Vintage Sci-Fi Trifecta: Tanith Lee

In each Vintage Sci-Fi Trifecta I read three short stories by a classic science fiction author I’ve never read before in order to get a feel for their style.

Tanith Lee is the kind of writer I’ve come across from time to time without ever having read anything by her. In retrospect, I think that’s probably because she mostly wrote fantasy, which is not often my cup of tea. Her career is outstanding though: she was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, nominated for two Nebulas, received 11 nominations – and two wins – for the World Fantasy Award, and was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror, to name just a few! The daughter of two professional dancers, Tanith moved around a lot as a child, but shared a large library with her parents; a library which contained much “weird fiction”, as it was still known in the 1950s. Sharing a love of stories with her parents, Tanith reportedly began writing fiction at the age of nine. After a single year of college she dropped out to hold a number of random jobs before trying her hand as a professional writer. She is credited with nearly 100 novels and over 300 short stories that span genres from fantasy to science fiction to horror. With such a wide span, it was an absolute crapshoot what I was going to get.

Crying in the Rain
Originally published in Other Edens (1987)
Read in The Big Book of Science Fiction

If an author is in The Big Book of Science Fiction (edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer) then I find I can’t go wrong picking the featured tale. (I honestly can’t recommend this collection enough.) Crying in the Rain is a quiet and sad tale that could have been set in the peasant lands of mythical times, but instead takes place in the radiated wasteland of a far future city and its surrounding ghettos. The tale centers on a mother selling her oldest and most attractive daughter to a young man in the city, and is told from the perspective of the daughter relating the story to a friend. There is no overt moral judgment here, which is the most upsetting aspect of the story. The world is harsh, life is short (a mere 30 years if you’re lucky and don’t get “canced” by the radiation), and selling your daughter to a good man is the best way to care for your remaining children. That prospect is no idle promise, as the man in question does care not only for the narrator’s siblings but for her dying mother as well. Her life is happy and she in contented as a result of being sold to this man, who showers her with gifts and affection for the first time in her life. This is a truly haunting story that will be with me for some time.

The Sombrus Tower
Originally published in Weird Tales #2 (1980)
Read in Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies (1988)

This reads as a King Arthur style fantasy that I could easily imagine coming across in a contemporary issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. A number of noble knights are given ominous forecasts by a witch, and all go out to either confront, or avoid, their destiny. Our protagonist is one of the few who decide to confront his fate, seeking out the “Sombrus Tower” where he is to meet his doom. Excellent macabre creatures and tortured souls meet him along his journey to the tower, and these encounters carry the story from one scene to the next. In the end, the poetic nature of the tale is realized as our protagonist finds himself torn between his original “brave” quest to meet his destiny, and the sense that going in search of death maybe isn’t such a smart idea. The ending is worthy of any psychological horror story, and I won’t spoil it. This was a fun short piece of dark fantasy that I’d recommend to fans of the genre.

The Pandora Heart
Originally published in Don’t Open This Book! (1998)
Read in same

I was skeptical of this story as soon as I started reading it, as it was introduced with a comment that it was commissioned especially for the obscure anthology I was reading it in. That isn’t to say that I haven’t read lots of great stories in original anthologies, it’s just that I’ve not come across many outstanding stories commissioned for themed anthologies. I find that the best stories come from a writer pursuing their idea, rather than handing a writer an idea to pound a story around. This tale is a retelling of the Pandora myth with a few clever twists and turns, but largely it felt like an “unwanted princess in a castle” cookie cutter story meant to fit a theme. Combined with my ambivalence toward fantasy (especially fairy tale fantasy), this one was hard for me to get through.
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If an author has published two or three dozen short stories, then you can grab a few and get an idea what they’re doing. When an author has written 300 short stories across multiple genres it is hard to get a handle on almost anything of their style by only reading three stories. I’ve probably read more Isaac Asimov than I have any other author, including stories he wrote across genres, and I can only imagine that for the one Tanith Lee story that I didn’t like there must be a dozen that I’d adore. For that reason I’ll hunt down more of her stories, and likely a few of her books, though I’ll probably focus on science fiction as a rule. That being said, I would recommend Tanith Lee’s works to fans of the fantasy and fairy tale genres.