Some Art Books and Others

The Art of Dahlov Ipcar (2010) by Carl Little, celebrates the life and art of Dahlov Ipcar (born 1917), who settled in Maine in 1937 and who has lived and worked there ever since.  Ipcar is also known as a writer/illustrator of many children’s books, and as the author of a smaller number of adult novels, most notably the fantasy A Dark Horn Blowing (1978).  Her artwork as showcased in this book centers on animals, often in a kaleidoscopic presentation, with deep and rich colors. This is a fine retrospective. 

Inner Visions: The Art of Ron Walotsky (2000) is a collection of the artwork by Ron Walotsky, covering about three decades worth of production. Much of Waltosky’s art was made for the covers of science fiction books, including iconic ones for books by Robert Silverberg, Piers Anthony, Roger Zelazny, and for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Again, it makes for a very enjoyable retrospective.

Only Visiting this Planet: The Art of Danny Flynn (1994) is a third retrospective, this time by a British artist, most of whose art appeared on the British covers of books by writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, Brian Stableford, T.M. Wright, Octavia Butler, and George R.R. Martin.  Flynn’s work is less known in the U.S., but it is distinctive and evocative, and it’s good to see a collection like this.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) was written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting, the first of some twelve books in the series. Doctor Dolittle is a great friend to animals, and he has learned their speech and filled his house with them. When word reaches him that the monkeys in Africa are dying from an epidemic, Dolittle heads there with his animal friends, Jip the dog, Dab-Dab the duck, Gub-Gub the pig, and Too-Too the owl. The depiction of the Africans exhibits the racism of the time, and this led to the rewritten versions published, under the direction of Lofting’s son Christopher, beginning in 1988. The sensitive re-writing of objectionable passages doesn’t really diminish the qualities of the original.  But whether these qualities—such as the whimsical humor in both the words as well as the illustrations—are appealing is a valuation up to the reader. Though the Dolittle books are considered classics of children’s literature, their charms elude me. 

The Great Good Thing (2001) by Roderick Townley is a book about a children’s book, a kind of meta-story, and what happens to its characters when their story isn’t being read.  Princess Sylvie gets obsessed with her reader, and finds a way to leave her book, at first temporarily.  The real story is not so much that of Sylvie, but that of her reader, Claire, who has opened up the book after a long gap.  The book had belonged to Claire’s grandmother’s—she was the first reader—and offstage she is an old woman who dies, while the story outside the book continues as Claire ages.  This description makes the book sound better than it is—the juggling of the two settings, inside the book and outside of it—comes off rather clumsily, and the more important story—the one outside the book in underdeveloped in comparison with the story within the book. And the characters within the story book are also better developed. This diminishes the story’s power considerably. The Great Good Thing was followed by two sequels, Into the Labyrinth (2002) and The Constellation of Sylvie (2005). 

The 10th Victim (1965) by Robert Sheckley is a short novel, the set-up for which is that, in the future, humankind’s natural aggression has been channeled into a Hunt, between two volunteers, who play the roles of either Hunter or Victim.  Anyone who volunteers to be part of a Hunt must do so for ten hunts (presuming they live that long), after which a Tens winner gets almost unlimited rewards. Here Caroline Meredith is working on her tenth legal kill. She goes to Rome to find her victim, taking a film crew along to cover her momentous kill, planned to take place in the Coliseum. Things don’t work out exactly as planned. This novel began as a short story, titled “Seventh Victim,” published in the April 1953 issue of Galaxy.  In 1965, a European film (starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress) was made as The 10th Victim, and at this time Sheckley expanded his story into a short novelization of the film.  It was reprinted in 1987 (in the edition I read), alongside the publication of a sequel, Victim Prime (1987) and in anticipation of a third volume, Hunter / Victim (1988). The short story is probably the best version, as the later novel feels padded and lacks focus. There is some satire in it, but not enough to be very interesting. And there is certainly not enough of interest in it to make me want to read the second and third books.   

More catching up . . .

Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer is the first of three short novels called the Southern Reach Trilogy. It tells the history of the 12th expedition into the mysterious Area X.  This expedition consists of four women, referred to by their positions—the biologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist. Previous expeditions into Area X all ended in various types of disasters.  Annihilation is basically the journal of the biologist. VanderMeer uses this format to play a game with readers—none of the characters are given names, the context of the story as provided by the biologist is only selectively revealed, and the narrator is unreliable. The book is well written, but it is a really a chump’s game. There is no readerly interest in the characters, and only a small curiosity about the setting and plot. VanderMeer withholds too much from the reader, while teasing them along. It is no surprise that nothing is explained at the end, and I’m certain that nothing will be revealed in the two subsequent books. And I have no interest in reading them. 

The New Atlantis (1989) by Ursula K. Le Guin.  This novelette was originally published in 1975, and in 1989 it was issued as a mass market Tor Double (with Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Blind Geometer as the main other story).  It was pure coincidence that I read this immediately after VanderMeer’s Annihilation, and found that it almost seems to take place in the future of our world that leads to the future in VanderMeer’s novel. Yet Le Guin is a much greater artist, and she evokes more humanity in this slim story than VanderMeer can muster in an entire novel. 

Song of Kali (1985) by Dan Simmons is an odd book. Set in 1977, it concerns an American magazine writer sent to Calcutta to locate some recent poetry supposedly written by a dead Indian poet. Robert Luzcak travels with his Indian wife and their young daughter. Mystery and intrigue follows. Luzcak is not always sympathetic character (his attitudes towards the Indian natives are rude), and his daughter seems only to be a plot-device to be kidnapped. The tenor of the book changes towards the end, and Simmons broaches some philosophical ideas as suggested by the title (the song of Kali referring to human hatred and violence), but these are not expanded upon, and the novel remains merely an engaging thriller. 

Bimbos of the Death Sun (1988) by Sharyn McCrumb takes place at a small regional science fiction convention. One of the two author guests is the famous, temperamental and arrogant writer of the Tratyn Runewind books, Appin Dungannon. The other guest is a local engineering professor, James Owen Mega, who wrote a hard science fiction novel that a cheap paperback firm published with a cheezy cover and retitled (to the author’s disgust) Bimbos of the Death Sun. As a mystery novel, this is an oddity. Appin Dungannon doesn’t even get murdered until the second half of the book, and the murder is solved in the last two chapters by acting out a D&D game. But what makes it interesting and readable is the spot-on depiction of the science fiction fans at the convention—critical but also compassionate.  Anyone who has attended a science fiction convention will have encountered many people similar to the characters found in this amusing novel. 

 

Friends of the Dead (2015) by James Doig.  This limited edition (only 200 copies) collects ten short stories, most of which are in the medievalist antiquarian mode, and thus in the tradition of M.R. James. The medieval historical aspects are particularly well-done here—an area often given short shrift by modern Jamesian writers who lack the expertise in the medieval (Doig mentions in his short introduction of having studied for a PhD. in medieval history).  One story (“Malware,” which opens the book), however, is completely modern: a tale of computer systems and hackers.  It is as well-done as the rest of the tales in this handsome volume.  

Some Catching up...

The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality and the Financial Crisis (2015) by Darryl Cunningham is a great book, essential reading—in graphic novel form—to understand the current political malaise in America.  It is divided into three parts.  The first gives the biography of the patron saint of selfishness, Ayn Rand (1905-1982), showing her many errors and contradictions.  The second section, “The Crash,” shows how Rand’s devotees, like Alan Greenspan and the Tea Party advocates, who follow her economic ideas but not her atheism, set up the ridiculous unregulated market, that with the attendant self-interests of Wall Street brought about the market crash of 2008.  The third section, “The Age of Selfishness,” analyzes the current financial and political world and calls for a much needed re-evaluation of where things are heading.  This is one of the best books of 2015.

The Tropes of Fantasy Fiction (2015) by Gabrielle Lissauer sounded like it would be a book I would like. The cover blurb notes that it shows how the tropes and clichés that go into making a story do not make it good or bad, but how the author applies them does.  “The book also explores the concept of text versus meta-text—that is, when the story’s world and character actions contradict the reader’s expectations based on the tropes being used.”  Alas, it does no such thing.  This book reads like an enormous blog-post, with a know-it-all blogger of limited capacity. Witness a few random quotes:  “One thousand years ago in our history, the Holy Roman Empire still existed. Europe was in the beginning of the Middle Ages, and Islam was in the midst of its Golden Age. Algebra didn’t exist yet, nor did the printing press—though movable type was on the horizon. And a great many people still thought the sun revolved around the Earth!” (page 162).  “Elves are the creatures that are found in books like Lord of the Rings and fairies are like Tinker Bell. Elves are tall, stately creature that are in tune with nature and better than people. Fairies are tiny, silly things with insect wings and also in tune with nature. They are of the natural world, whereas man is of the urban and technological world. Fairies and elves are mysterious and magical; men are mundane and must beware lest they stumble into their realms and never to be seen again.” (page 143). Nevermind that these statements are massive simplifications, inapplicable in their details to most literary productions; yet they are trotted out like pearls of wisdom. The whole book is written in this trite, patronizing tone. This book should be jettisoned into the nearest Crack of Doom. 

 

Naomi’s Room (1991) is the first novel published under the pseudonym Jonathan Aycliffe.  It is a commercial supernatural thriller, in which Charles Hillenbrand loses sight of his four year old daughter Naomi while Christmas shopping, and she is abducted and soon afterwards found mutilated. Supernatural forces that are based in their house are involved in some way, and their reawakening involves further deaths and mysteries which Charles Hillenbrand must solve.  Compelling, and interesting in parts, it nevertheless remains merely a page-turner with (as is so often the case) an unstasfying resolution. 

 

The Lost (1996) is the fifth of Jonathan Aycliffe’s supernatural novels.  Here a modern British man Michael Feraru makes a trip to Roumania and delves into his family history, reclaiming an isolated castle that his family had abandoned during World War II.  The tale is told, like Dracula, in documents—letters, journal entries, clippings. Bram Stoker did this very effectively; Jonathan Aycliffe less so. The revelation of the family secrets are anti-climactic, and the novel as a whole is much less interesting that Naomi’s Room.

 

Belin’s Hill (1997) by Catherine Fisher is a young adult novel centering on a boy Huw, who (with his sister) comes to live with his uncle’s family near Caerleon (Arthur Machen country) after his parent’s deaths. Huw himself had been in the train accident that killed his parents, and is still not really recovered.  In this new place he is both distracted and haunted by various things to do with the legend of a haunted family on Belin’s Hill.  Huw finds some Celtic stone faces, hinting at more ancient magic, but the local legend of the witch and her cursed family is also involved. Ultimately the various threads of story don’t mesh very well.    

 

Machen’s Gwent: ‘A Country Hardly to be Known’ (2015) is Catherine Fisher’s talk from the 2013 Caerleon Festival which honored the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Machen. It is an essay of strung-together quotations from Machen’s works, highlighting his comments on Gwent. Nothing really revelatory to be found here, but it’s a pleasant essay acknowledging Machen’s interests by one of his modern appreciators. 

 

Speculative Horizons (2010), edited by Patrick St. Denis, is a collection of five original stories by C.S. Friedman, Tobias S. Buckell, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Brian Ruckley, and Hal Duncan. The slickest tale is that by Modesitt, which is related to his other writings, and feels rather ephemeral on its own.  The Buckell story is promising and shows some good imagination. The Ruckley is a fantasy of a society of hunter-gatherers, and the Friedman begins as a more routine tale but it has an interesting twist at the end.  The standout of the volume is the final tale, “The Death of a Love,” in which a kind of cupid is formed when couples fall in love. Duncan explores how couples kill destroy their own loves by killing their cupids.

 

The Book of Dreams (2010), edited by Nick Gevers, is also a collection of five original stories, centering on dream adventures.  The opening story, “The Prisoners” by Robert Silverberg, is the most routine of the five. Jay Lake’s “Testaments” is the most imaginative, though its episodic nature makes it less of a story.  Jeffrey Ford’s “86 Deathdick Road” is one of those quirky modern stories that suddenly turns (unsatifyingly) surreal.  Kage Baker’s “Rex Nemorensis” mixes the dreams of a Vietnam veteran with a particular locale.  And finally, the oddest story of an odd lot, Lucius Shepard’s “Dream Burgers at the Mouth of Hell” gives a glimpse at the backward and surreal workings of Hollywood and its scriptwriters.

One Quick Review

The Space Vampires (1976) by Colin Wilson is a strange kind of throwback novel.  It starts out engagingly, with a captain of a space ship discovering a huge derelict spacecraft hiding in the asteroid belt.  Three humanoid aliens are removed from it and taken to Earth, where they turn out to be a kind of vampire that devours the lifeforce of their victims, and they able to move from one victim to another. From there the book loses focus, as Captain Olaf Carlsen and his psychiatrist friend (and vampire specialist) Hans Fallada turn detective as they try to track down the creatures who are leaving a trail of corpses. There are hints of M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, and even Clark Ashton Smith, but this is essentially a pulp novel of the 1970s.  It even recalls the original 1960s Star Trek television series in the conclusion where the aliens are basically talked into suicide.

The book was filmed as Lifeforce (1985), which Colin Wilson regarded as the worst film ever made.  Though it differs considerably from the book, it captures the cheezy pulpy feel of the novel, and stands beside it, rather than in its shadow. News has recently come that Lifeforce is to be remade, as a made-for-TV movie for Chiller channel, due for broadcast in late 2015. 

More Books

Fractured Fairy Tales (1997), told by A.J. Jacobs.  This is an odd production. “Fractured Fairy Tales” was an independent segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which ran on American television for five seasons from 1959-64. Some ninety-one short episodes were produced, narrated by Edward Everett Horton. Just what this collection is supposed to be is not clearly defined. The authorship is credited to A.J. Jacobs, who was born in 1968, after the series had aired.  But the book is copyrighted to Ward Productions, and Jay Ward gets a kind of author blurb on the rear flap despite the (unstated) fact that he died in 1989. The book contains twenty five stories, each usually only four or five pages long, and they are much in the style of the original productions, but there are a good number of pop culture references (to “action figures,” “jazzercise,” to the zip code “90210”)  that date to the 1990s rather than the early 1960s.  Most of the stories are moderately amusing, but one misses the velvety narrative voice of Edward Everett Horton, and the simple visual style, and the familiar character voices of people like June Foray or Daws Butler. Reading these stories on their own seems like a one dimensional experience compared to the much more appealing animated episodes. 

How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial (2013), by Darryl Cunningham.  This small book, in graphic novel format, exposes the scientific illiteracy that is rampant in modern popular culture, covering eight topics in particular:  the idea that the moon landing was a hoax; that (1) homeopathy or (2) chiropracty are worthwhile medical treatment options; that vaccines cause autism; as well as taking on the supporters of fracking and the deniers of evolution, climate change, and science. 

            I can’t recommend this book enough.  It should be taught in every elementary school in the United States. Darryl Cunningham has done another similar book The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis, which I’m looking forward to reading. 

The Prince of the Aquamarines & The Invisible Prince (2015) by Louise Cavelier Levesque, translated by Ruth Berman. These two fairy tales date from the first half of the eighteenth century, during that flowering of interest in the writing of fairy tales in France.  Neither has appeared before in full in English—the second tale, “The Invisible Prince,” was included by Andrew Lang in much abridged form in The Yellow Fairy Book. They are primarily of historical interest, but it’s good to have them available, and the translator Ruth Berman does a fine job in an afterword of discussing the historical context of the two tales. 

Written in Darkness (2014) by Mark Samuels. A collection of nine new stories by Samuels, with an introduction by Reggie Oliver. Samuels first collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (2003) was a very promising debut, but it was followed by some much less interesting work (perhaps early work?), including Black Altars (2003) and the novella The Face of Twilight (2006), so that by the time Glyphotech (2008) came out I’d ceased paying attention to Samuels’s work.  The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories (2010) didn’t seem attractive either, but I thought I’d check in again when Written in Darkness came out. And I’m glad I did. This is Samuels at the top of his form, and seeing that The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories is out in an affordable trade paperback edition, I plan to try it out too.  

These Last Embers (2015) by Simon Strantzs, with wraparound cover art by Drazen Kozjan. Simon Strantzas is a Canadian author of four collections of stories, and Drazen Kozjan is a Canadian illustrator. This is the first of a series of chapbooks from a Canadian small press. Strantzas story is good, but not amongst his best; it is too short (a mere ten pages of text) to be really effective. Kozjan’s wraparound cover is outstanding. Yet the story and illustration seem mismatched in tone. Still I look forward to future chapbooks from this publisher.  

A New Batch of Reads

Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner (2013).  Written not long before his death in 2010 at the age of ninety-five, this autobiography of the legendary writer on pseudoscience is a mixed bag.  Personally, I’ve preferred Martin Gardner writings on literary subjects like Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum above most of his other writings.  But to get an overview of his life and works, as is found in his autobiographical reflections, is good too.  Yet along with such clear-headed insights like this:  “Not only is there no evidence for God or another life, but the evidence strongly suggests the nonexistence of both. The enormity of irrational evil implies the absence of a just God;” there comes the contradictory revelation “I managed to retain faith in a personal God and a hope for an afterlife,  I’m what is called a ‘philosophical theist’.”  Why?  Gardner admits:  “Shortly before he died, Carl Sagan wrote to tell me he had just reread my Whys, and was it fair to say I believed in God only because it made me happier? I responded by saying, in effect, ‘You’ve got it!’ My faith rests entirely on desire.”  Sadly, this admission leads one to place Gardner--at least with regard to his faith--among the uncritical cranks (whose wackiness was equally rooted in their personal desires) he so easily and thoroughly dissected. 

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction (2012), edited by Brit Mandelo, is a reprint anthology of seventeen stories, originally published between 1996 and 2011.  Most of the stories are interesting and readable (there are a few duds), but overall I found the collection as a whole to be rather tame. I expected much more boundary-stretching, but it just isn’t to be found here.  Also, there seems to be an imbalance in that only two of the seventeen stories are by men. The best story, handsdown, is “Fisherman” by Nalo Hopkinson.

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971 (2014), edited by S.T. Joshi.  Here is the extensive correspondence between an old pro and editor at Arkham House, August Derleth, with young writer-to-be Ramsey Campbell, beginning at a time when Campbell was aged fifteen.  Kudos to Campbell for allowing this interesting correspondence to be published, despite any potential embarrassment in the exposure of his much younger self. Many topics are covered in these letters between two people who never met:  H.P. Lovecraft, prominently; and weird fiction, also prominently; but also films (a growing topic as the time progressed), and sexuality, including discussions of banned literary works (often via copies traded).  There are extensive notes by editor Joshi, with a number of errors and a few howlers (e.g., the well-known bibliophile and writer Timothy d’Arch Smith is said to have died in 1997—he is still happily with us, and has produced a number of new books since his presumed death).  Despite such problems (surely a good copyeditor could have caught these mistakes and the typos), this is still an interesting read. 

Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors (2013), by Andrew Shaffer.  This book sounded like a good idea, and I was expecting to enjoy it a lot.  Alas, the end-result is so snarky and smarmy that in this instance I would relax my disgust at the idea of book-burning to see this paper turd go up in smoke. If you have any respect for authors and their actual history and context, avoid this book.  (If you like listening to inebriated dim-witted know-it-alls pontificate in a bar, this book might be for you.) The style is glib and exaggerated.  On Lord Byron, Shaffer writes: “Unsurprisingly, Byron’s lifestyle of ‘bling, booze, and groupie sex’ proved to be incompatible with married life…. His wife may have preferred eternal damnation.”  Of Poe he tells us, “He was fiercely opinionated, a trait that would come back to bite him on the ass. He was also an alcoholic who drank for the same reasons he wrote: to push back the depression that he was constantly waging a war against.” Such pearls of cliche appear regularly. The main thing I learned from this book is to avoid any future writings by this author. 

Pybrac, by Pierre Louys, comes from a mass of erotic manuscripts left behind at the author’s death in 1925.  Here, newly translated by Geoffrey Longnecker, are over three hundred quatrains that all begin “I do not like . . .” and pass through a litany of encouraged various sexual acts, though predominantly of heterosexual anal sex. The form is limiting, and the reading becomes monotonous rather quickly.  This is the kind of book one supports because it will outrage small-minded moralists, and for that reason it must be applauded.

More Recent Reading

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story (2010), by Michelle Paver.  This is basically the journal written by one man of a doomed 1937 expedition to an imagined isolated place called Gruhuken in the Arctic, north of Norway.  While it is a ghost story, the ghost takes the form of a haunted figure in the icy landscape.  What’s far more real and significant to the men of the expedition, at first, is the barren landscape itself, the frozen world, and how to survive in it.  By authorial sleight of hand, giving out only selective details of the failed mission at the very beginning, one is left with a well-written page turner that draws you to the end.  With the right director and screenwriter, there is just enough material here, as well as mood and character, to make an interesting and artistic film.  

Red Delicious (2014), by Caitlín Kiernan writing as Kathleen Tierney, is the second of Kiernan’s novels about the half-werewolf, half-vampire Siobhan Quinn.  The first was Blood Oranges (2013), which also appeared as Kiernan writing as Tierney. When an established author uses a pseudonym, it’s often to do something quick for money, or something very different from their usual style.  Either may be true in this instance, but Kiernan really should have hid behind a pseudonym.  The book is a basically an extended exercise in attitude and cliché.  And it is basically a monologue by Quinn (who hates her first name Siobhan, so everyone calls her that at least once so the author can insert some boilerplate text about Quinn hating it). The whole is filled with unnecessary wordage, not always as wise as this bit from late in the book:  “Those of you who find this annoying, go read another book, instead. I won’t mind.”  I finished the book primarily to see if the author might do something interesting for an ending. Nope.  Just the same ole same ole. To use an appropriate critical cliché, this book isn’t writing, it’s typing.  

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure (2014), edited by C.D. Rose. This book is basically a slim encyclopedia of biographies of some fifty-two failed writers.  I presume that they all lived only in the mind of the supposed editor, whose imagination was apparently given free reign at a website, from which these are collected.  Add a rather pretentious introduction by one Andrew Gallix.  Some readers may find this book clever.  I found it merely boring. One could, I suppose, build short stories around this kind of exercise, but what’s present here is just the invention, without artistry. I’d much rather read Borges than crap like this.   

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2001), by François Augiéras, translated by Sue Dyson.  The original French edition “L’Apprenti Sorcier” appeared without the author’s name in Les Cahiers des Saisons (Éditions Julliard, 1964), where it is listed as by the author of Le Vieillard et l’Enfant (1949), which had appeared at the author’s expense under the pseudonym of Abdullah Chaanba.  It is a bizarre narrative, written as though by a teenage boy who is sent to live with a priest in his mid thirties. The nameless narrator is used sexually by the priest, and comes to love the pain of flagellation. Meanwhile he falls in love with a younger boy, and they have their own warm and open sexual relations, in contrast to those with the priest, and they cause consternation in the small village. The boy decides to write a small book (presumably the one that is being read):  “a tissue of weaknesses run through with follies and naïvity, that was the sort of book I could be the author of.” And that’s a reasonable description of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A handful of poetic observations and keen turns of phrase, scattered throughout this short book, are just enough to help the reader make it to the end. 

Passion  (L’Appasionata): A Tale of Venice (2014), by Stefan Grabinski, translated by Miroslaw Lipinski.  Those familiar with the work of the Polish fantasist Grabinski will be intrigued by this novelette, his longest short prose work.  It starts out quite different from Grabinski’s usual, being first a kind of travelogue of Venice, and second a tale of romantic infatuation. Grabinski slowly sets the stage, and then his usual magic begins.  A very fine tale is the result.