By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain
By Joe Hill
4/5
()
About this ebook
Little Gail London and her friend Joel Quarrel are out on a cold and lonely morning at the end of summer, when they make the find of the century: a dead plesiosaur, the size of a two-ton truck, washed up on the sand. With the fog swirling about them, they make their plans, fight to defend their discovery, and face for the first time the enormity of mortality itself... all unaware of what else might be out there in the silver water of Lake Champlain.
Joe Hill
Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).
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Reviews for By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain
54 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very good, quick read about childhood, surprise and terrible loss. All this in about thirty pages and twenty minutes, with a satisfying, melancholy ending you rarely see in a story this short.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To me, this story feels unfinished. I would like other mini-stories in which the three main characters are continued.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I love Joe Hill's work, but I was disappointed with this short story. I can't go too much into why without spoilers. His prose was wonderful as always, and the characters memorable. I just felt I was left...wanting.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5BY THE SILVER WATER OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN Review Now THAT was a fun ride. This one brought back memories of Amazing Stories, not to mention the Bradbury tale, "The Foghorn", which, I'm sure, was intended, because this story was first published in a tribute to Bradbury. Being that "The Foghorn" is one of my favorite literary shorts, I dug Hill's ode very much.
What makes Hill's version even more endearing than the original is that he's replaced the old men and their lighthouse with ten-year-old kids on a foggy beach. I'm a sucker for stories about children, and Hill managed to capture the magic of youth perfectly.
I think this is now my second favorite Hill story, number one being the highly inventive and imaginative "Pop Art" from his collection 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS. Joe Hill's imagination seems fathomless, and there's a good reason he's near the top of my pile of favorite authors.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a sweetly sad story. I wish it was longer, and we knew more about what happened next.....
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good short story about kids that find a creature along the shore of Lake Champlain. This didn't feel like typical Joe Hill, more like something from Neil Gaiman. The story itself was solid and dialogue driven, with the tension coming more from the threat of parents' wrath and sibling rivalry than from whatever was in the lake itself.
While this was sold as a single, I may have to find the Ray Bradbury anthology in which it was originally included, especially if the rest of the stories are this good.
Book preview
By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain - Joe Hill
BY THE SILVER WATER OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Joe Hill
The robot shuffled clank-clank into the pitch dark of the bedroom, then stood staring down at the humans.
The female human groaned and rolled away and folded a pillow over her head.
Gail, honey,
said the male, licking dry lips. Mother has a headache. Can you take that noise out of here?
I CAN PROVIDE A STIMULATING CUP OF COFFEE,
boomed the robot in an emotionless voice.
Tell her to get out, Raymond,
said the female. My head is exploding.
Go on, Gail. You can hear mother isn’t herself,
said the male.
YOU ARE INCORRECT. I HAVE SCANNED HER VITALS,
said the robot. I HAVE IDENTIFIED HER AS SYLVIA LONDON. SHE IS HERSELF.
The robot tilted her head to one side, inquisitively, waiting for more data. The pot on her head fell off and hit the floor with a great steely crash.
Mother sat up screaming. It was a wretched, anguished, inhuman sound, with no words in it, and it frightened the robot so much, for a moment she forgot she was a robot and she was just Gail again. She snatched her pot off the floor and hurried clangedy-clang-clang to the relative safety of the hall.
She peeked back into the room. Mother was already lying down, holding the pillow over her head again.
Raymond smiled across the darkness at his daughter. Maybe the robot can formulate an antidote for martini poisoning,
he whispered, and winked.
The robot winked back.
For a while the robot worked on her prime directive, formulating the antidote that would drive the poison out of Sylvia London’s system. The robot stirred orange juice and lemon juice and ice cubes and butter and sugar and dish soap in a coffee mug. The resulting solution foamed and turned a lurid sci-fi green, suggestive of Venutian slime and radiation.
Gail thought the antidote might go down better with some toast and marmalade. Only there was a programming error; the toast burnt. Or maybe it was her own crossed wires beginning to smoke, shorting out the subroutines that required her to follow Asimov’s laws. With her circuit boards sizzling inside her, Gail began to malfunction. She tipped over chairs with great crashes and pushed books off the kitchen counter onto the floor. It was a terrible thing but she couldn’t help herself.
Gail didn’t hear her mother rushing across the room behind her, didn’t know she was there until Sylvia jerked the pot off her head and flung it into the enamel sink.
What are you doing?
Sylvia screamed. What in the name of sweet Mary God? If I hear one more thing crash over, I’ll take a hatchet to someone. My own self maybe.
Gail said nothing, felt silence was safest.
"Get out of here