The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller
reviewed by Michael Hemmingson

Carol Emshwiller. The Mount. Small Beer, 2002. 232 pp. Paper: $16.00.

While science fiction has, since its inception as a genre, generally been dominated by commercial publishing houses and the demands of that popular market, there have always been active, scattered small presses bringing out the “other” science fiction—without them, we wouldn’t have The Demolished Man or Dune, classics in the field that were originally small-press titles. Carol Emshwiller has been writing fantasy, speculative, and science fiction for many years; she has a dedicated cult following and has been an influence on a number of today’s top writers. Unfortunately, as reality would have it, a cult writer is not often attractive to the conglomerates. Brooklyn-based Small Beer Press, formed a couple of years ago and putting out noteworthy titles, has stepped in to fill that hole by simultaneously publishing two new Emshwillers: Report to the Men’s Club, a collection, and a novel, The Mount. The latter is an alien-invasion yarn, but not like any alien-invasion story I’ve ever read, and certainly not the kind you’ll soon see Steven Spielberg turn into a TV miniseries. It took me about thirty pages to figure out who was narrating the narrative—my one complaint—but the title should have given it away sooner. While a quirky novel, it is very easy to fall into the rhythm of Emshwiller’s poetic and smooth sentences and run with the flow. It’ll be interesting to watch what other unique titles Small Beer Press will issue in the future.