Changes

by Michael Bishop (Editor), Ian Watson (Editor)

Contents:
Fleeing from the baboon / Ian Watson --
Sporting with the child / Barrington J. Bayley --
Wife's story / Ursula K. Le Guin --
Rouge tomato / Michael Bishop --
New me / Thomas M. Disch --
Legacy / Charles Sheffield --
Sisohpromatem / Kit Reed --
Byrds / Michael G. Coney --
Desertion / Clifford D. Simak --
First Christmas tree / Tom Discj --
Dark of the June / Gene Wolfe --
Indian rope trick explained / Rudy Rucker --
Flies by night / Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley --
Day of the wolf / Ian Watson --
Between the dark and the daylight / Algis Budrys --
Once on Aranea / R.A. Lafferty --
Master / Angela Carter --
Apotheosis of Myra / Walter Tevis --
Itihonian factor / Richard Cowper.

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

259 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1983

About the author

Michael Lawson Bishop was an award-winning American writer. Over four decades & thirty books, he created a body of work that stands among the most admired in modern sf & fantasy literature.

Bishop received a bachelor's from the Univ. of Georgia in 1967, going on to complete a master's in English. He taught English at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968-72 & then at the Univ. of Georgia. He also taught a course in science fiction at the US Air Force Academy in 1971. He left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer.

Bishop won the Nebula in 1981 for The Quickening (Best Novelette) & in 1982 for No Enemy But Time (Best Novel). He's also received four Locus Awards & his work has been nominated for numerous Hugos. He & British author Ian Watson collaborated on a novel set in the universe of one of Bishop’s earlier works. He's also written two mystery novels with Paul Di Filippo, under the joint pseudonym Philip Lawson. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Bishop has published more than 125 pieces of short fiction which have been gathered in seven collections. His stories have appeared in Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the Missouri Review, the Indiana Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgia Review, Omni & Interzone.

In addition to fiction, Bishop has published poetry gathered in two collections & won the 1979 Rhysling Award for his poem For the Lady of a Physicist. He's also had essays & reviews published in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Omni Magazine & the NY Review of Science Fiction. A collection of his nonfiction, A Reverie for Mister Ray, was issued in 2005 by PS Publishing. He's written introductions to books by Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Pamela Sargent, Gardner Dozois, Lucius Shepard, Mary Shelley, Andy Duncan, Paul Di Filippo, Bruce Holland Rogers & Rhys Hughes. He's edited six anthologies, including the Locus Award-winning Light Years & Dark & A Cross of Centuries: 25 Imaginative Tales about the Christ, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press shortly before the company closed.

In recent years, Bishop has returned to teaching & is writer-in-residence at LaGrange College located near his home in Pine Mountain, GA. He & his wife, Jeri, have a daughter & two grandchildren. His son, Christopher James Bishop, was one of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre on 4/16/07.

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess this is one of the only reviews of this 1983 anthology edited by stalwarts of the strange writers of SF, Michael Bishop and Ian Watson. While the theme is about transformations, the various tales transcend their own mutability and become odd entries that are not quite horror nor SF, but skewered visions of both. Perhaps post new-wave speculative body horror? Really, this collection left me with some type of odd residue, an obtuse lacquering of the uncanny where science is little more than a 'catch', a gizmo of sorts, to help excel the transmutation and the horrible evolution outside of the lab.

Sporting with the Chid / Barrington J. Bayley -- Bayley is a purveyor the mouth-dropping 'weird'. Here two astronauts hang out with the Chid, humanoid aliens who despite being adept at surgery, seem despondent and lazy at first, but soon show how far advanced their skills are. As they grow a native forest to remind themselves of 'home', we witness brains and other organs live their own lives free of any physical body. A nasty tale of symbiosis, and slime.

Wife's story / Ursula K. Le Guin -- reverse Lycanthropy. A short tale that Ursula seems to have been banged out on a cocktail napkin. Not her finest moment.

Rouge tomato / Michael Bishop -- a planet is formed to feed the invaders... yes, not of rock or stardust, but a sentient giant tomato guided by one mortal Earthly mind. The delivery is where Bishop excels as the insanity of creation is gloriously toyed with. Monty Python takes of Genesis.

New me / Thomas M. Disch -- Disch can do better. We know he dislikes the church but this parable has the subtleties of getting randomly punched on the subway. Read his novel, The Priest, to get his full scathing wit in action.

Legacy / Charles Sheffield -- three giant humans are found in the ocean anchored by behemoth chains. The government gets on the case trying to figure out where they came from. In a world rapidly advancing in biomorphic engineering, where does the secret lie, and which scientist will put all on the line trying to figure it out? Clunky smartass prose, but fascinating in its raw constructions of giants being drowned and murdered. Perhaps the same place where J.G. Ballard's giant in superior The Drowning Giant came from. Sheffield is now on my radar.

Sisohpromatem / Kit Reed -- solid tale of Kafka in reverse that originally appeared in Moorcock's New Worlds.

Byrds / Michael G. Coney -- one by one, family members start believing they are becoming birds. With the aids of jet packs, the disillusioned drop their human wardrobes to become avian monks on the powerlines, roofs and trees. How birdshit transcends form. Coney is quite mad.

