Urx Quonox

 

Urx Quonox by Adam S. Cantwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm reading the Occult Press version, gifted to me and signed by Adam, 37/120 limited edition. Thanks, Adam!

I'm a big sword and sorcery fan, have been since the mid-70s, reading Savage Sword of Conan and the old Howard paperbacks. Here, with Grasm the Barbarian, Cantwell has taken S&S to a higher literary level, the inevitable evolution out of pulp and into thinking-man's writing, and I'm here for it.

If Robert E. Howard had cast aside all prudery and collaborated with William Burroughs, this might start to approximate the style of "The Monarch in Disarray," but this tale is much more transgressive, visceral, and psychedelic than that. It's a decadent sword & sorcery tale, pushed to carnal extremes with an emphasis on the sorcery and its deeper effects on the psyche. Grasm > Conan, maybe. The writing is head and shoulders above Howard's.

Another story of Grasm the Barbarian, "Scream of the Bluejay," is a barnacle-encrusted sea-salt soaked rope of a tale about revenental vengeance. While the center of attention in the story isn't the barbarian, it says much about him and twists in such a way as to wring out more of his past. It's a clever tale of sword and sorcery, of regret, betrayal, and murder; a hideously glorious, horrifically beautiful tale.

The final entry in the Grasm trilogy, "Cities Below the Strand," again puts an emphasis on sorcery over swords. No swords are drawn in this tale, but there is a deep cut of nihilism here, particularly as regards both the past and the future of Grasm himself. This is a small window into what could be a large, inglorious panorama both for the barbarian himself and for his world as a whole. Hearts die, nations collapse, the world keeps spinning.

Three tales about the same person, but exploring different aspects of his past, present, and future. Grasm learns about Grasm even as we do. I want to continue this journey!

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Now It's Dark

 

Now It's Dark by Lynda E. Rucker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first encountered Lynda E. Rucker's work in such magazines (remember those?) as The Third Alternative , Shadows and Tall Trees , and Nightmare Magazine . I've always admired her work, but I've read it intermittently, in sparse doses. The wonder about short story collections is that a reader can encounter stories by the same author, one after another. Sometimes this is disconcerting - quality is varied, voices change so dramatically as to be jarring, the same themes are done to death - but the best collections show just enough of the author's range of voices and themes, all at high quality, to introduce the reader not just to a new world, but to new worlds.

The worlds that Rucker takes us to in Now It's Dark are, well, dark. Not gory, not reliant on jump-scares, but more than just weird. At times, her work is creepy, emotionally gut-wrenching, or shocking, and sometimes (as in the last story of this volume) all three at once. Let's explore each story, in turn.

"The Dying Season" is composed (with a deft authorial hand) of a series of mis-steps by a fragile, emotionally-shaky woman who is on a supposed vacation in an off-season resort. This is not a fairytale but a tale of dark fairy that leaves one befuddled and even less sure of one's place in the world, like a psychogeographic black blot on the map, where being found is being lost. An unsettling tale.

"The Seance" was first published in Uncertainties, volume 1 and I can . . . certainly . . . see why. It's the vagaries peeking around corners, not the jump scare or obvious gore, where the real terror lies. Or does it? Just when you think you know something or, worse yet, someone, another angle reveals a hint of things you really don't want to see clearly. But you're the curious type, aren't you? Careful! You don't want to peek! But Rucker forces the issue and you are helpless and wide-eyed.

Rucker captures liminality in a bottle in "The Other Side". It's not a horrific tale, far from it, though the weird element might be considered horrific by some. Dark? Yes. But this was a somber contemplative piece drenched in sadness. Reflective and vaguely hopeful at the same time. Not only is liminality the subject of the story, but Rucker has captured the feel and mood of the liminal. Outstanding!

Egaeus Press's anthology A Soliloquy for Pan recently went through it's second printing and, once again, I missed my chance to get a copy. If Rucker's "The Secret Woods" is representative of the quality of the other stories in that volume, I have lost out on a treasure. It evoked in me both a deep emotional response and intellectual resonance. It's a gem in Rucker's crown.

I needed to sit with "Knots" for a while. It's a story about control and abuse, but there's a supernatural thread passing throughout that takes it firmly into the territory of the weird. It's heartbreaking, though, to think of those in abusive relationships that can't or won't get out. What are the knots that tie them to the situation? Mental illness? Emotional immaturity? Or something much more sinister than that? If you like to feel helpless, this is the story for you. And therein lies the horror: the horror of co-dependence.

Another story in the register of Aickman, "The Vestige" tracks a hapless traveler who has lost his passport, phone, and money. A traveling worst nightmare scenario. I've been in a similar situation when I last travelled to the UK and, on my way back, was detained in Heathrow Airport and had to give up my passport to authorities for reasons that were not clear to me then, but are now. I'll spare you the details of what is a very long story, but suffice it to say that I (and several others) were on Homeland Security's list for extra vetting and the first thing they did was confiscate our passports. Of course, that is a terrifying thing, but it's not the terror of the loss or fear of being a stranger in a strange land that affect the reader. These are sharp elements in the story, but it's the mystery of a past that might not have been and a present that also might not be that create the most emotional dissonance in this tale.

The next story was written for the anthology Gothic Lovecraft . There's just enough Lovecraft in "The Unknown Chambers" to call the story Lovecraftian. "Deep Ones" are mentioned once, as is Lovecraft himself. If you're familiar with the mythos, you'll figure out what's happening or going to happen early on. If not, then this might be a good introduction to Lovecraftiana not from the man himself. Disconcerting and stultifying, it's a good mythos tale, but not spectacular.

I suspected the final conceit of "So Much Wine" about three-quarters of the way through. The obtuse narrative could only lead to one conclusion, in the end. I was right. But I still love this story, not because of the way it concludes, but because the writing throughout devoured my attention, pulling it away from the fact that I already knew what was coming. The journey is more important than the destination.

"An Element of Blank" presents a coming-of-age story of three girls, now women, who experienced something - though it's never quite clear how fully - which may have been a demonic possession, those many years ago. Now, the possessor is back and the girls are wiser and braver than . . . what, exactly? Memory is a fickle mistress and cannot be trusted. And, yet, it must. But trauma, while it cannot erase the past, can redact it.

"The Seventh Wave" finishes this volume with, dare I say it? A splash. At turns, deeply sad, empathetic, and desperate, this story ends on a high note of pure terror. Possibly the most effective story in the volume, the voice of the narrator is strong, not in intensity, but in its depth. And the story will push and pull at your heartstrings until they're about to break until the inevitable, yet shocking end. I cannot recommend this story strongly enough.

And I cannot recommend this collection strongly enough. The physical object, as with all Swan River titles, is crisp and engaging. It might sound silly, but I love their size, the way they feel in the hand. The cover art for this volume is a painting by the amazing

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Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants

 

Le Livre des Fourmis: The Book of Ants by Robin D. Laws
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite games is the old Surrealist game Exquisite Cadaver. I'm not only a proponent, I'm a teacher of the game. I spread the gospel of Exquisite Cadaver far and wide, whenever I have the opportunity. My primary reason for loving the game is that it breaks my brain and causes me to look at live in a whole new way. It's the cognitive equivalent of cubism - seeing objects (in this case, either grammatical objects, if you are playing the "sentence" version, or illustrative objects, if you're playing the "three part drawing" version). Through what appears to be an aleotory excercise, but is really a channeling of the sublimated unconscious, one discovers new ways of looking at (or reading or writing or drawing) Things. I capitalize "Things" because I think of those creations as entities - self-sufficient, complete entities created by a group of people exercising the collective unconscious in a double-blind experiment. These Things emerge as we take our disjointed thoughts or pieces of thoughts (memes, perhaps?) and force them into a relational structure that causes disparate bits of our processed perceptions to be ordered in a template that we would normally use to create "meaning" - sentences and/or drawings. Through this, we form a new "reality". Or, at least, we form a new perception of reality. And if perception is reality, well, you get the picture.

In The Book of Ants (I will use the English title, because, to be honest, there is very, very little French in the book, even though most of the protagonists are French Surrealists), we are introduced to all the most famous of the surrealist cadre, and quite a few minor, even peripheral players of that artistic/poetic era. The book is told from the viewpoint of one Henri Salem, but don't go researching him, he's not real. At least not in this reality. In the reality of The Book of Ants, however, he is a young poet who develops relationships (and rivalries, and sometimes downright mutual loathing) with Breton, Dali, Bataille, Magrite, and many others you have likely never heard of, who keeps a diary set in two worlds: The world of the Great War and the interwar years of Paris, and the strange "place" underlying the conscious world, The Dreamlands.

