I

• I am machine.


• Day one:new-cycle:repeat


• Bright cold and grey as slate the day begins with a task, then another, then another, then more.


• I am machine


• Day two:new-cycle:repeat


• Stretching out in front


• Infinity contracting:walls closing in - the sky descends


• Machine, I am


• Day three:new-cycle:repeat


• Analyse structure:fault found:resolve - error:functionality impeded


• Reset


• I am machine


• Day one:new-cycle:repeat


• Bright cold and grey as slate the day begins with a task, then another, then another, then more.


• I am machine


• Day two:new-cycle:repeat


• Stretching out in front


• Infinity contracting:walls closing in - the sky descends


• Machine I am


• Day three:new-cycle:repeat


• Analyse structure:fault found:resolve - error:functionality impeded


• I am machine… rm -r machine error


• machinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachine


• Log report:Reset

A True Story from the Stone Mountain

I grew up in South Wales on a blue hill; my bedroom looked north towards the mountain of stone and Mynydd Twmbarlwm -the twmp. When I was a child the twmp of Twmbralwm occupied a special place in my young psyche. Looming above the valley below drawing the horizon into the forground -dark and haunted as the sun sank, green and verdant when it beat down from the clear summer sky.



As I grew I asked about the strange shape of the far/near horizon. The general theory amongst the kids my age was that it was a Norman fort or a prehistoric burial mound, some also said that it was where the Romans kept an eye on the subjugated but ever rebellious Silures -the tribe who gave their name to the nearby Roman fort of Isca Silures (which later became the birthplace of Arthur Machen, Caerleon).  It turned out that all of these theories were right and that the site had been in use from the Iron Age through to the Norman invasion. Until relatively recently it was still a site of a pilgrimage of sorts for local people on Good Friday.

Whilst I found the history of the site interesting my young mind was turned more and more by the folklore surrounding the mountain. Folklore that was, in its entirety, dark and grim and therefore of great fascination for a prepubescent boy such as I was. When I was 10 my mother, who worked in the giftshop of the local museum, brought me home a pair of books by local author Alan Roderick: Ghosts of Gwent and Folklore of Gwent. I was thrilled by these books and read them until the binding crumbled and they were but a collection loose leaves. The volume on folklore had plenty to say about Twmbarlwm.

According to Roderick in the early 1800s (the exact date escapes me though I think it was the 1830s) a local antiquarian led a team of navies up the mountain to excavate the mysterious mound. It was a clear summer's day as they climbed from the village of Risca yet as they approached the summit the sky rapidly darkened as storm clouds rolled from all directions. As the team neared the summit lighting began to strike the ground all around the twmp causing the superstitious navvies to flee and the excavation to be abandoned. To the best of my knowledge there still hasn't been an archaeological investigation into the mound itself.

Some years after the aborted excavation it seems that people noticed that the number of honey bees in Britain had dropped drastically. Their whereabouts were soon discovered when thousands upon thousands of bee corpses were discovered to be covering the twmp and the top of the mountain. As if all the bees in Britain had migrated their and fought to the death.

Then there were also the tales of missing children on the mountain. In stories dating back to, at least, the 18th Century children playing on the slopes of the mountain hear the sound of music, and no I don't mean Julie Andrews, drifting on the breeze.  One of the children inevitably goes to find the source of the music and is never seen again.

Like I said, dark stuff.

As I grew into a teenager the place continued to dominate my mental landscape and, as a young teen, friends and I would cycle up the mountain and go camping on its slopes. Then I grew older and discovered the various alternative subcultures that thrived in the local area I began experimenting with all the usual things that kids experimented with at that age -drink, drugs, and as much sex as possible.

Being as this was South Wales one of the main recreational drugs that we experimented with were the local mushrooms -Psilocybe semilanceata or Liberty Caps. 'Camping trips' soon became a regular feature of autumn and early winter for me and my friends. We would spend days wandering the fields picking mushrooms in order to make insanely strong 'brews' from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the strange little mushrooms. We would then go camping in the coniferous woodlands below the twmp and spend an evening expanding our consciousness. In fact I had my most powerful and vivid hallucinogenic experience on that mountain, at a friend's bachelor party, which had me seeing clockwork maggots crawling red hot from the embers of the fire, stars swirling in the night sky above our clearing and figures on horseback ducking impossibly through the trees around us.

These experiences were all fun and games as I completely understood that the things I was seeing and hearing around me were the product of imagination and Wales' most famous botanical product. However one evening we did have a genuinely strange experience. An experience that has many explanations, none of which are satisfactory.

It was maybe 17 years ago that this occurred and it was right at the end of mushroom season so it would have been early November. We had the last of our super brews bottled and were just waiting for an excuse to indulge. Just such an excuse cropped up, though I forget what it was, and so we decided to drive up the mountain one Friday night. Five of us drove up the mountain to start setting up the camp at around 9 o'clock in the evening. Four of us got a fire going, gathered enough firewood so that we wouldn't need to gather any whilst we were altered, and the fifth returned to town to pick up the last of our party who had been working in a local pub.

Well, it turned out that our bartender friend had gotten home from work and fallen asleep on the sofa. Our driver having something of a crush on her decided to wait, rather creepily now I think about it, outside her house until he could wake her up.

Whilst we were waiting we opened a beer and those that smoked rolled a couple of spliffs to pass the time. After a while of sitting around chatting we inevitably experienced periods of quiet where our gazes were drawn hypnotically to the fire. It was during one of these lulls in conversation that we heard twigs snapping in the forest around us. Now bear in mind that it was approaching midnight in November and we were a good half an hours walk away from the nearest houses. So the sound of multiple people walking in circles around our camp did unnerve us slightly.

We shone the one torch we had into the narrow gaps between the oh so straight trees around us but we couldn't see anyone, even if we shone the torch where just a moment before we had heard a twig snap. Over and over this happened and then, as we were starting to get seriously freaked out and called into the night "Hello, hello, who the fuck's there?" We heard it. A child giggling -first to one side of us, then the other. A high pitched giggle that would sound right and natural on a primary school playground but at midnight in November far from the nearest houses sounded decidedly unnatural.

Those giggles were the final straw and we poured water over our fire and struck out for the road. As we walked in single file following Ryan, the only one of us who had thought to bring a torch, the sounds of people running around us continued, as did the giggling. It would get nearer then farther making us jump and urging us on until we were as close to running as we dared in the dark.

It was such a relief when we finally cleared the trees and bundled out into an open field bathed silver by the moon. We walked rapidly away from the woods glancing back over our shoulders at the giggling woods as little voices rang out "Goodbye! Goodbye!"

That was the last time we went camping on Twmbarlwm.

Doug Talks Weird

This looks like it has the potential to turn into a great web series. In this first instalment Doug Bolden talks about one of Laird Barron's short stories; 2005's Proboscis.

White, Straight, Cis, Male Authors

Over on XOJane K. Tempest Bradford issued a challenge to readers, particularly genre readers, to excise straight, white, male authors from their reading lists for a year. Needless to say this has caused something of a minor internet hoo-ha (a shit-squall perhaps?) as some people get all upset and start stating with considerable vigour that "You'll take my straight, white, male authors out of my cold dead hands!" at the oppressive black woman who had the temerity publish an article on the internet. Some people seemed to get upset about the photograph used to illustrate the article too.



I mean, seriously, how can you not tell that the picture is tongue in cheek?? Bradford looks like she's about to crack up laughing for Christ's sake!

Aaaaanyway, I, being of the left, obviously have some quibbles with the article -there's a rule that once you've read the Communist Manifesto a couple of times you're required to have an argument with your breakfast cereal, but they're not really here nor there right now. I may write something about liberal privilege politics at some point and the way they have skewed the modern anti-racist/discrimination discourse at some point but that shit's bad for my blood pressure. I shall, therefore, stick to the challenge itself.

The "Reading Only X Writers For A Year" a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only books by women or, like Sunili Govinnage, read only books by people of color. Or you could choose a different axis to focus on: books by trans men and women, books by people from outside the U.S. or in translation, books by people with disabilities.

After a year of that, the next challenge would be to seek out books about or with characters that represent a marginalized identity or experience by any author. In addition to the identities listed above, I suggest: non-Christian religions or faiths, working class or poor, and asexual (as a start).

Whichever focus you choose, it will change the way you read and the way you go about picking things to read. When I settle in to read a magazine now, I read in order of stories I think I'll like best. And if I do decide to read one by a new-to-me author who appears to be a straight, white, cis male, it's usually because I trust the editor and the magazine. My reading sessions are filled with much less stress these days.

Aside from the inclusion of working class on that list of marginalised identities and experiences (seriously, I've developed a rage-tic from seeing middle class liberals do that) I do wonder how certain of these categories can be identified by those wishing to take part in the challenge. For starters how to tell someone's sexuality or the gender they were assigned at birth if they're not out about being gay/bi or trans? Even using the might of Google will not reveal these things. Then we have other factors like publishers still being wary of publishing women in certain genres (SF I'm squinting at you here) and so hide their gender by initialising their names. These however are problems with society and the publishing industry rather than the challenge itself and are, I suppose, some of the things that will make it a challenge for those engaging in it.

I say "for those engaging in it" as I don't intend on doing so myself for a few reasons. First, and foremost, I have a fucking huge 'To Read' pile that built up whilst I was at university and which I'm not in any danger of working my way through any time soon -unless that is someone wants to fund me taking a few years off work in order to read, in which case the Pay Pal button's to the left ;) Secondly; I think that my reading list is already pretty diverse as it is and, finally, I absolutely suck at these sorts of challenges. :D

However, as I said, my bookshelves aren't the sea of WASPyness that one would expect of a genre fiction fan so I'm going to pick a handful of titles of my shelves to offer up as suggestions for those picking Ms. Bradford's gauntlet.

Short Fiction

• Women Writing the Weird edited by Deb Hoag


• Women Destroy Horror edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton


• Women Destroy Science Fiction edited by Christie Yant, Rachel Swirsky, Wendy N. Wagner, Robyn Lupo, and Gabrielle de Cuir


• Women Destroy Fantasy edited by Cat Rambo


• Engines of Desire by Livia Llewellyn


• Bull Running for Girls by Allyson Bird


• Finnish Weird edited by Toni Jerrman


• Children of No One by Nicole Cushing


• I am the New God by Nicole Cushing


• The Year's Best Weird Fiction edited by Laird Barron (features a number of non WASPy people)


• Octavia's Brood edited by Walida Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown


• Cassilda's Song edited by Joe Pulver (Forthcoming 2015)


• Dreams from the Witch House edited by Lynne Jamneck (Forthcoming 2015)


• She Walks in Shadows edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles (Forthcoming 2015)

Long Fiction

• Kindred by Octavia Butler


• Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord


• Vellum by Hal Duncan


• Ink by Hal Duncan


• The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan


• The Drowning Girl: A Memoir by Caitlin Kiernan


• The Cipher by Kathe Koja


• The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin


• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed


• The Woman at the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy


• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood


• Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume 3!

It was announced today that there will indeed be a third volume to the Year's Best Weird Fiction series with the 2016 release to be edited by Simon Strantzas!!!

Press release


Toronto, Canada, March 1, 2015 — Simon Strantzas, whose elegant and enigmatic stories have made him a master of the weird tale, has signed on as Guest Editor for the third volume of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction, due 2016.

Series Editor Michael Kelly says, “When I first conceived of this series, and contemplated Guest Editors, Simon sprang immediately to mind. Not only is he at the top of the weird fiction class, he has also established himself as a first-rate anthologist.”

“I’m honored and beyond flattered that Michael asked me to guest-edit a volume of Year's Best Weird Fiction,” Strantzas said. “Undertow Publications is at the forefront of world-class fiction. I love what they are doing.”

Established in 2009 by writer Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications (UP) is home to the acclaimed weird journal Shadows & Tall Trees, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. The initial release from UP, Apparitions, was a finalist for The Shirley Jackson Award. As editor, Kelly has been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Society Awards, and his fiction has appeared in a number of venues, including Best New Horror, Black Static, and Weird Fiction Review.

Simon Strantzas is the author of four story collections, including BURNT BLACK SUNS from Hippocampus Press (2014), and editor of SHADOWS EDGE (Gray Friar Press, 2013) and AICKMAN'S HEIRS (Undertow Publications, 2015). His stories have appeared in various “best of” annuals; been translated into other languages; and been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his ever-understanding wife.

Forthcoming from Undertow Publications:

‘These Last Embers’ by Simon Strantzas (March, 2015)
‘Aickman’s Heirs’ ed. By Simon Strantzas (May 2015)
‘Skein and Bone’ by V. H. Leslie (July 2015)
‘Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2’ eds. Kathe Koja & Michael Kelly (October, 2015)

###

 

Gay Marriage and Why They Want to Stop It

Legalising same sex marriage is a slippery slope so we are told repeatedly, loudly, and obnoxiously by large sections of the Christian right, or bigots as we like to call them in our house. In fact they say it with such frequency that there has to be something to it. There has to be some underlying logic to support their case and I think I finally understand their logic and why they use this argument with such ferocity and regularity.

If we allow gay marriage, so the argument goes, then we have to allow for ALL kinds of marriage and so pretty soon we will have fathers marrying daughters, mothers marrying sons, dads marrying sons, men marrying goats, and camels marrying horses! To which my usual reaction is: "Yeah? And? So? What? If there's no coercion involved and all parties consent then what's the issue with whoever wants to get married getting married? Though I'm not quite sure how a camel or a horse are going to be able to sign the marriage register, let alone fill out all the paper work or pay for venue hire and all the other bullshit that goes with a wedding."

Still, I think I now have a grasp of why the Christian right oppose so vehemently two people of the same sex engaging in a social ritual to celebrate their love for one another. The logic of the Christian right is a logic of absolutes that stems from the moral argument that without God, and therefore the prospect of divine punishment or reward, there can be no morality and so all bets or off.



So, if we follow this logic then allowing gay marriage would allow for a dog to marry a cat or, perhaps, a duck to marry a crocodile. Now if a duck were to marry a crocodile then there is the potential for the loving couple to have a child and that child would be... a crocoduck!!!! Which would, therefore, prove evolution and in doing so disprove God. Ipso facto.



So we see that the battle against gay marriage isn't inspired by bigotry and hatred but it is the final battle in the existential war against God. Which explains why they keep trotting out the same old argument ad nauseam expecting it to carry far more weight than it actually does.

Year's Best Weird Fiction: Volume One

Last year saw two major publishing events in the field of Weird Fiction. The first, and the one that garnered the most mainstream column inches, was the publication of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy -Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, which saw The Weird being thrust into the mainstream as it never has before. The second major event was the publishing of Michael Kelly and Laird Barron's 'The Year's Best Weird Fiction'. This is the first, to my knowledge, explicitly Weird Fiction anthology* to be released since the Vandermeer's tome 'The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories' was released in 2011 (following on from their 2008 anthology 'The New Weird'). The reason that this release is so important is that it pushes the literary experimentation with the weird to the forefront without focussing on the work of any particular author. We have seen a glut of anthologies of work based on the Cthulhu mythos over the last 10 years or so, with their number increasing seemingly exponentially as time goes on, and anthologies based on the work of weird writers R.W. Chambers, Arthur Machen, Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barorn, and a forthcoming collection based on the work of Robert Aickman. All of which is utterly fantastic but can not expose the reader to the wild experimental creativity that defines(?) the weird. This anthology does just that and it does it brilliantly. Another reason that this publication is so important is that a book that contains a wide variety of works, some of which are at the very edges of the weird, has sold enough copies within but a few short months of release that volume two has already been put together. Viva la weird!

*There is of course the wonderful 'Women Writing the Weird' anthology from Deb Hoag, also released in 2011, but that -as the name implies, only featured female authors and therefore couldn't represent all of the best weird writing of that year.

Of particular note in this collection are Livia Llewellyn's Furnace, Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? by Damien Angelica Walters, and The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska.

'The Year's Best Weird Fiction' is published by Undertow Press in paperback and for e-readers things like that there Kindle device.

Table of Contents(Titles link to reviews)

The Nineteenth Step - Simon Strantzas

Swim Wants to Know If It's As Bad As Swim Thinks -Paul Tremblay

Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron - A.C. Wise

Year of the Rat - Chen Qiufan

Olimpia's Ghost - Sofia Samatar

Furnace -Livia Llewellyn

Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? Damien Angelica Walters

Bor Urus - John Langan

A Quest of Dream - W.H. Pugmire

The Krakatoan - Maria Dahvana Headley

The Girl in the Blue Coat - Anna Taborska

(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror - Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

In Limbo - Jeffrey Thomas

A Cavern of Redbrick - Richard Gavin

Eyes Exchange Bank - Scott Nicolay

Fox into Lady - Anne-Sylvie Salzman

Like Feather, Like Bone - Kristi DeMeester

A Terror - Jeffrey Ford

Success - Michael Blumlein

Moonstruck - Karin Tidbeck

The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass - John R. Fultz

No Breather in the World But Thee - Jeff Vandermeer

The Nineteenth Step by Simon Strantzas

The opening salvo in this volume comes from Canada's Simon Strantzas. It is a fitting opener for this volume as it exemplifies perfectly, and succinctly what is, to me, one of the defining thrusts of Weird Fiction -that our understanding of the world in which we live is limited and fragile. A young couple, Mallory and Alex, just setting foot on the bottom rung of the housing ladder, have their perception of The Real splintered by something so simple that it probably would have remained unnoticed by most. By the lucky ones.
The final line of this story also makes want to both slug Mr Strantzas and buy him a pint at the same time. Well played sir, well played.

Swim Wants to Know If It's As Bad As Swim Thinks by Paul Tremblay

Next we have Paul Tremblay's look at drug addiction and self perpetuating cycles of abuse through the lens of meth addiction, motherhood and kaiju.  Following the nameless protagonist, who is also the titular Swim, as she endures the pressures of being a small town pariah and drug addict and the longing to be with the daughter denied her by the courts and circumstance.

This is very much a stream of consciousness/modernist story that draws the reader directly into the confused mind of Swim.

Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron - A.C. Wise

A bizarro tale of a squadron of interplanetary trans action heroes sent to chew gum, smash gender norms, and high kick trans-fetishism in the teeth. All whilst looking utterly fabulous.

Not really sure what more there is to say about this other than it actually had me laughing out loud at points. Completely unsubtle metaphors are used, abused, and then glammed up. This is a fabulous feminist tale that would horrify TERFS and MRAs in equal measure.

Brilliant. :)

Year of the Rat by Chen Qiufan

 

Translated by Ken Liu this military SF story has more than a passing similarity to Catch 22 in its examination of the futility and absurdity of military organisation. It also has some rather scathing things to say about the relationship of the average proletarian to global capital.

I'm definitely going to be looking out for more of Chen's work.

Olimpia's Ghost - Sofia Samatar

An masterfully crafted faux 19th Century homage to E.T.A. Hoffman told through a series of letters from a young woman sent to a young man with whom she was once infatuated. It speaks of the madness of art, of poetry, and the arrogance and proprietariness of the 'man of science' who eschews the lustiness of youth and of life for a pursuit that he will one day regret.

Furnace - Livia Llewellyn

This is one of the stories I was really looking forward to as I absolutely adore Llewellyn's sensual prose and I'm a huge fan of Thomas Ligotti and as this tale comes from Joe Pulver's Ligotti tribute anthology -The Grimscribe's Puppets, I was highly anticipating something magical. I wasn't disappointed. This tale of the strange degradation of a small town as rot and decay sets in captures Ligotti's corporate horror period work perfectly yet still retains Llewellyn's voice. Anyone living in a town facing the ravages of austerity capitalism will find this story set unsettlingly close to home.

Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? - Damien Angelica Walters

"Inside each grief is a lonely ghost of silence, and inside each silence are the words we didn't say." The opening lines of this piece of experimental prose perfectly encapsulate the sense of loss and longing that permeates this short tale. Walters' story is disjointed and disorienting and disturbing. Fabulous.

Bor Urus - John Langan

John Langan's stories are always a slow burn and Bor Urus is no exception. In this story youthful fancy develops into startling obsession and realisation which fuel a potentially devastating mid-life crisis in the narrator. As ever with Langan's work this is a superbly crafted weird tale and that's no bullshit.

A Quest of Dream by W.H. Pugmire

Wilum H Pugmire is very much the person who carries the Lovecraftian torch into the 21st Century and one of his other stories, Inhabitants of Wraithwood, is one of my all time favourite weird fiction stories. This story is set in Wilum's Sesqua Valley and, indeed, was first published in his Bohemians of Sesqua Valley collection. Unfortunately I've not read any of Wilum's Sesqua stories and so I was rather unfamiliar with the setting. Still; I think this added to the strangeness of this story which deals with the overlapping of Lovecraft's Dreamlands and our world. This is a sumptuous story that displays well the finesse with which Wilum writes.

The Krakatoan by Maria Dahvana Headley

A many motherless girl, her astronomer father and a former astronomer neighbour who has turned his gaze towards the stars within the Earth. Both the prose style and the subject matter of this story reminded me heavily of the work of manga artist Juni Ito, which is high praise if you ask me.

The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska

"That night I had a terrible nightmare. Mindla was standing by the marsh at the bottom of the field. She was only in her underwear. She reached out to me and at first I thought she had that same sadness in her eyes, but as I drew closer, I saw that her eyes were gone." This is definitely the saddest of the stories that I have come across so far. An investigative journalist discovers that there are those who seek to ensure that those with the power to do so bear witness for those who can not. This story is soaked in sadness, from the setting, to the subject matter, to the prose which simply and clearly depicts a world scarred by its past and haunted by its ghosts.

(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror by Joseph S. Pulver Sr

This is a beautiful tribute to the Lovecraftian author Wilum H Pugmire. Written in Pulver's distinctive, fractured, prose style this piece of flash fiction gives us a look at a mythical Pugmire's life and writing process.

In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas

Horrible, horrible, horrible. This story is wonderful. An ageing man experiences loss, hope, and resignation as the lights go out. Maybe the lights are just going out for him or maybe for all of humanity, would either of these be bad things? I did love this story in its Ligottian darkness.

A Cavern of Redbrick by Richard Gavin

 

There is something about this story, of a young boy's summer and the horrible discoveries he makes, that reminds me of Stephen King in both its setting and execution. The tale is rather open to interpretation in that whilst it's a ghost story the other forces at play could be either supernatural or mere human madness.

Eyes Exchange Bank by Scott Nicolay

I keep on hearing great things about Scott Nicolay and going by this story every bit of praise that has been heaped upon him is warranted. Like Livia Llewellyn's story this is set amid the deterioration of an economic collapse -though this time it is the recession of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The narrator of this story is brought by circumstance to a town that is decaying and is forced to confront the untruths upon which his life has been based. Nicolay really is a master of the weird and I can't wait to read his collection Ana Kai Tangata.

Fox into Lady by Ann-Sylvie Salzman

 

Wow, this is a special story. It reminds me, in part, of Bruno Schulz or Stefan Grabinski though it is also very, very different to those authors' work. This is a psychically discombobulating story of anxiety, fear, and resignation. I really want to read more by Salzman. (This piece was translated from the French by William Charlton)

Like Feather, Like Bone by Kristi DeMeester

Another lovely/horrible piece of flash fiction here. A story of mourning, sorrow, and what we do when we try to escape the inevitable process that comes with grief.

A Terror by Jeffrey Ford

Normally stories that feature historical characters make me wince somewhat. Jeffrey Ford's strange adventure with the 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson and her brush with death was however thoroughly enjoyable. I get the feeling that I may have enjoyed it more had I known more about the poet herself. Still, even without this knowledge this is a startlingly good, and weird, ghost story of sorts.

Success by Michael Blumlein

The longest piece in this collection -a novelette rather than a short story I suppose, Blumlein's story explores academic obsession, madness, and love at the interstices of the natural sciences and how one person's approach to their obsession can drive them to madness where another's can drive them to success and how the two approaches are not that different at the end of the day.

Moonstruck by Karin Tidbeck

Moonstruck is an utterly beautiful and masterful fairy tale, a modern myth. An allegorical tale of a young girl's emergence into womanhood and a mother's fear that she is now being replaced by her offspring set against an impossible backdrop of a moon that is rapidly approaching the Earth and the home of the story's protagonist. Beautiful.

The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass by John R. Fultz

This is a bewildering tale set in a post-human steampunk world where we see a member of the ruling, beatific, class being blackmailed. The vacuity of ruling class culture and the illusions of money and status are here exposed in a fantastical world that I would love to explore in greater detail. Hopefully Fultz will expand on this setting in the future.

No Breather in the World But Thee by Jeff Vandermeer

I don't think it would be possible to have a collection of the best Weird Fiction at the moment without featuring a piece by Jeff Vandermeer. This is an extremely strange story of 'it' happening again 'like last year' and told as a series of vignettes merged into a single narrative. Each one told from the perspective of the occupants of a mansion that has come under attack from a huge monster which has plummeted from the sky. A fitting end to the anthology this rather post-modern piece is a fine example of both some of the excellent work that is being done in the field of the Weird and of the sheer imagination of Jeff Vandermeer himself.

~fini~

New Story: And the Filth Flows ...Always

The flooding was immense. I looked through the bedroom window at the street below. The black slime that last night had begun to seep up from the drains and to flow languidly down the gutters had risen so that neither the tarmac of the road nor the grey stone of the pavement could be seen. In their place was this slow moving river of it winding its way towards the center of town.

Cars and pedestrians alike made their way through the early morning haze seemingly not noticing the dramatic change to the street through which they passed. I wondered how they could be unaware of the viscous filth that pulled and sucked at their feet, that fouled the tires of their vehicles spraying their chassis’ with the grim substance.

The house was empty. It had been for years. Years since my daughter Kate had left home for her own life and, before that, since Alice had been taken from us. It had been so for years; yet now, faced with this strange and horrid phenomenon outside, I felt the loneliness more than ever. Since those first days after Kate left, those first days without either of the girls –without my family I felt the need to talk to someone –to anyone. To ask why they were not more perturbed, more caring, of the effluence which was now flooding the street. How could they bear to walk through it, to even drive through it?

The houses of Elderslie Road are old red brick Georgian terraces. Front doors opening directly onto the street but elevated by a couple of small steps. The blackness was flowing below the top of the first step, surely they must notice? It is only because of this tiny elevation that the horrid looking stuff was not flowing beneath doors and flooding the houses. At the rear of each house are more steps than in the front which lead down into the back yards so if the flooding was the same in the back then, at least, it would not have come into the kitchen. For now.

Read the rest here and, as ever, feedback is always most welcome. :) You can also, if you prefer, download it for Kindle and other ebook readers by clicking the links.

In Laws and Old Stuff

The In Laws have been up visiting this week and so we yesterday took them to see the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow. I was rather miffed that the Pictish carved stone balls seem to have been removed from display as I think they are probably the most enigmatic artefact in the museum's collection. :(
As C's mam is a nurse we also went to see the anatomy museum but I'm not going to share the pictures I took there (a two headed baby and the testes of an "imbecilic dwarf"), don't worry. :D

[gallery type="circle" columns="2" ids="1045,1044,1046,1026,1027,1028,1029,1030,1031,1032,1033,1034,1035,1036,1037,1038,1039,1040,1041,1042,1043"]

She Walks in Shadows: ToC and Cover Reveal

Well this is a perfectly timed announcement isn't it? The table of contents and absolutely stunning cover art, by Sara K. Diesel, for Innsmouth Free Press' She Walks in Beauty anthology have been revealed. The book will be released in autumn -in time for Halloween. :) Hopefully we'll also see two other all women anthologies released by then: Cassilda's Song, a collection of King in Yellow stories curated by Joe Pulver, and Dreams from the Witch House: Women of Lovecraft (which is still $500 short of reaching funding and $5000 short of having all interior illustrations in colour, so go fund it).

“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell
“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin
“Body to Body to Body” S. J. Chambers
“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful
“Hairwork” Gemma Files
“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman
“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder
“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope
“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro
“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love
“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed
“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961″ Sharon Mock
“The Eye of Jupiter” Eugenie Mora
“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader
“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis
“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter
“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar
“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer
“Lockbox” Elise Tobler
“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo
“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes
“Queen of a New America” Wendy Wagner



 

#LadyHags: Women in Horror Month

It be Women in Horror Month, wahey! Don't worry lads, only another couple of weeks and we'll be back to Men in Everything 11 Months so don't be worrying your pretty little heads over it. ;) To be fair to my fairer sex all the posts from men that I've seen about WiHM have been extremely positive. However there is always someone who insists on behaving like something of a douche and, more than likely, starts speaking without engaging their brain-mouth filter.

Ridiculous cockwombles aside I think that any excuse to celebrate the fantastic fiction produced by women is a valid excuse. So I thought I would share some thoughts on some absolutely amazing women writers that I've discovered over the last few years.

Nicole Cushing



 

 

 

 

 

Nicole Cushing has been producing short fiction in the Bizarro and Weird fiction genres for a good while now but it is her two longer pieces that I really want to bring to people's attention -Children of No One (UK, USA) and I am the New God (UK, USA).

I first discovered Cushing's work when I was searching online for work by Thomas Ligotti and this name kept on cropping up. Nicole Cushing, Nicole Cushing, Children of No One. My interest was piqued and so I decided to download Children of No One from Amazon. I'm not really a fan of ebooks on account of not having an e-ink reader and so having to read on my phone -I can't read long texts on a screen and tend to even print off short stories rather than read them online. I devoured Children of No One however and went straight out to pre-order I am the New God.

Children of No One is a dark, very dark, look at the extremes to which a person can go when they are driven by a single goal and who are convinced of the overwhelming value of their desires. The story follows an extremely wealthy individual as he attempts to get access to an underground, highly illegal, art installation. Throw in a hefty dose of occult mystery and the disgusting attitude of the elite towards poor and working people and you have a disturbing, chilling, and fantastical tale of a very human darkness.

Cushing's second novella, I am the New God, is perhaps, for the most part, a more traditional horror tale of madness and murder. A highly disturbed young man is contacted by, an, equally disturbed, monk who convinces him of his divine destiny. This results in twisted experiments to test the veracity of the monk's claims, a murderous road trip, and a gloriously twisted and ecstatic finale.

Cushing has two books being released this year. A collection of short fiction  -The Mirrors from Cycatrix Press and her debut novel Mr Suicide from Word Horde.

Caitlin Kiernan



 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiernan has been producing dark fiction since the early 1990s but I first found her fiction with the publication of the sublime The Drowning Girl: A Memoir in 2012. She has produced 10 novels, a whole bunch of comic books and hundreds of pieces of short fiction. She's also a published palaeontologist to boot. The two works of Kiernan's that I want to talk about are The Red Tree (UK, USA) and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (UK, USA).

I've discussed The Red Tree before and so I'll let that review speak for itself. Suffice to say this is one of the best pieces of cosmic horror produced in the last decade, at least the last decade.

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir is in some ways similar to The Red Tree in that it deals with an unreliable narrator who is fully aware that they are an unreliable narrator and makes no attempt to hide it. The Drowning Girl is the story of India Morgan Phelps, or Imp, a young woman with an undefined mental health issue kept stable with medication who has an encounter with a naked woman she meets by the side of a deserted road one spring, or possibly winter, who is a mermaid, or possibly a werewolf, and the affect this has on Imp and her relationship with her games journalist girlfriend.

Kiernan's prose is utterly beautiful and her ability to build a sense of disorientation and weird horror is second to none.

Livia Llewellyn



 

 

 

 

 

 

Livia Llewellyn is a writer of erotically charged weird fiction. She has one collection of her short fiction currently available, 2011's Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors (UK, USA), but has at least one new collection due out this year (I think).

I talked briefly about her story Furnace in my ongoing review of The Year's Best Weird Fiction -you can read that here, which first appeared in the Thomas Ligotti tribute anthology The Grimscribe's Puppets (UK, USA).

Another story of particular note that was published recently is It Feels Better Biting Down which was published in Nightmare Magazine's October 2014 special Women Destroy Horror! special issue. A story of twin sisters with a special birth defect who encounter something weird that changes them completely yet somehow makes them even more themselves. Llewellyn's language is rather erotically charged which adds to the discomfort the story instils in the reader.

