C.J. Cherryh's Short Fiction for Fans and Critics Alike

C.J. Cherryh is an award-winning speculative fiction novelist who already has a legion of fans, but her woefully underrated short fiction is sure to win over a few more. Admittedly, Cherryh writes with a tangled pen--sometimes her prose is so awkward that the reader is forced to go over a phrase three or four times to decipher its meaning. Because of this tendency for odd phrasing, and because of the different approaches she seems to take to fantasy and science fiction writing, readers often fall into one of three camps.

Either they love her fantasy, they love her science fiction, or they don't like either. I fell into the latter camp. I was not impressed with Cherryh's highly lauded Morgaine cycle, and wondered what all the fuss was about. That is, until the collected short fiction of C.J. Cherryh fell into my lap.

Through this collection, I came to realize that Cherryh has eclectic interests with a strong taste for history and she brings a sociological perspective to her work seldom seen in other genre short fiction. Her educational background includes archeology and a degree in classics from Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, and it's this background that seems to bring her Sunfall short stories to life.

Each of the Sunfall stories is set in a far future earth when the sun is dying, and cities have even more character than they do today. Almost every short story of this collection is memorable because Cherryh does not overly dwell on the speculative elements of her story--she instead illuminates the ordinary in extraordinary ways. Her Sunfall story set in future Paris tells a haunting tale about unrequited love that not only honors the character of the city of love, but sheds light on the fickleness of the human heart. There is magic in the story, certainly. But like Paris itself, the story focuses on the magic of human attraction.

Her Sunfall story set in future New York is of an entirely different character, filled with skyscrapers, daring and corruption. From city to city, she captures the essence of New York City now and projects it forward in a way that is both plausible and intriguing. For the Sunfall series alone, C.J. Cherryh's short fiction deserves high praise. It certainly has the capacity to win over the hardest genre-hating heart.

But another stand out in the world of C.J. Cherryh's Short Fiction is a story called "A Thief in Korianth" which, for all its predictable twists and turns, somehow manages to capture a Dungeon's and Dragon's type universe and give it some class and depth. C.J. Cherryh is able to accomplish this feat in her short fiction not once, but twice. In a startlingly short 1980s tale called "The Last Tower," Cherryh takes a rather stereotypically besieged wizard, and gives his plight a poignancy that is as rare as the tale is brief.

Interestingly, Cherryh's award-winning short story entitled "Cassandra" seemed to pale in comparison to some of the other stories in the collection. It lacked the resonance of the Sunfall series and the charm of her wizard stories. Certainly, someone over at the Hugo Awards thought it was important work, but one shouldn't judge C.J. Cherryh's short fiction on that story alone.

C.J. Cherryh has described her own writing as using "very limited third person," but in her short fiction perspective often takes the approach of a camera lens, giving a wide angle, then focusing in on the character or characters she wants to explore. Sometimes the points of view shift unpredictably in a story, but she does it so deftly in her short fiction that she ought to teach that shift as an art form.

Ultimately, the collected short fiction of C.J. Cherryh deserves praise. Whether you're a fan of C.J. Cherryh's novels, or a critic, her short fiction is worth reading. In spite of the occasional awkwardness, there's a definite mastery of storytelling on display here that is worth studying.