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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Aurorae

 I've seen the Northern Lights a few times in my life, all of them since I moved to Wisconsin in 1996. The most spectacular displays I saw were back in the early-2000s. Unfortunately, phones didn't have cameras back then and digital cameras were expensive and finicky, so we never got pictures of those. But they were visible enough in the middle of Madison that we woke our kids up to come out and see them. I think we were home-schooling them at the time, so we could let them sleep in the next day. There were vivid blues, bright greens, and the occasional pink, and they fluctuated wildly across the sky. We could see all of this with the naked eye, they were so intense.

A few weeks ago, we caught a display, this time with our phones. Unlike the flashing display we saw back in the early aughts, these were difficult to see with the naked eye, but looking through our phone cameras, we were able to catch them. I'm including a couple of the better pictures below, along with a short video, for your viewing pleasure. It's worth staying up late and going out and seeing these displays (though we caught these right in our back yard). Enjoy.

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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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Deadmau5 aut Mus Mortuus?

 My work allows me an hour lunch. I try to consume all my needed food (gotta get that protein in) before lunch, if at all possible. That way, I have an entire hour free to mentally decompress. My workplace is about a one minute drive from a beautiful branch of the Ice Age Trail on one hand, and, across the street, the Janesville Optimist Community Park. The Ice Age Trail is a paved, slowly-winding path through prairie (with restored prairie grasses) and wood (with deer that are so tame, they don't spook until you are very close to them - I've wondered if they might eat out of your hand, but haven't been brave enough to test this yet). The Optimist Community Park has dirt and grass trails that cover 35 square acres.

On my lunch breaks, I like to take a half hour or thereabouts (or even ten minutes, if I have errands to run) and read while I walk. That's how I read the book I most recently finished, Ad Infinitum. I'll also occasionally turn on the Derive App and see where it takes me. And sometimes, I just walk in, stand, and listen to the birds (it's a bird-watcher's paradise). Whatever it takes, I go there to reconnect with my inner self during the work day. I'm dreading winter, when temps and conditions will make this walk far less likely. Maybe I'll use some of that time for writing.

Recently, like within the last two weeks, I came across a dead mouse in the Optimist Community Park. I felt sorry for the little guy, laying there with flies buzzing around him. So I gave him a little private funeral. My Latin is not great, so I had to settle for the (probably incorrectly-structured) text: Mus mortuus non respirare. I then gathered a few prairie flowers and laid them by him. The next day, the flowers were still there, but Mr. Mus was gone, likely eaten by crows. Of course, I knew that he (honestly, I have no idea how to check for a mouse's gender, nor do I want to know) was going to be eaten, whether by bird, bug, or bacteria. But I wanted to celebrate his little life, really celebrate life itself, as I am closer to the end than the beginning of my own. 

Truth be told, I hike the Ice Age Trail more than the Optimist Community Park trails. So fast forward a couple of days and, lo and behold, I find another mouse dead on the trail, likely stricken by a bicycle. Well, that was odd, I thought. What are the chances that a mouse would be schmucked by a bike while crossing an eight-foot wide paved path?

Apparently VERY high.

Over the course of the last two weeks, I've found five dead mice on my short hikes. And I just happened to get there before the scavengers did. Five dead mice in two weeks on the same stretch of tales. This is how conspiracy theories start. It's like the beginning to an X-Files episode. 

So, in all, I held five very brief mouse funerals. I admit that I checked the trail both ways before plucking prairie flowers. I know how prairie flower aficionados are. Had I been caught by one of them, I likely would have ended up paralyzed, stuffed into a bearskin to be burned alive. But I was able to dodge the prairie flower inquisitors and gave my little bit of homage to these little guys:

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Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

 

Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Six months it took me to read this book. Six months. Not because of it's length, not because it was boring (though there were moments), but because it just took that long to slowly absorb the contents, which are expansive. Nicholas Ostler tackles a sweeping overview of how Latin was a force that shaped history, and how history shaped Latin.

I started "studying" Latin a few years ago, I think it was during Covid, but I was really only dabbling. I've covered my reasons for doing so and my plans for the future elsewhere, so I won't belabor that here. If you have any recommendations, by the way, I'm listening.

My reason for reading Ad Infinitum specifically was this: I stumbled on the book at an estate sale where an older professor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison had collected a very, very large book collection. If it hasn't been made clear yet, I am very picky about what I read and buy. There are only so many pages one can read in life, so I will remain choosy until I die, I suppose. I've wasted too much time reading works that I felt were a waste of my time (to be fair, you don't really know until you've at least begun reading the book), so I don't often take in orphaned books. This was an exception, largely driven by the fact that I happened to have dipped my toe in the language and had, at about that time, begun listening to the excellent History of Rome podcast. Here, then, was a book that bridged the gap between the two.

And the book acts as that bridge, and more. It's not a book primarily about linguistics, though there is a skeleton of the more academic issues of evolving phonemes. It is about culture and the influence that language has on culture and vice versa. It is about the evolution of a spoken and written tongue bending to the will of those who use (and abuse) it. It is more of a convoluted map of how we got to where we are today in regards to this seemingly mystic language and its uses.

