“Anything Box” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1956. Sometimes reprinted as “The Anything Box.” You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #21 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Anything Box” was a selection for Judith Merril’s SF:’57: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s been reprinted a fair amount, but usually considered fantasy. “Anything Box” has the most citations of Zenna Henderson stories in our citation database, but with just three citations. In other words, she’s not that well remembered.

“Anything Box” is a story about a teacher who has a special student, Sue-lynn, who appears to have an invisible box that lets her see into magical worlds. At first the teacher thought Sue-lynn was just having a bit of normal childhood imaginary fun, but then another teacher suggested that Sue-lynn might be mentally disturbed. Her father was caught robbing a gas station and jailed, so there is reason. Sue-lynn’s teacher, our first-person narrator then begins to wonder if the anything box might be bad for Sue-lynn. Over the course of the story, we go back and forth trying to decide if the anything box is real, imaginary, or dangerous. You should read the story yourself, it’s lovely.

Zenna Henderson is most famous for writing stories about The People, collected in 1995 as Ingathering: The Complete People Stories. They are gentle tales about children and adults who have special powers. Like Superman, they come from another planet. The People look like us, but have extra abilities, like being able to fly. The People stories are light and moving. Over the decades I’ll read a few and think how wonderful Zenna Henderson is as a writer. But I always go on to read somebody else rather quickly. Unfortunately, her stories suffer from a kind of sameness. You need to read them occasionally, at the right moments in your life. Then they can be magical.

“Anything Box” is a story that can mean a lot to a reader. To me, the Anything Box is a stand in for books, and in my case science fiction books. When I was growing up, science fiction let me cope with a bumpy upbringing. Dave Hook, one of our group members said in his comment, “For me, this is SF, not fantasy.” I can see that, but I’m not sure I see it in the same way Dave does. Maybe Dave assumed the story is about a kid with a real alien artifact with special powers.

I don’t think Zenna Henderson’s magic worked with my friend Mike. He wrote this about this story:

"The Anything Box" is a wisp of a fantasy story. Its gossamer framework is too slight to support any metaphorical baggage we might want to heap on it.

A young girl has a mysterious Anything Box (which today would be known as an iPhone). Her teacher gets a chance to peer into the wonderful Anything Box. The girl loses the box and it eventually turns up in the teacher's desk drawer. The teacher gives it back to her.

No epiphanies. No tragic outcome. Calm is quickly restored. We are left wanting something more substantial. 

Mike is right, the story is gossamer light, but I can find all kinds of heavy metaphorical meanings in it. When I was ten, I discovered the Oz books by L. Frank Baum at the Homestead Air Force Base Library, a magical place in my memory. Years later, I read an article from the 1950s, about how librarians had started removing Oz books off the shelves because they thought they gave children unrealistic expectations about life. That article could have come out around the time Zenna Henderson wrote “Anything Box,” because the worries of the teachers in the stories are the same kind of worries expressed by the librarians. At the time I read that article, and it was back in the 1980s, I was outraged that librarians would ban books.

But do you want to know what’s hilarious? Those librarians were right. The Oz books gave me tons of unrealistic expectations about life. Whether we need escapist fantasies to cope with living is another issue. Now, in my old age, as much as I embrace Zenna Henerson’s sentiment in “Anything Box,” I know the dangers of an anything box are all too real.

If I had not used my anything box growing up, I might have been more realistic, and successful in life. But might, is the key word. I might not have survived. I know about my life-long addiction to an anything box. I also understand my unrealistic expectations toward reality. But it is, what it is.

James Wallace Harris, 1/13/24

These are the Zenna Henderson paperback books I own. They are how I remember her: