Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories

"Report to the Men's Club" is a collection of short stories by Carol Emshwiller that spans her career from 1977 to 2002. I was curious about Emshwiller, having come across her name in numerous places; none of the summaries of her novels especially interested me so I decided to discover her via this collection.

There is no theme that connects the stories in this collection but there is discernible similarity in the writing style. The 19 stories, seven of which had not been previously published, cover several different genres - mythic fiction, science fiction, fairy tales/folklore.

"Acceptance Speech," about a woman who is kidnapped by aliens to write poetry, is perhaps the story that falls most clearly into the science fiction genre. "Grandma," a sort of tall tale variant of mythic fiction, is the recounting of a woman's years as a superhero as recalled by her granddaughter. In the folklorish "Creature" a man adopts a monster that isn't quite what it seems to be.

The ideas are imaginative and clever but for whatever reason the stories did not resonate with me. I was never captivated by a story. I never felt the bewitching enchantment of the author's storytelling skill. I never felt the lingering echo of the stories still resounding in my heart days later in the way a truly masterful story tends to do.

"Report to the Men's Club" is a good collection of short stories - solid, respectable, and well written - but for me they were unremarkable and forgettable.