The Hunger and Ecstasy
of Vampires (1996) by Brian Stableford is a strange work.
The title might make one expect a lurid
modern vampire story, but that’s not what you get with this novel.
Instead you get characters (real people and
imagined ones) meeting up in London
in January 1895 to hear on Edward Copplestone relate his experiences of astral
projection to the distant future while on some special drug. One of the
listeners, Mr. Wells, is concerned with the similarities to a story he has
written and published serially.
Oscar
Wilde finds the whole story a glorious lie.
Other listeners and commentators include the scientist and spiritualist Sir
William Crookes, president of the Society for Psychical Research, and a medical
doctor and his detective friend who lives on Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes
could not be named in a story in 1996 for copyright reasons). Copplestone’s
narrative tells of the triumph of vampiric beings over normal men in the
future.
It’s an interesting tale, but
not what I was expecting.
Teaching the Dog to
Read (2015) by Jonathan Carroll.
Have I just read too much Jonathan Carroll that the magic is gone? His
recent novels have left me pretty cold, and for the first time ever I stopped
reading his last one in the middle.
In his
earlier books, there was a modulated relationship between realism and fantasy, and that worked out very well. His recent stories have tended to throw in too many elements of fantasy.
That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but when
the elements just don’t fit together it is.
In
Teaching the Dog to Read,
Tony Areal is divided into two Tonys, Tony Day and Tony Night, the latter of
whom helps arrange the night-time dreams of Tony Day. They switch places, and one
of the Tony’s falls in love, and collapses of a heart attack.
From there we meet the previous
incarnation of Tony, and then the first incarnation in the form of a caveman; and it all becomes too
much.
Carroll’s shorter works are
frequently problematic.
He definitely
works better at novel length. If you’ve never read Carroll before, skip this
novella and grab
The Land of Laughs
or
Bones of the Moon.
The Hunger and Ecstasy
of Vampires (1996) by Brian Stableford is a strange work. The title might make one expect a lurid
modern vampire story, but that’s not what you get with this novel. Instead you get characters (real people and
imagined ones) meeting up in London
in January 1895 to hear on Edward Copplestone relate his experiences of astral
projection to the distant future while on some special drug. One of the
listeners, Mr. Wells, is concerned with the similarities to a story he has
written and published serially. Oscar
Wilde finds the whole story a glorious lie.
Other listeners and commentators include the scientist and spiritualist Sir
William Crookes, president of the Society for Psychical Research, and a medical
doctor and his detective friend who lives on Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes
could not be named in a story in 1996 for copyright reasons). Copplestone’s
narrative tells of the triumph of vampiric beings over normal men in the
future. It’s an interesting tale, but
not what I was expecting. 
Teaching the Dog to
Read (2015) by Jonathan Carroll.
Have I just read too much Jonathan Carroll that the magic is gone? His
recent novels have left me pretty cold, and for the first time ever I stopped
reading his last one in the middle. In his
earlier books, there was a modulated relationship between realism and fantasy, and that worked out very well. His recent stories have tended to throw in too many elements of fantasy. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but when
the elements just don’t fit together it is.
In Teaching the Dog to Read,
Tony Areal is divided into two Tonys, Tony Day and Tony Night, the latter of
whom helps arrange the night-time dreams of Tony Day. They switch places, and one
of the Tony’s falls in love, and collapses of a heart attack. From there we meet the previous
incarnation of Tony, and then the first incarnation in the form of a caveman; and it all becomes too
much. Carroll’s shorter works are
frequently problematic. He definitely
works better at novel length. If you’ve never read Carroll before, skip this
novella and grab The Land of Laughs
or Bones of the Moon. 
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