Orbit 13 Edited by Damon Knight
Only five authors in this anthology are women: Kate Wilhelm, Grania Davis, Sonya Dorman, Doris Piserchia, and Grace Rooney. Between them, they penned six of the 17 stories. Regardless, I read the book from cover to cover, with one exception. Steve Herbst's Creation of a Future World in 'The Tracer' recounted, with commentary, a presumably fictional movie. As I struggle with film at the best of times, reading someone describe a movie to me was tedious to the point of pain. I skipped ahead.
If I had to sum up the short stories of Orbit 13 in a single word, it would be "bleak." I anticipated this based on the cover; crumbling infrastructure isn't traditionally a portent of hope.
There are multiple stories about some malaise of the soul spreading across the country. There are numerous post-apocalyptic stories. There are several stories where the lines between dreams, memories, and fantasies blur--to the protagonist's detriment.
I specifically purchased this book for Doris Piserchia's first piece: Idio. It tells the story of three people with significant intellectual disabilities who are subjected to an army experiment to pool their brainpower. The premise is inherently ableist, but I don't think Piserchia's writing is. The characters are human, sympathetic yet flawed, and nuanced; it's the army's ableism and lack of humanity that is the crux here.
Her second story, Naked and Afraid I Go, tells of a future where—in the famous words of one of Pittsburgh's favorite sons:
Much like in Jurassic Park, life finding a way is somehow a wee bit hopeful while also being terrifying and useful at exposing people at their worst.
I've read Piserchia before, namely The Dimensioneers and The Fluger. The former was unreadable; the latter was a fun "who is the real monster?" bit of pulp. Her two stories in Orbit make me consider her on a completely different level. I'll have to roll the die and keep picking up her novels when I see them.
Kate Wilhelm's The Scream reminds me of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted set in post-apocalyptic Miami.
(For those unfamiliar with those references: imagine a group of folks with plenty of baggage and little reason to trust each other banding together on a shared quest for selfish reasons. Naturally, the setting must also be curious and creepy.)
It's a damn good story, and it genuinely feels like a whole doomed world swirls around the characters. It is also depressing AF and left me wondering what the rest of Wilhelm's work was like. Because with her ideas and writing, I could go for a full-length novel ... so long as it didn't leave me too depressed.
Grania Davis's Young Love is the story of two young idiots in love in a dystopian American nanny-state. It's written in a confusing fictional dialect, like the writing of A Clockwork Orange, and this dialect is important to highlight the "point" of the story. This "point" hits with the appropriate weight, and there's charm in the storytelling, but the obfuscated language makes it a little bit of a chore to read.
Sonya Dorman's Time Bind is one of those stories where dream/fantasy/memories blur, leaving both the protagonist and the reader confused and on edge. It's tough to write a story that's supposed to be confusing; too often, it spins out of control, leaving the reader entirely lost. Time Blind makes me feel like I'm there, with the protagonist, just as baffled as she is why the Time Complex she's dedicated her life to illegally gaining access to isn't producing expected results.
Grace Rooney's Teeth is, imo, a bit hokey. It's common nightmare fuel paired with unexplained science-magic for a quick on-the-nose turn-around.
By my metrics, there were two stand-out stories written by men:
Going West by Edward Bryant is the story of a man aimlessly but obsessively driving West. The conclusion is trash, in my opinion, and somewhat predictable besides, but everything leading up to it is so captivating it doesn't matter.
Coils by John Barfoot is the only true horror story in the bunch. It's a twisty-turny, what is reality, what is dream, what is time, OMG WHAT IS HAPPENING sort of story. I loathe horror in all forms, and yet I'm conflicted. Do I wish I had never read it, or do I want to re-read it to see if I can connect more dots?
I think my official recommendation is thus: do you like fucked up horror shit? Read it. Are you inexplicably drawn to fucked up horror shit even though you hate it? Stay away.
You might think that's obvious.
As a kid, I used to grab religious supernatural horror (the most terrifying of all horror genres if you genuinely believe in demonic possession as a thing that can just, like, happen) and climb a tree deep in the woods where I'd read until dark.
I'm not a wise person.
The back copy claims that there is personal commentary by the authors and editorial correspondence between them and Damon Knight. I love gaining insight into the fiction I've read, and since short stories have even more open questions baked into them, I was eager for the opportunity to dig in.
Except I couldn't. There are short bios of the authors at the back of the book, and that's it.
Since most of the stories have a psychological bend to them, I began to wonder if the lying cover was part of a shtick, a trick to make us feel as crazy as one of the characters in the stories. And I felt a good deal of that as I, for the 8th time, paged through this 13th Orbit looking for that elusive authorial commentary.
All things told, even with the lack of commentary, I'm glad I read Orbit #13. It was interesting to look back at short speculative fiction from the 1970s, especially as short stories don’t tend to be as timeless as novels. I could feel the 1970s on these stories.
The bleakness of the stories, though, didn't leave me hungry for more. I'm not sure if Damon Knight preferred the depressing or if their sheer concentration was a fluke or a sign of the early 1970s. Regardless, when I finished reading, I felt weighed down and was happy to close the book for good.
