The Infinity Box: A Collection of Speculative Fiction

by Kate Wilhelm

s/t: A Collection of Speculative Fiction:
The Infinity Box (1971)
The Time Piece (1975)
The Red Canary (1973)
Man of Letters (1975)
April Fools' Day Forever (1970)
Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? (1971)
The Fusion Bomb (1972)
The Village (1973)
The Funeral (1972)

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

318 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1975

About the author

Kate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in Fantastic Stories in 1956. Her first novel, MORE BITTER THAN DEATH, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, and family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She returned to writing mysteries in 1990 with the acclaimed Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries and the Barbara Holloway series of legal thrillers.

Wilhelm’s works have been adapted for television and movies in numerous countries; her novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to Quark, Orbit,  Magazine of Fantasy and ScienceFiction, Locus, Amazing Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,  Fantastic, Omni, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan.

Kate Wilhelm is the widow of acclaimed science fiction author and editor, Damon Knight (1922-2002), with whom she founded the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and the Milford Writers’ Conference, described in her 2005 non-fiction work, STORYTELLER. They lectured together at universities across three continents; Kate has continued to offer interviews, talks, and monthly workshops.

Kate Wilhelm has received two Hugo awards, three Nebulas, as well as Jupiter, Locus, Spotted Owl, Prix Apollo, Kristen Lohman awards, among others. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2009, Kate was the recipient of one of the first Solstice Awards presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in recognition of her contributions to the field of science fiction. 

Kate’s highly popular Barbara Holloway mysteries, set in Eugene, Oregon, opened with Death Qualified in 1990. Mirror, Mirror, released in 2017, is the series’ 14th novel.

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Infinity Box', Kate Wilhelm. Pocket paperback, 1977.

I'm quite captivated by Kate Wilhelm as of late. Her 'Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang' is a novel that transcends the dystopia into territories beyond survival, moving with a haunted narrative where existential grit and glamour of doom darken the horizons. Here in her mid-1970's collection, the dystopia darkens even more, and her characters unwind in the social and environmental decays like puppets pawn to their own ignorance & disillusion. The thing is, her apocalypses don't seem to have a beginning or an end, but exist already -- yes, we've been living within this long-goodbye from the get-go. While she writes with a fantastical air, just like her patriot in literary SF, Lucius Shepard, the cerebral unravelings are what makes her fiction so sharp and profound. I'm surprised her legacy doesn't shine as much as it should, but then again, who cares about dead authors when we have living ones. Did I mention she's kind of cynical as fuck too?

THE INFINITY BOX - this novella is about mind invasion, mind control. A middling average family man encounters a new neighbor. She is wan, unattractive, and like an injured bird, consistently nervous. He's attracted to her though, and without explanation, he is able to enter her mind, play and replay her thoughts and memories, and in the end, invades her not out of genuine interest, but because he can. Madness unravels in a psycho-therapeutic drama, and yes, the male gaze is treacherous.

THE TIME PIECE - Wilhelm plays it like a pulp game here as she enlivens a short tale about a man retiring from a 'good job'. His reward is a watch, and he soon finds out that he can freeze and then rewind time. While life grows stale and he questions the worth of his history, he tries to find some diamonds in his twilight-year funk, only to realize that life may just be a series of misconnected fragments from a predictable script. Far out concepts mingle with standard time-travel ploys.

THE RED CANARY - this one is brutal. Poverty and overpopulation, and a healthcare system that is not only a flawed bureaucracy but perhaps a method of suffocating the weak. A lonely man with a shit job in a shit apartment with a shit wife and a child he cares little about. Only to wander the city as sickness is everywhere. What makes this story work so well is that we could be on the edge looking down at this soon-to-be reality. Don't read this one when you're researching for a new health plan...

MAN OF LETTERS - parallel worlds clash as a hack writer loses his marbles, and finds himself and his life in a timeslip that may be his own madness, or a deviant plan. Solid.

APRIL FOOL'S DAY FOREVER - what if the government decided to wipe out half the population with manicured diseases? And why are all the doctors so friggin' young? Yes, the strongest will survive, or will they? What is a really dark novella about eugenics, medical care, and secret governments (star chambers) may conclude with a bright dash of optimism, but is this a heavy-handed ticket about age-ism and assisted deaths, or is it just Wilhelm fucking with the reader's expectations? Wilhelm definitely believes that art and expression is the only way out of it.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, BILLY BOY, BILLY BOY? - one of the more weaker, disjointed tales. More of the same, like 'Red Canary' - overpopulation, suicide, and rebellion. This one is quite fatalistic. Here, one reader may decide to slow down reading this collection, for the whimpers of a slow apocalypse may feel repetitive. I dig it though.

THE FUSION BOMB - a nice, refreshing escape from the urban landscape. Here on an island off the Carolina coast, a research team is assembled. Their goal is to play hedonism to the fullest, live the good life -- sex, food, travel, money -- while searching for the shape of the soul, the necessity of 'the enlightenment'. Yeah, Wilhelm is taking it into far-reaching territories, and here she and Lucius Shepard (visit his 'The Ends of the Earth' collection) seem to be writing in the exact same parallel universe. And really, this strange woman coming to the island as a secretary.....where does she really come from? Visions from within clash with nature, and a great story about immortality only slightly fizzled with a strange anti-climactic conclusion. Does nature truly win in the end?

THE VILLAGE - In the early 1970s, I think every SF writer wrote about Vietnam infiltrating our suburbs and/or cities in the US. Here it seems stock-like and predictable, the armed forces attacking their own ('Red Dawn' with radicalism), just for the sake of destruction. Harlan Ellison, Kit Reed, Norman Spinrad, Effinger and Ballard all did it just the same.

THE FUNERAL - a tonal exploration of a young woman designated as a teacher-in-training to a private school segregated from the world around them. Wilhelm pre-dates 'The Handmaid's Tale' in this one. A cautionary tale of new religion and order, and one can not help but think of Scientology (without the cosmic bureaucracy) and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. How it ends, Wilhelm brings yet another tale to a bruised song of silence. Perhaps the endings are never conclusive, focused only on what leads up to The End. To call Wilhem 'nebulous' would be an understatement. She is an existentialist to the fullest.

Again, I'm surprised Wilhelm isn't read and studied more. She's a gem, and then some.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 5 out of 5]

SF in the 60s and 70s often dealt with aspects of the mind – telepathy, ESP, projection, mind control of various sorts. It was no accident that the drug and consciousness experiments of that time led SF authors to speculate on what could be done. In this collection, stories like “The Infinity Box” and “The Fusion Bomb” deal with different possible forms of mind control. Immortality and life extension were big themes at the time, and are represented by “April Fools' Day Forever”. Vietnam looms over the story “The Village”, while “The Funeral” reads like a 1972 precursor to Atwood's 1985 book “The Handmaid's Tale”. It fits neatly into the work that James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) was doing at the time.

Kate Wilhelm often used a style that jumped quickly (sometimes paragraph by paragraph) between characters or scenes with no warning, challenging the reader to put the pieces together and make the connections. This method is most effective with “The Village”, which literally brings home that feeling of horror when recalling the atrocities committed during the Vietnam war.

The funniest story might be “The Time Piece”, where a man uses his watch to wind back time so that he can change the choices his family members made. But things don't go as he planned, of course. The loosening of obscenity laws at the time is also played for humorous effect.

Some of the attitudes and behaviors of that time may grate on the reader (all that smoking and drinking!), and the characters are mostly all middle- and upper-class white people (WASPs, in the jargon of the day), we should be careful about imposing current awareness upon stories set almost fifty years ago.

Recently we lost three pioneering women SF writers from the Pacific Northwest in the period from January 2018 to April of this year: Ursula Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm and Vonda McIntyre. I was more familiar with Le Guin's and McIntyre's work, so I picked up this old collection of stories to learn more about Kate Wilhelm's legacy. She is best known for her award-winning novel “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang”, but this collection shows she was a master of the short story form as well.

