As Eddie becomes dangerously obsessed and paranoid, Christine realizes it’s not her dead husband haunting her, but someone or something else.
He can’t stop going in her mind and controlling her body, yet he feels guilty afterwards, and after an incredibly disturbing scene, he convinces himself that she’s the one who is easily manipulatable, so it must be her fault. Eddie becomes both sickened and fascinated by his connection to Christine and what he’s able to do to her. What I thought was going to be a mind control scifi story quickly turned into an incredibly disturbing psychothriller. Confiding in Janet about the details of her mental illnesses and how problematic her marriage was, Christine admits her fear that she is going crazy again. Terrified by the intrusion, she passes out, and he falls into a falling dream. He can see her house, her furniture, even control her body a little bit. Thinking he is having a drunken nightmare, Eddie finds himself one evening seeing through Christine’s eyes. She is going through his papers, hoping to find his final documentations that involve her condition(s). They end up getting married, but he died of a heart attack after abandoning his researches. Almost like a long term time lapse photograph, when she looks at a tree, she sees it as it is right now, and as it was every moment since it sprouted from a seed. Falling in with a psychology professor, he discovered she was able to see objects and scenes in every moment, not just this moment. In and out of institutions as a child, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, among other things. He’s a little creeped out by her, but can’t avoid her company when Christine and Eddie’s wife Janet become fast friends.Īfter an evening of drinks, Christine begins to talk about her childhood and failed marriage. When the shy and petite Christine moves in across the street, Eddie immediately feels like they’ve met before, even though she doesn’t look familiar. The story is told from the point of view of Eddie Laslow, happily married, father of two, owner of an electronics lab and a few patents. I’d like to track down the Infinity Box collection, or at least issues of Orbit that contain her work while I continue to hunt for a copy of Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang. I came across the novella in a Tor Double alongside Zelazny’s He Who Shapes. Nominated for a Nebula award in 1972, The Infinity Box first appeared Orbit 9 and then again in 1975 as the titular story in a collection of Wilhelm stories. Along with her husband Damon Knight, Wilhelm was instrumental in the creation and running of the Milford Writers Workship, which would grow into the Clarion workshop. Where I got it: purchased used as a Tor DoubleĬan you believe I’ve never read a Kate Wilhelm? Famous for The Hugo award winning and Nebula nominated Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, she’s been awarded multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003. Originally published in Orbit Vol 9, 1971
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