One of Ford's best stories of all time irrespective of this collection, things kick off with “Creation”. Fundamentally about the role of parents in their children's upbringing, Ford foregrounds a boy going to catechism and learning the Christian cosmology who. One day he decides to create his own man, of sticks. A tiny tear forming in the reader's eye in the final paragraph, the fact that it feeds into the story's other main themes flips it from maudlin to meaningful. From cosmology to Poe/Lovecraft/Ashton Smith, “Out of the Canyon” is set in the Old West and centers around an isolated well purported to have healing waters. Trouble is, some of the visitors end up the opposite of healed. Ford weaves a tale, but one which lacks drive to bring the story's potential to the surface (no pun intended).
The title story is nicely meta. About a teen girl who assists a popular writer of heroic fantasy churn out commercial copy, things take a turn when the writer hits a wall. Ultimately about Muse, the story offers brilliant, objective commentary on fantasy as commodity and the act of writing, a balance struck between the two.”Far Oasis” is an sf myth sf myth about an exile who uses unnatural selection as a means of purpose. Effortlessly done, it ends up in a place recognizably human despite the exotic, extra-terrestrial setting. “The Woman Who Counts her Breath” is a character vignette about my mother in law—I mean a woman with such nerves she is a control freak. Lacking a true story arc, the piece feels like a sketch for a novel character more than anything.
A fairy tale for adults, “At Reparata” is a tale of a kingdom whose melancholic ruler is in need of a healer. Though the story has elements of kings and castles and the adventure variety, it distinctly pushes buttons more of the ruminative, fatalistic variety. It takes a few pages to get going, but once the healer settles into his work things takes off, ultimately becoming something of a mini-Gormenghast. A Conan-ish collage featuring a sea warrior who meets a goddess in all her forms past, present, and future, “Pansolapi” is an experimental story which is complementarily short—a shot glass full of the Odysseus/Medusa exotic which burns going down but warms the soul as it settles in.
Aliens, gangsters who trade aphrodisiacs shaped like insect turds for hollywood b-movies, humans in exo suits who imbibe narcotics through crotch spigots, those are just some of the elements “Exo-Skeleton Town”. Ford successfully mixes them into a drink of bizarre noir flavor. “The Honeyed Knot” is a pseudo autobiographical story (as so many later Ford stories would be) about a teacher with a student who has a tragic background looking to write fiction. While technically a ghost story, Ford gently guides it to the right side of relevancy.
Ford calls “The Delicate” a surreal fable, and lo and behold this brief little tale of the forces of mortality at work is indeed that. But beyond mode, where the story really sinks a talon into the reader is tone. Difficult to write but effortless to read, the story feels like the waves sprayed up from the prow of a motor boat, one wave peeling over and washing into the next one building, the momentum perpetual. “Malthusian's Zombie” is indeed a zombie story, and one that unravels at a perfect pace and ends on a superb twist. About a professor new in town who meets an new, odd neighbour, in the course of the two getting to know one another over chess a strange story comes to light. “On the Road to new Egypt” features Jesus hitchhiking, the devil with a bag of super skunk, and Jeff Ford driving home on a weekday night. They visit the home of an elderly woman due to be sainted when Madness ensues—as if there wasn’t enough madness already given that combination. The story doesn’t pay itself off as well as one might hope given the choice of characters, it doesn't lack for entertainment.
A proper brain-in-a-vat story cum twilight zone, ““Floating in Lindrethool” tells of a door-to-door salesman with the most peculiar product: a live human brain in a globe. Not an extra hand rather an extra brain, the elevator pitch is that it can help you organize home and life when yourown brain power is being taxed. The trouble for the salesman in the story is that the sample brain he uses oing door to door talks like a human too. At least that is the start of the salesman’s troubles. A story that fans of Jules Verne will get more out of than people who are unfamiliar with the writer, “High Tea with Jules Verne” is, as it presents itself, an interview that puts an eccentric edge to the writer with just a touch of poetry. Less a story, more a homage. Closing the collection is “Bright Morning.” A successful blend of what are seemingly disparate elements, it tells of a man seeking out a lost Kafka story, and in the course of telling manages doppelgangers, literary criticism, memoir, and the coincidental. Wholly slipstream, the reader walks away from it—and the collection as a whole—with a lot to ponder alongside wonderfully, dare I say it, Kafka-esque ideas in their mind.
In the end, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories is more sheer goodness from Ford. Where some writers peter out after their debut or have recommended places to start other than their debut, Ford can be entered anywhere, including here. Thus, if you know Ford and enjoy his writing, there is more to enjoy here. If you don't know Ford but the above sounds interesting, this is as good a place as any to find out what you've likely been missing.
The following are the sixteen stories contained in The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories:
Creation
Out of the Canyon
The Fantasy Writer's Assistant
The Far Oasis
The Woman Who Counts Her Breath
At Reparata
Pansolapia
Exo-Skeleton Town
The Honeyed Knot
Something by the Sea
The Delicate
Malthusian's Zombie
On the Road to New Egypt
Floating in Lindrethool
High Tea with Jules Verne
Bright Morning
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