Tag: kit reed

Short Story Review: “Cynosure” by Kit Reed

July 17th, 2024

(Cover by Ed Emshwiller. F&SF, June 1964.)

Who Goes There?

Kit Reed debuted in the late ’50s, actually part of the generation of women to come after that initial wave in F&SF‘s early years; had she been older or started earlier she would’ve fit right in with the first generation of F&SF‘s “housewives.” But Reed’s career would go beyond the ’50s—way beyond. She would keep writing until her death in 2017, and while she would write the occasional novel, she remains more recognized for her short fiction, and while she was not the prolific writer ever, she did consistently stick with the short story, even when market forces would’ve suggested shifting to novels. I’ve read several of Reed’s stories at this point and I would describe the ones I’ve read as “domestic satire,” including today’s story. Reed’s satires of the nuclear family and the emptiness of middle-class suburbia are more playful than vicious, in that I get the sense that while she had a cynical side she also didn’t resent her station in life. “Cynosure” is entertaining and to some extent an effective satire, but I think it could’ve been even better had it been a little less cartoonish and a little more merciless.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the June 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is on the Archive. It has since been reprinted in Marriage and the Family Through Science Fiction (ed. Val Clear, Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander, and Patricia Warrick), The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women (ed. Richard Glyn Jones and A. Susan Williams), and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1964-1968) (editor not credited), along with the Reed collections The Killer Mice and Weird Women, Wired Women. So you have a few options!

Enhancing Image

Norma Thayer is a housewife, although she’s not exactly a wife anymore, her husband having filed for divorce and left her “when there wasn’t even an Other Woman to take the blame.” Now she lives with her ten-year-old daughter Polly Anne, plus a dog and a cat. This is a lot of responsibility for one woman, especially since Norma and her daughter have just moved into a new neighborhood, maybe in the hopes of turning a new leaf. Norma thinks of herself as a dutiful housewife, never mind being a divorcee; she does all the cooking and cleaning, and on top of that she does her best to keep up with the latest suburban fashion and household appliances. Unfortunately her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Brainerd, remains unimpressed. I was actually confused at first as to whether Mrs. Brainerd is supposed to be a human or an android, since futuristic technology is certainly on the table (as we’ll find out) and Mrs. Brainerd is described as “made of steel” in her introductory scene; but after delving more into the story this description is apparently to be taken metaphorically. Mrs. Brainerd is not actually an android, although she does turn out to have a knack for perfectionism that leads one to think of her as robotic. Despite being demanding and unlikable, Mrs. Brainerd stands as everything Norma aspires to be: she’s “small, slender, lipsticked, and perfumed,” and like Norma she tries to keep up with all the latest gizmos and gossip—except unlike Norma she does this perfectly. How is a single woman supposed to compete with this? How can she handle a kid, a dog, and a cat, and keep a house clean? Unless…

If you’ve read some Kit Reed before then you can guess where this is going. Actually the satirical use of future tech reminds me of Robert Sheckley, had he been a bit less of a misogynist. During one of her pets’ messy accidents (“You Know What”) Norma just so happens to find an advertisement in one of her magazines, which is weird because from what I can tell we’re not told what the name of the product is. Is it supposed to be Cynosure? (By the way, a “cynosure” is basically the center of attention. I’m not sure I’d ever heard of it before, and actually going into the story I assumed it’d be some kind of mythological reference. No dice.) The gizmo at the heart of the story has an unassuming, such that it doesn’t register as future tech—except for its function. “It was a box, small and corrugated, and inside, wrapped in excelsior, was a small, lavender enamel-covered machine. A nozzle and hose, also lavender, were attached.” I imagine it looking like a cross between a vacuum and a leaf blower. The idea is that the dingus lathers material in a liquid which renders the material frozen in place, until it’s unfrozen with a counteracting liquid that comes with the package. And yes, such a liquid would also work on living things. This is one of those inventions where I’m not sure how regulations gave it the green light, or how there wouldn’t be a massive recall once the exploits with such a machine would become obvious. Still, let’s not think too hard about that.

