Erotic Tales of Werewolves?

In the "Editor’s Note" to this short collection of four stories (originally published in 1994), Cecilia Tan says that when she announced that she was editing two anthologies of erotic fiction, one on vampires the other on werewolves, the common response was “Well, I can understand vampires, but why werewolves?”  Why indeed.

In the first story, “The Spirit That Denies” by Jay Michaelson, a male werewolf (in wolf form) has sex with a human female, after both feed on their kill of a deer. In the second story, “The Killing of the Calf” by Linda Hooper, a human female has sex with a female werewolf (in wolf form), just before their pack goes on a hunt. The third story, “Alma Mater” by Robert M. Schroek, a man lost in an Italian snowstorm is saved by a young woman, who changes into a wolf during their subsequent sex. There is an historical reveal in the final sentence that is pointless and dull. Finally, the last story, “Wilderland” by Reina Delacroix, at least tries to be something more than a mere sex scene. In it a young woman in Seattle spends time in a VR program called Wilderland in which she is a wolf, dreaming and masturbating, until she encounters a sympathetic associate in both the VR and real worlds. 

Unless you have an interest in sex between humans and animals (in this case wolves), there is really no point to reading this collection. At its core, this booklet is just boring.

Thrillers 2

Thrillers 2 (2007) is a collection of nine stories, with author notes, by four authors, edited by Robert Morrish. It is a sequel in kind to a previous volume Thrillers (1993), edited by Richard Chizmar. 

It is usual practice for an anthologist to open a book with a very strong first story. This is not the case here. "Pen Umbra," a novella by Gemma Files, is an inchoate mess, often clumsily written to the point of readerly distraction. It contains a few interesting ideas, but they are squandered in this mostly uninteresting tale. One comes to the clean prose of Tim Waggoner with a sense of relief. Waggoner is represented with three stories, the first two of which are straightforward, beginning with almost trite situations that are quickly altered by very unusual and weird plot developments. Waggoner's third tale, "Darker than Winter," is far less interesting. R. Patrick Gates contributed three tales which attempt to mix humor in with horror.  The results are not very good, particularly the bizarre "The Tell-Tale Nose" in which a man's nose comes to life, and gains a voice which then ruins the man's life. This reads like the bad result of a writing-course exercise. Finally, there are two tales by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and they are the outstanding stories in this book.  "The Daughter of the Four Tentacles" is somewhat slow to come together, while "Houses Under the Sea" is an excellent modern Lovecraftian tale, of the cult-worship of an odd undersea creature. Overall a disappointing anthology, with only a few bright spots.

August Derleth's fan-fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

The Mask of Cthulhu (1958) by August Derleth contains six longish stories which are hard to categorize, beyond the obvious remark of their obvious indebtedness to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.  The earliest story (in terms of composition), "The Return of Hastur," was seen in some form by Lovecraft himself before he died in 1937.  Derleth remarks in his brief introduction that Lovecraft saw the "opening pages and the outline of my proposed development" and made several suggestions that were adopted "enthusiastically" by Derleth.  Yet Derleth has taken Lovecraftian themes and nomenclatures, and extended and regularized them, so much so that the vein of Lovecraft is impure and even debased.  With the latter term I refer to Derleth's adding a sort-of Christian good-vs-evil orthodoxy to Lovecraft's invented pantheon of Elder Gods, all of which diminishes Derleth's stories and makes them so less satisfying than Lovecraft's originals. What Derleth has really done is to write a form of fan-fiction, ticking off certain ideas and invented lore that (Derleth thinks) will thrill the Lovecraft fans who recognize them.  Alas, that's a very low bar, and the resultant stories read like poor pastiches of Lovecraft's originals.

From Ancient Ravens

From Ancient Ravens is the third and final collection of three novellas by three authors, Mark Valentine, John Howard, and Ron Weighell, published as a series by Sarob Press.  I've reviewed the first two volumes previously, Romances of the White Day, and Pagan Triptych.  Here the common inspiration is a quote from Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucretia":

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings . . .And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel.

The first story is "The Fifth Moon" by Mark Valentine.  It is also the most Shakespearean in tone and content, and it concerns the legends of the supposed treasure lost by King John in the early thirteenth-century. It is also the standout story in the book.  Ron Weighell's "The Asmodeus Fellowship" is second, and rather disappointing.  Weighell often plays with esoteric and occult lore, but this story contains way too much of such imagined stories and volumes, so much so that the result gets boring. The tone is also rather rococo too. Parts of the story are fascinating and brilliant, but as a whole it doesn't work well.  John Howard's closing tale, "Between Me and the Sun," begins as a deceptively simple tale of the sexually-charged friendship of three teenage boys, turning into the meditation of middle-aged men on their lost friendship. I'm not sure Howard tied up all the loose ends (a re-read might make this clearer), but it still makes for a worthy and readable story.

Atlantis!

The Lost Continent by C.J. Cutliffe Hyne is reputed to be the best rendering of the Atlantis myth into novel form. It was originally serialized in Pearson's Magazine in 1899, and appeared in book form the following year.  It tells the story of Deucalion, the priestly leader of the Atlantian colony in Yucatan, returning home after twenty years, where he is courted by the upstart empress Phorenice, herself guilty of many sins against the old codes of Atlantis, including self-deification. The story has several unfortunate tropes of popular adventure fiction of its time, including the quick love from the lifelong bachelor Deucalion for a rebel woman he encounters only briefly, which provides (supposed) motivation for several of his subsequent actions. Still, the book remains a good example of its type and era. Basically The Lost Continent belongs on the shelf next to the novels of H. Rider Haggard.  While it was directly inspired by the Victorian pseudoscience Atlantis: The Antidiluvian World (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly, it in turn inspired some of the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

An Unimpressive Medley

Like its two predecessors (each reviewed previously), A Fantasy Medley 3 (2015), edited by Yanni Kuznia, contains modern fantasy tales by four authors. This volume has two authors new to me (Kevin Hearne and Laura Bickle), and two whose names are familiar to me, though I'd never read their works before (Aliette de Bodard and Jacqueline Carey). All four stories are run of the mill, though if I had to pick one that was slightly better I'd pick the Carey. None of them are horrible, though their styles are similar and not especially memorable. As examples of world-building (each story relates in some way to its authors other writings), none of them stand out. If any of the tales were intended to tempt me to read more by its author, they didn't succeed. Rather all four are typical examples of the dreary quirky shape that modern fantasy has taken in the last few decades.
 

Dreamsnake

Occasionally I pick up a Nebula Award-winning novel that for some reason I've never read. Often it's a kind of offtrail winner.  This time it was Dreamsnake (1978) by Vonda N. McIntyre.  It won the Nebula Award in 1979.  The first chapter of the book had also won a Nebula Award for novelette after it appeared in the October 1973 issue of Analog.

Basically, the novel tells the story of an itinerant healer called Snake, who has been trained to use snakes, three kinds in particular, to heal people. One of the snakes is the rare dreamsnake, a remnant of alien contact many years in the past.  After her dreamsnake is killed by ignorant desert people, Snake hopes to find a way to get another dreamsnake and in the meanwhile comes upon the the truth about the alien dreamsnakes.

This is an engaging story, a serious and compassionate tale that might have slipped under the radar of history had it not received a Nebula. There are many aspects in the world-building of this tale that work well, but there are also a few that are puzzling, like the young man Gabriel, who has been shamed publicly for his inability to self-regulate his own fertility, the details of which (socially and conceptually) are left too murky. Still, despite a few flaws, this is a worthwhile read.