Waystations of the Deep Night

 

Waystations of the Deep Night by Marcel Brion
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recall a night. It was probably 1982, if I've triangulated correctly. In Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. My friend Ray and I were staying at our friend Shawn's house. Shawn's dad was kind of a celebrity to us. He had a killer conversion van (though, unfortunately, no barbarians painted on the side), a copy of Rush's 2112 in the tape deck, and he knew the guitar player from REO Speedwagon. Pretty cool to us 13 year olds!

Back then, young teenagers were pretty "free range". I recall Saturdays and summer days where I would ride my bike for hours, covering many miles, just sort of going from place to place, running into friends, creating adventures. There were no helicopter parents back then. At least I didn't know any. Needless to say, Shawn's dad was not a helicopter parent. We stayed out in the conversion van, listening to Rush while playing Tunnels & Trolls, with no adult influence whatsoever. It was bliss.

When it comes to exact details of that night, I can only recall a couple. After finishing our T&T session, we went out for a nighttime stroll. It was one of those strangely surreal nights where the three of us seemed like the only people out on the streets. We went to Top Dog Hot Dog for the arcade games as much as for the hot dogs. I recall playing Moon Patrol, Zaxxon (I still suck at that game), and then playing the Centaur pinball game (still my favorite board) until they closed at about 11 PM.

Then, we wandered. I can't tell you where all we went and what all we did, though I am certain involved a lot of trespassing and maybe some breaking and entering.

What I can tell you about is the feeling I had. Did I mention that we had stayed awake the entire night before that night? No? It's true, we had been awake for close to 36 hours straight before the night began. For those of you who have done this, first of all, don't continue. I have first-hand experience of a loved one becoming temporarily psychotic and having to be hospitalized in the psych-clinic due to lack of sleep. It's terrifying to see from the outside. I wonder if I hadn't experienced something similar that night. How could I know? When you're in the middle of psychosis, your thoughts seem pretty logical (even hyper-logical, to coin a term) to you.

I want to say there was a dulling of the senses, but "dulling" doesn't describe what I felt. It was more a compartmentalizing of the senses. The "I" in "me" was one step removed. I heard things, but it was as if it was from a distance. Vision came as if from a television or movie screen. Even my own voice felt like it emanated from somewhere outside or "behind" me. It was summer, but my skin felt numbed. A high-pitched whining continually sounded from the back of my skull.

And I felt like anything was possible. Everything, though one step removed from my senses, was alive and full of potential. I wouldn't have been surprised by a miracle, and wouldn't have been taken aback by the end of the world.

Since then, I've had a few other experiences late, late at night that I won't detail here. There is some kind of physiological and psychological reaction to the deep night that makes each of those experiences to feel "of a piece," as they say. And the same is true of the stories in Marcel Brion's excellent Waystations of the Deep Night.

The title story is exactly what you would expect from such a title: an oneiric tale straight out of a de Chirico painting. I'm honestly shocked that the Brothers Quay haven't done a short film based on this story. It would be a perfect fit, as Brion's painterly prose is beautifully imagistic. Or is that magicistic? Borderline majestic. It's everything I hoped for, judging by the title. Dark and refulgent, at once.

"The Field Marshal of Fear" is a quiet, somber piece, but steady as marching feet. The short, simple sentences, however, do not fail to evoke a stupendous sadness, an eternal drudgery experienced by the dead veterans of wars long since won or lost. A graveside sleepwalk, full of night's heaviness.

In "The Fire Sonata," Brion's voice reminds me of Calvino, but with a sinister edge much sharper and darker than anything the Italian master wrote. I had to split this story into two readings, and I had high expectations for the concluding read. My expectations were met and then some! This could have been an episode of the Twilight Zone that Rod Serling would have been proud of. That's the highest praise, coming from me, as TZ is my favorite shoe of all time.

I would swear David Lynch had written "Incident on a Journey," had I not read it in this collection. The ending came as no surprise, but the inevitability of the tale made it all the more uncomfortable and awkward, like you know you're walking into a trap, but there is no way to avoid it, so you take in every excruciating detail and just watch in desperate silence as the void closes in on you, closer and closer.

Though it could be read merely as a fabulously well-written eerie tale (in the Fisherian sense), "Dead Waters" is, pardon the pun, much deeper than that. It's a story primarily about agency, manipulation, creation, and causality, with many of the characters being potentially marionettes or God Himself, or neither. There are no clear answers, but plenty of compelling questions about what transpires on dark streets. This was the most blatantly "dreamlike" story in the collection, and a deeply-intriguing read.