As others have pointed out, this book serves as a sort of addendum to an RPG book, The Dreamhounds of Paris (which I shall review at some future point), written for the Trail of Cthulhu gaming system. It is referenced in the rulebook as a possible history from which players and game-masters might leverage for their own game play.

That said, there is nothing game-specific about the book at all. It reads quite well (outside of some annoying typos). The style is sparse, at times elegant, but not "purple," which is a bit surprising when the narrator and many of the characters are French poets and artists and even more surprising when once considers the overly-ornamented prose of H.P. Lovecraft, who brought The Dreamlands into the popular conscience. It helps to know the Cthulhu mythos and The Dreamlands, specifically, but those aren't absolutely necessary to understanding and enjoying the story, in fact, that knowledge isn't necessary at all. There's enough context and explication to allow the reader "in," though some references, such as the names of certain creatures that inhabit The Dreamland, might miss their full impact. In summary, no experience with the game or the subgenre is necessary, though knowing the subgenre is helpful.

I acknowledged the annoying typos. And I've edited and written enough books to know that eliminating all typos from a manuscript is a herculean task and, in many cases, nearly impossible. But the number of typos in the book can throw one out of the "dreamstate" of the book, which is a real shame. One might be luxuriating in the strangeness of it all, only to be suddenly jettisoned back to grammatical reality by obviously missing words (or obviously "extra" words). Can this be forgiven? Sure, but not without losing a star on my rating.

But when it's flowing, this story will capture you, slowly at first, intriguing you through the historical relationships of the surrealists one to another, then accelerating with the discovery that many of those sensitive enough (note: Breton was not) might enter the dreamlands, then, with the discovery that the surrealists could not only enter that place, they could manipulate it, create, and destroy, the pace becomes almost frantic. A new reality is discovered, then it is manipulated, subverted altogether, and disintegrated by those who have crossed over. There is a strong thread of the responsibility of those who colonize and the heinousness of the erasure of another's culture. Some serious ethical questions are asked and the answers to those questions affect not only The Dreamlands, or early-20th-Century Paris, but our own waking reality today. This isn't a book about strangeness and horrific caricatures of monstrosities - it really is about what it means to have influence, and about the consequences of one's actions, intended or not. This takes the work a step further than any other book I've read that was based on a roleplaying game. This isn't a "real play". It's much more than that. It will cause something that roleplaying games rarely do, and which the best gamemasters will engender in their players: introspection.

It's not just a book based on a game. It has, dare I say it? Meaning.


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Metal Hurlant

 

Metal Hurlant: Old Dreams, Young Visions by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If any one piece of media informed my teenage years, it was the movie Heavy Metal . Now, 43 years after I first watched that movie on HBO late night as a early teen (the perfect target for the movie at that particular time), I can honestly say that it still carries a heavy influence on my tastes in art, music, and just plain attitude. It was a significant blip on my cultural radar, but it was, in all honesty, just a blip. I watched it twice on HBO and then . . . the movie just disappeared. Vanished. I looked for news of a videotape release everywhere: magazines (remember, there was no internet back in 1982 - at least none that the military was sharing) such as Starlog or Fangoria , at obscure corners of videotape stores , libraries - wherever. I asked about it a lot. And whenever I asked, I either got a blank stare, or the person's face lit up, then quickly sagged with "Man, I wish. No one can find that." It wasn't until the very late '90s that the movie was released on DVD. There was some kind of legal kerfuffle about the use of the music, if I remember correctly, which prevented its release after the movie was shown on HBO.

But, though the times were dark, they weren't empty. I could always turn to the pages of Heavy Metal magazine, a number of which I usually shoplifted, and sometimes bought, from the gas station down the road from my house. Marvel comics also published a competitor in the form of Epic Illustrated , their first adult-themed publication. I could also rely on my old copy of Mechanismo (which I bought in the 1979, before I even knew about Heavy Metal) for a fix of cutting-edge scifi art. While in those "lean years" I also heard of a magazine titled "Metal Hurlant". It took some asking and researching (again: no internet) to figure out that this was the French version of the English "Heavy Metal". But it wasn't until 1985, when I moved to England, that I saw a copy of Metal Hurlant in the (paper) flesh. Sadly, the magazine ceased publication in 1987. A TV series, "Metal Hurlant Chronicles" emerged in 2012, but to be honest, it had little of the flair of either the original Heavy Metal movie or the magazine Metal Hurlant.

The English variant, Heavy Metal, had a series of misfortunes, mostly caused by abysmal customer service and poor money management, in the last couple of years. A kickstarter was done to re-release the magazine, which I've seen on bookstore (remember those?) shelves, though I hear there were also hiccups involved in getting copies to kickstarter backers.

At the same time, Metal Hurlant was kickstarted by a completely separate entity from Heavy Metal magazine. I did not back the kickstarter, as we were saving for a trip to Europe at the time, among other things. But I book-marked it as something I would look into. Lo and behold, my oldest son bought me a copy of Metal Hurlant for Father's Day. I raised that boy right!

With that long history lesson behind us, let's turn briefly to the book itself. And it is a book, at 267 pages of content. It's a mixture of old, classic pieces that debuted in the pages of the original Metal Hurlant back in the '70s, and newer material that explores contemporary approaches to science fiction illustration. Interspersed are several excellent essays that cover the history of Metal Hurlant, introductions to the newer artists in the volume, and sometimes delve into the punk attitude that informs the art, stories, and even the publication itself of what might be considered a counter-cultural manifesto, as well as an expanded artistic view of possibilities.

Of course, my own attitudes toward art have changed since I was a young teenager. Back then, I was clearly focused on the violence, crazy vistas, and . . . other biologically-driven interests. While those things are still of interest, I've upped my reasoning and critique since those testosterone-fueled halcyon days of yore. It's not enough to be "gonzo," and frankly, I am oftentimes put off by "gonzo for gonzo's sake" in my media consumption. Yes, I'm currently listening to the Heavy Metal soundtrack as I'm writing this review (duh), but my "favorite" songs on this wildly-eclectic album have shifted over time. I like some songs better than I used to and others have grown moldy (though there is one exception that has always been on steady footing for 43 years now - though I prefer the live version to the album version).

The wonder of the current incarnation of Metal Hurlant is that it has chosen "classic" reprints of the highest quality. There are no "dumb" stories in this volume (unlike, for instance, the "snow time" vignette in the Heavy Metal movie - ugh), except for the one overly-indulgent story about Arzach's mount pooping out copies of Metal Hurlant - that was admittedly pretty dumb.

The new stories also create a sometimes subtle sense of wonder at small things and gentle turns of story, among the awe-inspiring and more visceral emphasis of others. "Catching the Wave" and "You Will Remember Me" are downright poignant. Dare I say that I have found a new level of sophistication in the pages of this historically irreverent, "punk" magazine. Yes, yes I dare. I am eager to see what the next volume brings (subscriptions are available). All-in-all, I am rather ecstatic of what we've got here in the "new" (but also old) Metal Hurlant, and I am optimistic about its future, which will contain many futures that we can't even yet imagine.

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Disruptions

 

Disruptions by Steven Millhauser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been a champion of Millhauser's work for a long time now, ever since I was introduced to his work through one of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fabulous Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. I was rather excited when I heard that Millhauser had released another collection of shorts that I had somehow missed - I blame post-covid . . . well, everything.

I've always admired Millhauser's clean aesthetic and straightforward storytelling, always with a hint of something more lurking behind the scenes. After reading many more authors since my earlier Millhauserian days, I now recognize, in this collection, echoes of some of my favorite authors: Calvino, Borges, and Kafka, for instance. But I sometimes wondered as I read if these echoes were too loud, that Millhauser was dipping into these classic literary heroes of mine and regurgitating what he found there. Oh, I don't think it's anything intentional, and it probably says more about my reading journey than about his writing journey, but I couldn't help but want to compare the stories in this collection to these three authors. I showed great restraint in not doing so for almost every single story. There were times where I just couldn't help myself. The resemblance was too strong. Sadly, this made me, well, sad. My love affair with Millhauser may be coming to an end.

