Celestial Inventories

by Steve Rasnic Tem

Among the transforming events in these twenty-two genre-bending an office worker and his wife fade into a literal invisibility; a photographer discovers the unexpected in the faces of dead children; a girl moves onto a strange street when she fails to return from trick-or-treating; an artist devotes his career to contracting diseases; a plague of head explosions becomes a new form of terrorism; a couple's aging dismantles reality; and a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper. Steve Rasnic Tem's other works include Deadfall Hotel, Onion Songs, Ugly Behavior, and The Man on the Ceiling. Celestial Inventories may be the World Fantasy Award-winning author's finest collection to date.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction

325 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Steve Rasnic Tem was born in Lee County Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. He is the author of over 350 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (with wife Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, Celestial Inventories, and Onion Songs. An audio collection, Invisible, is also available. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, Daughters, The Man In The Ceiling (with Melanie Tem), and the recent Deadfall Hotel.

Reviews

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

a little too gross for me.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was a mixed bag for me, some stories blowing my mind with their beauty and lyricism and others not grabbing my attention at all. On the whole, however, I would say that those stories that were wonderful outweighed those that were not as much (for me).

My favorite story of the collection was the first, "The World Recalled," which
tells the story of a man's life backwards through a series of surreal vignettes. The man witnesses (or imagines) a tree of keys, a kitchen table that tells very odd time, a ladle for stirring better perspective into the daily news, a colander hat, and other odd objects. "He kept telling his nurse to keep the closet door closed: incremental weather was hiding among his old coats and pants, and he certainly didn't want any of that slipping unnoticed into his room" (from "Closet Weather").

This focus on ordinary objects made strange or wonderful is clear in several of his stories, including "When We Moved On," in which an elderly couple choose to leave behind their home filled with object-bound memories, and the title story, "Celstial Inventory," in which a man closes himself up in an apartment and begins to make an inventory of everything within.

Another theme I found fascinating was the exploration of art and what it means through very dark mediums. In response to world that is virtually disease free, an artist puts his body through the pain and suffering of a variety of diseases as a kind of performance art in "The Disease Artist." Meanwhile, in "Head Explosions," terrorists are causing people's heads to explode, but instead of dying, the people continue to live with grotesquely rearranged heads in floral and other graphic designs, which the narrator takes as a kind of art. And a beautifully mournful explorations of capturing a family's final moment with a lost loved one is presented in "The Bereavement Photographer."

I also enjoyed a couple of the fairy tale Tem presents. "Little Poucet" is a dark noir retelling of a classic tale and it one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read, in all the best ways. In "The Woodcarver's Son" a father's tears fill a house while his wife haunts it, forcing the son goes to a local witch seeking a cure for his father's sorrow.

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

CEILING

“So finally it all came down to this: an old man on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling.”

Exploring its marks as maps of far countries, as I did as a child? Or two ducks in a row? I can empathise with this inventorying old man, well, not too much empathy needed! It’s just an eye opener it has given me that things are thus inventorifiable. A job I need to do before it is too late. The next Tem I have intended to read, appropriately, is The Man on the Ceiling! If I live long enough, that is.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.

[S.J. Townend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refreshingly different. I admit, I didn't enjoy all of these stories, but the ones I did, I loved.

[Jeff Ferry]

Desperately seeking Kafka. A miss for me.

[Gef · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review coming soon.