The Start of the End of It All - Softcover

Emshwiller, Carol

3.88

52 ratings by Goodreads

9781562790028: The Start of the End of It All

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1562790021 ISBN 13: 9781562790028

Publisher: Mercury House, 1991

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Eighteen stories deal with alien worlds, extraterrestrial invaders, crossbreeds, animals, and lonely city-dwellers

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Eighteen short fantastic fictions comprise Emshwiller's third superb collection (Verging on the Pertinent, Joy in our Cause): again, her improvisations include inventive fabulisms and feminist satires, many with a science-fictional spin to them. In the typical title story, whacked-out and laced with dream imagery, aliens approach the narrator: ``It is important and salutary to speak of incomprehensible things.'' They provide her (and other middle-aged divorc‚es) with a ``master plan'' to change the world by eliminating cats from it. One misunderstanding leads to another: ``And now the same old pattern. Another breakup, another identity crisis. It shows I haven't learned a thing.'' This pattern--the fantastic undercut by the commonplace--is used to advantage elsewhere. In ``Looking Down,'' a birdman gets captured. He mates with a mere woman and has a child, then teaches himself and his captors that, though not a god, ``I know ways to make her happy even so.'' In ``Glory, Glory,'' a wife on vacation with her husband is suddenly recognized by the natives as a goddess. The husband is at first amused, then taken aback: ``You're thinking very well of yourself, that's easy to see, but you know you never even finished college.'' The wife likes her new state, however, and finally abandons him. Other stories are less fantastic but remain metaphorically haunting: ``There is no Evil Angel but Love,'' for instance, is the story of an 80-year-old woman who falls in love, wondering why she ``never had a real life like everybody else.'' The ensuing ``affair'' is otherworldly, yet psychologically apt. Emshwiller's fabulisms court a sense of the sacred but cleverly undercut that sense with tongue-in-cheek playfulness. The ensuing deft balance between mystery and skepticism is touching-- and often aesthetically triumphant. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review:

Throughout Carol Emshwiller's bold collection of stories, pop culture conspires with science fiction to create strange and tremendously funny worlds. Fraught with apocalyptic allusions, 7be Start of the End of It All will keep you wide-eyed for the duration, all the while maintaining hilarity and compassion about the human condition. The eco-consciousness of the ominous title story deftly reveals both the seriousness of global decay and the surrealistic levity of the paranoia that is produced by it. From the poignant wordplay on divorce, "...a tearing word. I was divorced in the abdomen and in the chest," to aliens' insistence upon extermination of all cats as vital to reestablishing an ecologically sound planet. "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" is a captivating examination of how "humanity" encompasses a most multifarious group of living objects, caught in an identity struggle between "Normals and Others," naked suits and truth." Emshwiller's collection is a fascinating feminist exploration of both the colloquial and allegorical ramifications of love, sexuality, compassion, and egalitarianism. With The Start of the End of It All, we have discovered an emotional anatomist of the most gifted and unique sort, whose observations are explosive in both their humor and their intelligence. -- From Independent Publisher

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