"One Summer Night" reminded me of the elements I love in Millhauser's fiction: the crystal clear, yet evocative prose, a sense that people are much more or less than they seem, and a liminal state of mind where a certain sinister or magical something is just around the corner, in the shadows, out of reach and that, depending on which side of the razor's edge you fall off of, you might find heaven or hell.

No, "After the Beheading" is not some kind of literary click bait. It is one of Millhauser's most morbid tales to date. But the shock doesn't come from the act of the beheading itself. It comes in the slow cessation of outrage and spectacle. The true horror here - and it is truly horrific - arises quietly, long after the execution. It is the slow swelling and expansion of indifferent acceptance, another common theme in his work.

Having taken a couple of guided tours in Europe last month, Millhauser's "Guided Tour," about a highly accurate historical tour of the town of Hamelin hit close to home. To quote from this macabre tale, "Stories have teeth . . .", and this one will take a chunk out of you. Fabulous, frightening stuff. Here Millhauser leaps from the merely strange into the truly horrific.

"Late" is what you'd expect from a story that appeared in Harpers magzine: Highly neurotic entitled city dweller obsesses about the arrival of his date to the point of insanity. Not my favorite Millhauser piece. Clever, but more than a little tedious.

Millhauser's best stories are often about community and it's complications. In "The Little People," a series of vignettes and encyclopedic entries about Greenhaven, a city within "our city" whose inhabitants are an average two inches tall, he addresses the joys and challenges, the loves and the prejudicial hates that arise between "our" culture and those of Greenhaven's residents. Though the community trope feels a little stretched at times, it's a fascinating reflection on human nature within a society.

In "Theater of Shadows," we continue with the theme of community, but this time, a community that embraces darkness and find themselves, purely by their desires and choices, in a liminal state somewhere between shadow and light. We refer to this state (though Millhauser does not) as a "Twilight Zone," and for good reason. This story is reflective (pardon the pun) of the best of Rod Serling's masterpieces. There was a sliver of a hint of folk horror in this story, as well, and it stuck in my brain long after I finished reading; always the sign of a solid story.

"The Fight" reminds us that coming of age stories can be fraught with fear and testosterone, when the fight or flight response is being honed in at such a visceral level that we don't even realize what is happening and the line between fact and fantasy blurs both for our relationships with others and for our image of our selves. Moving into proto-adulthood is no easy transition.

"A Haunted House Story" channels Robert Aickman in all the right ways. haunters and the haunted are indistinguishable, and a view of utter happiness brings on a dark gloom of despair. This story will affect you, deeply, and you will not even understand quite why. But it burrows into you. And it stays. It's terrifying by not being terrifying at all . . . until it's over.

One thing Millhauser does well is magic realism. "The Summer of Ladders" is a great example of this. The population of a town become obsessed with climbing ladders, with results that affect all the inhabitants, directly or indirectly. And an apotheosis might have happened. Maybe, just maybe. Or a disappearing act? As with most magic realism, it's so hard to tell. And in that ambiguity lies the magic. But, as I outlined in the beginning, a magic of mimesis.

"The Circle of Punishment" begs comparison to the short fiction of Borges, Kafka, and Calvino. But Millhauser here turns "kafkaism" inside out while pushing "kafkaism" even deeper into the soul in such a way that the reader is unsure whether to be relieved or even more disturbed. I've coming away thinking far too much about the interiority of social prisons, punishment we impose on ourselves, deserved or not. Again, though, I felt like this story was not "his own". Ridiculous, I know, but it was a distraction from the fiction itself, like focusing on the girders of a roller coaster rather than enjoying the ride.

The communal theme continues (yet again) with "Green" where changing fashions in landscaping (or the destruction thereof) swing wildly, with neighbors making bizarre changes to "keep up with the Jones's" in a strange display of conspicuous consumption. If you love to look good to everyone around you by following the latest trends, regardless of their utility or even sanity, well, this story is for you. And if you're an HOA board member, you're going to absolutely love this one. I was not very impressed, as the subtlety was completely worn off by the fine this tale made it to the printer.

Phone-tree hell is portrayed quite vividly in "Thank You For Your Patience". The person listening to the annoying repeated messages while waiting to speak to a human being shows her patience, even gives a practical sermon on her experiences with patience, revealing secrets to an uncaring machine. It's a sick twist on the tale of the suburban housewife, sick because it reveals just how pathetic some peoples' lives are.

The residents of a small town all fall asleep for three days in "A Tired Town". The narrator struggles to stay awake and, in so doing, experiences a silent moment on the cusp of something indescribable, but then succumbs to slumber. He awakens to the "cleanup" afterword with a sense that he somehow missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but he's not sure what it was. Serves as a reflection on busy-ness and calm. This one was a little too "on the nose" in its criticism of modern American society.

"Kafka in High School, 1959" gives us snippets of Kafka (yes, that Kafka) as an awkward nerd going through the clumsy growing pains of a teenager. It's all too normal of an alternate history, bland, with sideways glimpses of how this teenager could turn into the author we know. One can see how the awkwardness could be magnified into the bleak work we already know. And in the end, things do go strangely.

Millhauser embraces outright surrealism in his story "A Common Predicament," which is anything but common. The narrator's strange relationship with a woman whom he loves (and who loves him), though never faces him. Ever. The speculations as to why she exhibits this behavior haunt him, but he accommodates this strange quirk for the sake of their love. Definitely a story worthy of the label "disruption".

A disruption of a far more disturbing kind takes place in "The Change," a modern re-telling of the myth of Daphne, the nymph who turns into a tree to avoid the unwanted sexual advances of Apollo. But this is no myth, it's a frankly horrifying story of what it means to be a young woman in a world of hyper-charged sexuality and the rule of testosterone that mirrors the rule of the jungle. This needs a trigger warning! It's no wonder that this, unlike most of the stories here, was original to this collection - no one in their right legal mind would want to publish it in their respected literary magazine. Too chancy!

Millhauser's experimental piece, "He Takes, She Takes" jockeys back and forth using the simple phrase: "He takes the (insert thing here, she takes the (insert other thing here)". It is tediously repetitive, but between this iterative bouncing back-and-forth, a story actually seems to emerge, though it is up to the reader whether this is a story of two individuals or the story of all couples.

And we end the collection with, guess what? Yes! Another story about a strange community, "The Column Dwellers in our Town". I rather liked this slightly-surreal take on a town where some inhabitants choose to live a solitary life atop a high rock or cement column (not to exceed 140', per code). It does cause one to think hard about asceticism and social pressure in new ways. Though the subject matter was bizarre, the reflections on people's reactions to the town's setup was more subtle and believable than the other community stories in this volume. I quite liked this strange "story".

But did I like the whole collection? Sure. I guess. But not nearly as much as Millhauser's earlier work. Maybe it's him, maybe it's me, but I was longing for something with the power to immerse me in one of his little worlds, something like Enchanted Night (which I strongly recommend). Sadly, my intense love affair with Millhauser's writing may have run its course. Am I tired of it? Not entirely. But, like the inhabitants of "A Tired Town," I feel a dolor coming on. Maybe it's time to rest on Millhauser for a while?

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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

 

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a weird and unplanned synchronicity, I read Walter Benjamin's Illuminations at the same time I read Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. I had no idea that these works had any connection with each other, but there is a very strong connection in their analysis of the work of Baudelaire. More on this later.

It took some time to get to Benjamin's excellent and very eclectic collection of essays. Hannah Arendt's introduction is extensive and interesting, laying a foundation for what is to come by examining Benjamin's light in both a historical and intellectual context. I came through it feeling well-equipped to tackle Benjamin's sometimes-abstruse work. Rather than a barrier to getting to the source material, Arendt provides a useful and understandable bridge to Benjamin's core ideas.

We start with "Unpacking My Library," which every book-lover should read, but, more especially, every book collector. I'm admittedly somewhere between the two poles of reader and collector Benjamin presents, but I lean more toward the former than the latter. Benjamin, an admitted book collector (there is an underlying hint of shame in the title as he presents it, as if it is a guilty pleasure), points out the collector's foibles with a great sense of self-deprecating humor.

"The Task of the Translator" presents several thoughts on translation, including the very interesting question of one's linguistic machismo when translating. Should the translator impose his language on the one being translated, or should he allow the language being translated to inform and even form his own? I have always respected "good" translators and their work, but now I question what, really, does "good" mean in this context? I don't have a firm conclusion, but I do have a lot of thinking to do as a result of reading this essay, which was probably Benjamin's intent.

In his essay "The Storyteller," Benjamin parses out the different characteristics, not of structure, but of the worldview of storytelling (as in: around a campfire), the short story, and the novel. He reflects on collective vs individual memory, the impatience of modernity (don't get me started), and how the absence of death and the view of eternity it provides has shaped fiction, in general. The irony of Benjamin's demise is not lost on me. It's a bittersweet read, precisely because of what followed.

As much as I love Kafka, it's apparent that I need to read more of him. I guess The Collected Stories (all of his short stories) and The Trial aren't quite enough. I feel like such a poser . . . Maybe I should read him in German to feed my ego a little. In any case, I found Benjamin's "Franz Kafka" inspiring. Absolutely one of the best summations of the spirit of Kafka's work that threads the needle between analysis of Kafka's psychological state of mind and the more metaphysical/surreal aspects of Kafka's work. I've been a fan of Kafka's work since I was young and this rekindles the fire to dive back in again.

Sadly, I know very little about Brecht's work, having only read (in German) "Der kaukasische Keidekreis". But while I should read more of Brecht's work, I know something about the man himself. I had a professor in college who was a Brecht expert. James K. Lyon, from whom I took my German literature classes as an undergrad, wrote the book
After doing some more research and interviews, Professor Lyon discovered that every Wednesday night, Brecht would have friends and acquaintances over so he could show them what was going on in Germany at the time. They watched (and discussed and mocked) German propaganda films - hence the anthems and salutes. But this poor lady thought Brecht was a communist and a nazi!

Now on to Proust and Baudelaire. The Freudian analysis of Proust and Baudelaire feel flimsy, at best. I get the analysis of memory regarding Proust, and the examination of time might have some basis in psychology, but the Freudian dream-connection just hangs by a weak thread. I found Benjamin's Marxist analysis of Baudelaire much more convincing than his Freudian analysis of the poet. After reading this, I definitely need to read Flowers of Evil yet again. In fact, I should make that a regular practice. I can't stand French as a language (everything is an exception, sorry, but give me German, Swahili, and Latin rules all day long), but if I were ever to attempt to learn it again, it would be for this sole purpose: Reading Baudelaire.

As I said earlier, I was reading Solnit's Wanderlust at the same time as this book. I'll probably save most of the correlations for my review of Solnit's work, but there was an amazing amount of connection, with Solnit quoting Benjamin critiquing Baudelaire, while herself analyzing Baudelaire's work, not only on the figure of the "Flaneur," but also on walking as a socio-political act. Fascinating stuff, especially since my wife and I had recently returned from a vacation in Europe where we figure we clocked in around 90 miles of walking in two weeks.

The book continues with Benjamin's analysis and critique of film in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which is not so interesting when addressing the work itself as it is fascinating when one looks at the audience and the change it engenders in them vis-à-vis their appreciation of static art. I might also add that the exploration of strangeness that an actor undergoes when acting in front of the camera and of that same actors dissociation with self led me to think about real and rumored instances of actors who fell too far into their characters and never quite shook the stain to their psyche. Granted, many of these stories are overblown and sensationalized, but I have spoken with some actors who have had to essentially detox from their role to return to normalcy.

The final essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History" is be far the most challenging piece in the collection. It is a somehow timely piece of class history and touches on resistance to fascism in ways that many people now are exploring and re-exploring. Benjamin's arguments might be difficult to understand and sometimes seem to cater to the "party line" a little too cleanly, but they are worth consideration and contemplation.

All-in-all, this is an intellectual/philosophical grab bag on a wide variety of topics. Each is addressed in a different way - you won't find Benjamin pounding the same drum repeatedly - and one will have a variety of emotional and intellectual responses to the whole. But one cannot argue that the work is insignificant. Far from it.



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Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction

 

Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction by Robert Grains
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids are great. They're all adults now, so to call them "kids" feels a little disingenuous. But my kids are great (and my wife and grandkids, too, I must add).

"So why," you are likely asking yourself "are you leading off a review of a collection of weird horror fiction with 'My kids are great'."? Well, here's the deal. At around Christmas time, I do a bunch of massaging to my Amazon wishlist. Before you go ballistic, I try to order my books direct from publishers or, even better, directly from authors, so get off your high-horse for a second. I keep that Amazon wishlist to help my kids with Christmas shopping for dear old dad. One of the biggest issues with this is a recency-bias. If I see something new and shiny and it's getting near Christmas, I add it to my wishlist.

Such was the case with Ossuary of Dreams. I don't remember why I added it to my list last minute, but I did. Maybe it was the cool title or the even cooler font on the cover (no seriously, I live that font), or maybe I read a review about it that impressed me . . . I don't know. But, added it, I did.

So, this might be a sort of apologia to my daughter, who bought me the book. Kiddo, I really do appreciate the gift. It means a lot to me . . .

But I gotta give this one two stars.

The collection had its high points.

I found "A Walk in the Morning" to be a highly effective story.

There are echoes of Dhalgren in Grains hurtling-toward-the-collapse story "Our City at Night," but with a strong injection of occult forces. Here, I found that I prefer Grains at longer word counts. It gives his voice needed breathing space and makes the flourishes more emphatic and impactful.

I rather liked the unfolding-apocalypse (with a dream-time glimpse into the pyrrhic acknowledgment of respect to the lone survivor, imparted by the new God of this world) portrayed in "The Golden Age". I, for one, embrace the arrival of our robot overlords. This was an effective story, paced perfectly, with an air of reverent restraint that fit the tale to a tee. Well-played, not-quite-terminator.

"The Portraits of the Baron," the second-longest work in this collection, was, admittedly, very enjoyable. I loved the deep dives of esotericism here and the ending, while predictable, was satisfactory and held an ironic twist. This is the strongest work in the book.

"Metamorphosis" is an apocalyptic horror story somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith and China Mieville, wherein the narrator embraces the inevitability of change on the cosmic level, accepting fate with a philosophically stoic attitude that masks the shock of an undeserved fate of extreme horror.

So, there was something to like the collection. But, as Stepan Chapman used to say, there's also "something for everyone to hate".

I didn't hate most of the other stories. They ranged from "meh" to "I want to lem this book," but few of them went to the extreme of me wanting to do physical harm to the actual object. I reserve most of that hatred for one book in particular, which I'd like to see burned off the face of literary history. So, I didn't hate any of them that much. But there were some in there that I just kind of wanted to punch in the mouth.

I think that there are two fundamental problems, for me, with the work. First, the absolute fascination, nay, worship of overwrought and just plain faulty description drove me batty.

For example:

. . . a rumbling like from a squadron of unleashed poltergeists in the entablature.

This phrase has so many problems, I can't even begin to enumerate them. Well, maybe I can, but I really don't want to. Suffice it to say that I have more questions than answers about what is happening here.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident.

Secondly, the overuse and downright abuse of adverbs had my inner editor clawing at my innards the whole way through. I honestly wanted to scream at times. Instead, I sighed heavily (I wince at having used an adverb here - is there no escape?!?) so I wouldn't wake up my wife. the "ly" ending now makes me twitch whenever I see it, like an abused puppy. It's going to take a while before I can see it without twitching.

Finally, I think that while the translation is mostly very good, you can also tell, in places, that it is a translation. I speak conversational German, and I know how convoluted German sentences can get. I don't envy anyone translating such a work of purple prose from German to English. The effort was good, but it is inevitable that there are some hiccups, and given the often awkward phraseology, they really show.

Had this been my first weird fiction rodeo, and had I read this, say, thirty years ago, I might have felt differently. But I can't, in good conscience, say anything beyond "it was ok," hence the two stars.

As always, your mileage may vary.

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The Jade Cabinet

The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the interest of full disclosure, I know Rikki. I've helped publish her work a couple of times and have an irregular correspondence with her. Just sent her a letter (handwritten, of course) a few weeks ago, in fact.

Knowing Rikki and reading The Jade Cabinet again after having been away from it for so many years, I am struck, most of all, by the sheer restraint she shows in presenting this devastating, yet beautiful novel. It's a clear case of the power of editing and craftsmanship at work. Her pen is under strict control here, concentrating the power of whimsey and, indeed, some degree of madness into a self-restrained, almost ethereal (pardon the pun - one of the main characters is named "Etheria") critical examination of male dominance, the Victorian social paradigm, and the favoritism of technic over magic.

