“The Dead Boy at Your Window” Bruce
Holland Rogers(1998)
Many early fairy tales were designed as parables
rather than as straightforward stories, although
with the passage of time their secondary meanings
have sometimes been lost. Modern fantasy tends to
be primarily adventure fiction, but a few writers,
particularly at short length, have more aggressive
agendas. Bruce Holland Rogers is one of the emerg-
ing talents in the field, whose work often defies easy
classification, as in this very short, very powerful
story of a mother and her stillborn child and what
happens when she refuses to accept that he is dead.
Her rejection of the truth is so powerful that
the child becomes animated, although he is still
not alive. He is unable to grow, of course, so his fa-
ther builds a frame in which he regularly stretches
the boy’s body so that he seems to be getting taller.
The child is odd but quite bright and eventually
becomes a good pupil in school, although many of
the other kids dislike him. The local bullies beat
him up, but since he feels no pain he neither com-
plains nor resents their actions, although some-
times he feels lonely. Then one day they fasten his
thinly stretched body to a wire frame and launch
him into the air like a kite.
The dead boy drifts through the sky, eventually
coming to the ground in the land of the dead. The
dead are all naked, and they are jealous of the new-
comer at first. They are also anxious for word from
those they left behind, even though they no longer
remember their own names or the names of their
loved ones. When the dead boy tells them that he is
going to return to the land of the living, they give
him messages of their love to carry back, even
though they cannot tell him to whom they should
be delivered. So the dead boy passes them on at ran-
dom and receives messages from the living that he
carries back on his next flight, and for many flights
to come. Rogers states his point explicitly at the
end, although it is clear from the context. Love out-
lasts memory, and it needs no names to endure. The
story earned its author the Bram Stoker Award.
Dean, Pamela(1953– )
Pamela Dean is the pen name of Pamela Dyer-
Bennett, who began her career contributing sto-
ries to the Liavek shared universe anthology series
but quickly switched to novels, starting with The
Secret Country(1985). This was the first of a series
of four in the Hidden Lands series, very charming
fantasies for younger readers, written with enough
wit and sophistication to entertain adult audi-
ences as well. Several children have been engaged
in an elaborate fantasy game of their own making,
but they discover they have either created some-
thing real or have been influenced by a hidden re-
ality already existing as they stumble into a world
that follows the same rules as their game. They re-
turn for a second series of adventures in The Hid-
den Lands(1986), in which they battle the Dragon
King before finally escaping back to their homes.
Inevitably, they are summoned back for what ap-
pears to be the final battle in The Whim of a
Dragon(1989), which was apparently originally in-
tended as the end of the series, although Dean
added The Dubious Hills(1994), a somewhat low-
key and mildly anticlimactic extension, although a
very fine novel on its own.
Her other novels are intended for adults. Ta m
Lin(1991) is an elaborate retelling of a classic fairy
tale updated to a contemporary setting. Although
much of it is set on a college campus, the major
conflict is between a mortal woman and the fairy
queen, both of whom love the same man. Her
most recent novel is Juniper, Gentian, and Sage
(1998), which has a decidedly darker tone. Three
sisters become fascinated by an unusual boy who
moves in across the street. He convinces them to
help him build a time machine in their attic, which
they believe to be nothing more than an unusual
game, but he is in deadly earnest and lies to them
about the purpose of the machine. It controls time
rather than allows travel to other ages, and when it
is complete, he uses it to seize control of their lives.
Although Dean wrote only a handful of short sto-
ries, they are all quite entertaining, particularly
“Owlswater” (1993) and “The Fair Gift” (1996).
Her recent lack of new work is regrettable.De Camp, L. Sprague(1907–2000)
Some authors are content to write exclusively
within the fantasy genre, but when L. Sprague de
Camp first began selling stories during the early80 “The Dead Boy at Your Window”