Two More

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.

Two

A Fantasy Medley (2009), edited by Yanni Kuznia, is another of the short anthologies published by Subterranean Press that serve as good introductions to writers of the fantastic. This book contains stories by four authors, all women, and nothing (not even an introduction) by the editor.  Kelley Armstrong’s “Zen and the Art of Vampirism” is an urban fantasy of Toronto’s supernatural creatures and of the attempt by two newcomer vampires to take over the city from the current nonviolent vampire.  The style is plain and modern; the story unexceptional but decent.  Kate Elliott’s “Riding the Shore of the River of Death” is a more ambitious tale of a young woman trying to accomplish the rites of passage into manhood, and thus avoid accepting the traditional role of women in her clan.  Though interesting, it is less successful, perhaps because it is set in a world Elliott has explored more fully in her “Crown of Stars” series. C.E. Murphy’s “From Russia with Love” is a surreal and not especially involving reworking of some of the Russian folklore about the Baba Yaga.  The gem of this small book is the final tale, Robin Hobb’s “Words like Coins,” in which two women, living during a severe drought, come to work with the pecksies (not quite the usual pixies of folklore) in order to survive. Pecksies, who have their own rules and loyalties, can be bound to humans by words, and the precision of the expression of these words can cause unexpected problems. 

The Vampire Master and Other Tales of Horror (2000) by Edmond Hamilton, collects stray tales by Hamilton, who was one of the stalwart contributors to Weird Tales magazine in the late 1920s through the 1940s. Of the nine stories collected here, four of these—including the title novella—come from Weird Tales, where they appeared under the pseudonym, Hugh Davidson.  “The Vampire Master” and “The House of the Evil Eye” are cases of Doctor John Dale, a physician who specializes in evil, and his assistant Harley Owen. Dale is pretty incompetent as a fighter against evil, especially in the title story. Despite Dale’s precautions that are supposed to keep people alive, the victims keep accumulating. And his solution to rid the world of the vampire menace, by making bullets with a cross on the front point, is just silly.  Of the other tales, one from Strange Tales  called “Dead Legs” is laughably bad—an invalid criminal takes the legs of an enemy and has them transplanted on himself, with the end result that his new legs try to betray him.  Four other tales come from Thrilling Mystery, an even lower brow pulp with even stupider stories.  H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of friends from Weird Tales considered Edmond Hamilton a real hack.  Now I know why. 

 

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.