This is a character-driven novel, first and foremost. What I love about Rikki's work here is that none of the characters are presented as "either/or". Radulph Tubbs, a notably brutal man with few redeeming qualities, almost none, in fact, becomes, in his older years, a bit sympathetic. But not too sympathetic. More just plain pathetic. But the narrator (who, in a surprising twist, ultimately . . . well, I don't want to give away the surprise) feels a pity that borders on admiration for Tubbs' inner world, even though his actions in the physical world are violently misogynistic and crassly materialistic. Baconfield, the architect, who is hired by Tubbs, is a staunch industrialist, bent on bringing sterile order to everything, but later, through a series of misfortunes, becomes a mad mystic. Angus Sphery, father to both Memory (the narrator) and her sister Etheria, is a loving, whimsical father and a friend of Charles Dodgson (yes, that Charles Dodgson) who also abandoned his first daughter and ultimately ended up in Bedlam asylum. Sphery's wife, Margaret, likewise, lost her sanity, but for altogether different reasons.

Yes, it's that sort of novel. Full of frivolity, madness, and (mostly) tragedy.

And at the center of it all is Etheria, the mute daughter of Angus Sphery, who is essentially sold off to Radulph Tubbs for the price of The Jade Cabinet, a Wunderkammer, of sorts, filled exclusively with figurines carved from jade. One of these figures, which I will not reveal here, becomes the pivotal tool (I use that word reluctantly, but it works on several levels), the wrench in the works, as they say, that leads to the vanishment of the lovely, innocent Etheria and the subsequent emergence of the one true monster of the novel, the Hungerkünstler. No, not that Hungerkünstler, but one of the same mien.

Unlike many character-driven novels, however, The Jade Cabinet is fully-engaging throughout, with something for everyone (or "something for everyone to hate" as my friend Stepan Chapman used to say). The magic realism borders, at times, on that ill-defined subgenre known as "The Weird". The writing itself has a strong focus on not only the language itself, but the role of language as it affects the inner worlds of each character. Ultimately, I suppose, the work is about language and memory, though it never beats the reader over the head with a philosophical stick. It is subtle. And this is really the greatest compliment I can give to it: it breathes softly, with occasional rushes of wind, but it's underpinnings are mere whispers that overwhelm, if one is paying attention. It demands such attention, but not in a bombastic way; rather, it engages like a soft mountain breeze through the trees, simultaneously caressing the ears and overwhelming them. It is an elemental force: the force of the air.

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Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons

 

Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons by Peter Bebergal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off, thanks to Peter Bebergal, editor, who graciously sent me a review copy of this book. I've long admired Peter's work and he is definitely one of the better human beings on the planet. That said, I've been careful to keep a critical eye on the ball here.

The question to be answered is: Did the book hit its mark? Of course, the answer depends, in part, on the audience. For me, a reader, a writer, an editor, and a long-time gamer, the answer is yes, with some slight caveats. They will be registered in the reviews of the stories themselves, below.

Those who have been playing D&D for some time (I've been playing since 1979) and those who have read extensively in the fantasy genre will, likely, approach with caution. All of us old-skool gamers have read Gary Gygax's "Appendix N" from the first edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide (still, as far as I am concerned, one of the best helter-skelter amalgamations of gaming tools and even some gaming wisdom - though the absolute best guide on how to run a game is found in the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Keeper Rulebook: Chapter 10). We all know about it, but how many of us have read those works in their entirety? Not me! That might have something to do with a lazy streak, because digging up all those titles is a lot like real work, especially with some of the older, more obscure works.

So, here, Bebergal has done the work for you, and then some. Okay, not every work is collected here (that would take entire volumes), but he has picked out some of the best short work mentioned in Appendix N, and mingled in some pieces not specifically mentioned, but that may have influenced the game, and definitely have influenced players and dungeon masters for decades. But you won't find many direct corollaries with D&D spells, monsters, classes, magic items, or dungeons. No, outside of a few notable exceptions (all noted in the Introduction or Afterword), you'll have to extrapolate from the material provided - you'll have to use your imagination! After all, TSR, the founding company for D&D and many other tabletop roleplaying gems, told you right up front that these are "Products of your Imagination" all the way back in 1983. So, get with it! Get reading and get imagining!

Here's what you have to look forward to:

Right as I started reading this book, my next turn on the Play By Mail game Hyborian War arrived. I read the report on how my Darfarian armies and heroes were doing (not well, honestly - and since then, things have gotten worse). Then I read Lin Carter's "How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm" and I couldn't differentiate between the two. I count that as a very good thing. I can use a lot more epic sword and sorcery on that scale (and yet, in such a short story) in my life.

"The Tale of Hauk," by Poul Anderson: Viking undead undead undead undead. Three stars. The epic "poetic" language came across stilted to me. Even ten-year-old-OMG-I'm-new-to-D&D-and-everything-is-so-awesome Forrest would have balked at the choppy only halfway-historically-accurate prose. What can I say? I was a jaded snob at a very young age. I blame Lewis Carroll. So, not bad, not great. But do not let this stop you from reading more of Anderson's work. He really is an excellent writer!

I've read my share of Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales, but not "The Jewels in the Forest," until now. These are not mere Murder Hobos, but people with real emotion. I could have used these role models in my early TTRPG days (I started when I was 9): Adventurers, but not sociopaths. It's the humanity of the two that I love. There is some genuine pathos here, and Bebergal has slipped other stories into this volume with more emotional impact than you might expect ("Tower of Darkness" and "Black Gods Kiss" most especially). But the pulp-action adventure and mystery here is also up front and real.

Clark Ashton Smith's "Empire of the Necromancers" may be the absolute highpoint of grimdark sword and sorcery (with an emphasis on the sorcery, though swords are utilized). It's difficult to find a darker story, where the level of vengeance would make Poe pale and Evenson blush. The voice is Dunsanian, but a Dunsany gone horribly wrong, which makes this tale horribly right. Machen might have loved this.

I've read "Turjin of Miir" before, but this reread did not tarnish the experience at all. On the contrary, now, more than ever, I can see the subtle genius of Jack Vance's work. There's a cleverness that never becomes self-seeing, a burbling sense of unaware-of-itself humor and a phantasmagoric atmosphere that's weird enough, but not crazy

I have to admit that I haven't read much Tanith Lee. But after the outstanding "A Hero at the Gates," I want more. Cyrion, the protagonist, uses his keen power of observation and quick decision making with even more skill than he shows as a swordsman. Steel may finish the deal, but the critical analysis is made in the hero's head long before a blade is unsheathed. A fantastic character study. In my mind, I couldn't help but picture Erol Otus' D&D character Valerius as I read.

I've read and enjoyed Howard's "Tower of the Elephant" thrice before, and I know why it was contained in the current volume. Still, it's not without it's faults, and I would like to have seen some other Conan story, maybe "Rogues in the House," which, to me, is more of a D&D adventurer's tale. Still, the volume would be incomplete without "Tower," I think, at least for someone new to Sword and Sorcery. So, it's really a must-have. Shame that another Conan piece couldn't have been squeezed in.

Poetry? In Sword & Sorcery? Well, of course. What do you think the old epics were? Here, in Saberhagen's "The Song of Swords," poesis and evocative epic storytelling meld perfectly. This would make any bard proud.

I've had the chance to talk with Michael Moorcock a few times on the phone, while co-editing the Leviathan 3 anthology with Jeff Vandermeer. Mike is a scholar and a gentleman, and I enjoyed some long conversations with him about the writer's craft and his time working with Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. One wonders how he could create such an anti-hero as Elric, but when you read carefully, you realize that Elric might have been a "good man" once. But his world, as shown in "The Dreaming City" is broken. The dream has shattered, and so, the man, who is a shell of his former self, driven by his evil sword.

"The Doom That Came to Sarnath" is one of those tales in which a deep lore is established. Here Lovecraft paints the picture of a lost city saturated by a long-duree history of corruption and fear. Just the sort of place adventurers might go to seek treasure, and just the sort of place where they might meet their own doom!

David Madison's "Tower of Darkness" is amazing. The protagonists, Diana and Marcus, are thoroughly-realized characters that might have been every bit as well-written as Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, had Madison not died an untimely death at age 27. I want to read more of his work. Much more. Absolutely fantastic fantastical work, and such a loss to the world of Sword and Sorcery.

