donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (12/12/84)
Michael Bishop is not known for being a horror writer, but he has managed to produce (according to the blurb) 'a bloodcurdling novel of satanism, illicit lust and supernatural horror' called WHO MADE STEVIE CRYE? (Arkham House, 1984; 309 pp.). Some blurbs leave more unsaid than others, and while this blurb is accurate in what it says, it is so incomplete and misleading as to be virtually useless in telling you why you should read this book. And you should read this book -- I think it's definitely the best novel Bishop has produced to date. Stevenson Crye is a woman in her thirties whose husband has died and left her to support their two children. Stevie earns a meager living by free-lancing articles for newspapers and magazines in the area around her home town in Georgia. One day her fancy daisy-wheel electric typewriter breaks down; when she learns that it will cost $52 to replace the cable on her ribbon carrier, plus $23 for a service call if she won't make the 80 mile round trip to the service center, she screams in fury and frustration. A friend suggests a tiny shop in a nearby town that will fix it for $10.67, so she decides to give it a try (bad news, as any horror fan can tell you). The young man who 'fixes' her typewriter bears a remarkable resemblance to John Hinckley... When Stevie brings the typewriter home, she discovers that it is possessed: it will type out things that no one ever typed into it. Its taste in subject matter runs to gruesome nightmares, nightmares that Stevie begins to experience in her sleep and then even when she's awake... Has her typewriter been taken over by the ghost of her husband Ted? Are demons from hell trying to destroy her mind? Has the psychopathic typewriter repairman installed an RS-232 interface? 'Stop!' she commanded the machine. The Exceleriter paused briefly, paragraphed, and rattled off another two lines of type. Then it stopped. That the runaway Exceleriter had obeyed her impulsive command Stevie found amazing. Why should it listen to her? If it chose to obey, it did so primarily to demonstrate the paradox that IT was in control. Its halting on her rattled say-so only served to heighten her feelings of inadequacy and victimization. ... Shivering, Stevie approached her desk. She removed the taped pages from the typewriter to see what it had written. ... This chapter -- if you could call it a chapter -- ended rather abruptly. Its final words were: '"Stop!" she commanded the machine. 'The Exceleriter paused briefly, paragraphed, and rattled off another two lines of type. Then it stopped.' If you guessed that this book is somewhat less than serious about partaking of the horror genre, you're quite right. (Actually when I finished STEVIE I was laughing so hard my lungs hurt.) Bishop's writing has more in common with Gene Wolfe and Philip Dick than with Stephen King, and the book abounds in nice touches. The characters are well drawn and consistent, especially Stevie, a woman totally out of sympathy with the stereotypically tearful and danger-prone virgins who populate more ordinary horror novels. This Arkham edition is illustrated by J K Potter with large numbers of wonderfully revolting 'photographs', and has an amusing jacket by Glennray Tutor; not a bad deal for $15.95. I remember with fondness a short story called 'Built Up Logically' (which I believe had a companion piece called (naturally) 'Built Down Logically'; I've lost my copies, can anyone tell me where to find these stories?) -- if you liked that story, you'll really like WHO MADE STEVIE CRYE?. I know, I know, look it up in the Library of Babel, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn