Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories

Carol Emshwiller  - published August 2002

“Creature” won the 2002 Nebula.
Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award
Locus 2002 Recommended Reading List

What if the world ended on your birthday — and no one came? What if your grandmother was a superhero? What if the orphan you were raising was a top-secret weapon, looked like Godzilla, and loved singing nursery rhymes? What if poet laureates fought to the death, in stadiums?

Emshwiller’s previous books (Joy in Our Cause, Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, and others) have won her a devoted cult following. Her short fiction is about women and men, monsters, obsessions, art, and falling in love. She writes witty, humane, endearingly odd stories that play with all the genres and conventions you can put a name to — science fiction, Western, romance, postmodern, tabloid, literary — and some that haven’t even been invented yet.

Suspect that life is much stranger than anyone ever admits? Buy this book. Unhappy in love? Buy this book. About to visit the dentist or embark on a long voyage? Buy this book. Troubled by dreams you can never quite remember in the morning? Buy this book. Love good short fiction? Buy this book.

Grandma
The Paganini of Jacob’s Gully
Modillion
Mrs. Jones
Acceptance Speech
One Part of the Self is Always Tall and Dark
Foster Mother
Creature
The Project
It Comes from Deep Inside
Prejudice and Pride
Report to the Men’s Club
Overlooking
Water Master
Abominable
Desert Child
Venus Rising
Nose
After All

Praise for Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories:

“These short stories have a mysterious glow.” — JANE

“Emshwiller proves over and over again why she should be venerated as the treasure she is: relationships, superheroes, sentient reptiles — it’s all in there, and she makes it all work.”
— Peggy Hailey, Book People

“Carol Emshwiller’s stories are wonder-filled, necessary, and beautifully crafted. It’s a high pleasure indeed to see this new collection.”
— Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren

I am disappointed by these stories. Disappointed that they have not (yet) won Emshwiller the Pulitzer she deserves as our premier magic realist. Disappointed that their sly and scary intimacy has not (yet) altered the tone of all science fiction for the better. Disappointed that she wrote them, not I.
— Terry Bisson, author of The Pickup Artist

Carol Emshwiller makes fiction out of the stuff of our everyday lives; about moms and memory and monsters that end up as familiar as Border Collies. She’s deceptively deft, full of strange things that end up feeling as familiar as your own kitchen.
— Maureen F. McHugh, author of After the Apocalypse

“I read one of the stories in Carol Emshwiller’s new collection, Report to the Men’s Club, in progress several years ago and have thought about it ever since. I could even quote you lines! And now, having read the rest of the elegant, complex, insightful stories, I know she’s done the same thing to me again eighteen times over! Emshwiller knows more about men and mortality and love and loss and writing and life than anybody on the planet! Dazzling, dangerous, devastating writer! Unforgettable (and I mean that literally!) collection! Wow! Wow! Wow!”
— Connie Willis, author of Passage

Cover art by Erica Harris.