Friday, March 20, 2020

Short Book Reviews: Margaret St. Clair's Short Fiction


The Hole in the Moon and Other Tales, by Margaret St. Clair (Dover)

I was introduced to the work of Margaret St. Clair decades ago through her novels, The Dolphins of Altair and The Dancers of Noyo. I still have those old Ace editions. Now Dover has gathered together her short fiction, which belongs on every SF collector’s shelf. The stories show the scope (and weirdness) of her imagination. Her stories are often uneasy, dark and Twilight-Zone-ish, but always fiercely intelligent. She trusts her readers to perceive what is going on without explaining or spoon-feeding.

In researching her biography, I learned a couple of fascinating things about St. Clair – that she was a lifelong supporter of American Friends Service Committee, and that she lived at Friends House in Santa Rosa in the last years of her life. So it did not surprise me to learn she was indeed a birthright Friend (Quaker), although she became interested in Wicca later in life after researching a novel. She wrote:

“Those who have lived through the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Coventry, Dresden, may be excused for forgetting that love, kindness, compassion, nobility, exist. Yet in man’s animal nature lie not only the roots of his cruelty, viciousness, sadism, but also of his perfectly real goodness and nobility. The potential is always there.”-- Quoted in Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction, by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson


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