Desertion / Clifford D. Simak -- an astronaut and his dog weather a Martian landscape each with a lethal dose of immediate transfiguration drugs. As usual, the purity and earnest care in which Simak writes is a classic of the genre's tenderness. I can see why people don't admire him, but I'm one of his sentimental legion. City and Choice of Gods are fascinating works, classics of SF. BTW, did Simak hate cats?

First Christmas Tree / Tom Disch -- a haiku jack-off. Disch, one of my favorites, wastes a page with irony as memorable as gum on a shoe.

Dark of the June / Gene Wolfe -- Wolfe is so hit or miss with me, but Dark of the June is a fine ghost story blue around the edges with elemental melancholia. Slipstream spirit in the machine as a father tries to find his dissonant and deconstructed daughter.

Indian Rope Trick Explained / Rudy Rucker -- as with Sheffield, this tale made me intrigued by another author I've never read. In this case, Rudy Rucker. Hopeless dad and shitty husband figured out how to time skip (at least by ten seconds), but when he receives a gift of thorns from an African street performer, he figures out how transcend time even quicker. Ridiculously fun. Anything where a character is reduced to paper-thin dimensions is something to applaud.

Flies by night / Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley -- how we can shed the skin at midnight. Perhaps the only empowering story of human turning into a fly.

Day of the Wolf / Ian Watson -- within a recreated fauna of an English forest, in the middle of Africa no less, a game warden seeks out the hirsute hunter who is killing all the genetically-modified wildlife. Great premise.

Between the Dark and the Daylight / Algis Budrys -- obtuse and strange, this tale is about the accelerated evolution of children. Who better else to battle the filthy hippo creatures on the muddy planet? Of course, the children are best seen and not heard. Budrys could have written this into EC Comics, the horror pulpy and the scientific elements even pulpier.

Once on Aranea / R.A. Lafferty -- who doesn't want to become a lord of spiders? I realize there's little in-between with Lafferty. He's definitely a comic but he sets up his madness with some dark threads. What happens when you cocoon a scientist and his dog in a sentient sack of star spew?

Master / Angela Carter --a misanthropic hunter goes deep in the Amazons trying to kill every panther in the jungle. His kidnapped lover is forced into the hunt, only to be her own gateway towards seeing God in utter, grim violence. Nuance is not Angela Carter's middle name, and I love her for that.

Apotheosis of Myra / Walter Tevis -- the planet is the star of this great tale from the author of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Like the planet in Solaris, a sentient planet feeds off the desires of its inhabitants. Here the hallucinatory grass sings, and the multiple moons give little serenade. Throw in a 'kill your rich wife' scenario, and The Apotheosis of Myra becomes a unique tale all its own. James Cain and Stanislaw Lem.

Itihonian Factor / Richard Cowper. A sixteen year old schoolgirl has a spiritual tryst with a woman's ghost. A strange future gothic is tender for all the right reasons.

Truly a unique collection, and sadly, one that slipped through the cracks. Don't pass this one up in the $1 racks.

[Garick Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book when it came out back in 1983, thinking that it would be a collection of werewolf stories. After all, it says "With a werewolf story by Ursula K. Le Guin!" on the front cover. Of course, it isn't really about werewolves. Here is the full title, from the title page: Changes: Stories of Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction about Startling Metamorphoses, Both Psychological and Physical. If that sounds pretentious, it's because it is. As you can imagine, as a teen in 1983 I was quickly disillusioned and set it aside after reading a couple stories.

Fast forward to September 2024, when I found this in a box in my mother's garage. I started reading it again and picked away at it until I had read all the stories by January 2025. So, after about 42 years, I finished this book. (Surely that must be some sort of record?) Ian Watson provides some long-winded introductory material. On the other hand, his story "The Day of the Wolf," which is a rather clever anti-colonial tale crossed with the Red Riding Hood fable, is one of the better stories here. Also quite good is Angela Carter's "Master." I haven't read anything else by her, but I probably will after revisiting this one (hers was one of the stories that I read back in 1983, and the only one that I remembered clearly; it made quite an impression).

As for the rest, we have minor stories by major authors ("The Wife's Story" by Ursula K. Le Guin; "The Apotheosis of Myra" by Walter Tevis). We have the intriguing yet inscrutable ("The Dark of the June" by Gene Wolfe--Wolfe's story later appeared in his massive anthology Endangered Species, along with several sequels or related pieces, which may explain what is going on; "The Tithonian Factor" by Richard Cowper). And we have the damn near unreadable ("Rogue Tomato" by Michael Bishop). Simak's story ("Desertion") is considered a classic, but the remainder do not rise above the mediocre, IMO.

All in all, I think Bishop and Watson were more accomplished writers than editors.

[bookclubbooks]

rtc

[Melbourne Bitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories from Barrington J Bayley, Ursula K LeGuin, Michael Bishop, Thomas M Disch, Charles Sheffield, Kit Reed, Michael G Coney, Clifford D Simak, Gene Wolfe, Rudy Rucker, Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley, Ian Watson, Algis Budrys, R A Lafferty, Angela Carter, Walter Tevis, Richard Cowper with an introduction by Ian Watson.