Friday, July 12, 2013

Forgotten Books: A Cupful of Space -- Mildred Clingerman

The SF magazines I read back in the '50s were mostly filled with stories by men, but a few women were there, too, most often in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  One of them was Mildred Clingerman.  Some of her best stories are collected in this little volume published by Ballantine in 1961.  All but three of them first appeared in F&SF.  Two appeared in Collier's and one in Woman's Home Companion

Notice the line under the book's title.  It's quite misleading, since few of the stories are actually science-fiction.  They're horror and fantasy, mainly, though a couple of them do have science-fictional elements.  This isn't the place to get into a discussion of what SF is, but I'll just mention that in the '50s when I was reading this stuff by the boatload, I made no distinction.  It was all science-fiction to me, no matter what it really might have been.

"First Lesson" is from Collier's, and it's one of those "did it happen or didn't it?" Stories that kind of wants to have it both ways. Not bad, but not the best in the collection.  That honor might go to "The Wild Wood," which is definitely creepy and not as dated as "First Lesson."  It's more horror than anything.  "Letters from Laura," told in epistolary form, is about a trip to Crete.  Not a trip you'd want to take. "The Word" is a short-short that you'll catch onto immediately, but it's kind of cute.  "The Gay Deceiver" is pure horror.  "Stair Trick" is about doorways to another dimension, so that would be science-fiction, I suppose.  Not that it matters.  No matter what you call them, all the stories are well written worth looking at even after all these years.

7 comments:

George said...

Ballantine Books published plenty of great science fiction. This is a wonderful collection that didn't get the attention it deserved. Thanks for remembering it!

Anonymous said...

Ballantine rather ridiculously wanted to label all their fantasy and horror "science fiction" up until about the time their editions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS caught on...since their horror collections and such in the early mid '50s perhaps didn't sell as well as they might've. (The audience for fantasy and horror wasn't as self-conscious as the audience for sf.) Now, of course, TV GUIDE would like you to think of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER as one of the best sf series ever, and TEEN WOLF, as well...at least with LOST IN SPACE, included in the current issue's list as well, they're wrong on only one serious count.

Todd Mason said...

Ballantine rather ridiculously wanted to label all their fantasy and horror "science fiction" up until about the time their editions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS caught on...since their horror collections and such in the early mid '50s perhaps didn't sell as well as they might've. (The audience for fantasy and horror wasn't as self-conscious as the audience for sf.) Now, of course, TV GUIDE would like you to think of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER as one of the best sf series ever, and TEEN WOLF, as well...at least with LOST IN SPACE, included in the current issue's list as well, they're wrong on only one serious count.

Todd Mason said...

Oh, of course, they say "sigh-fie" series at TVG...

Steve Oerkfitz said...

Clingerman, Kit Reed, Margaret St.Clair, Carol Emshwiller, Zenna Henderson Were all writers I remember enjoying as a teenager-mostly publishing in F&SF. There have been recent large collections from Emshwiller and Reed that are worth searching out.

mybillcrider said...

Those are the ones I remember, too.

Anonymous said...

Oh! I love that cover art. I must have a copy of this for my collection. I adore old paperbacks. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.