John Wyndham has long been a favorite writer of mine.  I started on his SF books way back in the 1960s with those classics “Day of the Triffids”, “Midwich Cuckoos” and my personal favorite “The Crysalids”.  But I never came across any short fiction from him until Random House decided to republish a collection which had previously been published as “Jizzle” with this new volume including a novella “Curse of the Burdens” which was originally published in 1927 under the pseudonym John B. Harris.

This volume has 16 stories collected and I found several intriguing, some ho-hum, and some uninteresting.  Overall, I think I’ll continue to rely on his novels.

“A Present from Brunswick” was a delightful little story of an ordinary woman, part of a friendly group of women who got together to make music from time to time.  This woman came into possession of a vintage recorder sent to her by her son who was in Europe.  A very unique recorder which showed its true history when she began to play it…and three thousand shabby little children showed up in town.  Now we know where the Pied Piper’s enchanted children ended up. The problem to be addressed was whether the town felt responsible for accepting three thousand more souls into their town; and what she’d do if they didn’t…

“Chinese Puzzle” had another poor mother receiving a gift from a son in a faraway place – this time, a mysterious egg.  After the egg hatched into a dragon, the son’s parents decided it was their duty to keep it safe until their son returned home.  But it did tend to keep getting bigger.  By the time they had to put it outside in a hutch, the whole village came to look.  But because the local Wales lore had it that the region hosted its own dragon, some felt outraged that a “Chinese” dragon was to be feted so. And although many thought a fight between the two dragons would be quite something to see; no one thought to ask either about their sex or about their loneliness being the only one.  That was a great deal of fun.

There was a cautionary one about pissing off a woman who could make your life hell…for years and years.  Not terribly interesting but a nice closing sentence.

A really nice one was “Confidence Trick”. A subway car of people find themselves at the end of the line, with not an idea of how they missed their stations.  And the end of the line really was the end of the line.  And none of them could account for why they ended up in hell; it couldn’t be because of any of their actions – they were all good people, well…ok people, at least.  But in the manner of most people, they accepted direction and queued up, as instructed; until one of them dared to question the rightness of the situation and simply stated “I don’t believe it”.  The strength of his conviction might have been because he was a physicist but it had the power to turn not only hell on its ear but the upper world, as well.

The one titled “The Wheel” made me think of Shirley Jackson. It was short but expressive.  It was the sort of dystopian story that usually generates sadness in me at the idea that humankind will always find something to blame no matter if the thing deserved it or not.

“Reservation Deferred” was actually a little progressive for the times with an irreverent take on Heaven and a nod to women (not quite feminism) but closed with disappointment for this reader.  Not exactly unexpected for that era but for a moment I thought I’d read something extraordinary.

“Jizzle”, which was the title story of this collection back in 1954 was probably the closest one to horror in this collection. I thought it was pretty well-written, with the best plot. A fellow in his cups buys a talented monkey who draws, to add to his act with a traveling vaudevillian troupe.  She works out well and looks to provide him and his wife a much better income.  Initially, he thinks the monkey’s art is amazing but some of the images start to seem too close to real life.  At first he discounts the implications but it’s obvious to the reader that the monkey has her own agenda.

And then there is “The Curse of the Burdens.”  This novella is actually a sort of cozy mystery which had the potential to be interesting.  But because the author was enamored with the countryside and trying to make all the characters both suspicious and important to the plot; he ended up boring the pants off me.  I kept reading due to the implied promise that there might be a supernatural element but the ending was disappointingly prosaic.

Since Wyndham has a place in my heart forever, I am happy that new readers may discover him.  I’m just not sure that this collection will have the best effect.  Many of the story elements are awfully dated.  I would have preferred to see an omnibus of two or three of his more popular stories.  ~~  Catherine Book

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