I’ve read that even Reed’s SF can come off as almost like fantasy, and I can see why. The scientific—never mind practical—properties of the gizmo are a little dubious. It may as well be magic. Rather than hard-nosed SF “Cynosure” is much more like a tech fable, as well as a snapshot of life for middle-class whites in the mid-’60s, written before John F. Kennedy’s assassination but published after—only to collide with the Beatles arriving in the US. This is a side of American culture in the ’60s that history has all but forgotten about, if only because nobody remembers the conformists, and Norma is very much a conformist. The need for conformity in the suburbs was and continues to be a fruitful well for ambivalent and satirical storytelling, to the point where poking fun at suburban conformity has itself become a cliche. Of course we hate the suburbs—after all, a lot of us were raised there. I sure was. I recognize Norma in people I grew up with, or rather the parents of those people, the parents (the moms especially) who “kept up appearances,” even if they were getting divorced. It’s tempting, when reading Norma’s interactions with Mrs. Brainerd, to project some homoerotic jealousy onto the relationship; but this was probably not intended. Norma probably doesn’t even see Mrs. Brainerd as a potential friend, but as an ideal to strife for, Mrs. Brainerd posing as the perfect conformist. She doesn’t seem to have a life outside of her “job” as a housewife, her attitude being abrasive but in the service of conformity rather than individuality. Mrs. Brainerd is a robot—metaphorically if not literally. Which does make the ending satisfying!

There Be Spoilers Here

Mrs. Brainerd has been visibly disappointed in her visits, but Norma thinks that with the gizmo she can get everything just right for her neighbor. To her credit, she comes pretty close! She even freezes Polly Anne with the stuff so as to keep her in place during the visit—a tactical move that you have to admit is a bit drastic, but don’t worry, she’s not dead. But still Mrs. Brainerd remains unimpressed. Why? The cake the two women are having has got “that greasy feel.” Well tough shit, huh? Norma has one of those moments—perhaps a bit of a mental break—that would, in different circumstances, result a disgruntled office worker paying management an “unexpected visit.” Don’t worry, the gizmo doesn’t kill Mrs. Brainerd either, although I have to wonder what would happen when she’s eventually unfrozen—if she is unfrozen. Does Norma simply leave her like this? I have a few questions. The vengeance in sweet, though, as Norma and her family pile dirt on the frozen Mrs. Brainerd and the dog even “Did It” on her feet, her face contorted in terror and disgust all the while. There’s a snappiness and just enough of a viciousness in Reed’s style that it’s easy to get wrapped up in Norma’s revenge on her neighbor and possibly even see her as heroic, despite Norma being an anti-heroine at best. Humiliating her neighbor is undoubtedly sadistic to some extent, and yet it’s also framed as a liberating act. Had Norma killed Mrs. Brainerd outright it might’ve crossed the threshold in unintended villainy, but because of the reversable effects of the gizmo it’s easy to think of the ending as like something out of a children’s cartoon.

A Step Farther Out

Purely as a comedy it’s effective enough, but I wish it had been darker, more unsparing. It could be because I grew up in the kind of household described here (except my dad is still very much present in my life, if that means anything), but while the ending is satisfying in its way I was hoping (indeed expecting) Reed to go farther than she did. There’s frustration and vengeance, but ultimately it feels like it was all in good fun. Give Joanna Russ or James Tiptree, Jr. this premise and they could’ve given us some of the bleakest SF of the ’60s. Reed is perhaps an undervalued writer, and especially given her long and winding career it’s easy to think she would explore darker avenues elsewhere. Who’s to say she didn’t?

See you next time.
Things Beyond: July 2024

July 1st, 2024
(Cover by Ed Emshwiller. F&SF, March 1965.)

As I’ve said elsewhere, we’re gonna be covering the ’60s in this year-long tribute to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction this month. Picking stories to review for July proved a challenge, but in a good way. Over its 75-year history F&SF has gone through several editors, which is normal, but the ’60s were almost certainly the most tumultuous time in the magazine’s history, for a few reasons. At the beginning of the decade Robert P. Mills was editor, and for the few years he edited F&SF Mills was very capable, arguably even on par with Anthony Boucher; but Mills was an agent and publisher first, and editing wasn’t something he wanted to do as a career. So the torch was passed to Avram Davidson, which sounds like an odd choice with hindsight, but it probably made perfect sense at the time. Davidson was a well-respected writer out of the “new” generation; he was more literary than most of his contemporaries, but he was also… quirkier. For practical reasons more than anything Davidson’s editorship could not last, and so the torch was passed once again, this time to Joseph W. Ferman, with his son Edward assisting him. Joseph lasted about a year before passing the torch to Ed; and this time, by the beginning of 1966, the torch would stay in place, as Ed Ferman would remain editor for the next 25 years. By the last ’60s F&SF had found a new and comfortable niche.

