devilinlaw
10/12/2021
The only C.S. Lewis I have read has been the Chronicles of Narnia, and I read those as a child, decades ago now. I decided that I would read this short story collection as it is included in the book Horror: 100 Best Books and subsequent list here on WWE. I was not a fan. Several of the stories here are unfinished, with the alternate timeline/parallel universe title story being fragmented as well. That's not what I had a problem with. What struck me most about the stories in this collection were their seemingly universal disdain for women, or at least women of a certain type. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! Menelaus is disgusted at finding Helen not as beautiful after his long siege of Troy in After Ten Years. The narrator of The Shoddy Lands is momentarily transported into the psyche of an unexpected and unwanted female visitor and is horrified at what he sees. A broken-hearted astronaut is turned to stone by a Medusa-like creature on the moon in Forms of Things Unknown. A group of men go AWOL and steal a rocket to escape a pair of undesirable women on Mars in Ministering Angels. These last two are almost served up as punchlines or exclamation points to end their respective stories. It was honestly a bit much by the end and I was not sad to be done with this thin volume.