‘Something Strange’ – Kingsley Amis

 

Page Count: 19 Pages

Damn I’m getting old now. Here’s a sentence I never saw myself having to write… I’m waiting for my glasses to come back from the optician, with a new set of lenses, and this has rather limited what I’ve been able to read this week; that and the ongoing stuff that has seen me signed off work. I need to be reading though so I’ve been dipping in and out of a few short story collections this week. I’ve never read anything by Kingsley Amis so when I saw his short story ‘Something Strange’, I had the opportunity to do something about that and read another horror short story at the same time.

‘Something Strange’ was originally published in 1960. I found ‘Something Strange’ in ‘The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories’ but if you’re after reading it yourself, you can also find it in Amis’ ‘Collected Short Stories’.

Bruno, Clovis, Lia and Myri are the only occupants of a small outpost in space, carrying out their duties whilst waiting for the message from Base that will summon them home. What if that message never comes though? And what are the strange apparitions that haunt the outside of the station…?

On an initial read, ‘Something Strange’ definitely comes across as a story that was mislaid, upon submission, and ended up in the wrong anthology. Maybe there’s a ‘New Worlds’ collection, out there, with some blank pages in the middle of the book? There could be ;o)

Stick with it though, ‘Something Strange’ is very much a tale of science fiction but it’s also very much a ‘haunted house’ tale (albeit in space) with haunting apparitions, and occurrences, that unsettle the crew and leave them searching for answers. I’ll admit that I wasn’t as unsettled as the crew was; the fun for me lay in watching the crew slowly begin to unravel. Bruno comes the closest to discovering the truth but the real horror lies in what stops him (and it’s also saddening to watch Bruno struggle to articulate what’s on the tip of his tongue).

Yes, ‘Something Strange’ suddenly chooses to reveal that it was a horror story the whole time and the revelation is horrifying in its implications. I don’t want to give too much away other than to say that the revelation is worth the build-up.

I can’t see myself hurrying back for a re-read; Amis does so well at laying everything out that there’s no need to come back to pick up anything that was missed. ‘Something Strange’ was good for a half hour read though and I’m glad I stayed with it.