"La Capitana" is a child's long, slow fading into a dream-world of potential adventure beyond the seas. It is simultaneously happy and sad, bittersweet, full of hope and, yet, utterly hopeless. Imagine your eight-year-old self on a boring, sunny afternoon, given the power to disappear into mysterious dreams of exotic lands on a ship named "La Capitana," a name that you gave the ship, because it is yours, in dream.

"The Glass Organ" was every bit as ephemeral and strange as the object in the title implies. It is a multi-faceted story, but tenuous, images slipping onto one another, transforming into a world that may or may not exist.

"The Lost Street" is a more traditional ghost story. I use the word "more" intentionally, as it is not a fully-traditional ghost story. There are enough more surreal elements that take this beyond the realm of, say M.R. James and approach Bruno Schulz by way of Dali.

Overall, Brion's stories evoked a visceral familiarity within me, feelings I've felt mostly when I've had too little sleep (day or night) and some of the oddities of life in the deep night. Here's sampling of what I mean - Brion describes it much better than I do, from the story "The Glass Organ":

That nocturnal stroll through a park that merged imperceptibly with the forest - certain domestic trees having recovered their wild freedom - already contained within it the qualities of a labyrinth. I didn't choose paths. When several opened before me, I accepted now the darkest, with the childlike hope of encountering a marvelous creature, now the brightest, for the pleasing reward of a downpour of moonlight like a narrow stream between the serried darkness of the trees. Concerns about time or direction would have diminished the sense of the unreal that I received from the night. To let myself be carried along by it, to consent to the paths it offered me, ah! the sheer bliss of no longer choosing. What did it matter if dawn overtook me in the middle of the forest or at the first houses of a distant village? The joy of abandoning myself to the indefinite character that moonlight bestows on deeds and things ruled out any directed action on my part. There was nothing I sought, nothing I fled. For several hours I was at peace with myself, relinquishing both desire and regret, indifferent to wherever, in the end, I must inevitably arrive, not caring whether that place was one of fulfillment or one of oblivion.

This is how it feels to flee into the deep night.

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The Beauty of the Death Cap

 

The Beauty of the Death Cap by Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze


I admit that I have a certain soft-spot for "plotless" books. And while The Beauty of the Death Cap isn't completely plotless, the plot is a mere wisp, a skeleton or an apparition, if you will. But it's barely necessary in this book.

The central conceit of the book is the gradual peeling away of layers around the ultimately sociopathic Nikonor (a name of a "certain Slavic, vaguely menacing quality"), his various career pursuits, love of mycology, and his paranoia, engendered by his twin sister. This is all done in a tongue in cheek manner, but by the end, we realize that the tongue is boring completely through the cheek and exposing a bloody mess. It's not a horror book, nor a psychological thriller; no, this one really does defy categorization. You hear that about many books, but this one means it. I can't think of any subgenre in which this book comfortably sits outside of grim humor, and that's not really a genre so much as an attitude. And The Beauty of the Death Cap has that attitude in spades.

This isn't some clumsy, oafish attempt at morbid slapstick, though. Any book that begins by quoting Pliny the Elder either can't take itself seriously or is full of sinister deceit. Or both. I learned the hard way that here it was both.

Take a look at my limited notes:

I do appreciate a good, mildly-neurotic narrator.

I absolutely love this snarky, secretly-insecure narrative voice.

Just keeps getting drenched in gentlemanly insidiousness. I love the narrative voice, but despise the narrator. Okay, who am I kidding? I love the narrator, though I should despise him.

What's so grimly beautiful about this book is the progression one sees in Nikonor's revelations. The old analogy of peeling onions is apt. One could be moved to tears by the recognition of the narrator's growing (or is it just more and more obvious?) psychosis. And it stinks and stings, but you just can't help but keep digging deeper, like you're some kind of OCD psychiatrist who has to see what makes this man tick.

Or you just have a morbid curiosity. Okay, let's face it, it's the latter. We can't wait to see the ultimate end to this oncoming train wreck. We have to stay till the end. We are, as they say, "completists".

