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Signs and Portents
Collection. Story list: Afterword (essay); Arrows; Best Interests; Coasting; Depth of Focus; Do Not Forsake Me, O' My Darlin'; End of the Carnival; Fugitive Colors; Ghosts at Iron River; Savoury, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; Space/Time Arabesque.
188 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1984
51 people want to read
About the author
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
259 books477 followersA professional writer for more than forty years, Yarbro has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music. Her first professional writing - in 1961-1962 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to writing stories and hasn't stopped yet.
After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers.
She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories.
In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.
She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can.
Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.
Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order.
Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.
After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers.
She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories.
In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.
She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can.
Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.
Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order.
Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 12, 2020
I'm a huge fan of Yarbro's St. Germain chronicles and so wanted to check out some of her other work. This collection of short horror tales has a range of settings, themes, and topics, from a black-humor dystopia to a Native American murder mystery, but all in all it was disappointing. (The Kirkus review summed it up as "ten well-turned but largely inconsequential tales" and I cannot disagree.) The stories are uneven both in substance and in quality of writing -- the fantasy/SF stories are stronger, the modern-day/real-world ones substantially weaker. A couple of the latter ("Ghosts of Iron River" and "Depth of Focus") literally just sputter to a halt, without any kind of an ending. Several of the stories meander quite a bit and could have used some tightening up. "Space/Time Arabesque" was the most entertaining -- a wacky romp, like reading a history of Earth that's been put through a Mixmaster (to give but one example: Raleigh comes back from the New World not with potatoes and tobacco but with pot). I also liked "Best Interests" (written long before Alexa and Siri!), as well as "Arrows" and the opening tale (classic horror!). As a whole, however, I give it a resounding "Meh."
October 6, 2021
In truth, I got this through Inter-Library Loan simply to read one story - from my "stories to be read" list - that appears here. I do have another compilation of hers to read sometime in the future.
The story was "Depth of Focus" - it's a solid story with no real fantastic element to speak of (my only previous Yarbro short fiction reading has been the occasional dark fantasy or vampire story). In "Depth of Focus" a Weegee-like crime photographer, callous and indifferent to the human suffering he documents, covers a night-long hostage situation and ends up getting a blatant reminder of the barriers that the mediating arts put up between human beings and how easily they can be torn down by a reduction of distance.
As I said, a well-done story with a human heart - that rarest of creatures, a character study and satisfying story wrapped into one narrative. The photographer gets a lot of guff from his work cohorts and superiors, but a few well-chosen lines intimate the reasons he may act the way he does. In the end, it's all about scope and levels of distance. Glad I sought it out.
The story was "Depth of Focus" - it's a solid story with no real fantastic element to speak of (my only previous Yarbro short fiction reading has been the occasional dark fantasy or vampire story). In "Depth of Focus" a Weegee-like crime photographer, callous and indifferent to the human suffering he documents, covers a night-long hostage situation and ends up getting a blatant reminder of the barriers that the mediating arts put up between human beings and how easily they can be torn down by a reduction of distance.
As I said, a well-done story with a human heart - that rarest of creatures, a character study and satisfying story wrapped into one narrative. The photographer gets a lot of guff from his work cohorts and superiors, but a few well-chosen lines intimate the reasons he may act the way he does. In the end, it's all about scope and levels of distance. Glad I sought it out.
May 26, 2013
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro pens real horror stories--the kind that make you squirm in your seat and pause often, putting the book down until you muster the stomach and courage to continue. However, she writes what I call "quiet weirdings"; where tension and fear are derived from subtleties of atmosphere and psychological distress. She is, in my opinion, one of the finest writers of our time. The Scream Press edition is a well-crafted book and the signed edition is slipcased with a satin ribbon bookmark, and can often be picked up used for the price of an inferior quality new book ($25 - $40). Make the investment and you can pass this book onto the next generation-- perhaps by then you will have found the courage to read it twice.
September 26, 2015
Do Not Forsake Me, O' My Darlin' - An executive receives an invitation to his own funeral. This story was quite predictable.
Depth of Focus - A photographer with a flat affect receives his comeuppance.
Space/Time Arabesque - What happens to history when a graduate student tampers with the structure of the universe.
Savoury, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - Hell hath no fury
Depth of Focus - A photographer with a flat affect receives his comeuppance.
Space/Time Arabesque - What happens to history when a graduate student tampers with the structure of the universe.
Savoury, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - Hell hath no fury
November 26, 2021
A sort of random collection of sort-of-horror, or horror-adjacent tales. Nothing special, but not awful either... Fans (like me) will read it because it's Yarbro, others might read it because it's off-beat or unusual.
Some of the stories or moments may haunt you, for a little while.
Some of the stories or moments may haunt you, for a little while.
August 31, 2021
Uneven and sometimes predictable. The bad pieced feel pointless and unfinished. The two or three decent reads provide unusual perspectives.
January 24, 2008
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Signs and Portents (Jove, 1984)
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is a wonderful writer who doesn't mind wallowing in the literary muck now and then; she harbors no illusions that she's too good for, well, anyone. That pretty much assures the uninitiated Yarbro fan (for there are two types of people on Earth, Yarbro fans and those who have not yet been exposed to her work) that any piece of fiction the woman has turned out is going to be a fun time. Signs and Portents is no exception to the rule. It's a book of short stories, and it suffers from one of the deficiencies of almost any book of short stories, inconsistency (only the truly great and the truly awful short story collections are uniform in their quality). However, that is to be expected, and no reader of short stories will fault a colelction for it.
When Yarbro is good, she is very very good, and that's the case here. Her characters jump off the page and into the reader's brain with a minimum of hassle, and they're usually doing something altogether fun, like learning that getting a love potion from a witch ain't all it's cracked up to be ("Savory, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme") or messing with the order of the universe thanks to, well, being an incompetent clod ("Space-Time Arabesque"). There's quite a bit to enjoy here, if you're lucky enough to find a copy. ***
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is a wonderful writer who doesn't mind wallowing in the literary muck now and then; she harbors no illusions that she's too good for, well, anyone. That pretty much assures the uninitiated Yarbro fan (for there are two types of people on Earth, Yarbro fans and those who have not yet been exposed to her work) that any piece of fiction the woman has turned out is going to be a fun time. Signs and Portents is no exception to the rule. It's a book of short stories, and it suffers from one of the deficiencies of almost any book of short stories, inconsistency (only the truly great and the truly awful short story collections are uniform in their quality). However, that is to be expected, and no reader of short stories will fault a colelction for it.
When Yarbro is good, she is very very good, and that's the case here. Her characters jump off the page and into the reader's brain with a minimum of hassle, and they're usually doing something altogether fun, like learning that getting a love potion from a witch ain't all it's cracked up to be ("Savory, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme") or messing with the order of the universe thanks to, well, being an incompetent clod ("Space-Time Arabesque"). There's quite a bit to enjoy here, if you're lucky enough to find a copy. ***
January 3, 2014
This is a diverse collection, and somewhat weaker for it-- her genre pieces are mostly solid, predictable at worst, but the more realistic stories felt more hokey and clumsy with symbolism. Mostly enjoyable, with Fugitive Colors standing out as an excellent and unnerving story.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews