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Consider Her Ways
The six stories in Consider Her Ways: And Others, the second collecton of John Wyndham's short tales, continue his exploration of the science fiction staple - what if? In the title story we are introduced to a world where all the men have been killed by a virus and women continue to survive in a strict caste system - bottom of the heap are the mothers. In others we meet the man who accidentally summons a devil and then has to find a way of getting rid of him without losing his immortal soul, as well as the woman who, thanks to an experiment in time, discovers why her lover abandoned her. 'Wyndham writes strongly and has a gift for bizarre plots' Guardian 'One of the few authors whose compulsive readability is a compliment to the intelligence' Spectator John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'. As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge, Consider Her Ways and Others, Web and Chocky. John Wyndham died in March 1969.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1961
About the author
John Wyndham
382 books2,041 followersJohn Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was the son of a barrister. After trying a number of careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, he started writing short stories in 1925. After serving in the civil Service and the Army during the war, he went back to writing. Adopting the name John Wyndham, he started writing a form of science fiction that he called 'logical fantasy'. As well as The Day of the Triffids, he wrote The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) and The Seeds of Time.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
July 12, 2020
“Most things are possible: whether they are desirable, or worth doing, is a different matter.”
This is a 1961 collection of short(ish) stories, all but one of which (Peggy MacRafferty) involve glitches, twists, and jumps in time, place, or timelines.
It’s 2020 - where are the time travellers?
It’s only July, but 2020 is already a dramatically memorable year around the world, for multiple dreadful reasons.
Record-breaking wildfires in Australia and the Amazon, Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest (though protesting against police brutality targeting people of colour is a good cause), record-breaking Arctic heat (38 Celsius = 100.4 F in Verkhoyansk), recession, trade wars, ebola in the DRC, locusts in Kenya, and bubonic plague in Mongolia. Plus hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wars, and refugees.
Still to come: an especially bitter US presidential election, and the upheaval of the end of the UK’s Brexit transition period. Plus North Korea is emboldened and who knows if this year's natural disasters will be worse than usual?
If time travel were possible, shouldn’t someone have come to “fix” 2020?
* Maybe they did, and this is the least bad version?!
* Or perhaps their adjustments accidentally made things worse? (The “murder hornets” might have given immunity to Covid and so saved the economy as well?)
* Maybe they’re avoiding the year like the plague we’re not avoiding?
* Or perhaps they fixed one version of 2020, but we’re on the dead/dying-end they didn’t fix?
Image: I just hope that when time travellers or aliens visit, they take me back with them!
Style and themes
I’ve read this collection at least twice before, but long enough ago to have forgotten all the details. There’s more humour than I remembered (especially The Long Spoon, and Peggy) and some had a strong strand of female empowerment and criticism of patriarchy (Consider Her Ways, and Peggy).
There’s little scientific explanation beyond vaguely-described experiments gone wrong. Instead, they’re about how people react when they suddenly find themselves somewhere/when impossible. Are they dreaming, dead, or mad? Realisation comes from mirrors, news, newspapers, and unfamiliar variants of familiar objects (fashion, transport, brands, prices). The only minor fault is that some are rather unsubtle in the framing or exposition: questions from a lawyer, a personal meeting with a historian, a tour of a new place.
Reviews of individual stories - no spoilers
Consider Her Ways, 5*
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." - Proverbs 6:6-8.
“Who am I? Who are you? What’s happened to me?”
How terrifying to have to ask. Not to know your own name or hair colour. To be in a place that looks somehow wrong. To look down and see a grossly distorted body that you know can’t be yours.
But the narrator is pragmatic and decides “to take an intelligent interest… [it] must be chockful of symbolic content”. She is in a supposedly a feminist utopia: a reaction against the mid 20th century obsession with romance and consumerism, where “everything had to have a ‘feminine’ angle”, finding a husband was paramount, “housewife” was reinvented as a profession, and kitchens were places of pride, glamour, and extravagance.
But Jane, “a thought-child of [her] time”, thinks it a horrifically wrong solution. While there, she’s not going to conform quietly. Most of all, she wants to escape to her own time and prevent this future happening. Can she change the past to change the future?
Odd, 3*
A man inherits valuable shares in a plastics company for helping a man he encountered only once, by chance. The lawyer disbursing the estate is intrigued. It’s very short and perfectly adequate, but nothing special or original.
Oh Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? 3*
A satire on the superficiality of stardom, and unrealistic beauty standards: the pressure for women to look, speak, dress, and behave in whatever is the current, ephemeral fashion. A single timeline, set roundabout now/then.
I liked the message, but didn’t warm to the characters, and there was too much movie mogul talk used as filler. I was also discombobulated by a film director called George Floyd (only a couple of weeks after a man of the same name was murdered by a cop kneeling on his neck for more than 8 minutes, triggering protests around the world), and the potential starlet's amanuensis being called Mrs Trump!
Image: “I’m Spartacus. No, I’m Spartacus.” (This collection was published the year after Spartacus came out, so any similarities are probably coincidence.)
Stitch in Time, 4*
“Butterflies were visiting… though in a dilettante, unairworthy-looking way.”
A delightful, wistful story of an old lady, living in part of the home she grew up in. She realises “she had become a stranger in another people’s world” and remembers sitting in the same spot, waiting for her first love to turn up, when she expected him to propose. She is still distressed by not knowing what happened. She nods off, and finds an answer. Maybe she’s dead, maybe it’s a dream, or maybe it’s something to do with her son’s physics experiments.
“If these things are written, they do sometimes seem to be written in a very queerly distorted way.”
Random Quest, 4*
A love story, told like a detective story, with a time twist, that raises existential questions, all crammed into 40 pages.
Colin Trafford is trying to trace a woman who may never have existed. His enquiries to those who share Ottilie’s unusual surname lead him to a retired doctor, who has made his own enquiries about Colin, and remains puzzled. Cue Colin to explain his quest, which arises from his inadvertent three weeks in another timeline.
“Some pivotal thing had happened, or failed to happen… Once that had taken place, consequences gradually accumulating would make the conditions on one plane progressively different from those on the other… Perhaps… infinite planes of the random split and re-split.”
The details of the differences are nicely revealed: trivial ones, like fashions, and huge ones, like historic events and their consequences.
To what extent is the “you” in another timeline really “you”, when your experiences have diverged and changed your circumstances and apparent character?
“It’s like continually glimpsing oneself in unexpected distorting mirrors.”
Could you successfully slip into the other one’s life, a life where you don’t even know the usual terms of endearment for your own wife? Would you want to?
Don’t focus on the sci of this sci-fi. It’s a fascinating fiction, well told, so relish the tangled questions it raises.
A Long Spoon, 4*
Image: Spoon with head of Chamberlain and the 14th century proverb, “Who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.”, which he quoted on 13 May 1898 about the threat of Russia. (Source.)
How many under 40s will understand the opening sentence?
“If I lace up the tape this way round I can hear myself talking backwards!”
Scare stories of playing rock music backwards and hearing satanic messages really only started in the late 1960s, so Wyndham was ahead of the game.
No matter. This is a clever twist on the traditional Faustian pact, updated to allow for the fact that nowadays, sudden money or titles are hard to explain, and with an extra twist.
Quotes
* “The sun was shining with a bright benignity upon the most precise countryside.”
* “I don’t see why, even in an hallucination, I’m expected to be an illiterate moron.”
* “It’s curious how real the figments of a dream can seem when one is taken unaware by them.”
* “It’s like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong.”
* “It’s all different - no, sort of half-different.”
* “It was not a dream - everything was too textured, too solid… Too sensible, too.”
Wyndham for women
“There are other things in life besides having babies.”
When I reread Midwich Cuckoos (see my review HERE), I was shocked that a story rooted in the violation of women pays scant attention to the likely depth of their trauma. And Chocky (see my review HERE), largely sidelines the female characters as decorative and domestic.
This collection was a welcome and deserved redemption.
“It must be a very strange experience to be owned… ruled by a husband.”
His only error was to assume that in a world without men there would be no romantic love or recreational sex.
I need to reread Trouble with Lichen to complete the process.
Image: xkcd Time Machine, mouseover says "We never see any time travelers because they all discover it's a huge mistake." (Source.)
Time-travel tip: Gather specific dates, as well as more general information!
This is a 1961 collection of short(ish) stories, all but one of which (Peggy MacRafferty) involve glitches, twists, and jumps in time, place, or timelines.
It’s 2020 - where are the time travellers?
It’s only July, but 2020 is already a dramatically memorable year around the world, for multiple dreadful reasons.
Record-breaking wildfires in Australia and the Amazon, Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest (though protesting against police brutality targeting people of colour is a good cause), record-breaking Arctic heat (38 Celsius = 100.4 F in Verkhoyansk), recession, trade wars, ebola in the DRC, locusts in Kenya, and bubonic plague in Mongolia. Plus hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wars, and refugees.
Still to come: an especially bitter US presidential election, and the upheaval of the end of the UK’s Brexit transition period. Plus North Korea is emboldened and who knows if this year's natural disasters will be worse than usual?
If time travel were possible, shouldn’t someone have come to “fix” 2020?
* Maybe they did, and this is the least bad version?!
* Or perhaps their adjustments accidentally made things worse? (The “murder hornets” might have given immunity to Covid and so saved the economy as well?)
* Maybe they’re avoiding the year like the plague we’re not avoiding?
* Or perhaps they fixed one version of 2020, but we’re on the dead/dying-end they didn’t fix?
Image: I just hope that when time travellers or aliens visit, they take me back with them!
Style and themes
I’ve read this collection at least twice before, but long enough ago to have forgotten all the details. There’s more humour than I remembered (especially The Long Spoon, and Peggy) and some had a strong strand of female empowerment and criticism of patriarchy (Consider Her Ways, and Peggy).
There’s little scientific explanation beyond vaguely-described experiments gone wrong. Instead, they’re about how people react when they suddenly find themselves somewhere/when impossible. Are they dreaming, dead, or mad? Realisation comes from mirrors, news, newspapers, and unfamiliar variants of familiar objects (fashion, transport, brands, prices). The only minor fault is that some are rather unsubtle in the framing or exposition: questions from a lawyer, a personal meeting with a historian, a tour of a new place.
Reviews of individual stories - no spoilers
Consider Her Ways, 5*
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." - Proverbs 6:6-8.
“Who am I? Who are you? What’s happened to me?”
How terrifying to have to ask. Not to know your own name or hair colour. To be in a place that looks somehow wrong. To look down and see a grossly distorted body that you know can’t be yours.
But the narrator is pragmatic and decides “to take an intelligent interest… [it] must be chockful of symbolic content”. She is in a supposedly a feminist utopia: a reaction against the mid 20th century obsession with romance and consumerism, where “everything had to have a ‘feminine’ angle”, finding a husband was paramount, “housewife” was reinvented as a profession, and kitchens were places of pride, glamour, and extravagance.
But Jane, “a thought-child of [her] time”, thinks it a horrifically wrong solution. While there, she’s not going to conform quietly. Most of all, she wants to escape to her own time and prevent this future happening. Can she change the past to change the future?
Odd, 3*
A man inherits valuable shares in a plastics company for helping a man he encountered only once, by chance. The lawyer disbursing the estate is intrigued. It’s very short and perfectly adequate, but nothing special or original.
Oh Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? 3*
A satire on the superficiality of stardom, and unrealistic beauty standards: the pressure for women to look, speak, dress, and behave in whatever is the current, ephemeral fashion. A single timeline, set roundabout now/then.
I liked the message, but didn’t warm to the characters, and there was too much movie mogul talk used as filler. I was also discombobulated by a film director called George Floyd (only a couple of weeks after a man of the same name was murdered by a cop kneeling on his neck for more than 8 minutes, triggering protests around the world), and the potential starlet's amanuensis being called Mrs Trump!
Image: “I’m Spartacus. No, I’m Spartacus.” (This collection was published the year after Spartacus came out, so any similarities are probably coincidence.)
Stitch in Time, 4*
“Butterflies were visiting… though in a dilettante, unairworthy-looking way.”
A delightful, wistful story of an old lady, living in part of the home she grew up in. She realises “she had become a stranger in another people’s world” and remembers sitting in the same spot, waiting for her first love to turn up, when she expected him to propose. She is still distressed by not knowing what happened. She nods off, and finds an answer. Maybe she’s dead, maybe it’s a dream, or maybe it’s something to do with her son’s physics experiments.
“If these things are written, they do sometimes seem to be written in a very queerly distorted way.”
Random Quest, 4*
A love story, told like a detective story, with a time twist, that raises existential questions, all crammed into 40 pages.
Colin Trafford is trying to trace a woman who may never have existed. His enquiries to those who share Ottilie’s unusual surname lead him to a retired doctor, who has made his own enquiries about Colin, and remains puzzled. Cue Colin to explain his quest, which arises from his inadvertent three weeks in another timeline.
“Some pivotal thing had happened, or failed to happen… Once that had taken place, consequences gradually accumulating would make the conditions on one plane progressively different from those on the other… Perhaps… infinite planes of the random split and re-split.”
The details of the differences are nicely revealed: trivial ones, like fashions, and huge ones, like historic events and their consequences.
To what extent is the “you” in another timeline really “you”, when your experiences have diverged and changed your circumstances and apparent character?
“It’s like continually glimpsing oneself in unexpected distorting mirrors.”
Could you successfully slip into the other one’s life, a life where you don’t even know the usual terms of endearment for your own wife? Would you want to?
Don’t focus on the sci of this sci-fi. It’s a fascinating fiction, well told, so relish the tangled questions it raises.
A Long Spoon, 4*
Image: Spoon with head of Chamberlain and the 14th century proverb, “Who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.”, which he quoted on 13 May 1898 about the threat of Russia. (Source.)
How many under 40s will understand the opening sentence?
“If I lace up the tape this way round I can hear myself talking backwards!”
Scare stories of playing rock music backwards and hearing satanic messages really only started in the late 1960s, so Wyndham was ahead of the game.
No matter. This is a clever twist on the traditional Faustian pact, updated to allow for the fact that nowadays, sudden money or titles are hard to explain, and with an extra twist.
Quotes
* “The sun was shining with a bright benignity upon the most precise countryside.”
* “I don’t see why, even in an hallucination, I’m expected to be an illiterate moron.”
* “It’s curious how real the figments of a dream can seem when one is taken unaware by them.”