The rapid changing of editors also coincided with a rapid changing of material and reader expectations at this time. The ’60s were the decade of a lot of things: the Vietnam War escalating, racial and socio-economic strife reaching a breaking point, the assassinating of left-leaning public figures, the coming of the hippies. More innocuously it saw the birth of the New Wave, which was spearheaded in the UK by Michael Moorcock and a small army of forward-thinking British writers (although, if it makes you feel better, quite a few important contributors to the New Wave were American), reinventing New Worlds to make it a boundary-pushing powerhouse of a magazine. The US scene was a bit slow to catch up. John W. Campbell and Frederik Pohl lamented the New Wave, but the rascally movement would eventually find a sympathizing magazine in the US with F&SF. Understandably the fiction published in F&SF during this time was a good deal more eclectic than what happened in the ’50s, so it also makes sense the lineup of authors for this month would be a bit eccentric. We have a few of the usual suspects, but we also have… Lin Carter? And Russell Kirk…? We have a New Waver with Brian Aldiss, although the story chosen is decidedly anticipatory of the New Wave rather than part of it. For the most part we have science fiction here, with some horror thrown in; this was not a great time for fantasy in F&SF. Still, I think it’s at least an interesting roster.

Let’s see what’s on our plate.

For the short stories:
1. “The Oldest Soldier” by Fritz Leiber. From the May 1960 issue. He’s baaaaack. Honestly it’s been too long—in fact it’s been exactly a year since we last covered Leiber. Of course in the interim I’ve not refrained from writing about him on a different outlet or two, and can you blame me? This time we have an entry in his Change War series, being one of the first examples of a time war in SF.
2. “Hothouse” by Brian W. Aldiss. From the February 1961 issue. Aldiss has a career that goes shockingly far back for someone who died fairly recently, having debuted in the ’50s and almost overnight becoming a force to be reckoned with. Hothouse is usually considered a novel, but as a series of linked stories it won Aldiss a Hugo. This first entry in the “series” is a much-needed reread for me.
3. “Subcommittee” by Zenna Henderson. From the July 1962 issue. There were quite a few female authors active in the early days of F&SF (more so than other SFF magazines), and one of the most prolific contributors was Henderson. Her fiction often involves families and the experiences of children, and she’s most known for her stories of “The People.” This story, however, is totally standalone.
4. “The Voyage of the ‘Deborah Pratt’” by Miriam Allen deFord. From the April 1963 issue. DeFord has one of the most curious careers of any old-timey SF writer, and in 1963 she was almost certainly the oldest living contributor to F&SF, being in her seventies. Prior to taking up genre writing she wrote for socialist and feminist publications, as well as conducting research for Charles Fort.
5. “Cynosure” by Kit Reed. From the June 1964 issue. Starting in the ’50s and remaining active until her death in 2017 (she lived to be 85), Reed’s work is often quirky, humorous, satirical, but also at times brutal. Her science was never hard, and her disposition makes one think of Shirley Jackson. Both are vicious when it comes to domestic portraits. In other words, Reed was perfect for F&SF.
6. “Uncollected Works” by Lin Carter. From the March 1965 issue. Acclaimed, if also controversial, as an editor, and pretty notorious as a writer, Carter is probably most responsible for reviving interest in pre-Tolkien fantasy in the ’60s and ’70s. He’d been active as a fan since the ’40s, but “Uncollected Works” was his first solo professional story, and it garnered him a Nebula nomination.
7. “Balgrummo’s Hell” by Russell Kirk. From the July 1967 issue. Kirk, at least when he was alive, was known more as a conservative political philosopher, and indeed Christianity is integral to both his fiction and non-fiction. But he was also a surprisingly accomplished writer of supernatural horror, and despite being very much an outsider he did sometimes appear in the pages of F&SF.
8. “They Are Not Robbed” by Richard McKenna. From the January 1968 issue. McKenna gained mainstream recognition with his one novel, The Sand Pebbles, but it seems he used science fiction as a training ground, such that he appeared semi-regularly in the magazines—both before and after his death. McKenna died in 1964, but he apparently had a small trove of stories waiting to be published.
9. “The Movie People” by Robert Bloch. From the October 1969 issue. Bloch is most known for writing Psycho, but his career started much earlier and much more embedded in the Lovecraftian tradition—indeed he and Lovecraft were correspondents when Bloch was a teenager. On top of writing bestsellers Bloch wrote for film and TV, even penning a few (horror-themed) Star Trek episodes.
Won’t you read with me?

Tag: kit reed

Short Story Review: “Cynosure” by Kit Reed

Things Beyond: July 2024