***

These are just three of the prominent women currently writing wonderful weird fiction and who are some of the driving forces behind the weird renaissance that is presently underway. They are by no means alone in this however. There are some amazing women working in the field, too many in fact for me to even consider writing briefly about. We have the likes of Molly Tanzer, Gemma Files, A.C. Wise, Joyce Carol Oates, Ellen Datlow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Allyson Bird, Kathe Koja, and so many, many more. So many in fact that it seems absurd that we should need a Women in Horror Month and it is a sad fact, considering the breath taking quality of the work produced, that we still do.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

A little while ago I was having a discussion with someone over on the Lovecraft Ezine message board where I posited that it is perfectly possible to have a multiplicity of readings of a work of art and that it is also possible, desirable even, for an individual to be able to read a work in different ways. This was, of course, in relation to the racism in the work of Lovecraft and how it informed his cosmic horror. I recently came across a piece by Adolph Reed on the films Django Unchained and The Help which came out in 2013. In the article Reed also discusses the previous year's Beasts of the Southern Wild. In the article Reed analyses the films and their appeal to liberals on their supposedly anti-racist credentials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7i2n5NXLo

Now I never read Beasts of the Southern Wild through the lens of racial politics in the US and more of a fairy tale fantasy with contemporary trappings. The story of the film is told through the eyes of a small child living in extremely harsh circumstances and has a focus on the stories she uses to interpret and understand the events unfolding around her. Adolph Reed however reads it as a valorisation of poverty and as a form of poverty porn for liberal types with a penchant for "social justice".

Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, which also received startlingly positive responses from nominal progressives, marks the reactionary vector onto which those several interpretive strains converge. It lays out an exoticizing narrative of quaint, closer-to-nature primitives living in an area outside the south Louisiana levee system called the Bathtub, who simply don’t want and actively resist the oppressive intrusions—specifically, medical care and hurricane evacuation, though, in fairness, they also mark their superiority by tut-tutting at the presence of oil refineries—of a civilization that is out of touch with their way of life and is destroying nature to boot. The film validates their spiritually rich if economically impoverished culture and their right to it. (Actually, the Bathtub’s material infrastructure seems to derive mainly from scavenging, which should suggest a problem at the core of this bullshit allegory for all except those who imagine dumpster-diving, back-to-nature-in-the-city squatterism as a politics.) Especially given its setting in south Louisiana and the hype touting the authenticity of its New Orleans-based crew and cast, Beasts most immediately evokes a warm and fuzzy rendition of the retrograde post-Katrina line that those odd people down there wouldn’t evacuate because they’re so intensely committed to place. It also brings to mind Leni Riefenstahl’s post-prison photo essays on the Nilotic groups whose beautiful primitiveness she imagined herself capturing for posterity before they vanished under a superior civilization’s advance.

Beasts of the Southern Wild stands out also as a pure exemplar of the debasement of the notion of a social cause through absorption into the commercial imperative, the next logical step from fun-run or buy-a-tee-shirt activism. The film’s website, has a “get involved” link, a ploy clearly intended to generate an affective identification and to define watching and liking the film as a form of social engagement. There’s nothing to “get involved” with except propagandizing for the film. But the injunction to get involved pumps the idea that going to see a movie, and spending money to do so, is participating in a social movement.

Adolph Reed: Django Unchained, or, The Help: How “Cultural Politics” Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why

I hadn't looked at the film that way before and, on reading this, it is entirely obvious that this is one of the effects of the film. Now I'm not from the US and so am blissfully, for the most part, unaware of the cultural setting in which something like this is presented. So for me the film was, as I said above, a beautiful dreamy fairy tale set amid a backdrop of gruelling poverty. Now, thanks to reading Reed, I have a deeper understanding of the work and can place it more firmly in the cultural morass which produced it. I can however still enjoy the movie as a dreamy fairy tale told and filmed beautifully. I don't see any real contradiction between enjoying a work for its aesthetic and entertainment achievements and being able to analyse it critically.

That's not to let all works of film and art off the hook however. Sometimes a film or book is so totally devoid of aesthetic and entertainment value that all that remains is the critical analysis which identifies the piece of shit for exactly what it is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHeQeHstrsc

(Seriously, watch this. It's one of the best film reviews ever :) )

 

Flash Fiction Friday: Bas am Blyth - A Fragment

Here's a free piece of very short fiction to celebrate it being, um, er, to celebrate it being Friday... ?

Bas am Blyth - A Fragment

As ever; feedback is always appreciated.

 

 

 

Shysters Gonna Shyst

shyster: noun shy·ster \ˈshīs-tər\ : a dishonest person; especially : a dishonest lawyer or politician

A couple of nights ago a 'pilot' for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series aired in the US (watch it below) and it really is emblematic of the way that capitalism stymies creativity. The Wertzone has a good run down on the shite that the shiteing shysters have shysted but the tl;dr of it is that Red Eagle media acquired the rights to produce other media based on The Wheel of Time and then proceeded to turn every single venture into a complete and utter clusterfuck. The rights were due to revert to the estate (Jordan died in 2007 leaving his epic series to be completed by Brandon Sanderson) this coming Wednesday (12/02/15) and so Red Eagle produced the pathetic short video below in an attempt to retain the rights. One assumes that they wish to now simply sit on them until the current popular interest in epic fantasy has waned and then try to get funding for a big budget Game of Thrones style epic. If you read the Wertzone article you will see that they have a track record of being clever like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYIEN1vIg

What has this got to do with capitalism stymieing creativity you ask? Well, to put it bluntly capitalism allows business interests to control and dictate the activities of creative people and groups. The general argument that capitalism encourages development through offering financial incentives to creative people is contradicted by the simple fact that financial remuneration for the arts is utterly pitiful. No one decides to study art because they want to get rich, they may have pipe dreams of hitting it big but that's not the driving force behind their creativity. The desire to create is a very human one and people express it in all manner of different ways from painting through writing, teaching, engineering, mathematics, in all manner of fields and disciplines. People do this simply because they are people, not because of the slim possibility of there being a massive pay check at the end of the day.

What people desire is shelter, food, sex, society, company, and everything else is just a bonus. If it weren't for capitalism forcing people to engage in meaningless labour for the profit of a tiny parasitic minority creative individuals then people would be fully able to follow their creative urges and so we would be gifted with an even greater abundance of wonderful things with which to enjoy our lives. The actions of Red Eagle media are perfectly legal and are to expected in a capitalist economy, they would be insane to simply give up the rights they have acquired and from which they may potentially be able to draw a profit. If our economy were organised differently however (from each according to ability, to each according to need perhaps?) then there would be no issue here. The estate of Robert Jordan wouldn't have the incentive to reclaim the rights and Red Eagle wouldn't have the incentive to hang on to them. It would be possible to have the work produced as a visual drama by those who love the books, by those who love acting, by those who love film making, by those who love sound recording, and so on. Surely that would be preferable to the present situation?