* “It’s like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong.”
* “It’s all different - no, sort of half-different.”
* “It was not a dream - everything was too textured, too solid… Too sensible, too.”
Wyndham for women
“There are other things in life besides having babies.”
When I reread Midwich Cuckoos (see my review HERE), I was shocked that a story rooted in the violation of women pays scant attention to the likely depth of their trauma. And Chocky (see my review HERE), largely sidelines the female characters as decorative and domestic.
This collection was a welcome and deserved redemption.
“It must be a very strange experience to be owned… ruled by a husband.”
His only error was to assume that in a world without men there would be no romantic love or recreational sex.
I need to reread Trouble with Lichen to complete the process.
Image: xkcd Time Machine, mouseover says "We never see any time travelers because they all discover it's a huge mistake." (Source.)
Time-travel tip: Gather specific dates, as well as more general information!
December 18, 2025
“What on earth would a mother want with knowing how to read?”
CONSIDER HER WAYS is a low key but utterly charming collection of short stories based on time travel or alternative realities based on what modern readers might call the multiverse theory. These clever stories are a wonderful combination of Clifford D Simak’s warm, understated pastoral style and Isaac Asimov’s story-telling abilities (often exhibited with his tongue firmly planted deep in his cheek). The golden age of classic sci-fi was a glorious gift to literature indeed!
Fans of THE HANDMAID’S TALE or Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s HERLAND will enjoy the rather dystopian feminism on display in the titular short story CONSIDER HER WAYS. Those who raise their eyebrows with a wry, amused grin and a nod of appreciation for the twist ending so effectively on display in analogies like Jeffrey Archer’s A TWIST IN THE TALE will appreciate STITCH IN TIME. And for the simple bemusement afforded by the consideration of paradoxes arising from time travel, ODD will serve as a pleasant diversion for all fans of the genre.
Virtually anyone who has dipped a toe into the riches of the sci-fi genre will be familiar with John Wyndham’s best known works, THE CHRYSALIDS, or THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS,, and to a slightly lesser extent THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, filmed as THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. If those titles fell into your reading wheelhouse of enjoyment, then do yourself a favour and look for a copy of CONSIDER HER WAYS AND OTHERS. You’re not likely to find it in today’s modern bookstore but if you’re in the vicinity of a good quality second hand book store that stocks a decent sci-fi collection, keep your eyes open for a copy.
Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
CONSIDER HER WAYS is a low key but utterly charming collection of short stories based on time travel or alternative realities based on what modern readers might call the multiverse theory. These clever stories are a wonderful combination of Clifford D Simak’s warm, understated pastoral style and Isaac Asimov’s story-telling abilities (often exhibited with his tongue firmly planted deep in his cheek). The golden age of classic sci-fi was a glorious gift to literature indeed!
Fans of THE HANDMAID’S TALE or Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s HERLAND will enjoy the rather dystopian feminism on display in the titular short story CONSIDER HER WAYS. Those who raise their eyebrows with a wry, amused grin and a nod of appreciation for the twist ending so effectively on display in analogies like Jeffrey Archer’s A TWIST IN THE TALE will appreciate STITCH IN TIME. And for the simple bemusement afforded by the consideration of paradoxes arising from time travel, ODD will serve as a pleasant diversion for all fans of the genre.
Virtually anyone who has dipped a toe into the riches of the sci-fi genre will be familiar with John Wyndham’s best known works, THE CHRYSALIDS, or THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS,, and to a slightly lesser extent THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, filmed as THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. If those titles fell into your reading wheelhouse of enjoyment, then do yourself a favour and look for a copy of CONSIDER HER WAYS AND OTHERS. You’re not likely to find it in today’s modern bookstore but if you’re in the vicinity of a good quality second hand book store that stocks a decent sci-fi collection, keep your eyes open for a copy.
Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
July 11, 2020
Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways!
- Proverbs 6:6
I am disappointed that I can't find it anywhere, but the Handlesmann Freaky Fables version is very fine. The Sluggard's mom sternly tells him to consider the ant's ways, and he spends several panels doing so, among other things thinking about how ant "ways" sometimes end up in circular paths that ants follow until they drop dead of exhaustion, how worker ants are not biologically equipped to enjoy sex, how ants have been observed to sell their young to get drunk on fermented beetle juice, and how wehs is German for "It hurts". Finally, he meets a polite anteater who wonders where the nearest anthill might be. The Sluggard's mom returns at the end and asks how the ant was.
"Oh," yawns the Sluggard. "Not too bad, considering."
Moral: consider the slug
- Proverbs 6:6
I am disappointed that I can't find it anywhere, but the Handlesmann Freaky Fables version is very fine. The Sluggard's mom sternly tells him to consider the ant's ways, and he spends several panels doing so, among other things thinking about how ant "ways" sometimes end up in circular paths that ants follow until they drop dead of exhaustion, how worker ants are not biologically equipped to enjoy sex, how ants have been observed to sell their young to get drunk on fermented beetle juice, and how wehs is German for "It hurts". Finally, he meets a polite anteater who wonders where the nearest anthill might be. The Sluggard's mom returns at the end and asks how the ant was.
"Oh," yawns the Sluggard. "Not too bad, considering."
Moral: consider the slug
November 23, 2020
Gee, these are good, and worthy of a five star rating. Wyndham was a great short story writer, and these show him at his best.
August 20, 2020
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise...
This is the quotation from Proverbs on which the book's title is based. It's the author's way of suggesting, I suspect, that authoritarian societies, although sometimes admirable in their discipline and productivity, tend to turn human beings into unthinking social insects.
I last read this almost a lifetime ago. But the idea of it had stuck with me - if not the detail - so I thought I'd revisit it. I'm a big fan of the novella form. I read almost all of Wyndham's fiction as a teenager but this book and Chocky, also a novella, made the biggest impression upon me. It's packaged here as Consider Her Ways and Others, bundled with five further stories of varying length. I found I remembered nothing about these others. Random Quest is the most substantial of them.
As with Chocky, while the conceit and the detailing might hold up quite well, the prose and dialogue are sometimes decidedly starchy, making it feel very dated. As with so many books in this vein, there are blocks of text where someone - in this case, the elderly historian - explains the new society to the narrator. No-one ever talks in this instantly articulate and erudite way in real life, and certainly not without being interrupted at some point. I got the feeling we were supposed to be experiencing Jane's indignation as her/our world is being trashed. Nevertheless, to be fair to Wyndham, he gives the old girl some pretty decent arguments, like this one, telling our narrator, Jane, about her privileged position:
You were never openly bought and sold, like livestock; you never had to sell yourself to the first-comer in order to live; you did not happen to be one of the women who through the centuries have screamed in agony and suffered and died under invaders in a sacked city - nor were you ever flung into a pit of fire to be saved from them; you were never compelled to suttee upon your dead husband's pyre; you did not have to spend your whole life imprisoned in a harem; you were never part of the cargo of a slave-ship...
Jane's husband was a test pilot, killed in an air accident, just as he was about to hang up his wings. Well, that's not dashing or romantic, is it? Lots of women are married to test pilots. Well, I suppose some of them might have been in England in 1956 when a sleek and shiny new aircraft design seemed to take off every other week. It fits in with the general thrust of the tale, though, that romance and disorder are preferable to the dreariness of order imposed from above.