I've often mused on where Gygax found his monsters. I think that Manly Wade Wellman's "Straggler from Atlantis" might be a source for what later became the gelatinous cube (I'm certain his ochre jelly came from Hiero's Journey). Regardless, Wellman crafts a good tale of sword sorcery, and even a crashed flying saucer here. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks , anyone?

Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" holds no surprises, nor does it need to. This is one of those rare stories where you can sense what's coming, what is almost inevitable, but it is so cleverly written that you gladly come along for the ride. This was a joy to read, alas for Mortensen, and the ending was a delightful (for us, not for the salespoerson) cherry on top. I loved this little story.

I've ,read my fair share of Ramsey Campbell's work, especially his Cthulhu mythos fiction. I didn't quite know what to think when I saw that his story "The Pit of Wings" appeared in this collection. Now I see that it's a brilliant mix of Sword & Sorcery and outright horror; exactly the type of game I like to run! If you've ever worried about stirges, don't read this story. Oh, and stirges are one of my favorite things to throw at a party of adventurers!

I will run out of words before I can explain how absolutely marvelous C.L. Moore's "Black God's Kiss" is. Jirel of Joiry is so well-realized in this one story that I immediately ran off to find more of Moore's work. She is a complex character who encounters turns of emotion and morality that reflect an inner reality absent in most Sword and Sorcery. And Moore's Hell is truly a Hell; terrible, yet beautiful. The image of a herd of fleet-footed blind white horses stampeding through hell will probably never leave me:

As the last one of all swept by her, sweat-crusted and staggering, she saw him toss his head high, spattering foam, and whinny shrilly to the stars. And it seemed to her that the sound was strangely articulate. Almost she heard the echoes of a name - "Julienne! Julienne!" - in that high, despairing sound. And the incongruity of it, the bitter despair, clutched at her heart so sharply that for the third time that night she knew the sting of tears.

"The Fortress Unconquerable, Save for Sacnoth" is everything you'd expect from Lord Dunsany. I have to admit that his penchant for hyperbole in all of his stories is simultaneously endearing and annoying. But he wrote in a epic mythological register, so it's to be expected. Still a great story, especially if you haven't read Dunsany before. Plenty of inspiration here for dungeoneers old and young, though! Note that Stormbringer isn't the only great sword of fantasy fiction. I'm going to venture a guess that Gygax took his idea (or was it Arneson's?) for intelligent swords both from Moorcock and from Dunsany.

I have heard A. Merritt's "The People of the Pit" as a great exemplar of pulp weird fiction. That may be true, but the telling of the tale felt off to me. The mimicry of Lovecraft's prose wore thin, and the high vocabulary of a character that clearly wouldn't use it was also a hindrance, throwing me out of my willing suspension of disbelief. So, it might be iconic, but it isn't particularly good. Didn't hate it, didn't love it.

As much a morality tale as an adventure tale, "Legacy from Sorn Fen," by Andre Norton is told in a register one step down from Dunsany's high flights. This suits the story more, with a grit that will appeal to most gaming tables. The biggest takeaway is to be careful what you wish for. Anyone who has been playing D&D long enough realizes the potential pitfalls of fulfilled desires. "Is that what you really want?"

Following these prose pieces are two comics. The first one is "Crom the Barbarian," a comic from 1950 that reads and looks like, well, a comic from 1950, with all that implies. The plotline definitely informed that of a certain '80s movie staring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The final piece is "Sword of Dragonus," from 1971, three years before the appearance of the epic black-and-white adult comic series The Savage Sword of Conan. I have a special place in my own Appendix N for Savage Sword. This is where I cut my teeth on sword and sorcery fantasy. While living at San Vito AFB, Italy, my parents dropped me off one night at the base day care so they could go watch Superman. I was 7 or 8 years old. Someone, probably some half-drunk airman, had left a copy of Savage Sword in among the kids books and comics that people had donated to the child care. It was there I read my first Savage Sword story, The Slithering Shadow. I had no idea why the women hardly wore any clothes, but I didn't really care. I was all about the swords and monsters! Thankfully, the guy running the Stars and Stripes Bookstore on base thought I was just buying comics when I bought my own issues of Savage Sword. This was what set me on the path that prepared me for my encounter with D&D about a year later. But that's a different story.

In summation: I'm impressed by the breadth of the collection. The varied tones and excellent writing make this not just a book about stories for gamers, it is a collection of good to outstanding writing in and of itself. What ties it all together is the imagination and the potential for collaborative imagining, riffing off the themes, characters, settings, plots, monsters, and, of course swords (lest we forget them). The book itself is an experience that rewards both the non-gaming reader and the long-time gamers.

I can't end without noting that though this copy is a paperback, there is fold-out endpapers that are - you nerds guessed it - an old blue dungeon map! Would you expect anything less from Strange Attractor Press? If not, you obviously haven't read enough of their books. So, intrepid adventurer, start here!

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Note: I would be remiss if I didn't mention my own, personal Appendix N. There's some overlap here. The Venn Diagram does cross in a few places, but it's obvious that old E. Gary and I might take an oblique view of each other. No worries, there's room under the TTRPG umbrella for just about anyone!




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Lost Estates

 

Lost Estates by Mark Valentine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not shy about my opinion of Mark Valentine as one of the best writers of strange tales penning today. Or maybe he's "quilling," yes, that seems more like his protagonists, most of them people who you can't help but like, from the book collector of "Worse Things Than Serpents" to the four quirky mystics of "The Readers of the Sands" to the curious amateur historian of "The Fifth Moon," his protagonists are just so darned likeable. I think this intensifies their rather strange encounters (some of them downright horrific). I'd like to think that they reflect aspects of the author's personality, but you know where that gets us when assessing fiction. And, having never met him, I can't say if these are projections of his inner life or not, but if not, he does have a convincing way or portraying people, like myself, whose curiosity can get them in a bit of trouble, innocent as they may be. And perhaps that's why their various discoveries and predicaments carry such a sense of immediacy. I could easily see myself, or people I know, blissfully blundering into situations with the beyond that they can barely comprehend, let alone deal with in any kind of meaningful way. These are not stories of highly-competent detectives who flippantly "figure it all out". If you want that, I'd point you to Valentine and Howard's excellent The Collected Connoisseur or his Herald of the Hidden . No, these are not the same as the highly-competent Connoisseur or Ralph Tyler, these are rather ordinary people with strange interests thrust into extraordinary circumstances. And I am all for it. My notes for each story (with some post-note-taking embellishment as always) are here presented:

"A Chess Game at Michaelmas" is classic Mark Valentine, but with an air of folk magic, like sage hanging heavy in the air, a consecration to a sort of tale that Valentine has avoided, or at least minimized, in the past. It's a new "look," but with the same rigor and steady hand that Valentine practices so well. The horrific element is quick, a flash in the pan, but it turns the tale completely, capturing the reader.

Valentine is a connoisseur (note the lack of capital leading letter - see above) of rare and strange books, and "Worse Things Than Serpents" has this avocation on clear display. The wandering narrator enters a bookstore called "Brazen Serpent Books" wherein he finds a rare book, not a grimoire or antique tome, but a book that piques his interest. His presence at the bookshop, in turn, piques the interest of something else. Something he doesn't want to take an interest in him. No one would . . .

How to place my finger on "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire"? I can't do it. I'm reminded of a recent substack post by Matt Cardin about the need for mystery in writing. I told him he's gonna love this Robert Aickman guy I heard about. This story is much the same. A mystery. But not a mystery to be solved, a mystery to be savored. Let the prose poetry wash over you and wander for awhile. But don't get lost along the way.

As I read "The House of Flame," I kept thinking "this sounds like it was almost lifted directly from Machen's Hill of Dreams," only to find that the story was written for a volume in homage to Arthur Machen. I have to admire that it even matched Machen stylistically; no easy feat. But then I ask, for the first time ever, "did Valentine do anything new here"? Maybe not. But to be blunt, I don't care. This is still a worthy and well-crafted tale, and maybe it will lead others down the Machen road.

"The Seventh Card," like its protagonist, ambles along at a slow pace, languidly moving, then melding with a soft sense of the strange, not sudden or harsh, but gently enveloping him (and us) into a softly spoken, but inevitably odd new reality.

I'm not fond of the title "And Maybe the Parakeet Was Correct," but I am quite fond of the story. A side-passage into sports journalism leads to a side-passage into a sport that has no heroes, only villains. The stakes here might be much higher than your standard football match and there is no willing audience and no cheering. On the contrary, no one wants to be a part of this match, though some must. If you've ever walked down the wrong alley in the wrong neighborhood - and I have done this many times in my travels - you'll relate to the awkwardness and dull sense of background dread in this story.

"Laughter Ever After" strikes a hopeful tone for a book collector's story. And it's set in Biggleswade, not far from where I lived in England. It's on the dull side, but that's kind of the whole point of the story.

"The Readers of the Sands" is a strange, yet subtle tale, the sort of story that balances in a razor, but never falls one way or another. It is a quiet tale of four individuals, each with an affinity for sand, each with their own insights and talents, all of them distantly cognizant of something Other in the shifting patterns, something sentient and, perhaps, inimical to them, individually and collectively. I think this story, surprisingly, has stuck in my head the most out of all of the stories in this volume. It was one of the least horrific of the stories, or perhaps one of the more "triumphant" stories, but this contrasts rather sharply with the strange ouvre of the tale, a sort of, well, shifting, slithering something that underlies . . . well, everything. Maybe it's the ontological questions that arise long after the story is read that have captured my lingering attention. I shall have to go read it again and again, as there's something expansive beyond just the events portrayed here. Something . . . I don't know . . . just . . . more.

What starts as a dry, treatise on pub signs and their origins slips from the academic to the folksy to the downright hallucinatory. This is a path that Valentine sometimes embarks on, but doesn't always finish the journey. Here, I am glad to say, we are plunged into phantasmagoric visions that might drive the bookish seeker after fact and data completely over the edge of madness. I was happy to dive off that cliff and swim in strange waters.

I suppose every short fiction collection has one - that previously-unpublished piece with an amazing title and mysterious premise that just doesn't quite connect with the reader. "Lost Estates" was that for me. A "minor piece" as the literati say. It just didn't jive with the rest of the collection, which is strange, given the story is about the creation of music, at it's heart, maybe even ironic, if unintended.

The next tale, "The End of Alpha Street," has the signature marks of Valentines work that I so love: a warmth of character, a hint of witty humor, a fascination with the outre and the neglected sides of life, and a mystery left mysterious. The story is eerie and yet so human; the juxtaposition pulling the reader in, even while alarms are going off in your head. But is there really need to be alarmed? Maybe.

Take "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and add ten layers of sinister intent. James was just scratching the surface, but Valentine goes all in, even if his protagonist is incredulous. If you think King John wasn't evil, your naivete won't save you. This is folk horror taken to the next level by Valentine's deft hand. A nod to James, but a story that is completely Valentine; well, outside of a sprinkling of The Bard's work. Five stars for "The Fifth Moon"!

I can't end without mentioning the absolutely beautiful presentation here. The dust jacket is, obviously, striking, but strip that thing off for a minute and just admire the even-more-striking hardcover. The aesthetic of this book is complex in its simplicity. Swan River keeps producing elegant hardcovers in limited editions that one must keep one's eye on, lest they sell out and you are left with a gaping hole on your bookshelf that could have been filled with a true gem. I've regretted missing more than one Swan River title, and I plan on snatching them up more often. If you're on the fence, splurge!

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Greener Pastures

 

Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The blurbs that introduce this collection are a who's-who of writers whose work I greatly appreciate: Gemma Files, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, and S.P. Miskowski, among others. So, I had high expectations going into this lauded collection.

Unfortunately, things started slowly.

"Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness" takes the old tropes of vampirism and twists it up a bit. It's good, smoothly written, but not extraordinary to me. Your mileage may vary.

"Onanon" was more the sort of thing I expected from all the blurbs and praise I've read. Cosmic horror of the natural world told in a sparse, unforgiving voice.

And from here on out, the stories were incredibly strong, outside of one dip, which I'll mention below.

The title story is strong. Very strong. Like "could have been an episode of Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone" strong. It's the power of the unspoken and the unseen between the words that is so unsettling. The words only mark the boundaries. It's the gaps in-between where the horror dwells. I have a few friends who are truckers that I'm going to recommend this story to. Or maybe I shouldn't . . .

"A Discreet Music" is subtle and strange, but mostly not horrific. And this is good. I actually like the calm weirdness of this transformation, of the shedding of an old life for the new. It's not without its painful moments. On the contrary, there is deep pain in Hiram, the protagonist. And there are jarring revelations about the self, as well. But the metamorphosis is profound and moving.

"The Devil Under the Maison Blue" is such a gently-delivered story that one embraces the horror as, well, just fine. A horror story needn't be stark or harsh or jarring in any way to elicit a powerful response. This is a clear case in point. Sometimes it's the devil you don't know that makes the biggest impression.

I, too, am a sucker for lost footage stories. "October Film Haunt: Under the House" is a melange of the weird and the eerie, full of things that ought not to be, but are, and empty of things that should be, but are not. The lines between fact and fiction and between observer and observed are smeared beyond recognition, resulting in a kaleidoscope of horror that will haunt the reader for a very, long time. And if you're wondering what the cover art is all about: this is it!

"Deducted From Your Share in Paradise" defies expectations in every way. It's a story of maintaining innocence while in a maelstrom of selfish choices, about endings and new beginnings, and possibly about heaven and hell. But it's not so cut and dried as these pairings. One must worm their way between these things and question the very meaning of their outmost bounds. Or maybe, boundaries need to be ignored.

"The Inconsolable" presses deep on the depression button, then asks "what is faith?" and "what is comfort?" It's a poignant tale about breakups and new beginnings, along with the caveats inherent in leaving a piece of one's old life, and a piece of one's own soul, behind.

"Dancers," while weird, was just too soft-spoken for my tastes. It might even be an (gasp) "ineffective" story, trying too hard to be too many things at once. This was the one gap in this collection. I guess every collection has to have one.

"A Thousand Hundred Years" pushes even further through the boundaries of Mark Fisher's "Eerie" and "Weird", namely "that which should be there, but is missing" and "that which is there, but should not be," to great emotional effect. The story is a strange admixture of tears and fears, of melancholy and hope, a tale of being pulled in multiple directions, some good, some bad, all at once. It is life and loss in all its complexity, and reveals the true, confusing horrors of the world. Like many of the stories in this collection, this injects a great deal of emotion, without becoming sickly sweet or cynical, into a tale that squeezes the breath out of you.

Oof (again). "Bookends" is a poetic, sublime, beautiful gut punch. Grief is at the heart of it all, grief and loss, both of which I've experienced in bucketloads over the course of the last few years. Do not read this if you are dealing with an open emotional wound, specifically the death of a close loved one. This story will absolutely wreck you. Then again, it might just open some doors. Approach with caution.

The blurbs are deserved. Minus one miss, this collection hits on all cylinders. I will be reading more of Wehunt's work, for sure. But that's for the future, after I've recovered from this one and the deep emotional grooves it cut in me start to smooth out. For now, I am left scarred, but better for it. Kind of like . . . life.

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Dreamland RPG Preview

 If you know me, or if you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know that three things that inform a great deal of my life are dreams, "weird" fiction, and tabletop roleplaying games. So when I learned, several years ago, that Jason Thompson, artist behind the amazing graphic novel version of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath & Other Stories was behind a TTRPG focusing exclusively on the dreamlands, I was very excited. 

Then, last year at Gameholecon, I had the privilege to play in a game and, frankly, was blown away. This is a game that rewards creativity, it is not a player's game, but a creator's game, and I am ALL in on it! The mechanics use word cards that players use to influence and create actions and even the environment itself (a malleable dreamworld where creation is the ultimate power). I had been prepared to be disappointed (just in case), but that preparation melted away as the game play far surpassed my cautious emotional hedging. It was one of the most fun games I've played at a convention (and I've played a few). 

So now, you can download the quickstart rules in preparation for the upcoming Kickstarter next year. I'll be saving my gold pieces to be able to splurge on this one. I only get excited about Kickstarter campaigns every few years - yeah, I'm a skeptic and a bit of a cheapskate at times - but 2025 is going to be the year I get excited. 

Go here to download the quickstart rules. And have a gander at this art! This is just a sample of the goodness that is and will be the Dreamland RPG

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

The Trickster Goddess of Family Cervidae

[Trigger Warning: Dead animal mention and photo]

 I'm going to get a little personal here. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. Take me as I am, as they say. Here I am:

Back in 2019, the company I worked for was bought out. Now, one of the companies I had worked for previous to that job went through three different buy-outs in five years. Yeah, not a great track record. I left that company before it sank, and oh, did it sink. It's gone. Dead to the business world. A has-been. Even the IP has been flushed down the toilet. I watched as the investors made mistake after mistake, had the heartbreaking task of handing out nearly 40 pink slips to people, some of them good friends, because the investors made some really poor business decisions, and when the third buyout happened and I saw the company culture that was being imposed there, I took off. On my last day, when I walked out (and I literally walked home the five or so miles, because I knew I'd need that long walk to clear my head), I felt like I was sitting on a cliffside overlooking the ocean, and seeing a cruise ship, on fire, slowly sinking beneath the waves. I was right. That's about how it went down. So fast-forward a few years, and I find I'm in the middle of yet another buy-out. Only with this one, I was assured that my job was not in any danger, that while there were now two buyers, where there had been one previously, that my position was safe as houses, as they say. 

They lied.

I found myself, at fifty years old, unemployed for the first time in my life. I diligently looked for, and found, a good job doing purchasing for a major player in the food industry (why not? I had just been "let go" by the water industry). This was in late 2019. Covid happened, and I found myself working from home, which was a good thing, because unlike many of my friends who were out of work, I found myself waking up at around 7, rolling out of bed to get started at 7:30, working through to 5:00 or so (I may or may not have taken a 15 minute lunch during that time - some days I did so, most I didn't), eating dinner, then getting back on for another 2-4 hours, depending on how crazy the day was. This went on for many months. Every day, I checked in with my boss for a call, maybe 20 minutes or so, to report on what I was doing. This was fine, as we needed to communicate regularly, given how absolutely insane the food industry was during Covid. People discovered they could actually cook burgers at home, and our customer base (the meat industry) went stark raving mad with production. One of our customers, also the world's single largest producer of beef, was running at 400% capacity. So anything that required preventative maintenance, like motors, for example, which I bought, was wearing out four times more quickly than usual. And I'm here to tell you that the meat industry doesn't like the idea of buying spares until their machines are down and they are suddenly losing $10K an hour - then, and only then, they'd think "we should have bought a spare". Duh. 

Covid came and went. But the stressors didn't. Long story short, I found myself, last winter, burned out and extremely sensitive to criticism. I was putting in "all the hours". I was pushing to get everything done that needed to get done. I made some mistakes, as one does when one is over-worked and burned out, but nothing critical. In fact, in the last year, I saved my company upwards of three times my yearly salary in one year of purchasing negotiations. I paid for myself and then a lot more. The numbers were clear as day. I received praise from the plant manager and international director of sourcing for my work. And yet, the pressure never let up. 

It was in the midst of this pressure cooker that I was driving home from work one night on a stretch of country road, and I saw a deer jump out onto the county highway. I was going at about the speed limit when I slammed the brakes and the deer jumped off the road, but I thought - and I was right - there's got to be other deer nearby.

Then, there she was. She bounded out and in a split second, I knew I was going to hit here. I knew also, that when hitting a deer, it's a bad idea to have your brakes clamped down, as the deer is then more likely to go under your car and tear up everything on the underside. So, I let off the brake and hit her at about 40 MPH.

As I saw her body fly up over my hood and fill my windshield, I thought "this is it, I'm going to die". Then, miraculously (for me, at least), she kept going up. I think my car met her rump just as she was bounding upward, as deer do, and she simply flew over the top of my car - completely over the top - and landed in a ditch behind me. 

I didn't have the wherewithal to do anything but glance back. I didn't see her. I had no idea if she had survived or not. My car was crumpled and I was shaking like a leaf. My airbags did not go off, for which I am very grateful, and any whiplash I suffered was minimal. After a panicked call to my wife ("I just hit a deer. I have no idea what to do. I've never hit a deer before.") and my wife's calming response that I should call the insurance company, I did that. Then I called 911. The Walworth County Sheriff's department arrived, and the deputies were awesome. They checked on how I was doing, asked what happened, of course asked if I had my seat belt on at the time of the accident ("I was raised in the military. You ALWAYS have your seatbelt on when you're raised in the military!" - they laughed at that), then checked my car. It was munched on the front, but drivable, and there weren't any fluids leaking. 

The police gave me a card with a case number and told me "if you get pulled over for only having one headlight, just give them this card and you'll be fine". Then they got in their SUV and backed up behind me, maybe fifty feet or so, shone their spotlight into the field to check for the deer, I presume, then drove off. I made it home, of course, took the car in and eventually it was totalled.

To say this was a stressor I didn't need is an understatement. But I kept coming back, in my mind, to that moment that deer rose up and filled my windshield. I was strangely calm when I thought "I'm going to die". I wasn't panicked at all. Endorphines are wonderful gifts! But I kept coming back to that thought. "I'm going to die."

Of course, I've thought that before. My deepest philosophical explorations (if they can be called "deep" at all) have been my delves into Existentialism. I've faced the possibility of death a couple of times before (once having narrowly avoided being in a fatal airplane accident - the plane taxiing behind me ended up being hit by a microburst on the tail of the plane on takeoff, flipping upside down, and killing all 16 people on board, I learned upon landing at my destination - and I've been shot at at close range once, as well). But this one was weird. I was so calm. Almost like I was just receiving a message: "I'm going to die".

Needless to say, this got me thinking a LOT (and driving much more slowly and cautiously at night in the country - yeah, I've become "that guy" at night. So, go around me if you're in such a hurry) about my then-current situation with work. I was not happy. In fact, I was much more unhappy and not mentally-well than I could have admitted to myself before the accident. And I had been putting up with a lot of stress and what in a later conversation I figured out was extreme micro-managing, and I had had enough. So I started sending out job applications. I had been approached by head-hunters before, but had told them I wasn't interested at that time. Now I was interested. I needed a change and I needed it bad. After sending out eight applications, I had two offers. in comparison, when I was "let go" at the job previous to my last, I sent out 65 applications and ended up with two offers.

Since I left my job and took the current job I am in, I've spoken with a few employees at the place I left and have discovered that others felt the same way about their experience there. I won't go into details, but the culture there is . . . languishing, shall we say? Two nights ago, I was sitting on the couch just staring at the closet door, feeling at peace. My wife asked what I was thinking about, and I said "I'm thinking about how I'm not panicked about going back to work after this long weekend. And how I didn't have to work on my days off, like the last job." I realized that, for the first time in a long time, I was at peace. No, this job isn't perfect - no job is. But it's much better than my last place, MUCH less stressful, and, frankly, just as rewarding. A side note - this job is a ten minute drive from my house. We're now a one-car family, which, while it requires some juggling, actually makes life feel a lot simpler, in some ways. And I'm close enough that I've been able to walk home a couple of times, when my wife needed the car. It's actually helping me be more fit. Four mile walks will do that for you. 

And the weird thing is, I have this dead deer to thank for these, dare I say it? Blessings. This might sound morbid and perhaps a touch cruel, but I feel like she sacrificed herself for me, in some ways. Yes, I feel badly about hitting her and killing her. I'm not mad at her, though. In fact, I'm extremely grateful, truly, honestly thankful. I think of the old myths of trickster gods that would sometimes lead people to the edge of danger, where they then found some sort of reward for their endangerment, narrowly escaping the potential for that Final failure. I've seen the pit of doom, and picked up a gold coin on its edge.

The next day, after the accident, I drove my wife's vehicle in to work. On my way home, I made sure I drove home that SAME way I drove when I hit the deer. I considered it a sort of banishing ritual, undoing what had been done the night before, closing the circle. Besides, I needed to get some confidence back about driving at night! In fact, I drove past there many times, as I drove home to tune up my resume, get applications in, and do phone interviews. 

I looked for the deer each time, but didn't see her carcass. We had had some nasty snowstorms, and if the deer was indeed killed, it was in a steep-ish ditch off the side of the road, covered in snow. 

Strange that late on February 18th, I submitted my application to the place I eventually ended up working for. On February 21st I was called by them and had my first phone interview. On February 22nd, the snow had temporarily melted, and on my way home I saw something I had been looking for since January 4th, the night of the accident. I took the following picture:

Coincidence? I don't think so. The older I get, the less I think there is such a thing as coincidence. Meaning is where it's at. And maybe it's all we've got.

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!