“Within the Walls of Tyre” (1978)

This story by Michael Bishop has its points, notably the treatment of ‘70s/’80s shopping malls and life, charting part of the US journey in the last century from cities to suburbs and exurbs. But starting with the title, it more like delivers an assault of intellectual pretension that annoyed me when it didn’t depress me. The internet tells me Tyre is “one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.... one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa ... and Carthage's founder Dido (Elissa).” But the venerable ancient city figures in this story only metaphorically. More: the story basically turns on another strange word likely unfamiliar to most readers: “lithopedion.” I looked it up for you (to be fair, it’s also explained in the story): “a rare phenomenon which occurs most commonly when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy, is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and calcifies.” It’s also called a stone baby and again it’s very rare—even the woman in this story carrying one mentions how rare and unusual it is. But it’s certainly grotesque and could very well reach people as a type of body horror, although it seemed more strained to me than anything, or even just cheap shock, which wasn’t helped by the necessity of follow-up research. Between Tyre and lithopedion it felt like some preening on the part of Bishop, and cringy. But the story is good on its 1978 time and place, with both shopping malls and casual sex done well. The story is set at Christmastime but Bishop seems to have missed the oppressive omnipresence in shopping malls of seasonal music. But that’s just picking nits on my part. Bishop’s mall here is otherwise good in the way director and writer George A. Romero’s is in Dawn of the Dead (something in the air in 1978). The sex scene reminded me of the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood,” except in this case the lover man does not crawl off to sleep in the bath (and remember, it was really the ‘70s more than the ‘60s that memorialized the fine points of casual sex pre-AIDS). “Within the Walls of Tyre” devolves down to an unpleasant revenge tale, only made more lame by all the intellectual tarting-up. A rare misfire from editor David G. Hartwell’s otherwise extremely useful phonebook-sized anthology The Dark Descent.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Story not available online.