Scott Edelman's Short Stories: The '80s
"Is This a Horror Story?"
Pulphouse
In my introduction to this piece, published in the Fall of 1989, about a couple who find something disturbing hidden in their house, I wrote:
"This story marked a turning point for me, in that it grew out of my disgust with what is traditionally called a horror story. I am tired of the mythic monsters traditionally used (or should I say, the monsters are themselves tired myths from being overused) and this grew out of my search for something new.
"I have been asked a number of times—is this piece fiction? Or is it non-fiction? I always answer that I don't know. I never do."
Pulphouse was an interesting publishing experiment, in that it was a magazine in book form. The reason that this cover isn't entirely legible is because all of the type is embossed in red foil on a pebbled stock. (It looks great on the book itself, though.)
This is my most reprinted story to date, having first been picked to appear in Quick Chills II, a collection of the best short stories of the previous year, and then the 1997 anthology 100 Fiendish Little Frightmares.
"Stealing Alice"
Beyond
"And don't try to follow me or I'll kill this book!"
So began my story in the 1989 issue of Beyond. "Stealing Alice" takes place during a future in which the written word is a thing of the past, and books are people who, rather than being read, tell their tales. But as with any technology, not everyone gets to benefit, and so a man who can't afford to legitimately take out a book instead kidnaps his daughter's favorite story."Stealing Alice" was competently plotted and written, but as I look back on it now, I can see that it was little more than that. It did not stretch my talents, and it did not sing, and in the stories that were to come I was hoping to do both.
"The Wandering Jukebox"
2 AM Magazine
"The Wandering Jukebox" was one of two stories I've written that begin "Once upon a time." (I promise never to do it again.) It tells the tale of the private life of appliances as they dream of a savior, and was published in the Spring 1989 issue of 2 AM magazine.
As I recall, it had a somewhat difficult marketing history. Many of the editors to whom I'd sent it rejected it by telling me that Tom Disch had done something similar with his story "The Brave Little Toaster," acting as if 1) I did not already know that, and 2) that the world could not possibly have room in it for two stories that centered on intelligent electronic devices.
As it turned out, the editor of 2 AM wasn't the only one who appreciated "The Wandering Jukebox," as the story was reprinted in Brian Stableford's anthology Tales of the Wandering Jew.
"Buffalo"
Ice River
Don't confuse my short story, "Buffalo," published in Ice River in the Summer of 1989, with John Kessel's much better 1991 short story, also titled "Buffalo," which won both the Sturgeon and Locus Awards, and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. If you've heard that there's a story out there with that title that you just have to track down and read, it's surely not mine—it's Kessel's.
Now that we have that out of the way, a few words about this "Buffalo."
A man working the midnight to 8:00 shift at an all-night convenience store notices what appears to be an anti-shoplifter, an old man who's apparently sneaking products onto the shelves rather than taking them away. When the narrator begins to use those products and sees positive changes in his life, he comes to believe that the visitor to his store is a time-traveler. But the old man insists that he isn't from the future—he's just from Buffalo. Which turns out to be true? You'll have to read it to find out.
"The Day He Bought His Last Hot Dog at Coney Island"
New Pathways
Two young brothers visit Coney Island, seemingly for a day of fun. But as time passes, a secret is hinted at, and then revealed—the apparent younger brother is actually a clone of the apparent older brother's true deceased older brother. (Make sense? In the story, it does, I hope.) As for the reason why this is happening, and why one sibling has brought the other back to life, the answer when it arrives should be a moving one.
New Pathways's early issues were subtitled, "a magazine of experimental science fiction," but that cover blurb was dropped after the fourth issue, perhaps out of fear that potential readers might flinch, as if they were being asked to eat their vegetables. Nevertheless, it was an important magazine and I miss it.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to reproduce the cover of the Winter 1988/1989 issue here as it originally appeared. It was printed on red dayglo paper, and no matter how much I fool around in Photoshop, it always seems to turn out pink. So this will have to do ...
"The Man Who Would Be Vampire"
Eldritch Tales
Looking back, this short story, published in a 1988 issue of this horror magazine, seemed a holdover of the many comic-book stories I was writing for DC Comics in the same decade. My stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, etc. were short shockers with twist endings, a way for a reader to while away a few minutes. But few of them now seem memorable to me.
An old man forces a vampire to feast upon him, supposedly to be made immortal ... but actually in order to exact revenge in a manner you weren't supposed to see coming.
It seemed like a competent enough piece when I wrote it, but this by-the-numbers sort of story was what I was trying to break away from by writing the story directly above.
