I was in the Estate Library several weeks back looking for short stories as I often read one when I get a short break while tending bar in the Pub. When I was there searching the indexes where we listed short stories, Iain Mackenzie, our Librarian, mentioned he made on odd discovery in an unsorted collection of short fiction.i asked him what it was.
It was he said a short story by Robert Holdstock. Given how few short stories he done, I was somewhat surprised. He said appears authentic as it included this note which I’m reprinting whole here
“In April 1994, I reminded Rob Holdstock that I would very much like him to write a story for this volume of New Worlds.
He replied on June 11.
David Garnett
Dear David,
Thanks for your note and I’m sorry to have been so slow responding. Two reasons for my distraction: first, the story I’d planned to show you (‘Merlin’s Wood’) grew into a novel! And secondly, that business at Hockley Mere in Norfolk, I mentioned to you, has been taking some interesting twists and turns. I’ll be getting back into Science after twenty years! Real Soon Now …
It occurs to me that the letters from the paleo-botanist who contacted me might be of interest, since they deal, as does the whole Hockley Mere ‘event’, with a subject close to the modem SF heart.
I enclose her side of the correspondence; see what you think. In any case, I’ll be in touch in July.
All the best
Rob
Ok, so it’s authentic.
So what’s the story like? The Charisma Trees is a story that is an odd riff off of his well known Ryhope Wood series of a mysterious wood where those who go in either don’t come back or are changed in strange ways if they come back. Like the Ryhope Wood which is larger on the inside than it is on the outside and represents a throwback to a time before, a time mythopoetic in nature. As Holdstock says here:
Dear God, we think of Ancient History as Stone Age, Stonehenge, Bronze Age, Romans, Trojans, King Arthur, Robin Hood – Abba! But here, before the Ice Age that shaped your country as you know it, someone lived, made tools, burned a clearing to construct a shelter, someone echoed the beaver, forgotten folk shaping the land by making their refuge out of the product of that land.
As scientists fail to unravel the mystery of this Wildwood, the Authorities decided to call in a number of experts as Holdstock says here:
You’ll probably know some of the writers among them: they’ve been brought in because of their expertise in the relationship between time and imagination: Aldiss to advise on the Jurassic; Priest on the Edwardian; Moorcock and Silverberg on the End of Time itself; Kushner and de Lint on time as it runs in the realm of Faerie; Tuttle on lost futures; Bear, Baxter, McAuley on Big Science. Several others. There are musicians – Birtwhistle, Chris Dench, Laurie Anderson, the younger Taverner, folk singers plus pipes and hurdy-gurdies, Aboriginal musicians plus flutes and drums, Hawkwind.
(Neither de Lint or Kushner knew that they were in this story when we asked them about it in emails, so we sent them copies.)
It’s the only story I know of where Holdstock wrote himself into the story. And it’s a good enough that I highly recommend. At first I thought it predated the Ryhope Wood series as it feels very much like something that might’ve led to being fleshed out into that series, but it dates according to the letter from roughly twenty years after ‘The Bone Forest’, the short story that leads off the series, was first published.
Iain was able to authenticate that it was published in New Worlds 4 as edited by David Garnett in 1994 which was the last in that anthology series.. I’ve no idea where it might be found, but Iain was unable to locate it online. Our copy was xeroxed a long time ago given the quality of it.
An update, May 2015: The story is in Ragthorn, a collection of tales published recently which we’ll be reviewing.