All the men have died - how convenient if you wish to write a piece of speculative fiction about a parthenogenically-sustained female-only society. Is it utopian or dystopian? Moot point. Wyndham tends to suggest the latter since to maintain itself the society needs to be autocratic. I can't imagine Joanna Russ being enamoured with Wyndham's tale. Andy Partridge, who has opined that the world should consist of only women - and him - might enjoy Wyndham's vision. Here's one of his arguments: Church of Women.
Ah but the idea... Despite its limitations, I see all sorts of connections here. It's no surprise to me that Margaret Atwood introduced the recent NYRB edition of Chocky and is a fan of his fiction. Consider Her Ways looks to have had a big influence on Atwood's infinitely more famous dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. The flipping between worlds put me distinctly in mind of Cortazar's brilliant tale, The Night Face Up (any similarity is presumably coincidental). The alliance between authoritarianism and eugenics lies at the heart of Wyndham's Herland. In that sense, there's a direct debt to Huxley's Brave New World in the genetically-modified social classes with their graded intellects and petty divisions. But Wyndham had also lived through times in which this noxious combination had been put into operation, not just in Nazi Germany but in social democratic Sweden too. I even saw shades here of Never Let Me Go. Clearly, it's much less writerly than any of these works, but it remains influential, I suspect.
Reading the book in these plague-haunted days, the extract below was a little disturbing (think about some of the conspiracy theories that have been doing the rounds). Look out, gentlemen!
It is still an open question whether the successful virus mutated again, or whether one of his earlier experimental viruses was accidentally "liberated" by carrier-rats, but that's academic. The important thing is that somehow a strain capable of attacking human beings got loose, and that it was widely disseminated before it was traced - also, that once it was free, it spread with devastating speed; too fast for any effective steps to be taken to check it.
The majority of women were found to be immune... Among men, however, there was almost no immunity, and the few recoveries were only partial. A few men were preserved by the most elaborate precautions, but they could not be kept confined for ever, and in the end the virus, which had a remarkable capacity for dormancy, got them, too.
Oh, yes - and the twist is worthy of Roald Dahl.
This is the quotation from Proverbs on which the book's title is based. It's the author's way of suggesting, I suspect, that authoritarian societies, although sometimes admirable in their discipline and productivity, tend to turn human beings into unthinking social insects.
I last read this almost a lifetime ago. But the idea of it had stuck with me - if not the detail - so I thought I'd revisit it. I'm a big fan of the novella form. I read almost all of Wyndham's fiction as a teenager but this book and Chocky, also a novella, made the biggest impression upon me. It's packaged here as Consider Her Ways and Others, bundled with five further stories of varying length. I found I remembered nothing about these others. Random Quest is the most substantial of them.
As with Chocky, while the conceit and the detailing might hold up quite well, the prose and dialogue are sometimes decidedly starchy, making it feel very dated. As with so many books in this vein, there are blocks of text where someone - in this case, the elderly historian - explains the new society to the narrator. No-one ever talks in this instantly articulate and erudite way in real life, and certainly not without being interrupted at some point. I got the feeling we were supposed to be experiencing Jane's indignation as her/our world is being trashed. Nevertheless, to be fair to Wyndham, he gives the old girl some pretty decent arguments, like this one, telling our narrator, Jane, about her privileged position:
You were never openly bought and sold, like livestock; you never had to sell yourself to the first-comer in order to live; you did not happen to be one of the women who through the centuries have screamed in agony and suffered and died under invaders in a sacked city - nor were you ever flung into a pit of fire to be saved from them; you were never compelled to suttee upon your dead husband's pyre; you did not have to spend your whole life imprisoned in a harem; you were never part of the cargo of a slave-ship...
Jane's husband was a test pilot, killed in an air accident, just as he was about to hang up his wings. Well, that's not dashing or romantic, is it? Lots of women are married to test pilots. Well, I suppose some of them might have been in England in 1956 when a sleek and shiny new aircraft design seemed to take off every other week. It fits in with the general thrust of the tale, though, that romance and disorder are preferable to the dreariness of order imposed from above.
All the men have died - how convenient if you wish to write a piece of speculative fiction about a parthenogenically-sustained female-only society. Is it utopian or dystopian? Moot point. Wyndham tends to suggest the latter since to maintain itself the society needs to be autocratic. I can't imagine Joanna Russ being enamoured with Wyndham's tale. Andy Partridge, who has opined that the world should consist of only women - and him - might enjoy Wyndham's vision. Here's one of his arguments: Church of Women.
Ah but the idea... Despite its limitations, I see all sorts of connections here. It's no surprise to me that Margaret Atwood introduced the recent NYRB edition of Chocky and is a fan of his fiction. Consider Her Ways looks to have had a big influence on Atwood's infinitely more famous dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. The flipping between worlds put me distinctly in mind of Cortazar's brilliant tale, The Night Face Up (any similarity is presumably coincidental). The alliance between authoritarianism and eugenics lies at the heart of Wyndham's Herland. In that sense, there's a direct debt to Huxley's Brave New World in the genetically-modified social classes with their graded intellects and petty divisions. But Wyndham had also lived through times in which this noxious combination had been put into operation, not just in Nazi Germany but in social democratic Sweden too. I even saw shades here of Never Let Me Go. Clearly, it's much less writerly than any of these works, but it remains influential, I suspect.
Reading the book in these plague-haunted days, the extract below was a little disturbing (think about some of the conspiracy theories that have been doing the rounds). Look out, gentlemen!
It is still an open question whether the successful virus mutated again, or whether one of his earlier experimental viruses was accidentally "liberated" by carrier-rats, but that's academic. The important thing is that somehow a strain capable of attacking human beings got loose, and that it was widely disseminated before it was traced - also, that once it was free, it spread with devastating speed; too fast for any effective steps to be taken to check it.
The majority of women were found to be immune... Among men, however, there was almost no immunity, and the few recoveries were only partial. A few men were preserved by the most elaborate precautions, but they could not be kept confined for ever, and in the end the virus, which had a remarkable capacity for dormancy, got them, too.
Oh, yes - and the twist is worthy of Roald Dahl.
October 18, 2025
„Общността на мравките“ се оказа изключително силна новела! Тя съдържа любопитни фантастични елементи и доста напрегната атмосфера, но мисля че представлява най-вече забележителна антиутопична история. Нейното заглавие е препратка към Библията. Главната героиня по загадъчен начин е загубила паметта си и същевременно е въвлечена в страшно заплетена ситуация...
April 24, 2022
Un distopico (ma forse non per tutti) romanzo breve di sci-fi che per buona parte procede quasi come un thriller. In realta' il ritmo e' blando e tutto si gioca piu' che altro sullo stupore progressivo del personaggio principale, una straniata donna in un mondo di sole donne. La trama non e' particolarmente originale ma sono passati piu' di cinquant'anni di imitazioni per un libro che lascia diversi spunti di pensiero e l'apprezzamento per la qualita' della scrittura.
January 5, 2024
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise..."
John Wyndham has been one of my favourite writers since I can remember. He is versatile while reliable, and now, through "Consider Her Ways", I found out that Wyndham has feminist works too, which makes me love him even more.
