quietly but effectively demonstrates otherwise in a
single sentence.
“Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s
Back”Joe R. Lansdale(1986)
After-the-bomb stories are almost always the
province of science fiction writers, but occasionally
someone finds a way to turn that device into a tale
of fantasy and horror. Joe R. LANSDALEhas one of
the most fertile imaginations in the genre, and he
used that premise for this very bizarre story about
two survivors, the narrator, Paul Marder, and his
wife, Mary, who are among the very few to emerge
from the fallout shelters into a transformed world.
Mary hates her husband because of his former job,
working in the missile industry, and blames him for
the war and the death of their daughter. Every
night she embellishes an elaborate tattoo of her
daughter’s face on his back, and he submits despite
the pain because he, too, suffers from guilt.
It is the details of that world that make this
fantasy. The oceans have disappeared, but whales,
sharks, and even some fish have managed to alter
their bodies so that they can live and move about
on the empty sea beds. Strange oversized lizards
prowl a landscape where unusual plants provide a
menace of their own. It is humans who look out of
place in this setting, and most of them feel that
way. The greatest threat lies in the rose vines,
which have become intelligent, malevolent crea-
tures. They insinuate themselves into corpses and
partially animate them, attempting to lure more
victims into the trap. Paul and Mary are besieged
in a lighthouse, one of the few structures to sur-
vive the war, with dwindling supplies and little
hope.
Paul has a vision one evening, or perhaps a
visitation. Lansdale never tells us whether he is
imagining the sight of his dead daughter because of
his own feeling of guilt or whether she is some vari-
ation of a ghost. The latter seems more likely be-
cause it appears that her presence has somehow
physically altered the tattoo on his back. A short
time later he discovers that the vines have man-
aged to find an entry point into the lighthouse and
that his wife has been attacked and is dead. Ulti-
mately, he decides not to fight any more and to ac-
cept death by letting the animated corpse of Mary
embrace him one last time.
Lansdale’s indictment of the mentality that
believes nuclear weapons make sense is effective,
if sometimes heavy-handed. The story suggests no
opportunity for redemption; a mistake on this
scale cannot be atoned for adequately. What
makes it particularly memorable is the uniquely
bizarre imagery with which he gives depth to his
nightmarish postapocalyptic world, where vio-
lence and beauty are so intertwined that they are
no longer distinguishable.“Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”Jorge Luis
Borges(1961)
The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges is the
author of a considerable number of intelligent, fan-
tastic stories, many of which, like this one, have no
characters in the usual sense of the term. The nar-
rator is simply relating the history of a series of
events that begin with the discovery of a single
volume of a common encyclopedia. This particular
volume varies slightly from all other copies of the
same book in that it includes a lengthy article on
the fictional country of Uqbar. Uqbar, whose geo-
graphical location is quite vague, is an unusual na-
tion whose culture is based entirely on idealistic
principles. The article describes its history under
the guise of a fictional world, Tlon.
The book is explained away in various fash-
ions as a hoax or as part of a plan by a secret orga-
nization to create a fictional world in incredible
detail for purposes of their own. Much of the ensu-
ing text is a discussion of some of the attributes of
this mythical world. The language has no nouns,
and objects are seen as a succession of experiences
rather than isolated in time. Time itself is a more
important delimiter than space. Fiction exists, but
a story must contain all possible resolutions in
order to be complete. Reality is mutable in the
sense that strong enough expectations will lead to
physical results. If a group is told to dig up artifacts
that do not actually exist, the artifacts will appear
as if they had been there all the time, created by
the credibility of the diggers. Contrarily, items that
are forgotten begin to lose their detail over time,
eventually disappearing entirely.352 “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back”