My _Daughters of Earth_ collection came today. I actually enjoyed “The Heat Death of the Universe” a lot—and I agree it makes an apt comparison with “Alternate Anxieties”. Actually it resonates well with several of the Interfictions stories in terms of theme and presentation, “Pallas at Noon” in particular. But yeah, it uses the list-style fragmented structure, and doesn’t exactly follow a plot except in some very subtle ways (the development of the ideas, the escalation of the main character’s brief interludes of madness). There’s a difference in that “Heat Death” sticks more evenly to its structure, and that it doesn’t call attention to its structure, IE it’s not doing the metafictional thing quite as actively.

But I don’t think the differences in structure are what make me like “Heat Death” so much more than “Alternate Anxieties”. “Heat Death” heaps together all these cool ideas in ways I haven’t seen: Dadaism, entropy, ontology. It even taught me some interesting new things I did not know about these ideas. I suppose the product of the ideas is similar in both stories, a certain bleakness, a sense of helplessness. But that point is arrived at by very different routes. I would say the feminist interpretation is way more blunt and right out there in “Heat Death”? As it is in “Pallas at Noon”. Not so much in “Anxieties”.

Of course there’s a limit to the extent these two stories can be held up next to each other and compared in a meaningful way, structural similiarities aside. Both are acutely personal stories produced in very different contexts and at very different times.

I suppose I could post the “Alternate Anxieties” review as an archival thing just for completeness. I will think on it.

You should tack it on. I surprised none of the INTERFICTIONS people didn’t notice, let alone the author herself (or maybe she was relieved you overlooked her?).

So yeah, I didn’t even notice this myself until long after I had done all the other reviews and it felt odd to be tacking another one on so long after the fact.

I had trouble with “Alternate Anxieties” because of the fragmented nature of the narrative, and because I wasn’t particularly inspired by the ideas which were one of the few unifying threads. It’s a story written in a deliberately bizarre and experimental way, which is meritous in its ambition, but means somebody is inevitably not going to get it. That was me. It felt incomplete to me, like textbook marginalia rather than a story. Maybe it would have done better if Interfictions had been a zine and they’d had room to actually print it in the margins.

But lots of people other than me seem to have thought this was a great story, including you. So what do I know.

http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/58068.html

And I have to ask: there’s 19 stories in this anthology. Where’s your review of Karen Jordan Allen’s “Alternate Anxieties”?

http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.php?id=interfictions

The guy loves a lot of the stories I explicitly did not, and finds himself bored by some of my favorites, but in the end he comes to the same conclusion: that in all, Interfictions is a damn amazing anthology.

My story, apparently, bored him to tears. Wee!

Luckily, I am blessed with short-term memory loss so probably won’t have your reviews in mind as I read each story. But I am looking forward to coming back to reread your reviews and compare them to my reactions.