[George K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Αρκετά περίεργη και ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία που θα μπορούσε να γίνει μια κάπως κλειστοφοβική ταινία. Αφηγητής σε πρώτο πρόσωπο είναι ο Έντι Λάσλοου, εφευρέτης της Φόρμας Λάσλοου. Οι δουλειές στο εργαστήριο πάνε αρκετά καλά, είναι παντρεμένος με δυο παιδιά, όλα είναι ιδανικά. Ώσπου έρχεται η νέα γειτόνισσα, η Κριστίν, χήρα του νομπελίστα Ρούντεμαν. Αυτή η γυναίκα έχει ένα χάρισμα, με το οποίο μπορεί να βλέπει όλα τα επίπεδα του χρόνου. Αλλά έχει και μια σκοτεινή ιδιότητα, η οποία μάγεψε τον νομπελίστα άντρα της. Ο Έντι κατάλαβε την ιδιότητα της Κριστίν και έπαιζε με το μυαλό της. Τα πράγματα όμως έγιναν πολύ επικίνδυνα. Καλογραμμένη ιστορία με λίγο μυστήριο και κλειστοφοβική ατμόσφαιρα, αλλά χωρίς πολύ βάθος. Θα ήθελα να ήταν μια πιο ολοκληρωμένη ιστορία.

[Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent stories, some mediocre ones. I have a feeling they grow on you, so I may a re-read in the future. If there is a future. Wilhelm's SF is of the dystopian variety, and too many of these stories in a row make you worry about humanity.

[Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ένας άντρας ανακαλύπτει ότι μπορεί να μπαίνει στο μυαλό μιας γυναίκας και να τη χειραγωγεί. Εκείνη έχει την ιδιότητα να μπορεί να βλέπει όλα τα επίπεδα του χρόνου. Πολύ ψυχογράφημα. Σε κάνει να θες να πάρεις ένα τηγάνι και να το σκάσεις επαναληπτικώς στην κεφάλα του ήρωα.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kate Wilhelm impressed me with her Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. I've tended to favor her ever since. This was a Science Fiction Book Club selection, read quickly during summer break.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some incredible stories from an amazing writer. I read most of them in a week or two, in parallel with my other reading as I do, but then took another month to finish the last two stories, work getting in the way as always.

Wilhelm wrote a wonderful introduction to this anthology, in many ways as well written as the stories themselves, which includes this wonderful paragraph; "Speculative fiction as I define it and use it involves the exploration of worlds that probably never will exist, that I don't believe in as real, that I don't expect the reader to accept as real, but that are realistically handled in order to investigate them, because for one reason or another they are the words we most dread or yearn for." What a great description of a particularly style of SF, one I enjoy.

The title story is a claustrophobic and intense story, very focussed on a small group of people and their personal interactions. It's SF because Wilhelm throws in the idea of links between minds, mind-reading or mind-influencing to give it a label, making it even more intense. It really asks the question of what such an ability would mean, especially if used aggressively or selfishly. She calls it a story of 'power and corruption.' It makes other works on this theme look relatively anaemic, lacking the rigour Wilhelm brings. This intensity and depth is heightened by its length (a Novella according to ISFDB), which seemed the correct duration to drive home the point of the story being told but not too long dilute it. 'The Fusion Bomb' is another story along these lines; a small group of people, the intense relationships between them, set against the ideas of scientific or pseudo-scientific 'innovators' or 'disruptors', to use todays parlance. It is an effective demolition of this notion.

The stories 'The Red Canary' and 'Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?' are very much in that style of 60s, 70s stylistic SF where the writer gives us an atmosphere rather than thorough detail, in this case the flavour of 70s dystopian futures that speak of decay and decline. This makes it convincing but also durable, leaving a lasting impression still relevant today. You can sense the frustration, weariness or fatalism of the protagonists in the human dilemmas they face.

I started with 'The Funeral', a story Wilhelm originally wrote at the invitation of Harlan Ellison for 'Again, Dangerous Visions'. Here the protagonist Carla carries around a notebook and is required to recall and note what a dying matriarch says; she often fails to remember properly and instead writes down her own thoughts, as do other characters in a similar position. The way Wilhelm conveys the simple physical reality of writing took me right back to when I used to write things on paper myself, probably around the same age as the character of Carla. Wilhelm powerfully conveys the oppressive and fearful atmosphere of the society we are presented with in the story, keeping it sufficiently vague that we can feel the attitudes of this society without getting bogged down in any details of how it came to be or why. The story is therefore quite simple and all the more powerful because of this, leaving the devastating effects on its victims plain to see, along with subtle points about how a repressive system like this perpetuates itself. The reader is invited to do some work here, deliberately and for good reason, adding to the impact of the story. What is front and centre in this story is Wilhelm's anger at how we treat our children, something she mentions in her afterward to the story in A,DV. That struck me when I first read this story, barely an adult myself, and it strikes me now, with an intervening decades of news stories and revelations about the hurt caused by the old to the young and the searing hypocrisy that accompanies it.

There are three or four shorter pieces that could be described as relatively straightforward SF stories; 'The Time Piece' and 'Man of Letters' which will set you thinking in that way we all ask of our SF. 'The Village' is in this vein, it is almost predictable (especially given the time it was written), but carries an enormous impact despite, or perhaps because of, the relatively plain and unfussy style of writing used. In the French edition of this anthology, it was used as the title story, perhaps because of shared or similar history between France and the US.

Throughout this collection, each story carries a distinctiveness and impact coming from the evocative detail of Wilhelm’s writing. She is a writer who had big influence on me right back when I first started reading serious science fiction, but to my regret I haven't revisited much of her work. I need to address this deficit; I have a copy of 'Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang' somewhere, I intend to dig it out and read it as soon as I get a chance.

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Kate’s 4th collection. It was originally published in 1975 and there hasn’t been an English print edition since 1979, which is the edition I have. There are ebook versions which is a shame as her books are good enough to warrant real editions. As with any collection the quality is mixed, but overall it’s well above average. It’s worth buying just for ‘April Fools’ Day Forever’ and ‘The Funeral’. Both are masterpieces.

The Infinity Box - First published in Orbit 9 (1971) edited by Damon Knight. This is a very dark story of psychic and psychological abuse, but also a fascinating concept of time and vision. It builds very slowly with Kate’s characteristically detailed characters. The protagonist slowly loses his grip and then his morality. They are some great ideas in here which have nothing to do with the story, other than help build the characters, yet could be the focus of great stories in their own right.

The Time Piece – This novelette has only ever been published in this collection. A ground hog day type story where a watch allows the protagonist to go back into the past, but he can’t change anything. Nobody listens. And then he has a revelation about the present. Nobody listens there either. All he wants is to be seen.

The Red Canary – First published in Orbit 12 (1973) edited by Damon Knight. The medical apocalypse told from the perspective of someone trying to cope as the health system collapses with consequential problems for civilisation. Shades of the pandemic can be seen, and covid was merely a repetition of Spanish Flu, and Black Death before it. Somethings never change.

Man of Letters – This short story has only ever been published in this collection. More of a horror than SF story, but for writers. The main character is a writer and is stuck. Everything he’s writing is cliché. He finds out why and tries to change it, but all work and no play makes Jack… Great story. I loved this one.

April Fools' Day Forever – This novella has only ever been published in this collection. I don’t know why this story hasn’t been more widely published. It’s brilliant. It carries the theme of new humans which appears in much of her work. The story builds slowly and you need to stick with it to about halfway before it all starts to make sense. This story covers life and death and immortality. Art and science, Eugenics and euthaniser. It gets very dark at the 2/3 mark. Psychology, philosophy, God, the subconscious, and the gestalt. Everything that makes us human, both good and bad, is touched on in this story.

Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? - First published in Quark/3 (1971) edited by Samuel Delany and Marilyn Hacker. The population apocalypse told as a series of vignettes from different points in the process; the before-hand warnings, the collapse, and the aftermath. I little disjointed and confusing. I think it could have been better in a more linear telling with more detail. In other words, Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang.

The Fusion Bomb – First published in Orbit 10 (1972) edited by Damon Knight. This is very much a psychological/metaphysical story. I may have to read it again. I’m not sure I entirely understood what was going on the first time through. A rich man is running a study on cycles and patterns and all the people work on a secluded tropical island. Are they studying, or are they studied?

The Village - First published in the Bad Moon Rising (1973) edited by Thomas M. Disch. The Vietnam war comes to an American country town. No explanation of how or why it occurs, just lots of senseless violence. Which is the point, possibly. Not a pleasant story and I’m not entirely sure if the point it seems to be trying to make works.

The Funeral – First published in the Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) edited by Harlan Ellison. Absolutely brilliant. It’s easy to see why Ellison chose this for his anthology. This collection is worth getting simply for this story alone. A girl being raised in school within a society extremely reminiscent of A Handmaids Tale, naturally she rebels.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

So nice to return to Kate Wilhelm. I’ve saved her books that I haven't read yet on my shelf to savor sparingly since they're so wonderful and I will be so sad when I’ve read through them all. I say it each time I read her: I so wish I'd known about her when she was still alive and I could relish a new book coming out. :-( This collection of short stories has some amazing entries, a few okay ones and two that I didn't like at all.

"The Infinity Box" is still excellent upon a second reading. I first saw it in Tor Double Novel #12. It's a dark story of male arrogance and assault, a woman fighting back and the very fabric of time and reality shattering. A strong, timeless piece that lets Wilhelm show her best work in her best milieu (psychological and interior).

I'd also read "The Funeral" before as part of Ellison's anthology "Again, Dangerous Visions". I was blown away by its haunting prose and story that first time. A second time reading it has not diminished it at all. It is just beautiful, strong, and sad.

"The Red Canary" tears at your heart. It is so dark and I felt trapped in David’s situation. What can you do? It is pure Wilhelm at her best, again.

"April Fool’s Day Forever" is one of her most powerful stories. It's one of the best short stories I've ever read. When she turns to our inner selfs and psychology, she has no peer, she is amazing. She investigates immortality robbing us of our humanity. This is certainly a topic explored by many SF writers, but here it is done with such a deft touch. This story is sublime, like one of Julia’s sculptures.

As for the rest, "The Time Piece" was an interesting idea but it never got moving for me. "The Fusion Bomb" was similar, I kind of skimmed it and felt like "meh" at the end. I didn't like "Man of Letters", it kind of felt like an MFA practice piece before MFAs. And, I thought "Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?" was just awful.

[Renee Babcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short story collection from the early 70s. Two of the stories I didn't read, they started out weak and didn't go anywhere. The title story was really disturbing and was something that could be written today and be equally disturbing. The collection as a whole was pretty bleak, but we live in bleak times.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been my lunch time reading book for some time. The stories are brilliant (all save one) but some of them are quite spooky, so I had to set the book down off and on. Glad I read it and it will go on the shelf with Kate's other works.

[Graeme Dunlop · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories, although it didn't read that way on the back cover.

I read on three of them before I gave up. The stories don't really seem to resolve, and I couldn't connect with them. No point in slogging through stories you're not enjoying.

[Teresa Villaseñor · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has a bad rhythm to it, like a constant type of climax. No ending whatsoever. I started reading it three times because I couldn't get the feeling to it. Meh.

[Dan Slimmon · Rating 2 out of 5]

So bleak… couldn't finish… too unrelentingly bleak

[Aryanna Tunstall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading The Funeral was a bit confusing at times but ultimately really enjoyable. I love how relatable the FMC is to all the changes that are happening to her.

[Patrick DiJusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of amazing, scary, spooky, prescient short stories from the doyenne of science fiction, Kate Wilhelm

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. This book is awful. Nonsensical and poorly written. Is there such a thing as half-dimensional characters? Maybe one-quarter-dimensional?

[eva · Rating 1 out of 5]

i did like the premise behind a few of these short stories: the mind control dude, the time travelling watch, the fountain of youth, the girls' school and its mysterious founder. that's about as far as it went. the writing ranged from indifferent to convoluted, and the overall tone was cold, cynical, and weirdly...macho?

[BL834 · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a word: bleak. Ms. Wilhelm writes beautifully, but man these stories just suck the hope right out of you. Don't read the whole book in a single sitting, m'kay?