What short story collection was the story story "Pagent Wagon" in?

August 15, 2013 10:45 PM

Wikipedia claims that "Pageant Wagon" by Orson Scott Card has only ever been in the short story collection The Folk of the Fringe (1989). This is wrong, as I've read it, and I've never read an OSR short story collection. I can even remember exactly when and where I read it, but not the name of the short story collection. So, what other short story collection has it been in? Possibly under another name?

My recollection of the story matches Wikipedia exactly, so I'm sure it is the same story, and I remember it being OSC. I read it in the summer of 2010 based on where I was living, and I'd just finished Wasteland: Stories of the Apocalypse, and was very surprised at the coincidence that the sequel to Salvage was one of the first stories in this collection. The theme of the collection may have been apocalyptic in nature, as I was on post-apoc streak just then, but it may also have been general science fiction. The problem is most of the stories I remember, seem to be from Wasteland, not whatever this collection was.

I don't think it was a really old collection, so it probably came out in the mid-late 2000s, thought not after summer 2010 of course.

So, does anyone have any idea what this short story collection might have been? Thank you.

posted by Canageek to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

Best answer: According to the Speculative Fiction Index list for Pageant Wagon, it looks like the only non-Card specific collection it was in was a 1993 collection called Washed by a Wave of Wind: Science Fiction From the Corridor. It was also in the Isaac Asimov small-format magazine, so there's a slight second chance it was in a collection of that magazine's stories.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:56 PM on August 15, 2013

Response by poster: I have read some of the Isaac Asimov magazines, so that could be where I read it and why I can't remember anything else from that collection; it could be I read it in Asimov's instead, and I do think that I first started reading those in 2010 as well. That could be it. Now I just need to find my copy of that magazine and fix Wikipedia.
posted by Canageek at 11:20 PM on August 15, 2013

It's also possible that you read Folk of the Fringe, which is really a collection of very closely linked stories set in a post-apocalyptic Mormon Utah and is presented as a novel. I read it as a teenager, and didn't think of it as a short story collection.

(Incidentally, reading it as an adult makes OSC's political leanings very, very clear: "The weapons that destroyed our nation were biological and, ultimately, cultural?")
posted by Wylla at 3:18 AM on August 16, 2013

Response by poster: Wylla: No, since I don't like OSC, I only own four things with his work in it: The Memory of Earth (Haven't read yet), Heart's Hope (Which made me hate his writing), Wasteland, and wherever I read Pageant Wagon. I also know those are the only things by him I've read, so the Asimov's magazine makes sense, as I got several of those around that time when my Grandmother closed her used bookstore down, and they were all from the late 80s, so the time matches. I think cobltnine got it; as soon as he mentioned Asimov's I remembered other stories I'd read about that time from it, and the covers, so yeah.
posted by Canageek at 10:13 AM on August 16, 2013

Response by poster: Yes, that is it; I recognized the cover right off, and while I don't remember any other stories from that issue, I do remember Asimov's editorial on why he doesn't write in Playboy (Because they haven't invited him to do so), and I remember being surprised that Playboy had Science Fiction in it.
posted by Canageek at 10:16 AM on August 16, 2013