cause of his seniority than for his actual stories,
most of which are only intermittently available.
The best and most famous of his dark fantasies is
“The Great God Pan,” which mixes a subtle super-
natural theme with suggestive sexual references
quite unusual at the time, all conveyed in a rather
complex story structure.
The tale opens with Dr. Raymond revealing to
his friend Clarke his plan to operate on a finan-
cially dependent young woman to allow her to look
on an aspect of the world that is invisible to the
rest of us. That vision includes Pan, the satyr, a fig-
ure that had changed with the advent of Christian-
ity from that of a playful manifestation of nature to
a carnal and even frighteningly evil creature, per-
haps an aspect of Satan himself. The experiment is
a success, but the woman, Mary, is driven mad al-
most immediately and never recovers her wits.
Machen provides plenty of foreshadowing and sev-
eral allusions to the days of Roman Britain to
strengthen the reader’s awareness that something
pre-Christian is taking place.
The story then jumps several years into the fu-
ture. A gentleman’s chance encounter with an old
friend reveals that something bizarre is happening.
The friend married a young woman named Helen,
whom he blames for all of his subsequent misfor-
tunes, including his bankruptcy and moral ruin.
The man dies shortly afterward, and the mysteri-
ous Helen has disappeared. A second inexplicable
death took place near their former home, and they
were suspected of being involved in the crime, al-
though never charged. Then London society be-
comes preoccupied with a newcomer, Mrs.
Beaumont, whose parties are much in demand. At
the same time, a wave of suicides is troubling the
citizens of London, although no one realizes until
quite late that all of the victims were recent visi-
tors to Mrs. Beaumont’s house.
Villiers, who belatedly emerges as the story’s
protagonist, suspects some portion of the truth and
is determined to confront the woman. We learn in
the final pages that she is also Helen, which should
have been obvious to most readers, and is the
daughter of Mary, who was made pregnant during
that instant when she was sane and could look
upon Pan’s face. The specific acts she uses to drive
men to suicide and despair are not described but
are almost certainly sexual in nature. Discovered,
she takes her own life, bringing the cycle of de-
struction to an end. The story delivers a clear mes-
sage, one that would later be common in science
fiction, that there are some things in the world
that humankind was not meant to know, or in this
case, see. The complex story structure, which
changes protagonists several times, is reasonably
well done, and the transitions are quite smooth.
The secret might seem rather tame by contempo-
rary standards, but it was quite daring for the late
19th century.Green, Sharon(1942– )
Sharon Green began writing professionally in 1982,
and for the first several years her output was exclu-
sively science fiction, although the plots and treat-
ment were so similar to fantasy that fans of the
latter should enjoy her earlier work as well. Her
first actual fantasy was The Far Side of Forever
(1987), a novel of multiple worlds that can be ac-
cessed through portals. A team of adventurers sets
out to recover a stolen magical artifact that is es-
sential to the continued stability of their particular
universe. Green later added a less interesting se-
quel, Hellhound Magic (1989), a magical search
and rescue operation. Her second fantasy novel,
Lady Blade, Lord Fighter (1987), is considerably
more sophisticated. A young woman secretly trains
herself as an expert with a sword, a skill she puts to
good use after she returns home to find her broth-
ers missing and herself betrothed to a man she de-
spises. The subsequent intrigues and action
sequences are very well handled. Dawn Song
(1990) blended elements from her previous novels,
mixing a quest story uneasily with another set of
political intrigues. Werewolf Moon(1993) is quite
atypical for the author, a supernatural romance
novel whose protagonist is drawn to a mysterious
man who may or may not be a werewolf.
The Hidden Realms(1993) launched a series of
five novels, the premise of which is that there are
entire worlds lying concealed within one another
and that inhabitants of these hidden universes may
at times emerge to spread their influence into the
larger realms. A shape-changing princess and an
arrogant mercenary are forced to rise above theirGreen, Sharon 143