Ex Libris: Leviathan Three by Vandermeer and Aguirre, eds

Heh, it's been a while since I've done one of these.

Two or three years ago was a good time for story anthologies. Jeff Vandermeer's and Forrest Aguirre's Leviathan 3 was one of the big collections that I had been drooling over, together with Peter Straub's literary Conjunctions, Robert Silverberg's collections of novelettes in Legends, Michael Chabon's first McSweeney antho, and later on, Al Sarrantonio's attempt in cutting-edge speculative fiction in Flights. So when I had a chance to pick up this book together with The New Fabulists collection, I didn't hesitate.

But what is Leviathan all about?

From the copyright page of Leviathan 1, writer/editor Jeff Vandermeer stated that the "anthology series was an attempt to cover many different themes and concerns without the kind of specific restrictions that often prove the downfall of more focused theme anthologies." He added that "each anthology shall attempt to map part of the Leviathan that is fiction."

Quite an ambitious undertaking, true? However, in the case of Leviathan 3, he declared that, "Leviathan 3 is our great Decadent volume—our anthology of excesses. Armed with a new co-editor—Forrest Aguirre—and a new publisher for the Ministry (Prime), we decided to take the anthology to yet another level, abandoning forever the idea of a logical set of themes that might map the entirety of fiction."

Moreover, Vandermeer wanted an element of the Decadent to enter the anthology " because the Decadent movement and the Surrealist movement had a lot in common—cross-pollination made a lot of sense." Uh-oh. (Sometimes I regret taking up political science in college instead of English lit.) Rich Horton in Locus at least attempted to call it a work of slipstream, and thus, it's understandable why it's hard to classify these stories.

Though I thought the collection was a gold mine of stories, I also agreed at what writer Stephan Chapman told Vandermeer when he said that the slogan for Leviathan 3 should be "There's something for everyone to hate." After all, just consider the book's ecletic collection of 27 stories and its broad range of themes and approaches. After all, this wasn't just about fantasy but also fantasy without the fantastical element, i.e. fantasy at the level of metaphor.

But of course I didn't know about this; when I first started reading the collection, I had no preconceptions about the anthology, something that was a major hindrance for Chabon's and Sarrantonio's collections.

To name some home-runs for me: Jeffrey Ford's "The Weight of Words" would set word-lovers a-spinning; Brian Stableford's "The Face of an Angel" was oddly creepy; "State Secrets of Aphasia" by Chapman himself and "The Genius of Assassins" by Michael Cisco were fun but almost incomprehensible readings; "Phocas" by 19th Century French writers de Gourmont and Gautier was saddening despite its religious overtones; James Bassett's "While Wandering a Vanished Sea" was quite Vance-ian in telling; and of course the Library stories by Zoran Zivkovic were excellent despite being dry. (Or maybe it was the translation?)

Others were either okay or didn't work for me. Despite excellent recommendations about the writings of L. Timmel DuChamp and Carol Emshwiller, their "A Fool's Tale" and "The Prince of Mules" respectively didn't exactly set my attention on fire. Neither did Brendan Connell's "A Season with Doctor Black." Unfortunately, while I was enjoying Tamar Yellin's "Kafka in Bronteland," I found my copy didn't have the requisite ending due to bad printing. Good thing that Yellin-- after I emailed her asking about it-- pointed me in the right direction on where to find the last part.

Overall, it's a pretty good set of stories. Though there were hits and misses, it's hard to take Vandermeer and Aguirre to task when even they admit that not everyone will like all the contributions in the collection. Likewise, you can see their enthusiasm when loading an anthology with varied tales. Though the reader would invariably find one story to hate, at least it's sure that the same reader will also like one story.

And that, I think, makes all the difference.

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Just an edit: a comment from the ever-informative Jeff Vandermeer:

Leviathan 3 (which did win the WF Award) is available through Amazon, if any of your readers care to order it. Leviathan 4 is available from Night Shade Books (Forrest edited that one himself). And we're planning on, at some point, doing a best-of Leviathan 1--3, given that 1 and 2 had somewhat limited distribution. Either that or an omnibus of 1 and 2 together. Meanwhile, my wife Ann and I will edit Leviathan 5, which will be a dark humor volume, probably for 2007.

Likewise, Vandermeer is cleaning house (well, when you have 250,000 books, you do gotta move 'em around a bit) so he's offering some great stuff, including Leviathan 2 and The Troika. Check it out here.