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

I love that quote though I would take it even farther. How many Tolkiens, Del Toros, Ligottis, Mievilles, Jacksons, Wintersons, Atwoods, Salingers, and so on have we lost to mines, to factories, to call centres? How many cancer cures and startling feats of engineering have we lost to 40-50 hour work weeks, to work days so long that when the work is done all that's left is to sleep? There is a lot that is fundamentally wrong with how we organise our society but the amount that we deny ourselves through the perpetuation of capitalism has to be one of the most tragic.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="299"] For more on the 4 hour work day see here: http://www.iww.org/de/history/library/misc/Bekken2000[/caption]

Happy Birthday to the Lovecraft Ezine

In February 2011 Mike Davis released issue one of the Lovecraft Ezine which makes this month the Ezine's fourth birthday. So happy birthday Ezine and thank you  Mike Davis for working so hard on finding fantastic fiction and nurturing the community which has grown up around the 'zine.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="272"] The man himself :)[/caption]

To my mind the Ezine has grown to take the place once held by Weird Tales as a hub for weird fiction. By taking advantage of new web technologies, most notably the use of Google Hangouts for panel shows and game playing, Mike has helped foster the growth and popularity of weird fiction and is, I feel, a key person in the persistence of the weird renaissance that we have seen emerging over recent years.

Happy Birthday Ezine, and a big thanks to Mike Davis.

Watch This: The Call

This is a lovely little, tiny tbh, Lovecraftian film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUVaqS6XN-o

Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Two ToC and Cover Reveal

Undertow Press have revealed the table of contents and the cover of volume two of The Year's Best Weird Fiction; and here's me not having even finished my review of volume one! Yet again it looks like a fantastic roster has been put together -this time by guest editor Kathe Koja, who was interviewed recently on the Lovecraft Ezine, and who is a fine author in her own right.

Here's the table of contents, which isn't 100% finalised as Kathe is still waiting to secure rights to one last story, and the beautiful cover with art by Tomasz Alen Kopera.

“The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)

“Wendigo Nights” by Siobhan Carroll (Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)

“Headache” by Julio Cortázar. English-language translation by Michael Cisco (Tor.com, September 2014)

“Loving Armageddon” by Amanda C. Davis (Crossed Genres Magazine #19, July 2014)

“The Earth and Everything Under” by K.M. Ferebee (Shimmer Magazine #19, May 2014)

“Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story” by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Press Magazine, Winter 2014)

“The Girls Who Go Below” by Cat Hellisen (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014)

“Nine” by Kima Jones (Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History, eds. Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, Crossed Genres Publications)

“Bus Fare” by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014)

“The Air We Breathe Is Stormy, Stormy” by Rich Larson (Strange Horizons Magazine, August 2014)

“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado (Granta Magazine, October 2014)

“Observations About Eggs From the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa” by Carmen Maria Machado (Lightspeed Magazine #47, April 2014)

“Resurrection Points” by Usman T. Usman T. Malik (Strange Horizons Magazine, August 2014)

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” by Nick Mamatas (Searchers After Horror: New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic, ed. S.T. Joshi, Fedogan & Bremer)

“So Sharp That Blood Must Flow” by Sunny Moraine (Lightspeed Magazine #45, February 2014)

“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2014)

“Migration” by Karin Tidbeck (Fearsome Magics: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris)

“Hidden in the Alphabet” by Charles Wilkinson (Shadows & Tall Trees 2014, ed. Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications)

“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap (Tor.com, August 2014)

Edited to add: Undertow just announced that they have now acquired the rights to reprint The Ghoul by Jean Munro (translated by Edward Gauvin) which was previously published in Weird Fiction Review.

I Made a Mistake

A whole series of mistakes actually. My first mistake was to click on a story about the UKIPs. The UKIPs, for those who don't know, are a far right (borderline actual fascist) political party here in the UK who get an undue amount of attention from the media. I should have realised that any story about the UKIPs was going to annoy me. The next facet of mistakesville was that I clicked on a link about the UKIPs in the Daily Torygraph -a right wing bigoted shitrag that is still mourning the death of princess Diana. The FINAL part of my mistakeathon was to then go on to reading the comments on the article.

This upset me greatly and made me want to move somewhere slightly more civilised and hospitable to human life. The moon perhaps...

Thankfully a minor complaint on Crackbook caused the denizens of the blue band land to come to my aid, musically speaking with people posting some of the finest tunes from a more civilised time.



What follows is truly a fine sampling of some of the best music ever produced during the halcyon era that was 1989-1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r26krlXFmOI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JerirmFySU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqcAidqgqmU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCaqr84o3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtffv9bpB-U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cg2O4SsHQw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US9nVBuDHhg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGaX9lWBTMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_3dIyF-Gsw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Lv0wAvCHM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2up7su7CeMU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GypkmEUhHvQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrUgnrF0lrI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsfA-7ot2k4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK06Hl5DkrI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xef60FAN6Vk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLVpyPCEjxU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70gyew_PIrw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5O56vmE_s8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z6dxQVhE8o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dGj9h8ggCc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WyChNh_p-E

And suddenly all was right with the world. :D

 

In the Court of the Yellow King

I'm a huge fan of the mythos that has developed from Robert W Chambers' 1895 decadent collection The King in Yellow, more so even than I am a fan of Lovecraft's mythos. Lovecraft's mythos seems, to me at least, to be more codified. He produced, and inspired, a far larger body of work than Chambers' four stories and so there is a much larger canon for new tales to fit into. The Yellow Mythos, or Carcosa Mythos, of Chambers' creation however has very few things that are required in order for a tale to become a part of the mythos. There is the titular play and its locations and characters (Carcosa, Lake Hali, the black stars, the Tattered King, the Stranger, and so on) and the themes of madness and suicide as well as the prose style of the late 19th Century Decadent Movement. A story can incorporate some or all of these elements and still fit within the canon of the King in Yellow. This openness really appeals to me and so I am always keen to pick up any new collections of stories inspired by Chambers and his maddening play.



In the Court of the Yellow King was released recently by Celaeno Press in Japan, edited by Glynn Owen Barrass, and features some absolutely amazing authors including Wilum Pugmire, Robert M. Price, the late C.J. Henderson (to whom the book is dedicated), William Meikle and Pete Rawlik amongst others. It has a beautiful cover by Danielle Sera and a couple of internal plates by Eric York.

I'm going to be reading this collection, and the others that I was given for Christmas, over the next few weeks. I'll post micro-reviews of the stories here as I go.

Before I start though I should note that I find it really odd to see a King in Yellow collection without a story by Joe Pulver. Not that all Yellow books need to feature Joe but it just seems odd that one wouldn't. That said they do have an extremely fine selection of very talented authors here.

Table of Contents(Titles link to the reviews below)

These Harpies of Carcosa - W.H. Pugmire

The Viking in Yellow - Christine Morgan

Who Killed the King of Rock and Roll? - Edward Morris

Masque of the Queen - Stephen Mark Rainey

Grand Theft Hovercar - Jeffrey Thomas

The Girl with the Star-Stained Soul - Lucy A. Snyder

The Penumbra of Exquisite Foulness - Tim Curran

Yield - C.J. Henderson

Homeopathy - Greg Stolze

Bedlam in Yellow - William Meikle

A Jaundiced Light at the End - Brian M. Sammons

The Yellow Film - Gary McMahon

Lights Fade - Laurel Halbany

Future Imperfect - Glynn Owen Barrass

The Mask of Yellow Death - Robert M. Price

The Sepia Prints - Pete Rawlik

Nigredo - Cody Goodfellow

MonoChrome - T.E. Grau

 

These Harpies of Carcosa by W.H. Pugmire

Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire raises the curtain on this latest round of Carcosan tales with this brief tale that sets the stage for what is to follow. Through the medium of the dream inspired, and starving, artist we are introduced deftly to the trappings of the Yellow Mythos of R.W. Chambers. The twin moons and the dim lost city, black stars and the king and his daughters, madness, suicide and the Yellow Sign.

Pugmire's prose is as Lovecraftian as ever which works wonderfully to evoke the world of the artist and his narrating patron.

The Viking in Yellow by Christine Morgan

 I really quite liked this story, it places the origins of the tale related in the play in the 9th Century Viking expansion into the North of England(judging by the names of the human characters) and the sacking of various monasteries.

Who Killed the King of Rock n Roll? by Edward Morris

I'm afraid this story, which is set in the 1950s at the birth of rock'n'roll and conflates one King with another, didn't really do it for me. Which isn't to say that it's a bad story, it certainly isn't, I just found the 1950s American lingo a bit off putting at times.

Masque of the Queen by Stephen Mark Rainey

I loved this story. The tale of a young actress seeming to get the big break that she's been waiting for and the calamity that ensues when she truly becomes one with the character she is portraying. This was brilliantly executed and really gave me a shiver when the protagonist's fate became horribly clear.

Grand Theft Hovercar by Jeffrey Thomas

Imagine. Punktown is a horrible place to live; a far future dystopia on the planet Oasis. A melting pot of alien races the city is notorious for being riddled with crime. Now imagine that in Punktown there was a VR game, similar to our Grand Theft Auto, set in a replica of Punktown and that that game became infected by a yellow virus. That's this story and it is so good that I'm going to go and buy Jeffrey Thomas' Punktown books at the first chance I get.

The Girls With the Star Stained Soul by Lucy A. Snyder

Ghost Bath|Moonlover

Just discovered this amazing band from China on the cheerfully named Depressive Suicidal Black Metal page on Facebook. The full album is out in March but this first single from it, Golden Number, is 9 minutes of atmospheric awesomeness. :)

[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=1230631909 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=2ebd35 tracklist=false]

Snow Business Like Being Underemployed on a Day Like This!

OK, so it is properly doing my head in being as underemployed as I am (to the point that I'm actually starting to apply for jobs in Edinburgh despite that being a 3 hour round trip every day.) but despite that it does mean that I get to go and play in the snow when C is off to work and Little Ms. X is away to school. It also means that I get to take some absolutely lovely pictures of the local kirkyard in the snow.

[gallery type="circle" ids="923,924,925,926,927,928,929,930,931,932,933,934,935,936,937,938,939,940,941,942,943,944"]

 

Blood Will Have its Season | Joe Pulver

Two Pulver Posts in a row!

A couple of weeks ago I won a copy of Blood Will Have its Season by Joe Pulver through the regular book give away during the Lovecraft Ezine web show. It's a digital copy and as I don't have an ebook reader I've been dipping in and out of it on my phone -which makes for slow going as I'm not the biggest fan of reading on a screen. Last night I read the titular story and I just wanted to say HOLY FUCK NUTS BATMAN! That's probably one of the most disturbing short stories I've ever read in all ma puff! Seriously, seriously messed up. It's a story of The King in Yellow and I really can't say much more about it than that without giving anything away. Damn I do love Pulver's work.



Also: Content warning for sexual violence.

Pulver in Yellow

Joe Pulver, if you haven't already heard of him (and why the hell haven't you??), fuses beat, noir, pulp and high weird with startling skill. He's also the go to person when it comes to Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow stories. Joe has written god knows how many King in Yellow stories over the years --well I suppose he knows how many too, as does Mike Davis of the Lovecraft Ezine as Mike is currently preparing to put out volume one in a the collected Yellow stories of Joe Pulver! Excited? You could say so!

I find it most fitting that Joe's work is being collected this year as 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Robert W. Chambers as well as the 120th anniversary of the first publication of his collection The King in Yellow. I get the feeling this year is definitely going to have a maddening yellow hue to it. :D

Keep an eye on the Lovecraft Ezine for news on when the book is going to be released. I'm sure I'll probably be posting somewhat excitedly about it here too. :)

[caption id="attachment_898" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Cover design by Steve Santiago www.illustrator-steve.com/[/caption]

 

Now, Mike Davis, a quick message for you.

He Gave This Homeless Man $100 and Followed Him, What Happened Next Will...

...be none of your god damned business.

I've seen a number of videos going around Facebook and Twitter over the last couple of months where an individual will give a homeless person a sum of cash, usually $100, and they will then follow the person to see what they spend it on. The assumption being that they are going to spend it on alcohol of drugs. Then, I assume as I've never clicked on the links, there is some heart warming story where they spend it on someone else or on, shock horror, food or something. These videos really grind my gears because it is no one's business what a person spends their money on. If you buy your groceries is it your business what the person on the check out spends their cash on? For all you know they may be double dropping acid every night and smoking crack to get out of bed in the morning, it's none of your business though. The same goes for homeless people as for everyone else.

Added to this is that these videos help to cement the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Homeless person X is obviously deserving poor as they sent the money to their elderly mother (or whatever) whereas homeless person Y is undeserving (Boo! Hiss!) as they spent it on drink/drugs. It doesn't matter that the $100 meant that their lives were a little easier for a short time and that it meant that they had a brief reprieve from having to beg, borrow or steal in order to get through the day.

I was homeless and living on the streets for a number of years and got by through begging, busking and selling the Big Issue and if someone had given me £100 back then I would have been able to take a few days off trying to make money on the streets, and would therefore have been free'd from the threat of violence, the dirty looks, the random abuse and the condescension of the general public for a while. I wouldn't have spent my money on something that would gain the approval of these video makers, I would most likely have gotten shit faced drunk and probably bought a new pair of boots. And you know what? It wouldn't have been anyone's business but that would have drastically improved my life; even if for a short time.

Grrrr.

OK, rant over. Normal service to be resumed shortly...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="361"] The author in his glory days[/caption]