"Winken, Treblinka & Nod"
Deathrealm
When a man in a concentration camp is granted three wishes, he uses them in a most unexpected way ...
This may be the only title I've ever come up with that now embarrasses me. A punning title for a story about the Holocaust is bad enough, but for it to be a bad pun makes it even worse. If I ever choose to reprint this story, it will appear under a less offensive title.
The story itself, however, while perhaps offensive to those who think there should be no fiction written about the Holocaust at all because it is too haunting and sensitive an event, still has its appeal to me—though decades later I can certainly see how I might have written it less clumsily.
This story appeared in the Spring of 1988 in the fifth issue of Deathrealm.
"Of Mice and Mr. Mendelson"
Eldritch Tales
A loser has an unhealthy relationship with mice in this story published in the 12th issue of Eldritch Tales back in 1986. The story wasn't that bad, but the title was terrible! It was another one of those punning titles with which I was very taken back in the early years of my career, as I describe below in my comments on "Stirred But Not Slakened."
Back in the '80s, when I was asked to read something spooky at a Halloween party one year, this was the story I chose. It seemed more traditional than the other pieces I had written up until that time, and more likely to work in performance. Also, at the time the story seemed chilling ... though from this distance, it only seems silly.
Two decades can do that even to the best stories. It's the rare ones that hold up to the writer—if one is continuing to improve, that is.
"Namestealer's Journey"
Potboiler
With "Namestealer's Journey," which was published in the Spring/Summer 1985 issue of Potboiler, I came up with a fantasy conceit which I now realize was so unwieldly that there was no logical way it would ever have worked in "reality."
In my created universe, no one gets to learn his own name until he is about to die. The first time they utter it must be to the gods who will let them into heaven, and the tribe shares this information in a complex naming ceremony. When the mother of the protagonist dies without learning her own name—meaning that she will not be able to speak it to the gods—our hero tricks his friends in order to learn his own name so that he can go to the gods himself and lead her to heaven.
Obviously, there are too many ramifications to this naming concept to pass the suspension of disbelief test, but it sure seemed workable at the time ...
"You Ain't Just Whistlin' Dixie"
Fantasy Book
The publication of this story—about a young woman struggling to get by in a world in which singing is illegal—in the March 1985 issue of Fantasy Book disabused me of one of the many false beliefs that writers can have. When I sold the same editor "Guinea Pigs" (see below) a few years earlier, I'd thought, Aha! I've got it now. I understand what the editor wants.
Wrong! "Guinea Pigs" was my 10th submission to Fantasy Book, and even though I thought I'd figured out the secret to the editor's tastes, I had to be rejected nine more times before this story, my 20th submission, was accepted.
And even after this sale, I was rejected nine more times by Fantasy Book. I never got to learn whether history would repeat itself and my 30th submission would be accepted, because the magazine went out of business right after my 29th was rejected. But still, all of those submissions and rejections taught me a valuable lesson—that editors are only rejecting stories, not you.
"The Last Leg"
Night Voyages
What can someone do who longs to learn the taste of human flesh, but is too nice a person to turn cannibal? That's the question I answered in "The Last Leg," published in the 1984 issue of Night Voyages.
Unfortunately, the interior illustration gave away one of the twists of the tale. (Not that I didn't appreciate the artfulness of Larry Dickison's image ... but I just wish it hadn't been on the first page.)
I can remember writing this story on index cards that I would shuffle as I rode the F train in New York to and from my day job, a technique that helped me create many stories and survive many commutes.
When I reprinted this story in my collection These Words Are Haunted, I was later told by my proofreader that it sickened him ... so I knew I was doing my job.
"Deal with the Devil"
Prelude to Fantasy
Every writer has to write a deal-with-the-Devil story sometime, just to get it out of his or her system. I think that it's one of the stepping stones across which all fantasy writers must pass. I just wish that my take on the concept, published in the Summer 1984 issue of Prelude to Fantasy, had been a better one.
"Deal with the Devil" is told in the form of letters between what are apparently two gamers playing out a scenario by mail, one of whom is eventually revealed to be ... well, you know who.
This is another one of my early stories that will likely never be reprinted. It isn't that I wish to disown it, because it served its purpose, and at the time was the best that I could accomplish, but it falls so far short of the way I write now that it's almost by a different person.
"Shoplifters World"
The Magic Aura
I learned two valuable lessons during my marketing of this story about a department-store detective and the strange discovery he makes.
Lesson Number One: Even when you think you've kept a copy of the original manuscript of a story, check again: When I received my contributor's copy of the Winter 1983 issue of The Magic Aura, I was horrified to see that almost every line of the story had been rewritten. And in those pre-computer days, I was even more horrified to discover that I had not saved a photocopy or a carbon, something that I was usually meticulous about. So as far as I'm concerned, my story of this title no longer exists. Don't expect to ever see it reprinted, as I doubt that I could ever reconstitute it from what saw print. Shame on the editor for doing such a heavy-handed edit without my approval, but shame on me for not making sure that whatever an editor might do, my original story would still survive.
Lesson Number Two: Never rewrite to an editor's suggestions unless you fully agree with those suggestions, even if it means passing up a potential sale: In February of 1981, at age 25, I hadn't yet learned enough about the history of the science fiction to know what is now said about the talents of legendary editor Horace Gold—that it was said he could take a mediocre story and turn it into a good story, but that he could also take a great story and turn it into a good story. (He was, as I learned, also the man who wanted to give "Flowers for Algernon" an upbeat ending.) But I didn't know this at the time, so when I received a letter from Gold that began with the magic words, "I'll buy this if you'll ... ," I was thrilled, and proceeded to do (or so I thought) exactly what his specific and very detailed suggestions requested. I even used the replacement title he recommended—"Jake's World."
Well, he bounced the story quickly, as can be seen by the dates on his letters—he originally asked for the rewrite on February 25, and then rejected it on March 10. Perhaps this was because my rewrite was done half-heartedly, without believing in it, but that doesn't explain why he didn't like the new title I'd used, even though it was his title! That made me leery of rewrite requests. From that day forward, I only rewrote when an editor pointed out something that, if I had been a better writer, I would have had the sense to realize would improve the story in the first place.
"Guinea Pigs"
Fantasy Book
This story of a harried commuter who discovers a cage full of what might be guinea pigs—but this being a science-fiction story aren't—came about as result (now it can be told) of learning that the editor of the magazine had a soft spot for stories about animals. I'd discovered this just after I'd heard a perhaps apocryphal anecdote that a writer had once sold a story to Anthony Boucher, an early editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, by combining three of that editor's interests —opera, chess, and cats—in a single story. If such targeting could work in the '50s, I figured—why not the '80s? So I let my mind wander until I found a plot that centered around something furry.
Would the editor have bought a badly written animal-themed story? No. But all editors have their thematic soft spots. This was my first attempt to capitalize on one, and in this case the exercise was successful, and the story appeared in the May 1983 issue.
As a reminder to writers to never give up on a market, no matter how many rejections may have been received—this was the 10th story that I had submitted to Fantasy Book. Editors don't reject writers, just words on a page, and if a writer can come up with the right story, the editor will bite, whatever their history up until then.
"Fifth Dimension"
The Twilight Zone
I had an odd approach to writing back in the early '80s. (Some would say that I still have an odd approach to writing, but we'll talk about that some other time.) Back then, I wanted to make sure that my stories were judged only by the words on the page, and not by the power of my personality. Though I attended science-fiction conventions, I avoided meeting editors face-to-face.
For example, while I was submitting stories to The Twilight Zone magazine and getting positive and friendly responses from editor Ted Klein, we both noted that my day job at the time was only a block or two away from the magazine's editorial offices. But I avoided getting together for lunch. I didn't want him to buy a story because he was biased to like me; I wanted him to buy a story because he liked the story. And so it wasn't until after he bought "Fifth Dimension," later published in the April 1983 issue of The Twilight Zone, that I finally allowed us to meet.
Aspiring writers, do not follow my boneheaded example. I was operating under a false theory. No editor I know has ever bought a story he didn't like just because he liked the writer. The story stands on its own. And while it might not help your story to be friendly with an editor ... it sure doesn't hurt.
The story that won Ted over, written in epistolary form, concerned a battered TV that picked up episodes of the original series that Rod Serling was continuing to film from the famous location referenced in the title. At the time, it was my most highest-profile short-story publication.
"Floater"
Space and Time
While I'm unwilling to guarantee it, I'd certainly be willing to at the very least give great odds that mine was the only story ever published in the almost forty-year history of Space and Time magazine to be adapted for television. Of course, once TV gets done adapting a story, the result can sometimes be unrecognizable, as was the case in this instance, but still—"Floater," from the Winter 1983 issue, was indeed made into an episode of Tales From the Darkside under the title "Fear of Floating." It starred Yeardley Smith, the voice of Bart Simpson, and first aired on May 25, 1986.
The short story as written tells the tale of a man for whom gravity does not work. It had what I felt was a bittersweet ending, sort of like the one in the "Time Enough at Last" episode of The Twilight Zone. (You know, the one with Burgess Meredith as the guy who breaks his glasses.) But by the time Laurel Entertainment got through with its rewriting, there were buckets of blood. Seeing my name on the screen was fun. Seeing what came after ... wasn't.
