull's wings; but with an old ugly pair of blue veined legs dangling below. In the title story, an army of alienated post-menopausal womanhood aids and abets a secret and definitely nasty invasion from outer space...

Carol Emshwiller's new collection The Start Of The End Of It All plots in many ways the start of the disintegration of the flesh and of the life: the drooping, the wrinkling, the smells, the memory lapses, the plots your children make to get you safely onto the death row of the Sunset Home. But though the real experience of ageing is often the subject (and especially female aging), that doesn't restrict the scope or limit the strangeness of these narratives.

Carmen Dog, the best known of Carol Emshwiller's books, describes a whimsical, comic and supremely natural revolution. Suddenly, women and female animals begin to merge and change places -and how obvious it seems that the beautiful, affectionate young labrador bitch can easily take the place of a wife. The world of men is bewildered, shaken to the core and benignly overturned.

On the cover of this collection, Carmen Dog is praised (by Penthouse magazine) for the way Emshwiller conveys the truths of feminism 'painlessly'. I don't imagine The Start Of The End Of It All will get the same kind of praise. Post menopausal women are intrinsically not interesting (Emshwiller plays wryly with the idea of their invisibility). Moreover, this kind of feminism is sometimes funny but never analgesic. It doesn't stroke the reader, male or female: it does not reassure. The octogenarian lover in "There Is No Evil Angel But Love" is perhaps delivering a well-deserved come-uppance to the Oppressive Male Slob. But her iron-fisted grovelling to the unfortunate object of her affections rouses no sympathy. A woman's need to be needed can be an addiction, criminal and heartless as any other kind of junkiedom. The narrator of "The Start Of The End Of It All" will tolerate all kinds of ugliness, so long as her husband-surrogate aliens keep her supplied with dishes to wash and messes to clean up. Even when she realises that she has been abused by the aliens as much as by her own men folk, the story ends with a hint that the dependency axis will continue. Women are amazingly ingenious at finding new routes to doormathood.

Long suffering is a vice: it saps your morals and destroys your judgement. In "Emissary," the friendly alien (crippled by her unsuitable and vulnerable female flesh) admires, gushes approval: in classic woman-talk speech patterns she cannot bring herself to criticise or complain. She longs to be helpful. But it is not until, (under extreme provocation) she says what she really thinks of this ruined planet, that her failed mission has some slight effect.

Carmen Dog is closely echoed in one of the more conventional stories. A space-travelling trapper hunts fur on a winter planet. The planet's fur-bearing sentients contact his pointer bitch: Little slave, what have you done that is free today? She understands, she realises the value of what is being offered, and knows her master is a murderer. Still she finds it impossible to break away. The habit of the 'dumb female' animal is too strong. "The Start Of The End Of It All" is a warning to nice, older ladies everywhere (the kind who'd be wearing medium heels and a flowery dress...) It speaks of the danger of being thankful for small mercies, the evil of never asking for much. It is a gentle book, but it incites to violence.

When you're old, one of Carol Emshwiller's narrators remarks, you have no time for long range plans. You only have time for action. The action attempted by these diverse characters (male as well as female, young as well as old) is always 'feminist' in the broader sense, in resisting the mindless pressure of convention; in abandoning or defying a fixed social role. There are no guaranteed prizes for kicking up your heels. Mr Draculalucard incites a bored housewife to hang from her heels in the attic, to eat chocolates from a heart-shaped box and have 'something happen' for once. However, she'll still become the bat's prey. But there are obscure and alluring pleasures to be gained.

In "Sex And/Or Mr Morrison" an elderly woman investigates the possibility that the acknowledged division of the sexes hides another layer of mystery (how is one to know such things, when everything is hidden?) The freedom to hide in a stranger's bedroom and spy on him undressing, is only one of her reckless methods. Old age is a second, and more venturesome, childhood.

"I've spent all night huddled under a bush in Central Park; and twice I've crawled out onto the fire escape and climbed to the roof..."

The loss of the long term is a desperate and an intoxicating freedom. Maybe it does not belong to old age alone. But — Carol Emshwiller seems to say — it's only when you're old that you will really know what it means to live on the edge. It is always risky to live in the imagination, to believe in an idea. But if you take this leap (so many of these stories feature a leap into the unknown) late in life, when the ties that bind us all begin to loosen; then you may never return. The gull-winged wife in the story called "Fledged" is a glorious creature. Her husband bemoans the fate of his ornaments, as her great wings sweep wildly through his tidy home (normal life has no room for freedom...). Still he admires her passionately. But the gull-woman's eyes are empty of human feeling.

Sometimes the leap can only be taken by deciding to stay on the ground. In "The Circular Library Of Stones," an amiable, slightly kooky old lady pins her faith on an imaginary archaeology: a lost city of women. Her obsession is beautiful, harmless, and a haunting metaphor for the 'faith' of feminism. But given the choice between the reality of her fantasy, and the reality of normal life — even though for her 'normality' is a one way ticket to the Sunset Home — she makes an unexpected decision. There comes a time when the only way you can keep a dream alive is by letting it go.

Wings, and the idea of flying. Ageing, and the freedom of old age. Renunciation of the dreamworld: flight to the dreamworld... In "Vilcabamba" a literal return from the exile of civilisation to a pre-Columban Eldorado. In "Looking Down," a conventional story (with a beginning, a middle and an end!) about an enslaved 'God' who turns out, when he's struggled his way to freedom, to be a loving father, and a decent, generous husband to his human 'priestess.' "Living At The Center" could be a story of the same people, but again an elderly 'unnecessary' woman is making a voyage of discovery that the men can only talk about.

Male characters are of course the bad guys; or at best weird, oversized semi-humans. There's a series of annoyingly stereotyped grumpy husbands. It's notable that in the one story that treats the sickness of power with compassion ("Moon Songs"), the unhappy tyrant is a young woman. In "Chicken Icarus" (reminiscent of Catherine Dunn's Geek Love) an isolated limbless young man, whose only active appendage is his penis, ponders humbly on his greatest ambition: to become a fairground freak. It's almost as if Emshwiller is describing her ideal male. But "Looking Down" isn't the only story to give a different perspective.

In "Peri," one of the most arrestingly odd of these narratives (and I think my favourite), a middle-aged man experiences a strange rejuvenation when he finds himself in charge of a little girl. The man, as it happens, can walk on air — an odd little talent which he's never developed. But it's a pair of panties that makes the story for me: a fancy, sexy pair meant for a grown-up lady. The child wants them, grandpa buys them. In eerie, casual defiance of current belief no harm comes of this perilous incident: no harm at all.

In her afterword to the collection, Carol Emshwiller almost denies conscious authorship. "My mind," she says, "it has always seemed to me, isn't very clever —is too pedestrian. My fingers and my typewriter seem much smarter." On this showing, taking a few fingers for a random walk across the keys is a richly profitable exercise. But I suspect it depends whose fingers. There is a subtle discipline in refusing to tell a conventionally premeditated story, refusing to let anything shape your imagination except itself. The alien in "Emissary" brings with her to planet Earth (much to the bemusement of the natives) a large collection of ordinary, empty picture frames. Emshwiller's narratives are her picture frames, held up around fragments of her writing's whimsical beauty. She borrows the privilege of the visual artist: simply to offer your perception, and let the audience provide the interpretation, the message. I've tried to describe something of what I saw through the frames. Other eyes will see other worlds. But please, take a look. Wander round this quiet, (deceptively quiet, deceptively unassuming) gallery. Stop and stare. You'll find it worth your while.