Years ago, I read a short story, probably in an anthology or something. The story took place after a nuclear holocaust. The characters were a family. The mother wanted to hold her baby who was in his bedroom…but when they entered the bedroom, they had to open some kind of seal…The mother could only stay in the room for a few minutes holding her baby. Turns out the baby was dead and the room, for the most part had no air in it, so that the baby’s body wouldn’t decay.
Anybody know the author and title of this story?
Thanks in advance.
Author: Robert R. McCammon.
Title: Something Passed By
Anthologized in his short story collection Blue World, available at many used bookstores. Dunno if it’s still in print or not.
I read every word of it, and hated it. Sometimes I can’t decide if that’s the mark of good apocalyptic science fiction, or bad apocalyptic science fiction.
Yeah, that’s pretty bad. I caught most of the references in the second Paragraph–King, Bloch, Bradbury, Koontz, Ellison–but Grant isn’t ring a bell for me right now. To whom does this refer?
Not sure it’s science fiction. Admittedly, they talk about how the scientists are studying all the weird new phenomena, but durned if they offer any kind of explanation or anything. Based on the general uneasiness and weirdness of the story itself, I’d call it more “horror” than “SF.” Just my opinion, though.
McCammon is one of those guys who happened to be writing creepy stuff about that point in the early eighties when Stephen King suddenly caught on very big. He seems to have done very well for himself during that decade writing bad horror novels (I read Stinger and The Wolf’s Hour, and thought both of 'em frankly kind of stunk… ).
It would have been better without the use of all those names. I found them very distracting and unnecessary. They make the story seem as if it’s a tribute or spoof of some kind, rather than being more straightforward horror.
