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In the Valley of the Statues
Featuring the original story for the best-selling Mythago Wood!
223 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Robert Holdstock
100 books407 followersRobert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author who is best known for his works of fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction.
Holdstock's writing was first published in 1968. His science fiction and fantasy works explore philosophical, psychological, anthropological, spiritual, and woodland themes. He has received three BSFA awards and won the World Fantasy Award in the category of Best Novel in 1985.
Pseudonyms are Chris Carlsen, Robert Faulcon,Robert Black, Steven Eisler and Richard Kirk.
Holdstock's writing was first published in 1968. His science fiction and fantasy works explore philosophical, psychological, anthropological, spiritual, and woodland themes. He has received three BSFA awards and won the World Fantasy Award in the category of Best Novel in 1985.
Pseudonyms are Chris Carlsen, Robert Faulcon,Robert Black, Steven Eisler and Richard Kirk.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2009
Originally I had this shortstory collection marked down as fantasy, but that was pure ignorance, because I hadn't yet read it.
It's not fantasy! It's science fiction... and its excellent!
Lots of amazing stories here, like the one about the old warmonger returning to earth, only to find it completely changed, so changed that he himself has to change in order to see it again... a truely horrific and sad tale...
It's not fantasy! It's science fiction... and its excellent!
Lots of amazing stories here, like the one about the old warmonger returning to earth, only to find it completely changed, so changed that he himself has to change in order to see it again... a truely horrific and sad tale...
September 27, 2015
The stories collected here are mostly science fiction, initially published between 1974 and 1980, plus “Mythago Wood” (first published in 1981), the novella later expanded into Holdstock’s best-known fantasy novel. The stories are quite disparate in style and approach, and, viewing Holdstock’s career retrospectively, I can’t help seeing them as experiments in search of the type of fiction he ended up writing. Certainly, the most powerful stories are the first (“Earth and Stone”) and last (“Mythago Wood”), and these are the ones that bring into play Holdstock’s deep affinity with Stone Age Britain in all its mythic, mystical, brutal, and often quite alien strangeness.
In “Earth and Stone”, a man time-travels to the Stone Age to study a people who, at first, seem to have all disappeared except for one odd boy, who leads him to a field of what seem to be newly-dug graves. But the men in the graves aren’t dead. The other science-fictional stories are mostly about time-travel, too. “A Small Event” sees a race of far-future, heavily genetically altered humans, awaiting the spectacle of a quantum black hole passing through the Earth, to witness the time-distortion it creates. They amuse themselves with strange, almost magical, entertainments in the meantime. “Travellers” is set Earth’s future, during a ‘Time Node’, where future and past co-exist for several months, due to the passage of a far-future alien being from our far future travelling to our far past. The story focuses on its protagonist’s search for a woman from the future he fell in love with during a previous Time Node. “The Graveyard Cross” deals with a different sort of time travel: its main character is an astronaut who has been away from Earth for centuries. Returning, he longs for nothing more than to stand on green earth once more, but finds that his home planet, and the human race, have gone through extreme changes in the meantime.
“Ashes”, not a time travel story, is nevertheless about a man dislocated from his own era. He begins his tale claiming to be a mass murderer, but wonders why, although he is sure he’s being hunted across the galaxy, other people don’t believe him when he reveals his identity. “In the Valley of the Statues” is not SF but horror, about an artist who has populated valley with lifelike statues.
It’s the first and last tale which are the best, and most indicative of the direction Holdstock’s fiction would take in the 1980s and beyond. Both “Earth and Stone” and “Mythago Wood” have an emotional power the other tales, though often highly original and stuffed with ideas, lack, for me.
In “Earth and Stone”, a man time-travels to the Stone Age to study a people who, at first, seem to have all disappeared except for one odd boy, who leads him to a field of what seem to be newly-dug graves. But the men in the graves aren’t dead. The other science-fictional stories are mostly about time-travel, too. “A Small Event” sees a race of far-future, heavily genetically altered humans, awaiting the spectacle of a quantum black hole passing through the Earth, to witness the time-distortion it creates. They amuse themselves with strange, almost magical, entertainments in the meantime. “Travellers” is set Earth’s future, during a ‘Time Node’, where future and past co-exist for several months, due to the passage of a far-future alien being from our far future travelling to our far past. The story focuses on its protagonist’s search for a woman from the future he fell in love with during a previous Time Node. “The Graveyard Cross” deals with a different sort of time travel: its main character is an astronaut who has been away from Earth for centuries. Returning, he longs for nothing more than to stand on green earth once more, but finds that his home planet, and the human race, have gone through extreme changes in the meantime.
“Ashes”, not a time travel story, is nevertheless about a man dislocated from his own era. He begins his tale claiming to be a mass murderer, but wonders why, although he is sure he’s being hunted across the galaxy, other people don’t believe him when he reveals his identity. “In the Valley of the Statues” is not SF but horror, about an artist who has populated valley with lifelike statues.
It’s the first and last tale which are the best, and most indicative of the direction Holdstock’s fiction would take in the 1980s and beyond. Both “Earth and Stone” and “Mythago Wood” have an emotional power the other tales, though often highly original and stuffed with ideas, lack, for me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews