Greenberg, Martin H.: Better Off Undead
Better Off Undead (2008)
Edited by: Martin H. Greenberg & Daniel M. Hoyt
Genre: Short Stories/Urban Fantasy
Pages: 312
This book caught my eye in the store because I recognized the cover and the title, but couldn't remember why. I picked it up to glance through the table of contents and promptly remembered: Carrie Vaughn has a story in this anthology. So I thought, what the hell? And added it to my stack. It's obviously different than the typical anthologies I usually see from the urban fantasy genre, I could tell that from the names of authors in the ToC. I could also tell that this anthology would be a mix of horror and UF rather than just UF, and I hoped that this book might be the one to break my sourness regarding UF anthologies.
I picked it up last night to read during American Idol because I needed something I didn't have to devote my full attention to and Cherryh's Downbelow Station just didn't fit that bill. Obviously, the anthology is a fast read.
The premise: it's simple, really: eighteen stories explore the actual perks of being undead, and therefore, it's a kind of celebration of the paranormal and all the goodness that comes with it. These eighteen original stories are split into four categories: Afterlife (stories that take place in some form of the afterlife), Spirit (ghost stories), Zombies (need I say more?), and Undead (vampires, yo).
I'm not going to do a story-by-story review. I'm barely going to highlight the stories I liked, because while a few (and I mean VERY FEW) stood out to me, none of the stories were memorable enough to warrant sitting down and actually writing a paragraph or two about it. So instead, I'll talk about the anthology itself in general terms and refer to certain stories with a sentence.
The intro warns the reader: expect humor. I was a little miffed when I read that (because I wish I'd read that in the store, as I would've passed on the anthology), but hey, at least I had a warning, and that warning colored my expectations. Indeed, the first few stories were rather humorous and light in tone, which made reading the later, more serious, the darker stories harder to stomach.
What worked: I was really impressed with the "Zombie" section, as those stories felt the most creative and fresh in the bunch. That may be in part because I don't READ zombie fiction, so came into those stories with no expectations (despite the many, many zombie MOVIES I've seen). The writing in Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "My Tears Have Been My Meat" was very good, but I'm not sure the story itself fit the premise of celebrating the life of the undead. Fran LaPlaca's "The Perfect Man" was quite clever, and I liked the direction and focus of Jay Lake's "Two All Beef Patties," even though I guessed where it was going. I also really enjoyed Kate Paulk's "Night Shifted" from the "Undead" section, as it was quite fun.
What didn't: I was really disappointed in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Genius Loci." While I've only ever read one other Yarbro work (which was a short story), I expected something better than a "punch line" piece that left the reader to imagine what rest of the story might be. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of Alan Dean Foster's "Ah, Yehz," but Foster's work has never agreed with me anyway. Charles Edgar Quinn's "Gooble, Gooble, One of Us" was just way too dark for this anthology and didn't celebrate a damn thing about being undead, IMHO. I think Amanda S. Green's "Bump in the Night" and S.M. Stirling's "Separation Anxiety" were meant to be funny, but they weren't, not by a longshot.
It is rather interesting how certain stories really didn't seem to celebrate the undead, even though that was the point of the anthology. Admittedly, we saw some different takes on the undead, and it was nice to see characters at peace or become at peace with what and who they were, and maybe that was more the point than anything. I didn't expect happy endings in all of these tales by a longshot, but it was nice when a story had a satisfying punch line or made me think differently about a trope than I had previously.
List of Contributors
Sarah A. Hoyt
Dave Freer
Laura Resnick
Esther M. Friesner
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Alan Dean Foster
Carrie Vaughn ( Odyssey Writer)
Irene Radford
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Fran LaPlaca
Jay Lake
Devon Monk
Robert A. Hoyt
Kate Paulk
Rebecca Lickiss
Charles Edgar Quinn
Amanda S. Green
S.M. Stirling
My Rating
Wish I'd Borrowed It: The only reason I bought it was for the Carrie Vaughn story, which was a cross between a ghost-story and a superhero story and therefore entertaining in its own right, but it didn't do anything for me, and that was par for the course with this anthology. However, I applaud the fact that this anthology featured ORIGINAL stories that DIDN'T DEPEND on the author's previously-published books. That's such a sad relief it's not even funny. The stories were, for the most part, pretty well written, and if you make it through the entire book without even cracking a smile once, there's something wrong with you (or you don't like this type of fiction no matter what form it takes, and in that case, you don't need to be reading this anthology to begin with). There's quite a lot of light, humorous stories here, which makes the darker ones stand out in a bad way (IMHO), but as far as UF anthologies go, it's got some serious variety, and that's a plus. But overall, it's like cotton candy: it doesn't stick with you for very long.
Cover Commentary: I think the cover art is really eye-catching. Hell, it caught mine in the store! The coloring is great, and I love the image of the hands at the bottom kind of reaching up out of the grave. Of course, the placement of the title is well done as well, because the whole look is, as I've said, eye-catching. It does imply a darker, perhaps more "serious" anthology than the one I read, but whatever. :)
Next up:
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh