McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

Wednesday, July 12 2006 @ 10:09 AM GMT+4

McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. The McSweeney's group has the dubious distinction of being self-consciously hip. They're knowledgeable about obscure disciplines in ways that Star Trek nerds would get beat up and ostracized for in high school, but they're so full of themselves that they get away with it. McSweeney's is academic geekhood with twice the academic ego - they want the literati and the populist audience both. And while they're extraordinarily good at marketing the literate hipster image, I'm not sure they promote their own ideology terribly well.

A case in hand is this story collection. It seems to be a follow-up to the successful Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, a collection designed to give literary authors the chance to try their hand at genre tales. The problem with that collection, as with this, is that the authors represented either already write in the SF field, or are authors recognized as 'slipstream' by fen. China Mieville and Stephen King are names widely known, and the inclusion of authors like Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Letham seems almost an affront, since both have vocally and deliberately isolated themselves from the genre ghetto for purposes of mainstream literary respectability. (Remember the Oryx & Crake arguments?)

There's nothing wrong with the collection, mind you, it's just that there's nothing but the marketing to separate the content from dozens of other quite respectable sfnal anthologies. Some of the stories are good, and others are genuinely creepy. Mike Mignola (of Hellboy and B.P.R.D fame) provides the illustrations, and deserves the mainstream exposure. Jason Roberts's "7C" is an extraordinary foray into truly dark territory involving fate and an intriguing cause-effect reversal. It’s the best short story of 2005.

Originally read January 2005

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