Previous: V's

Back to: Short Stories

Next: A's

The Way of the Witchfinder [4]

Review by Ian Braidwood

Those of you who are not familiar with the Warhammer world will need to be told that the conflict here is not between good and evil, but law and chaos. This story is about one such spat.

The citadel of Ora Lamae is ruled by Bayard Solon and his daughter Syrene, which is only a problem because the two of them are in thrall to deamons and taxing the local farmers out of house and home.

In desperation, the people in the surrounding countryside pray for intercession and yay mighty Solkan delegates the priest Yasus Fiemme, who delegates Florian, who puts down his broom and sets to work.

Pointless hackwork.

What Can Chloë Want? [4]

Review by Ian Braidwood

A touching story, which like The Facts of Life features a child having to deal with an issue and the domestic disturbances caused by their parents.

This time it's a young girl, who for some reason needs a new heart and to avoid difficulties with tissue typing, is to be the recipient of a transgenic heart.

The parental dissonance centres around the differing philosophical approaches to this situation: Daddy wants Chloë to understand everything and takes his daughter regularly to see the pig who will donate the organ. Mummy meanwhile, wants to shield her from the truth, which she finds disturbing and distasteful.

This story revolves around its title.

When Molly Met Elvis [4]

Where Zombie Armies Clash by Night [35]

Who Mourns a Necromancer? [7]

Review by Ian Braidwood

Well, who would mourn a necromancer? Even if you didn't have spine enough to crack open a bottle, you'd certainly say 'good riddense' to the person who interfered with your late Great Aunt Agatha.

Those who didn't believe the rumours might still mourn and that accounts for Alpheus Kalispera, High Priest of Verena and Magister of the University of Gisoreux, but what of Cesar Barbier, whose wife was the late Lanfranc Chazal's departed subject? Surely he would come to bury Chazal, not to praise him?

One thing I have noticed about Brian's stories for the Warhammer series is that they tend to be critical of the blanket application of general principles, even good ones. In this, they are part of a tradition which includes Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Does that make them literature?

Why Flying Carpets Became Extinct [v]

The Widow Who Grieved Too Much [1]

Wildland [6]

Review by Ian Braidwood

This is interesting, because it shares the same universe as The Blind Worm, though it appears to be set some time earlier than the events in that novel.

The Wildland is an alien organism, which has invaded Earth, subsumed almost all the life forms and drained even such major bodies of water as Lake Michigan.

As part of a counter-plan, two scientists leave the tunnels under San Francisco to collect samples for study, until they come across a specimen shaped like a human girl. Then the men start suspecting each other's motives and trouble begins to brew...

The Will [4]

Review by Ian Braidwood

I haven't found a story this disturbing since I watched David Cronenberg's The Brood, after a break of about ten years. In that time I had come to understand some of the gravity of the subject matter dealt with in that film. Even now, I find myself questioning whether child abuse should be the subject of entertainments.

If The Will has a saving grace, it is that it is told from the perspective of the victim and includes the reactions of a family in chronic denial; thus any romantic gloss or rationalisation is undermined. However, this does nothing to ally my misgivings.

I passionately believe in free speech, but stories like this leave a bad taste.

The Winter Wind [7]

The Woman in the Mirror [8]

Review by Ian Braidwood

Martin lives in a dingy flat, which he has largely furnished second hand from an auction house. He works in a department store and apart from his customers, enjoys little human contact.

One day he comes home from the auction house with an oval mirror, which he hangs above the fireplace. At first fleetingly and then more often, he spies a woman in the mirror who is living forlorn in an identical flat.

Touched by her plight, Martin gets the idea that if he changes his décor, he can improve the situation for the woman in the mirror world.

A much more successful story than Salome and one with a very different intent. It is both more subtle and sympathetic, with a more satisfying consummation.

The Womb of Time [56]

Review by Sally Startup

The Womb of Time is set in Dunwich, England, in 1935. Halsted, the main character, is a young American academic, researching the work of the English writer, Thomas De Quincey. Halsted is visiting England after a "crushing disappointment in love", but he normally works at Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts.

Halsted believes that De Quincey may have written his famous Confessions of an Opium Eater when staying in Dunwich, at an inn now called The Hidden Crown. He is surprised to find that other guests at the inn are also interested in the unusually low tide which is about to occur, exposing an area of the sea bed to the air for the first time since De Quincey's visit, a hundred and fourteen years before.

What is eventually revealed, and how the interests of the various guests and the innkeeper are connected, involves an interweaving of H. P. Lovecraft's invented mythology, Arthurian legend, Thomas De Quincey's writing, and much else. The ending of the tale is no less unnerving for the fact that much of the mystery is eventually explained.

Worse than the Disease [2]