Artificial Things

by Karen Joy Fowler

An extraordinary collection of short stories from the award-winning author of Sarah Canary. Including "Praxis", the story about a theater where the real and unreal collide; "The Poplar Street Study", Fowler's darkly comic account of an alien invasion; and "The Gates of Ghosts", in which a child journeys to a strange and deadly world, this anthology of 13 tales also features a new foreword by the author.

Contents:
The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things (1985)
The Poplar Street Study (1985)
Face Value (1986)
The Dragon's Head (1986)
The War of the Roses (1985)
Contention (1986)
Recalling Cinderella (1985)
Other Planes (1986)
The Gate of Ghosts (1986)
The Bog People (1986)
Wild Boys: Variations on a Theme (1986)
The View from Venus (1986)
Praxis (1985)

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Collections, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Horror

218 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1986

About the author

Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her most recent novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and was short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Her new novel Booth published in March 2022.

She is the co-founder of the Otherwise Award and the current president of the Clarion Foundation (also known as Clarion San Diego). Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children and seven grandchildren, live in Santa Cruz, California. Fowler also supports a chimp named Caesar who lives at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone.

Reviews

[Debbie Notkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fowler's first short story collection, proving (oddly enough) that she started out as good as she is now. Full of delightful and sometimes upsetting surprises, and finishing with a long story about being a female college student in the late 1960s, which is both autobiographical and fantastical.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Y'know, this is difficult to evaluate. The writing is wonderful: intelligent, graceful, evocative. The concepts are interesting, often intense & moving. But somehow they're not memorable. So minus a star for for that. I've no desire to reread, neither for more enjoyment nor for more of a chance to reach the subtleties. So minus 1/2 a star for that? And though it's not really fair of me, I wanted this to be speculative fiction, and some of the stories are more like horror, & some are more like ordinary general fiction, so I'm gonna take another 1/2 of for that. Sorry. :shrug:

Someday I'm going to reread Fowler's The Sweetheart Season, which turned me onto her. I must say I've not liked anything else by her since. :bemused:

[Pádraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought these were just wonderful. A couple of them are a bit slight, maybe, but the writing's so good it's hard to be bothered by that. I'm full of admiration for Fowler's playing with genre, mashing and weaving, but also a refusal to be contained. Several of these stories were published originally in SFF magazines, and the blurb quotes are from stalwarts of sci-fi (Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepard, and Orson Scott Card), but the stories themselves veer from science-fiction in the traditional sense, with simulations and artificial intelligence and so on, to others, harder to categorise. The presence of the supernatural often becomes less clear, a metaphor, or a story within the story, or both at once, or neither, something shifting and impossible to define.

It's also wonderful to take a cursory glance through Fowler's body of work since this was published, and see that her attitude towards genre categories hasn't changed. Which makes me very excited for the two other works of hers I have on hand: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and What I Didn't See: and Other Stories.

(Added to my 'shakespeare-ish' shelf due to the last story, 'Praxis', featuring simulations performing Romeo and Juliet - though the story's about far more than that)

[Marcella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understand why people are undecided on their feelings of this collection. It's an odd grouping of stories that all seem to start and end in the middle of a larger story. Don't take this to mean any of the stories are connected, but that there 13 longer stories for which each of these 13 short stories is a chapter. So you have to be comfortable with inconclusive endings and being dropped into a story and playing catch up.

And while I am hesitant to make this a feminist critique, I can't help leaving this collection feeling that each of the stories commented in their own way on the female experience. With the exception of a few (I.e., Other Planes, Contention, and the View from Venus, the Bog People), there wasn't an overt dissection of the female experience. But as told through science fiction mostly these stories communicate the complexities of being female. And they are probably more resonant with a 1970's female than present. But I still felt myself strongly identifying with themes and characters that I'm not certain my husband or male friends would have felt. All that said, this collection is enjoyable whether you read it with a feminist gloss or not.

Favorite story - between The Lake of Artificial Things, Face Value, and the View from Venus.

Least favorite - Contention and Wild Boys: Variations on a Theme.

Twilight Zone reminiscent- the Poplar Street Study

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although most of these stories did not have the satisfying 'punchy' ending I like from short stories, they were extremely well conceived. I think a lot of the problem I had with the endings comes from the fact that I'd really like to read more about the people and situations introduced in each of these stories.
I like that almost all of her protagonists are women, which you don't find often in science fiction. There is much unexplored territory in the genre that comes from placing a woman at the head of a story that might even be similar to something one has read before involving a male lead character.
I do have to say that "The View from Venus" is the best short story I have ever read, EVER. I recommend every fan of sci-fi, short stories, or romance get a copy of this book, if only for that story.

[Rin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that this collection of short stories plays with really interesting themes and characters. However, it did not age as well as other collections I've read from the same time.

[Katarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had been on my to-read pile for a while, and I didn't have very high expectations, but to my surprise, it was a wonderful collection of short stories, where each one had a highly intriguing concept and pulled me into a set of circumstances I truly enjoyed exploring. A few of them felt like they ended too soon, but then, that's often the nature of the short story.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some hit or miss endings. Sometimes the stories show an interesting story or thought, sometimes they seem to be leading you to hope the story will have a really out there ending, but they don't really have any closure.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely. Mesmerizing. Thoughtful. All the Karen Joy Fowler.
Some stories feel dated, but that’s not a bad thing… more like a fascinating glimpse into how we’ve changed.

[meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love Karen Joy Fowler's writing and it was really interesting to go back after reading all her novels to this, from 1986, her first published short story collection. She's an excellent short story writer, and she blends speculative fiction with real historical, personal, and sociological insights in the best way. It's very interesting to see the way she was branded early in her career: as a sci-fi writer, even though I'd say she really lightly incorporated elements of the genre. I think in 2020 I would expect to see this compared moreso to Salt Slow or Her Body and Other Parties, vs. the Orson Scott card pullquote on the cover of my edition. I really think she's just criminally underrated as an author, and I'm sad that I'm starting to run out of works by her

[Zackman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all collections, this one has a wide variety in terms of quality.

If you've read Fowler's short stories before, then you will certainly recognize her style. They're not for everyone. They're very cerebral and they contain Fowler's trademark ambiguity. There's also the tendency for many of the stories to just simply stop, rather than come to a particular conclusion.

I've read enough of Fowler's shorts to know that you can train yourself to read her style. If you like 3 of her stories, that will clue you in to whether she's your cup of tea.

My personal favorites in this collection are:
-The Poplar Street Study
-The Dragon’s Head
-The War of the Roses
-Other Planes
-The Gate of Ghosts
-The View from Venus: A Case Study

[Zen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Praxis:

Stumbled across this online as a audiobook.
I have no memory as to what led me to this story but I have a strange feeling it was while perusing reviews of the book "Empress Teresa". Make of that what you will.

I liked the story. It has a huge backstory to it that is left dangling and unexplained. It makes you want for more.

The interesting thing is I am still not really sure if I understand what actually happened in reality... which is essentially the point of the story....I think?

Anyways, it gets 4 stars not because it is a remarkably written story, it's almost a run-of-the-mill sci fi magazine story except...... it makes me think. In a quiet, considered manner. And still I am thinking.....

Interesting that.....

[Margaret Rosen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and didn't realize she wrote fantasy short stories as well! Really liked most of them (a couple were just OK for me.) One of them, set in the Bay Area, refers to the Chronicle, the Question Man and Count Marco and also disses Redwood City in a hilarious way, all of which made me laugh so hard.

[Duncan Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories published as science fiction, which some of them are. Better than I expected.

[Her Royal Orangeness · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not overly impressed with any of the stories in "Artificial Things." The stories are not particularly creative or ingenious, and the writing style is only mediocre. It's not really a bad collection, it's just unremarkable.

[Carol Colfer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so great....weird.