"Laurel Fixation"
Pulpsmith
Pulpsmith was a very eclectic magazine. It billed itself as publishing fiction and non-fiction that was at "the interface between popular and experimental where the avant garde is entertainment." Whatever that really meant, all I knew was that the editors embraced both literary and genre fiction, reprinting a classic pulp story by Manly Wade Wellman at the same time as they were publishing the winner of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Awards ... so I felt there was room for me in that place between high culture and pop culture.
"Laurel Fixation," which appeared in Pulpsmith's Spring 1983 issue, is the story of a man who is either obsessed with a dryad ... or losing his mind. I left it to the reader to decide which was really occurring.
Eventually, looking at the stories I was writing during this period, it seemed that there were too many written too closely together that were focussed on people disconnected from their mundane lives, operating in a kind of fugue state. While I thought each story, taken individually, was well-written, when considered together I feared that I was getting into a rut. So I did my best to shrug off that sub-genre.
"The Unicorn and the Whore"
Space and Time
People are always writing stories about unicorns and virgins. I thought it would be interesting to invert that relationship.
So in this story, the two characters of the title became a prostitute who wanted to leave that life behind by fleeing into Central Park, and the runaway merry-go-round horse she meets there who dreamed of being a unicorn. Don't worry—it's a playful tale with a happy ending:
"And she was a virgin. And he was a unicorn."
The story appeared in the Winter 1982 issue of Space and Time.
"The Test"
Potboiler
"The Test" was the second story originally written at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop to see print. No other stories produced at that workshop were ever published. I felt that it was more important to use what I had learned to go forward and write new, hopefully better stories rather than to patch up the flawed stories I had produced while there.
"The Test," published in the September 1982 issue of Potboiler, was written in the form of a citizenship test given in the year 2026 to potential Earth immigrants. (And 2026 seems so much closer now than it did when I wrote the piece in 1979.) This humorous story, combined with "Brain Drain" (see below), was what caused Damon Knight to recommend that I stick to comedy.
That was the only advice of his that I did not take.
"Stirred But Not Slakened"
Infinity Cubed
I wrote too many stories with punning titles in the '80s. It's a disease from which I think I've since recovered.
But back then, I would generate ideas by flipping through a dictionary and waiting for random puns to strike me. That's how "Stirred But Not Slakened," which was published in 1982 in the ninth issue of Infinity Cubed, came to be.
I can't remember which word first leapt out at me, "stirred" or "slakened," but one of them brought to mind the old James Bond phrase. And from that pun of a title came an idea for a vampire who rose from the dead but whose hunger could not be satiated. The story opens with the question, "Have you ever seen a fat vampire?" and proceeds to show a bloodsucker with an eating disorder. It was one of the many stories I wrote in the '80s that was merely a House of Mystery or House of Secrets story told without pictures.
That's yet another disease from which I've since recovered.
"The Last Tree Christmas"
Night Voyages
"I just cut down the tree my parents planted the day that I was born." That's how my story in the Fall 1981 issue of Night Voyages begins. It's an end-of-the-world tale, and the inversion of the title is meant literally— the story takes place in a time when Christmas trees, trees in general, are about to become a thing of the past. As I recall, this was one the first few stories I wrote after my return from Clarion. At the time, completing it, I felt that I had finally figured it all out, and that it would be smooth sailing from then on. Little did I know that I would always still be figuring it out. But I imagine that someday I will be repeating something similar to what the artist Hokusai said when he was an old man: "If Heaven had only granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter."
"Brain Drain"
Potboiler
This was the rewrite of a story I wrote while at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop over the summer of 1979. My instructors over the six weeks were Robin Scott Wilson, Algis Budrys, Carol Emshwiller, Thomas Disch, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. Damon, after reading a couple of my lighter stories such as this one, felt that I should write comedic science fiction of the Ron Goulart variety. He somehow felt that my comic-book background would help with that, perhaps not understanding that the word "comic" in "comic book" didn't necessarily mean funny. In any case, that was the sort of thing I was hoping to get away from. Sometimes, people give us the advice that we should stick to our strengths. But I've always felt that we should stick to our weaknesses instead. How else are we ever going to improve, to become more than just one-note writers? I always wanted to write the more difficult stories in order to bring my weaknesses up to the level of my strengths so that I could potentially write anything I could dream up. Sticking to strengths never seemed the way to achieve that. "Brain Drain" appeared in the July 1981 issue of Potboiler, and was the first of three stories I was to publish in that magazine