Laughter at the Academy
Seanan McGuire
The scope of Seanan McGuire
Laughter at the Academy is a collection of 22 short stories by Seanan McGuire. This collection is not even close to comprehensive. She has published literally hundreds of short stories. Many of them she gives away for free on her website. The stories in Laughter at the Academy are distinguished from the hundreds of other stories she has written in that they are unattached. Most of her other stories belong in one of the other universes she has created for the several series she's written. Thus we have Incryptid stories, October Daye stories, Velveteteen stories, and many others.
The effect of putting together a book of unattached stories is that McGuire's creativity in all its gruesome and weird variety is exposed. The stories are not all good. In fact, some are dreadful, some are tedious, and some are dreary. But some are splendid, and there are some that you may hate, but you will find it hard to deny that they are spectacular art.
The collection reminds me in a way of the TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Stay with me, here. When it appeared on TV it was unlike anything that had been seen before (or since, in my opinion). Sometimes it was great. More often it was simply dreadful. But if you want creative people to experiment and take risks, you have to budget for a lot of bad with the good.
I think my favorite stories in this collection were "Homecoming", "Office Memos", and "There is no Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold". Homecoming reimagines Valhalla and Fólkvangr, the places where heroes go after death in Norse mythology. When she wishes McGuire can be very funny, and "Office Memos" shows it. As for "Kingdom of the Cold", well, I'm not too proud to admit that I can enjoy a good revenge fantasy. Then there is the splendidly titled "Threnody for Little Girl, with Tuna, at the End of the World". The story itself is rather dreary, but the title is so great that I forgive it. The worst story in my opinion is "Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves". It concerns four biology grad students at Harvard, and it is entirely clear that McGuire has not the slightest concept of what life is like for a grad student in the sciences at an elite university, what their concerns and priorities and interactions are.
In the Acknowledgments McGuire writes, "These are some of my best stories, and some of my favorite stories, and a few of my weirdest thrown in for good measure. It is the scope of me, and it’ll be a few years before we can do this again." That is truly an excellent summary. I give it four stars not because it is a book of perfect stories, but because it is a perfect book of stories by an extraordinary story-teller.