What I enjoy about his books is their ability to transfer you into a story and inside the characters' minds and emotional experiences, as they make subtle but very relevant comments on a variety of social issues. Both his novels and short stories are equally effortless to read. And for a predominantly dystopian author, to me, his books feel surprisingly wholesome, and I would recommend them to all lovers of classic thought provoking Sci-Fi stories.
John Wyndham has been one of my favourite writers since I can remember. He is versatile while reliable, and now, through "Consider Her Ways", I found out that Wyndham has feminist works too, which makes me love him even more.
What I enjoy about his books is their ability to transfer you into a story and inside the characters' minds and emotional experiences, as they make subtle but very relevant comments on a variety of social issues. Both his novels and short stories are equally effortless to read. And for a predominantly dystopian author, to me, his books feel surprisingly wholesome, and I would recommend them to all lovers of classic thought provoking Sci-Fi stories.
April 6, 2012
I've been working my way through all of Wyndham's stuff -- there's a flavour to it that makes it just wonderfully easy to read, despite being a little bit dated. This collection of stories wasn't, I suppose, terribly memorable: all based around the same gimmick of time travel, but it was fun to read and to see what different things he did with that idea. Some of the stories have nice little stings in their tails, which is something I always like to see.
Not a must-read, by any means, but enjoyable.
Not a must-read, by any means, but enjoyable.
December 6, 2023
Доста добре написана антиутопия.
February 4, 2009
"....and I wondered, was this nothingness my soul?". This has to be the most wonderfully written passage I have ever read and one that will stay with me forever.
November 4, 2019
Consist of a novella and five other stories, Consider Her Ways makes me love Wyndham's short stories collection more than some of his novel. It's such a fun read.
Someone said, even though Wyndham's stories are called science fiction, he didn't bother to explain a lot of technicalities in his stories deeply. Reader must accept--or at least believe--that it worked perfectly as intended. And I don't mind it (though some of time travel stories make my head spins after that) since the way Wyndham told the stories make me believe it works.
Someone said, even though Wyndham's stories are called science fiction, he didn't bother to explain a lot of technicalities in his stories deeply. Reader must accept--or at least believe--that it worked perfectly as intended. And I don't mind it (though some of time travel stories make my head spins after that) since the way Wyndham told the stories make me believe it works.
October 14, 2023
An entertaining collection by one of Britain's greatest science-fiction writers. Here we explore the themes of time travel and alternate dimensions. Consider Her Ways is definitely the highlight. While not quite as outstanding as his famous novels, this short collection is worth your time... and talking about time, it will have you losing track of precisely when and where you are.
July 11, 2020
I've reviewed this story in the collection Consider Her Ways and Others.
See my review HERE.
See my review HERE.
April 12, 2021
Consider Her Ways and Others contains the novella "Consider Her Ways" and six short stories; most of the seven stories deal with alternate realities or time travel. All were written between 1956 - 1961. In true Wyndham style, all of the stories are well written, easy to read, and fit his style - heavy on humanity and low on violence. These stories are more proof that Wyndham was ahead of his time when it came to social issues and unique science fiction plot twists. And there isn't a rocket or aliens in any of the stories; they are just about people in very odd predicaments. The story "Random Quest" may be one of the best short stories I've ever read. I went back and read it a second time.
The lineup goes like this:
"Consider Her Ways": after taking an experimental drug, a woman wakes up in a hospital in an alternate reality in which men have gone extinct and women are divided in to several different vocations. When she recounts how her (our) world worked she is regarded as psychotic and delusional. The mystery is slowly unraveled with a great twist at the end.
"Odd": a businessman gets hit by a tram and wakes up 25 years in the future.
"Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?": a quiz show winner becomes a movie star. This was probably the only story that didn't work for me.
"Stitch in Time": A mind-bending time travel story of lost love with a great twist at the end.
"Random Quest": an alternate reality romance mystery with some time travel thrown in for good measure and twists and turns that will leave you guessing right up until the final sentence. This is just a superbly crafted tale.
"A Long Spoon": a young man accidently summons a nefarious supernatural entity and has to work together with the fiend to send him back. The funniest story of the bunch.
Like Jizzle this Wyndham collection was a joy to read and I'll be finishing the rest of his collected short stories in The Seeds of Time next.
The lineup goes like this:
"Consider Her Ways": after taking an experimental drug, a woman wakes up in a hospital in an alternate reality in which men have gone extinct and women are divided in to several different vocations. When she recounts how her (our) world worked she is regarded as psychotic and delusional. The mystery is slowly unraveled with a great twist at the end.
"Odd": a businessman gets hit by a tram and wakes up 25 years in the future.
"Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?": a quiz show winner becomes a movie star. This was probably the only story that didn't work for me.
"Stitch in Time": A mind-bending time travel story of lost love with a great twist at the end.
"Random Quest": an alternate reality romance mystery with some time travel thrown in for good measure and twists and turns that will leave you guessing right up until the final sentence. This is just a superbly crafted tale.
"A Long Spoon": a young man accidently summons a nefarious supernatural entity and has to work together with the fiend to send him back. The funniest story of the bunch.
Like Jizzle this Wyndham collection was a joy to read and I'll be finishing the rest of his collected short stories in The Seeds of Time next.
November 18, 2017
Consider Her Ways, a collection of short stories, was released in 1965. It’s an interesting collection and while the stories repeat the same theme – a sudden change that leads to exclusive knowledge or perception – there is still plenty of variety to the tales. All but the last tale involve some sort of transportation – body-switching, folds in time, or multiple dimensions, that enable the main character to learn something they wouldn’t otherwise know.
The final tale reminds me of Clive Barker’s The Yattering and Jack. It’s the story of a man who invents a clever loophole to a pact with the devil. It’s funny, charming, clever and my favourite of the collection.
I was less keen on the title story. In “Consider Her Ways” we are taken with the main female character, to a possible future where men no longer exist and cloned women run society, birth new clones and do all the work. This society has no art or variety. It is strictly utilitarian to the point of boredom, and serves as a terrifying warning to the main character. There is a cute and quirky twist at the end, but perhaps because it downplays, or rather ignores, female creativity, I find it annoying and condescending.
All the stories are well written and while repetitive at times, it’s a collection I am happy to have discovered.
The final tale reminds me of Clive Barker’s The Yattering and Jack. It’s the story of a man who invents a clever loophole to a pact with the devil. It’s funny, charming, clever and my favourite of the collection.
I was less keen on the title story. In “Consider Her Ways” we are taken with the main female character, to a possible future where men no longer exist and cloned women run society, birth new clones and do all the work. This society has no art or variety. It is strictly utilitarian to the point of boredom, and serves as a terrifying warning to the main character. There is a cute and quirky twist at the end, but perhaps because it downplays, or rather ignores, female creativity, I find it annoying and condescending.
All the stories are well written and while repetitive at times, it’s a collection I am happy to have discovered.
January 17, 2023
This is a collection of Wyndham’s short stories, and there are pros and cons to that. I find that Wyndham is one of those authors who tends to be better when he’s working with a full novel, because that gives him more room to develop his ideas and to play around with them, but he’s also a pretty good ideas man.
The stories here ranged in quality from okay to good, but I didn’t come across anything that I thought was particularly great. Still, Wyndham is a master of the craft and always does a heck of a fine job when he’s telling a story, and that’s definitely true here, too. The stories here were well-written and even though I had a pretty old copy, they oozed with life and bled out of the pages.
I don’t know if I’d recommend it to a general reader though, just because there are so many other awesome Wyndham books for you to get to. But for completionists, sure.
The stories here ranged in quality from okay to good, but I didn’t come across anything that I thought was particularly great. Still, Wyndham is a master of the craft and always does a heck of a fine job when he’s telling a story, and that’s definitely true here, too. The stories here were well-written and even though I had a pretty old copy, they oozed with life and bled out of the pages.
I don’t know if I’d recommend it to a general reader though, just because there are so many other awesome Wyndham books for you to get to. But for completionists, sure.
January 21, 2019
A very nice collection of Wyndham stories, mostly focusing on different types of time travel stories. They are quite dated, so there is a quite distinctive post-WW2 feel.
The best of the bunch are the longer stories, the titular Consider Her Ways and Random Quest.
Note that, while Wyndham is great as ever, the time-travel gimmicks are kinda repetitive, so I'd recommend to space out reading this collection, in order not to become boring and tedious.
The best of the bunch are the longer stories, the titular Consider Her Ways and Random Quest.
Note that, while Wyndham is great as ever, the time-travel gimmicks are kinda repetitive, so I'd recommend to space out reading this collection, in order not to become boring and tedious.
December 31, 2024
Consider Her Ways - Have you ever read a story and not known if it was misogynist or feminist? I know it seems like those two things should be diametric and yet . . .
A young doctor from 1950s England wakes up in a very strange place. She has no memory and no idea where she is. She instinctively feels that something is very wrong and decides she must be in some kind of dream or hallucination. After going along with it for a time - trying to psychoanalyze herself all the while! - it gradually becomes apparent that something more than a dream is going on.
For one thing she is in the wrong body - a body that has been genetically modified to give birth to babies in litters of four at a time and is one of a class of "Mothers," whose only purpose is to give birth. There are also no men anywhere in this world and no one even knows what she's talking about when she mentions the words "husband" or "man."
Eventually, we learn that her consciousness seems to have been transferred to some far future world after all of the men have died. She is also treated to some social commentary of her own time from an elderly historian named Laura:
"Whole trades adopted the romantic approach and the glamour was spread thicker and thicker in the articles, the write-ups and most of all in the advertisements. Romance found a place in everything that women might buy from underclothes to motorcycles, to 'health' foods to kitchen stoves, from deodorants to foreign travel, until soon they were too bemused to be amused anymore." (p. 50)
"The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenseless . . . When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed, and, thus eminently exploitable." (p. 51)
The main character is horrified by this world she finds herself in because there would be no "romance." Because this was written in the 1950s there's no overt mention of the possibility of women loving women, although I think it is hinted at obliquely. Laura (the historian) mentions Sappho and you could easily read this as the main character just being too sheltered to pick up on certain things.
So, here is where I am conflicted: everything the historian says to the main character about the struggles of women is true and displays an understanding that I was frankly surprised to see written by a man in the 1950s. Also, none of the women in this future world have any angst over it and are all quite happy.
However, the grotesque funhouse distortions of the gargantuan "Mothers" and the diminutive "Servitors," and shock/horror/disgust of the main character makes me think we are not meant to actually like this and then, by extension, if we are not meant to take this world seriously, are we meant to not take Laura's speech seriously, either? Or, was this over-the-top set dressing the only way Wyndham could find to bring up these ideas in a way that would have been palatable to his 1950s/60s audience?
I don't know. It's certainly a weird and interesting read, though.
This collection also includes some additional stories:
Odd - is a cute time travel short story. Pretty straightforward.
Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? - is a criticism of the film industry, manufactured celebrity and the artificiality of feminine beauty standards. However, the fact that the tale is framed in men mourning the loss of Peggy's "natural Irish beauty" rather dampens it for me. Why is the focus on their reactions rather than Peggy's?
This partly reads as making fun of a "simple" Irish girl for daring to dream that she could be a film star, and then she is punished for her ambitions by being put through the industry that erases her personality. I think I understand what Wyndham was going for here but I definitely have mixed feelings on the delivery.
Stitch in Time - an elderly woman reminisces about a choice from her past, how she married one man instead of another. Her first love mysteriously never showed up on the day she expected him to propose. In the present, her son is working on a science experiment involving folding time. One day, while sitting on her porch, her first love shows up - looking young and exactly the way he would have, if he had shown up that day fifty years earlier . . .
Random Quest - a man in his thirties is searching for a woman named Ottilie Harshom. He's reached out to her supposed relatives, only to learn that she never existed. This one is a bit different, in that it is a parallel world story, rather than a time travel story.
We learn that the man was involved in an experiment and a lab explosion somehow sent his consciousness into the body of a parallel version of himself, in an alternate version of 1954 London. I love parallel universe stories, so I found this one fascinating.
A Long Spoon - I was not expecting a 'deal with the devil' type story in this collection, but this one is hilarious! I've never seen Wyndham write out-and-out comedy before. After summoning a demon completely by accident, Stephen and his wife Dilys are unfailingly polite, yet they point out that his whole enterprise is rather outdated:
"How do you think I'd be able to square a sudden title with Debrett, or sudden affluence with the Income Tax inspectors, or even a sudden mansion with the Planning Authority." (p. 183)
Not to mention, they know how these deals go down and have no interest in signing over their souls. However, the demon, Batruel, cannot leave without either closing a deal or someone saying the magic word of dismissal (which none of them know.) The way they manage to solve this is pretty clever and this light-hearted fantasy romp may be my favourite story out of the bunch.
A young doctor from 1950s England wakes up in a very strange place. She has no memory and no idea where she is. She instinctively feels that something is very wrong and decides she must be in some kind of dream or hallucination. After going along with it for a time - trying to psychoanalyze herself all the while! - it gradually becomes apparent that something more than a dream is going on.
For one thing she is in the wrong body - a body that has been genetically modified to give birth to babies in litters of four at a time and is one of a class of "Mothers," whose only purpose is to give birth. There are also no men anywhere in this world and no one even knows what she's talking about when she mentions the words "husband" or "man."
Eventually, we learn that her consciousness seems to have been transferred to some far future world after all of the men have died. She is also treated to some social commentary of her own time from an elderly historian named Laura:
"Whole trades adopted the romantic approach and the glamour was spread thicker and thicker in the articles, the write-ups and most of all in the advertisements. Romance found a place in everything that women might buy from underclothes to motorcycles, to 'health' foods to kitchen stoves, from deodorants to foreign travel, until soon they were too bemused to be amused anymore." (p. 50)
"The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenseless . . . When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed, and, thus eminently exploitable." (p. 51)
The main character is horrified by this world she finds herself in because there would be no "romance." Because this was written in the 1950s there's no overt mention of the possibility of women loving women, although I think it is hinted at obliquely. Laura (the historian) mentions Sappho and you could easily read this as the main character just being too sheltered to pick up on certain things.
So, here is where I am conflicted: everything the historian says to the main character about the struggles of women is true and displays an understanding that I was frankly surprised to see written by a man in the 1950s. Also, none of the women in this future world have any angst over it and are all quite happy.
However, the grotesque funhouse distortions of the gargantuan "Mothers" and the diminutive "Servitors," and shock/horror/disgust of the main character makes me think we are not meant to actually like this and then, by extension, if we are not meant to take this world seriously, are we meant to not take Laura's speech seriously, either? Or, was this over-the-top set dressing the only way Wyndham could find to bring up these ideas in a way that would have been palatable to his 1950s/60s audience?
I don't know. It's certainly a weird and interesting read, though.
This collection also includes some additional stories:
Odd - is a cute time travel short story. Pretty straightforward.
Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? - is a criticism of the film industry, manufactured celebrity and the artificiality of feminine beauty standards. However, the fact that the tale is framed in men mourning the loss of Peggy's "natural Irish beauty" rather dampens it for me. Why is the focus on their reactions rather than Peggy's?
This partly reads as making fun of a "simple" Irish girl for daring to dream that she could be a film star, and then she is punished for her ambitions by being put through the industry that erases her personality. I think I understand what Wyndham was going for here but I definitely have mixed feelings on the delivery.
Stitch in Time - an elderly woman reminisces about a choice from her past, how she married one man instead of another. Her first love mysteriously never showed up on the day she expected him to propose. In the present, her son is working on a science experiment involving folding time. One day, while sitting on her porch, her first love shows up - looking young and exactly the way he would have, if he had shown up that day fifty years earlier . . .
Random Quest - a man in his thirties is searching for a woman named Ottilie Harshom. He's reached out to her supposed relatives, only to learn that she never existed. This one is a bit different, in that it is a parallel world story, rather than a time travel story.
We learn that the man was involved in an experiment and a lab explosion somehow sent his consciousness into the body of a parallel version of himself, in an alternate version of 1954 London. I love parallel universe stories, so I found this one fascinating.
A Long Spoon - I was not expecting a 'deal with the devil' type story in this collection, but this one is hilarious! I've never seen Wyndham write out-and-out comedy before. After summoning a demon completely by accident, Stephen and his wife Dilys are unfailingly polite, yet they point out that his whole enterprise is rather outdated:
"How do you think I'd be able to square a sudden title with Debrett, or sudden affluence with the Income Tax inspectors, or even a sudden mansion with the Planning Authority." (p. 183)
Not to mention, they know how these deals go down and have no interest in signing over their souls. However, the demon, Batruel, cannot leave without either closing a deal or someone saying the magic word of dismissal (which none of them know.) The way they manage to solve this is pretty clever and this light-hearted fantasy romp may be my favourite story out of the bunch.
March 31, 2026
Overall, this is a great collection of Wyndham shorts, the themes get a little repetitive but each is a good standalone story. In particular I really enjoyed 'A Long Spoon', I was laughing for most of this short tale and really enjoyed the extremely British themes. A little synopsis and evaluation of each below:
Consider Her Ways
It is hard to evaluate this one without spoiling the reveal. Overall, it continually conflicts with itself, seeming to have feminist themes that also put down women. I'm pretty sure women can be very capable mechanical engineers Wyndham, also making everything pink was a bit on the nose.
Odd
I think the lesson here is be nice to strangers so you get put in their wills. Another exploration of time travel, but with a different angle. A good little short with a nice twist.
Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?
This tale is unfortunately still very relevant, watching people gradually lose their individuality to appease the masses. I hope we can shift away from this as a society, our flaws are what make us perfect and intriguing.
Stitch in Time
A classic Wyndham love story mixed in with some more time travel themes, this one is bittersweet and if covered over a longer novel probably would have moved me to tears.
Random Quest
I started this one and thought 'oh no not another time travel story' but this has some good twists and is really funny at times. John really believes in the idea of soul mates and it always warms my heart.
A Long Spoon
This is just so so funny in such a British way, my favourite Wyndham short so far, I'd recommend it to anybody I know.
Consider Her Ways
It is hard to evaluate this one without spoiling the reveal. Overall, it continually conflicts with itself, seeming to have feminist themes that also put down women. I'm pretty sure women can be very capable mechanical engineers Wyndham, also making everything pink was a bit on the nose.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways.
Odd
I think the lesson here is be nice to strangers so you get put in their wills. Another exploration of time travel, but with a different angle. A good little short with a nice twist.
Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?
This tale is unfortunately still very relevant, watching people gradually lose their individuality to appease the masses. I hope we can shift away from this as a society, our flaws are what make us perfect and intriguing.
Stitch in Time
A classic Wyndham love story mixed in with some more time travel themes, this one is bittersweet and if covered over a longer novel probably would have moved me to tears.
Random Quest
I started this one and thought 'oh no not another time travel story' but this has some good twists and is really funny at times. John really believes in the idea of soul mates and it always warms my heart.
'Found her. Congratulate me. C.T.'
A Long Spoon
This is just so so funny in such a British way, my favourite Wyndham short so far, I'd recommend it to anybody I know.
'A friend of mine was once exorcised back in the fifteenth century. He found it excruciatingly painful at the time, and he hasn't fully regained confidence in himself yet.'
March 16, 2026
4.5 🌟
June 27, 2017
I absolutely adored this book. John Wyndham sets a very particular tone in this collection, everything feels just a little bit off, like a familiar room but everything is shifted 2 inches to the left.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the title story, Consider Her Ways, it wasn't my favorite. The dystopian future which would have been very unique in the decade it was publiahed feels less exciting given the flood of dystopian novels out today. It was wonderfully executed, and the use of time travel was great.
My favorite was Long Spoon, which had me laughing out loud at several passages. The plot was unique and the execution quite funny, and felt almost like a satire of Faustian themes.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the title story, Consider Her Ways, it wasn't my favorite. The dystopian future which would have been very unique in the decade it was publiahed feels less exciting given the flood of dystopian novels out today. It was wonderfully executed, and the use of time travel was great.
My favorite was Long Spoon, which had me laughing out loud at several passages. The plot was unique and the execution quite funny, and felt almost like a satire of Faustian themes.
January 24, 2021
John Wyndham has nailed it once again.
This is a collection of six short stories. Four are very similar and centre around the same point albeit with a different method of getting there each time. I really enjoyed these because they were eccentric and unique, but there was something bittersweet and thought-provoking about each one.
The last story in this book is the politest accidental summoning of a demon I've ever encountered and it was adorable and hilarious.
The only story I didn't enjoy was about a young starlet being "discovered". I think it was a satirical commentary on the entertainment industry of the time but it just didn't fit in with the rest of these stories for me.
This is very different to the John Wyndham I've read so far. The titular story had plenty of horror aspects but the rest were more thought-provoking than scary.
I thoroughly enjoyed it (the one star deduction is for the starlet story, which was just so out of place here) and would highly recommend it. The only caveat is that a lot of the "reveals" centre around contemporaneous information that I just don't have the knowledge of. But still, a cosy, unsettling and entertaining collection.
This is a collection of six short stories. Four are very similar and centre around the same point albeit with a different method of getting there each time. I really enjoyed these because they were eccentric and unique, but there was something bittersweet and thought-provoking about each one.
The last story in this book is the politest accidental summoning of a demon I've ever encountered and it was adorable and hilarious.
The only story I didn't enjoy was about a young starlet being "discovered". I think it was a satirical commentary on the entertainment industry of the time but it just didn't fit in with the rest of these stories for me.
This is very different to the John Wyndham I've read so far. The titular story had plenty of horror aspects but the rest were more thought-provoking than scary.
