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C.J. Cherryh's shorter stories

>From: Lesley Grant <lgrant>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Mon, 18 Jan 93 9:04:24 GMT

Her _Sunfall_ collection is incredible, and different from most of her work: details filled in all over the place, psychological explanations, the triumph of the human spirit and lots of other good stuff. And great stories too!
Does anyone have a complete list of her short fiction? Apart from _Sunfall_ and _Visible Light_, I think I've only seen 1 other story, in one of MZB's _Sword and Sorceress_ collections. That was the one about the woman in the desert with the broken sword (to say anything more is to say too much...)

				Lesley

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>Date: Fri, 14 May 93 10:01:22 -0500
>From: bjgaed@ccmail.monsanto.com
>Subject: CJC Short Story comments to cherryhlist

I recently picked up a collection of short stories from the library. The title is _Future Crime_ and it includes a story, "Mech" by CJC. The copyright date is 1991 and no magazine attribution is given so apparently it was written for the collection.

"Mech" is about a cop who is integrated into a mechanical hunter/tracker unit. Story is about a routine call on a homicide and the tracking down of the suspect. A *very* tightly written story with much less character exposition than we are used to from CJC's novels.

Does anyone have a bibliography of CJC's short stories? With the exception of this one story the only others I know of are in _Visible Light_, but I rarely buy SF magazines.

Bruce Gaede

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>Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 09:36:25 -0500
>From: bjgaed@ccmail.monsanto.com
>Subject: cherryhlist contribution

Over the weekend I read a rather old CJC "short novel" (about 75 pages) from 1985. It appeared in a collection of three such works in book form: _Alien Stars_ edited by Elizabeth Mitchell (Baen, 1985). This also included works by Joe Haldeman and Timothy Zahn.

The story is called "The Scapegoat". It is set in the Union/Alliance universe well after the events of _Downbelow_. Union and Alliance and Earth have banded together to make war on a race of aliens who have attacked human ships and one planet. Humans are winning the war through superior technology, but they know very little of their enemy. The aliens just keep throwing more and more troops at the humans with staggering losses. Humans cannot understand why the aliens keep fighting when they have so obviously lost the war.

Most of the story centers on the interaction between the first alien to actually make contact with the humans with the goal of attempting to make peace. The story is not particularly exciting or well-written, and you will miss the depth of character development that occurs in CJC's later works. But the story does develop very well the theme of communication between alien species and CJC's oft-quoted statement from the Chanur series about not making war on someone you can't talk to.

If you are interested in this theme in CJC's works you might try to hunt this up in the used bookstore. I have no idea if it is still in print, but I doubt it.

Bruce Gaede