Being in no way a Classicist, I do realize that there are some problems with the book, which have been pointed out in other reviews. But overall, I strongly recommend it to the lay reader who wants to understand the context of a language that we read and hear almost every day, but know next to nothing about.

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Into the Cosmos

 

I've been a fan of Decadence Comics for years now. I think I first encountered there work in 2017 or thereabouts. My first purchase of their products was Geopolitical Manipulation Through the use of Fungi Based Parasites on 186F, which I strongly recommend. Since then, I've picked up a variety of their works and never been disappointed. Most of their books feature art by Stathis Tsemberlidis or Lando, a pair of brilliant artists who, when one looks at their work combined, is loosely reminiscent of the work of Moebius combined with that of Pepe Moreno and Arnaud Dombre (better known as Arno, from his collaborations with Jodorowsky in what appears to be the now-defunct Heavy Metal Magazine), but in a more organic register. 

Now, one of my favorite movies of all time is 2001: A Space Odyssey. So, when I saw that 50 Watts Books was publishing a collection of illustrations from Tsemberlidis featuring work from his graphic novelization of 2001, Solaris, and Rendezvous with Rama, along with the comic "Protoconscious", I hit the buy button before I even knew what I was doing. Thankfully, sometimes my instincts are right. 

While the entirety of these stories are not contained herein (except for "Protoconscious"), those familiar with either the written or filmed versions of these science fiction staples will recognize the touchpoints. But Tsemberlidis, while providing gracious nods to the originals, makes the works his own with his distinctive (if not evocative of the aforementioned artists) style and impressionistic structuring of panels. 

I am particularly fond of the illustration of the black monolith of 2001:

Now, I might be playing a little favoritism here, as another black monolith of much larger dimensions, which I dubbed The Black Cliff, features in my newest published Mutant Crawl Classics adventure, At the Mutants of Madness. 

TTRPG nepotism aside, Tsemberlidis has provided here a panoply of compelling imagery and storytelling via illustration. If you're looking for surrealistic science fiction art that uses abstraction to trigger the imagination, you've found yourself a treasure. 

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Mus Mortuus Non Respirare

 I've probably written that sentence incorrectly. There are tens of thousands of people who could correct me if I'm wrong. At least I think there are. But now it's my turn to learn Latin.

Where does this poor dead mouse come in? Well, I have to admit, it's a long stretch from this erstwhile rodent to this page, but in my mind it's not far at all. 

I've been "studying" Latin for a year now. Meaning I've been doing Duolingo. Meaning, I haven't really been studying, but more . . . familiarizing myself with Latin. 

This winter, I intend to begin an honest attempt to learn some Latin. I understand, I'll probably die before I'm fluent. But I'm going to give it my best college try.

Meaning, I'm going to treat it like a class. Sort of. 

As you know, I recently finished I, Claudius. And I'm currently reading Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. I have SPQR lined up to read, as well. And I've listened to a fair clip of The History of Rome podcast. And, of course, I've been trying to translate the little quips from Asterix and Obelix since my youth. 

So, I've read around the language and dabbled a bit. But now it's time to get a little more serious.

I've got a little thumb drive with something like 200 Latin primers. Nice pickup from Etsy. But only recently have I picked up some honest to goodness books. Physical books. Something I can sink my eyes and brain into. They are:

Lingua Latina per se Illustrata: pars 1: Familia Romana, because I hear that this is truly the best book to learn Latin from (Reddit told me so)

Winne Ille Pu, and this one for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that when I lived in Italy, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Wells, who was the best teacher I had until college, read us Winnie the Pooh with all the voices, just like in the movies and when the movie came out at the Air Force base we lived at at the time (San Vito de Normani, if you must know), I stood in line for an hour only to have the theater sell out as we were ten people back in line and I cried and I cried and I cried. Yeah, I was a sensitive kid. But now I get Winnie the Pooh in Latin, and I will always hear in my mind Mrs. Wells, who could have slotted in on any of those movies and given all those professional voice actors a run for their money. No, I'm serious. She was *that* good!

Perseus et Medusa, because I have this recent fascination about Medusa that I can't explain and I'm fairly certain she is going to creep into my next piece of fiction. Almost 100% certain, in fact. 

And, finally, Medieval Latin Lyrics, because I understand the language was very different during the Middle Ages than it had been during the Classical Era and I want a taste of them knights-in-shining-armor kicking but while poorly-quoting Cicero. 

I think I'm going to just dive into all four at once. And I might also give a shot at De Spectris Lemuribus et Magnis because who doesn't like books about ghosts in Latin? 

I'm curious how others have fared in studying Latin outside of the context of a formally-taught course in a bonified educational institution? I suspect that it would benefit me to try that. Maybe later. Much later. When I can take college courses for free because it's interesting to watch retirees march to their grave with their nose in a book. 

Did I mention a book about ghosts in Latin? 

By the way, yes, I laid those flowers by the dead mouse. He just looked so vulnerable there, and I wanted him to be remembered. Plus, it gave me a reason to practice what little Latin I do know, even if it's wrong. Besides, when the world is cold and dead outside and I'm trying to just survive the Wisconsin winter, I can look at this post and think back on the very hot day I took that walk and realize that there's always another spring coming. Well . . . almost always. 

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