Along the road (strewn with bodies in our wake), we get some deliciously devious and understated gems, such as this:

I have long been in the habit of cooking for myself, which is useful when one lives in autarky. This way, I am not forced to depend on a sullen, nosy, or preachy cook. Marie came back to work for me for a few months after my mother moved to Creuse (three or four years after my father's death), but I must admit that the co-habitation did not proceed smoothly. Age had embittered her; she muttered constantly under her breath and had to be handled with kid gloves. She talked endlessly about Anastasie in the most outrageously hagiographic terms, and had the further audacity to ask me completely inappropriate questions about old Legrandin (I wonder if she hadn't carried something of a torch for him in her youth) and, in the evenings, after dinner, she had acquired the habit of wandering morosely - and suspiciously - down to the fishpond.

Claiming that I was spending more and more time in Paris, I eventually dismissed her completely, sweetening the deal with a goodly sum to ensure her a comfortable retirement (and assure me of her eternal gratitude). Thus we parted on the very best of terms; I even went so far as to accompany her to the train station in Ussel. Just as she was climbing with astonishing agility into her compartment, I surprised her with one last parting gift: a packet of the dried parasol mushrooms she loved so much.

And so Marie returned to her native Indre, and I never heard anything of her again (I must also admit that I have never been in the habit of following the obituaries in the various regional newspapers too closely).

And so it goes. On and on in a similar vein until things really come to a head and the plot resolves.

But, really, the plot is just a side issue. I can take it or leave it.

I love how Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze turns the banal into the fantastical, but without any truly outre methodology. Perhaps this is reflective of the psychoactive qualities of some mushrooms. Common fungus, really, until you eat one. It reminds me of Max Blecher's Adventures in Immediate Irreality a bit, or Roland Topor's The Tenant, but with a more gentlemanly approach (I use the term very loosely). Dousteyssier-Khoze nudges the imagination, just barely, but it's enough to push the reader into phantasmagoria, even without such things explicitly appearing on the page.

It just seems appropriate that the push into morbid fantasy would not take place via ink on the paper of the book, but in the reader's head.

Which might say something about the reader.



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S.S.O.T.B.E. Revised: An Essay on Magic

 

S.S.O.T.B.M.E. Revised: An Essay on Magic by Ramsey Dukes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ramsey Dukes: When you had me, you really had me. But when you lost me, I wondered if you had had me or not? I'm confused.

You're not quite the savior that some readers and reviewers would have you to be. Then again, I sense that you wouldn't really want that anyway. You're a smart cookie, though, if a little muddled toward the end. But, then again, I think you want to at least appear muddled, for the sake of banishment, if nothing else. At times you are incisive, and that's when I like you best. You are, after all, writing for some kind of audience, so it pays to be clear. On the other hand, you are writing for another kind of audience where secrecy itself is the goal. I get it. I mean, I really get it, in an esoteric sense. But I don't, in an artistic sense.

Then again, you're not much of one for art in spite of having created a good piece of it in S.S.O.T.B.M.E. You outline, quite incisively, I must add, a paradigm of paradigms: Art versus Religion versus Science versus Magic. Not "versus" in terms of territory, as all of these paradigms can and often do inhabit the exact same territory at the exact same time, but "versus" in terms of direction and, hence, perspective and viewpoint.

It really is all about the attitude, isn't it? But I think that your focus on Science, Religion, and Magic entirely misses the fact that you, or your book, is utterly encased in Art. You can't escape it, so you scoff at it, like a defiant prisoner spitting at his jailors. But that spittle doesn't remove the chains, buddy. You're stuck in art, and there's no banishing it. Even a Magic circle has to be drawn, no?

Reminds me of Heidegger's critique of Descartes, in some ways. You've made some assumptions and, by doing so, you've entirely missed the opportunity of questioning those assumptions. Unable to break out of your own bubble, you're blind to your own work. But, again . . . .maybe you always wanted it to be that way.

Because, as we both know, silence is Golden. And not just reflective of that rare metal substance. This is a gold more refined, beyond the material sphere. I know you know what Gold I'm talking about. And yet, I wonder if you haven't missed the real luster of Gold and traded it in for fool's gold.

Then again, playing the Fool is not a bad thing, now is it?

I'm not telling.