I thoroughly enjoyed it (the one star deduction is for the starlet story, which was just so out of place here) and would highly recommend it. The only caveat is that a lot of the "reveals" centre around contemporaneous information that I just don't have the knowledge of. But still, a cosy, unsettling and entertaining collection.
January 28, 2014
This is the second collection of short stories by John Wyndham that I have re-read in search of a time travel story that I read long ago and didn't understand. Well, I found the story and it wasn't about time travel and it was perfectly understandable, which made the title 'Random Quest' quite appropriate. Random Quest is a great story, a little dated, but interesting and almost plausible. Consider Her Ways is another really good story. This one was about time travel, or sort of. Wyndham was a good storyteller, though some of the stories in this collection are a bit lightweight. The two stories mentioned are as good as anything Wyndham wrote, but the collection as a whole is, I think, inferior to The Seeds of Time.
Read
January 5, 2015A book about how to yield to female cyclists without accidentally seeing their ankles.This was written in the 1920s, a time when seeing a young woman's ankles accidentally meant stopping your automotive device (or horse) and immediately throwing yourself under the next lorry that came along (or group of horses). The twist at the end is that the heroine has no ankles, due to a puddle skipping accident.
October 10, 2019
If you remember when these were written in the 50's -- you will see why they are wonderful and verging on brilliant. Twenty five years before 'A Handmaids Tale' Wyndham gave his take on authoritarian regimes and women as reproductive necessities. It's the first story in the collection and amazing. Wynhams writing and ideas never lets the reader down.
January 23, 2025
An excellent selection of short stories. For me Consider Her Ways was the strongest. A thought-provoking novella that has stood the test of time remarkably well. First published in 1956, it combines science fiction with social commentary, using its speculative premise to explore themes of gender, power, and societal structure.
The novella tells the story of Jane Waterleigh, a woman who awakens in a dystopian future where men no longer exist, and society is entirely governed by women. In this matriarchal world, women are divided into rigidly defined classes based on their physicality and societal roles. The narrative is cleverly framed through the lens of a drug-induced vision, which allows Wyndham to explore not only the mechanics of this hypothetical society but also its moral and philosophical implications.
What makes Consider Her Ways endure is Wyndham’s sharp critique of how societies impose rigid roles based on perceived biological “destinies.” The future world he depicts is not a utopia but a cautionary tale. It challenges the idea that eliminating one gender—or the hierarchical dominance of one over another—would automatically resolve humanity’s problems. Instead, it examines how power structures, if left unchecked, can become equally oppressive, regardless of who wields them.
When compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, Consider Her Ways is more analytical and speculative in its approach. Atwood delves deeply into the personal suffering of her protagonist, Offred, highlighting the brutal realities of systemic oppression, whereas Wyndham offers a broader, detached commentary. This difference in tone makes Consider Her Ways less emotionally engaging but no less intellectually stimulating.
Despite its age, the novella felt strikingly modern in its themes: gender roles, reproductive rights, and societal inequality. While some of Wyndham’s language and characterisation might feel dated, the core ideas remain powerful and relevant.
The novella tells the story of Jane Waterleigh, a woman who awakens in a dystopian future where men no longer exist, and society is entirely governed by women. In this matriarchal world, women are divided into rigidly defined classes based on their physicality and societal roles. The narrative is cleverly framed through the lens of a drug-induced vision, which allows Wyndham to explore not only the mechanics of this hypothetical society but also its moral and philosophical implications.
What makes Consider Her Ways endure is Wyndham’s sharp critique of how societies impose rigid roles based on perceived biological “destinies.” The future world he depicts is not a utopia but a cautionary tale. It challenges the idea that eliminating one gender—or the hierarchical dominance of one over another—would automatically resolve humanity’s problems. Instead, it examines how power structures, if left unchecked, can become equally oppressive, regardless of who wields them.
When compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, Consider Her Ways is more analytical and speculative in its approach. Atwood delves deeply into the personal suffering of her protagonist, Offred, highlighting the brutal realities of systemic oppression, whereas Wyndham offers a broader, detached commentary. This difference in tone makes Consider Her Ways less emotionally engaging but no less intellectually stimulating.
Despite its age, the novella felt strikingly modern in its themes: gender roles, reproductive rights, and societal inequality. While some of Wyndham’s language and characterisation might feel dated, the core ideas remain powerful and relevant.
September 16, 2022
My appreciation for John Wyndham grows with every one of his books I read. It did fluctuate just a little from story to story within this book however. There are two excellent stories in this collection, Consider Her Ways and (especially short but sweet) A Long Spoon. The rest are all at the very least competent, but would benefit from being separated a little farther from each other as reading them in sequence reveals their similar structures. 1. We're introduced to an educated, or high social status individual 2. This individual experiences some unusual time, or reality based change 3. Lengthy academic discussion about what has transpired 4. Character is either returned or has to live with consequence of being out-of-time (or place). That is a very generic description of 4/6 stories within this collection, which is not to say they are not good, only a little tedious once the structure begins to reveal itself. It's possible as well that modern sensibilities have changed sufficiently that a story about a very normal individual suddenly finding themselves 50 years in the past or future no longer feels novel or necessarily original. I do feel however that the two stories I mentioned above definitely deserve some praise, Consider Her ways for it's general scope and theme, and A Long Spoon for it's quick, smirky wit (a bit of a page turner at only 16 pages).
January 18, 2023
Here are the stories in this collection:
Consider Her Ways (1956)
Odd (1959)
Oh Where, Now, Is Peggy MacRafferty
Stitch in Time (1961)
Random Quest
A Long Spoon (1960)
Dates from ISFDB
All but 'A Long Spoon' deal with some method of time travel. Although 'Random Quest' is more of an alternate history story, there's still a kind of mechanism for getting the character into the alternate history in the first place. Further, it was one of the few Wyndham stories to be made into a halfway decent movie and, apparently, a TV movie I might watch after writing this review.
My particular favourite is still 'A Long Spoon' but, on re-reading and following the story a lot better than I did when I was 12, 'A Stitch in Time' has a bit more going for it, too.
While the explanations of time travel and alternate worlds seem a bit long-winded for those of us used to the ideas, they're still nicely written and are a good introduction to the concept for people unfamiliar with the sub-genres—whoever they might be.
Consider Her Ways (1956)
Odd (1959)
Oh Where, Now, Is Peggy MacRafferty
Stitch in Time (1961)
Random Quest
A Long Spoon (1960)
Dates from ISFDB
All but 'A Long Spoon' deal with some method of time travel. Although 'Random Quest' is more of an alternate history story, there's still a kind of mechanism for getting the character into the alternate history in the first place. Further, it was one of the few Wyndham stories to be made into a halfway decent movie and, apparently, a TV movie I might watch after writing this review.
My particular favourite is still 'A Long Spoon' but, on re-reading and following the story a lot better than I did when I was 12, 'A Stitch in Time' has a bit more going for it, too.
While the explanations of time travel and alternate worlds seem a bit long-winded for those of us used to the ideas, they're still nicely written and are a good introduction to the concept for people unfamiliar with the sub-genres—whoever they might be.
February 11, 2019
To clarify I just read the title story and: yeuccch. Some books age better than others, I guess.
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