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The Robot Novels: The Caves of Steel / The Naked Sun

 

The Robot Novels: The Caves of Steel / The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was probably around 1977 that I became fully aware that this specific edition of this novel had sat on my dad's bookshelf, probably since before I was born. It's strange to say, but that freakish cover with the vacuum-cleaner robot was a fixture in my house, as I said, likely from before I was born, to the day of my father's death in 2018. The stranger thing, I suppose, is that I have not read it until now. When my parents passed away (both within two months of each other - but that heartbreaking story is for another day), we got rid of most of their books. Many I had already read or owned, and most of the rest I wasn't terribly interested in. Dad had purged his collection back in the '90s or so, and, well, mom read romance novels almost exclusively, so . . .

But this one I kept. I can't look at the book without thinking about my dad. He was a huge fan of science fiction and of Isaac Asimov in particular. I gave some of the Foundation material a go some time ago, but wasn't floored by it. It was . . . good. But didn't strike me as amazing. But I had read many other books that my dad had (or had recommended to me) and he read some that I gave to him.

And what did my dad see in The Robot Novels? I can't tell you, but I can tell you what I saw.

First off, I'm convinced that Asimov wasn't really a science fiction author. At least not with this book. Sure, it's got all the trappings - robots (obviously), enclosed cities cut off from nature (the "Steel Caves" referred to in the first novel), spaceships, and blasters. But really, this is a noir novel along the lines of The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.

Secondly, Asimov was a product of his time. The use of the term "boy" for robots, the undercurrent of sexism, etc. While these things are not as blatant as, say, Lovecraft's racism or the sexism of E.E. Smith's Triplanetary, you can sense that Asimov was writing at a time when society was starting to "deal" with these subjects.

Lastly, Asimov is a good, solid writer. But don't expect anything fancy. Like its noir predecessors, The Robot Novels are a working-man's prose work. I'm not sure if this was an intentional choice by Asimov or the next step in science fiction writerly-ness, one step removed from the pulps. But there seems to be a neo-Hemingway sensibility to the prose itself. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. And the job, as they say, needs doing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the read. The plot was a twisty as you'd expect from a quasi-noir novel in a science fiction setting. The characters, while showing their "age," were interesting and while not three-dimensional, they were also not two-dimensional, filling some fractal character space in between. Will I read it again? Probably not. But I might be convinced to dip into another Asimov down the road, who knows?

To tie this one off, one of my proudest moments as a writer came when I was able to tell my dad that my story "The Auctioneer and the Antiquarian, or, 1962" was to appear in Asimov's magazine. He was effusive in his praise, something that was counter to his demeanor most of the time. It really is one of my happiest memories of my dad. Little did I know that ten years later, he would be gone and I would be collecting from his belongings the copy of the magazine that I had sent to him.

Folks, ten years can slip away very, very quickly.

Hold on.

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The House of Silence

 

The House of Silence by Avalon Brantley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

RIP to the late Avalon Brantley, whose novel, The House of Silence was released in the same year she sadly passed away. It sounds like a platitude, but it's not: Brantley's passing was a true loss of some incredible young talent, and The House of Silence is proof-positive of her excellence as a writer.

Truth be told, for the first 100 or so pages, I found little to no evidence that this was a horror novel.

I should have been more careful . . .

Brantley will pull your heartstrings with sympathy and respect for the protagonist, she will make you love them for all their weaknesses and foibles: but she is only setting you up for a long, loooooong plunge into horror.

And what kind of horror? All kinds. Brantley here plays with tropes of gothic, folk, supernatural, cosmic horror, psycho-geographical, and post-apocalyptic horror, and even a dose of what feels like sword and sorcery. She has claimed that Poe was "Virgil to my Dante", and it shows in all the right ways. This is no pastiche, but an infusion of Poe. But even more so, this work rings with echoes of Gene Wolfe's best work, especially in terms of a non-linear plot, replete with long memory gaps, flash-backs that might be flash-forwards, and just an overall churning of time itself.

Furthermore, there is a great deal of vagary regarding who is and is not a friend or foe. The mistrust engendered here adds to the confusion, occasionally knocking the reader off their balance. This is true right up to the end, where friends become foes and foes become friends - ulterior motives are hidden until they explode on the scene, but in an organic way. Nothing here feels forced.

It's rare to read a novel that has so many disparate elements ("something for everyone to love/hate") and yet feels like a tightly-coiled whole, especially when said novel has a staccato structure and such whirling emotional highs and lows, all of it done in a highly poetic style that flows like a river.

A river of blood.

Those who know, know . . . You really should know!

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The Ballet of Dr Caligari and Madder Mysteries

 

The Ballet of Dr Caligari and Madder Mysteries by Reggie Oliver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With few exceptions, I have come to love the work of Reggie Oliver. While I was lukewarm about Flowers of the Sea , I was head-over-heels about The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler and Other Stories and Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories . I had heard mixed reviews from readers I respect and admire, so I was curious where this volume would fall.

I began with misgivings. While the opening story, "A Donkey at the Mysteries," had some great moments, the ending fell a bit flat for me. I loved the subtext of unknowingly participating in rites one does not understand, but I was hoping for a moment of anagnorises that never materialized. The story had momentum, a series of setups, then . . . nothing. If this was authorial intent, the potential was under-utilized. Perhaps this is because I had read and quite enjoyed Brian C. Murarescu's investigation into ancient Greek and Roman cults of psychedelia(?), The Immortality Key . I had been (pardon the pun - but I am a dad) keyed up for the read, but was disappointed. Not upset. Just disappointed. Have I mentioned I'm a dad?

The second story was a touch better. "The Head" is a double entendre laced with Oliver's bleak humor. It's a strange admixture of sitcom and dread horror that devolves into an absurdist experimentalism. I really do like the two main characters (as much as one can like a madman and a disembodied head), and, as with other works by Oliver, his characters really shine. A worthy story, not his best, but a good read nonetheless.

When I started to figure out the subject matter of the third tale, I was prepared to be really, really disappointed. As a rule, I hate werewolf stories. But I might have to make an exception for "Tawny". I didn't love it, but this English social comedy with a lycanthropic twist was an amusing read.

Then, suddenly, the collection hit its stride. "The Devils Funeral" is peak Oliver. Clergy, madness, corruption, decay, and the near simultaneous death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Charles Darwin as a sideshow that leaves lingering questions. The question that keeps being posed is "who is the enemy"? It's a seemingly simple question with a dastardly labyrinth of possible answers and meanings, most of it unanswerable and meaningless. Existentialism reigns above. And, as above, so below.

A sinister comedy, or a comedic tale of horror? "Baskerville's Midgets" displays Oliver's insider's insight into the actor's life beyond the stage. This (and other stories about the intersection of horror and theater) is a story that only Oliver could have written. His background as an actor, playwright, and fiction author find a fitting culmination in this story, which will have you checking under your bed for (?).

Oliver next completes an M.R. James fragment "The Game of Bear". The transition, though carefully documented, would be fairly seamless without the indicator, which only serves to sever the tale in two. Oliver does an admirable job of mimicking James' voice, particularly in the climax of the story. Of course, James did put a strong personal stamp on the structure and tone of the English ghost story, so no surprises here.

"The Final Stage" is an existential tale that only one who has acted onstage can fully appreciate; not only because of the settings and situations, but because of the attitude that one must take to truly become immersed in their characters, not just the willful suspension of disbelieve, but the willful deceit which one must not merely engage in, but wallow in, if one is to be "a brilliant actor". There is a price to pay. But how are the funds exchanged? Does the character take from the actor, or the actor from the character? The economies of "real" life and faux-life are powerfully in play here.

With the introduction of a certain trope about mid-way through the story, I was ready to write off "The Endless Corridor" as just another vampire story. It is not just another vampire story. It is, in fact, much more nuanced and much more sinister than that trope led me to believe. Oliver, with considerable panache, twists the old trope into something entirely new and more horrifying. My trepidation was allayed, but my frisson was piqued.

Oliver continues to unveil the "back" of the theater in his mystery "The Vampyre Trap," an excellent, if old-fashioned tale of jealousy and ambition behind the curtain. One wonders who the actors are and who the characters are, as these roles become muddled. What better place for a murder or three in a place whose sole purpose is deceit and drama? There are strong resonances between this story and "The Final Stage" earlier in the volume, not because of direct subject matter, but because both hint at a certain sinister something taking place behind the masks of the masks of the masks.

The title story is the most brilliant story in the volume, but only those who have watched Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari will fully appreciate its impact. If I were to teach a class on the "O'Henry ending" I would show the movie, then have students read this. Textbook. And fantastically well-crafted. This is a Reggie Oliver masterpiece; one of his best stories ever.

How can I resist a story about one of my favorite eras of painting, that of the Pre-Raphaelites? I can't. Nor can the protagonist and victim(s) of "Love and Death" resist the alluring illusion of beauty, over-shrouded by the absolute victory of decay and death. Everyone in this tale is caught in this trap. Perhaps only the reader can escape. Perhaps not. But the allure remains.

"Porson's Piece" is as solid of an English ghost story as I've ever read. The village in which most of the action takes place shares half a name with <a href="https://forrestaguirre.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-day-hike-in-cotswolds.html>a village in the Cotswolds that my wife and I hiked through in 2019</a>, and I think I might know some of the "fictional" spots described. One path in particular (a photo of which is at my blog) was described in such a way that I cannot shake the feeling that this very path was the one Oliver here described. This added to the verisimilitude for me, but maybe I am just hallucinating, like the main character. Or maybe not.

Oliver begins "Lady With A Rose" with an ekphrasis of a Titian painting. The story is erudite and the characters colorful (pun intended), but not as startling as many of his other works. The final "twist" was to be expected and sort of just . . . ends there.

This collection has some real gems in it, but the opening and closing stories were unspectacular. An odd way to construct a collection.

The great in this collection carries the less-spectacular tales. Perhaps I've read too much of Oliver and am a bit jaded? I don't think so. He still astounds me, at times. I would hate to discourage anyone from reading "Porson's Piece," "The Ballet of Dr. Caligari," "Baskerville's Midgets," or "The Devil's Funeral," all of which were outstanding stories. But I can't give it a perfect five. Nor can I drop it to an "average" rating of three stars. I'm firmly in the four camp with this one.

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Thousand Year Old Vampire

 

Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three years ago, I started an ill-fated attempt to run a snail mail RPG campaign. Part of the issue was my own motivation, some that of my correspondents. I think we were all enthusiastic about the prospect, but in retrospect, I think we (more importantly, I) foundered on the rocks of chance. Or precisely not-chance. Though we all had strong characters and motivations, compelling settings and circumstances, the few interchanges became quickly mired in a sort of "all-over-the-place-ness" where we started off in different directions and didn't want to push each other into our own individual story-arcs. At least that's my observation.

We were missing, in essence, that random-determined-ness that is the generative catalyst for roleplaying games. Without stochasticity and a push from fate, I foundered on being centered on my own story. By design, there was no game master - we were all equal players - and, thus, no one moved the narrative along. And this, I'm afraid, needs to happen. Otherwise we are cats without herders. There needs to be a shepherd, whether in the form of a human or just an algorithm, even a simple algorithm.

So why am I going on and on about this failed attempt in a review of Thousand Year Old Vampire? After all, this is a solo RPG game, not a group play game such as I attempted.

Other Goodreads reviewers have complained that Thousand Year Old Vampire is nothing but a series of writing prompts, essentially. I think this is unfair and doesn't acknowledge the potential depth of solo play one might encounter in a session or sessions of TYOV. Now, that said, I have not yet played the game. As I do (and I will), I will report on my blog regarding the playability of the engine. For now, though, I'd like to concentrate just on the book itself (which, incidentally, is the most beautiful RPG book I now own).

Yes, one playing the game should be ready to do some writing. There are two ways to play it, quickly and slowly, and the slower version will require some writing . . . and eradicating. There is a diary, which need not be extensive, but needs to be written. Experiences and memories are gained and lost though the course of the game. The Vampire is, in essence, a palimpsest in the truest, most physical sense of the word. This is part of the horrific tragedy of it all: losing one's humanity, friends, family, and memories in the course of immortality.

To generate these memories and experiences and losses, there are a series of prompts throughout the book. Each time a prompt has been given and the experience had (or lost), the player rolls a d10 and a d6. By subtracting the d6, one generates a number between -5 and +9. This tells them how many prompts (and which direction) to move within the book. Each prompt has three possibilities which are to be used, in order, first, then second, then third, if one falls on the same prompt more than once. Statistically speaking, the likelihood of worming their way down (I use the phrase intentionally) to the third prompt is very, very low, so such events are typically very big deals.

Now, I haven't read all the prompts, because I'm saving them for my own foray into the unlife of a vampire. But the mechanic is brilliant, and I can see it working in principle, if not in practice.

This is what my snail mail game lacked: the prompts. Therefore, I wills et about getting a series of prompts written up for my own snail mail campaign. I'm hoping to take the best of TYOV, De Profundis, and English Eerie (which I am hoping to use as inspiration for both prompts and the method of navigating them) and do a more manageable campaign that lasts.

As a warm-up, I'm going to live a thousand years and see where that journey takes me in the meantime. I am both eager and terrified to embark.

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