Black Gate

In response to my “Five Weeks of Frights” Hallowe’en post “Oz Meets the Scarecrow,” novelist and short-story writer extraordinaire Frederic S. Durbin sent me a thoughtful email, furthering an ongoing discussion of iconic Hallowe’en monsters. With his kind permission, I am reprinting it here.

Consider it a guest post from the writer of the wonderful Arkham House novel Dragonfly (a quintessential Hallowe’en read) and — one of my favorite Hallowe’en short stories — “The Bone Man,” which ran in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2007. Of course, he will also be familiar to regular Black Gate readers; his story “World’s End” was, according to John ONeill, “one of the most acclaimed stories in Black Gate 15.” Here’s Fred:

Fantastic post on the Scarecrow! That’s insightful — I’d been wondering what the next center-stage monster would be, and I would trust your impressions as one poised to see into various oncoming and now-arriving streams of the pop culture.

It’s interesting to ponder what about the classic monsters is at the center of the terror they hold for us.

1. The vampire is essentially Death. He comes from the graves. He feasts on the living. He gathers us unto himself.

2. The werewolf is the beast within us, the monster at the core of man. He is our fear of ourselves.

3. Frankenstein’s monster is our fear of our gifts, our behavior — what we might do when nothing is beyond our reach. We might steal fire from the sun. We might reanimate the dead. And the fire and the dead will bite us in the butts.

4. The zombie is our fear of illness. Alzheimer’s . . . global pandemic viruses . . . irreversible illness; it looks like our loved one, but it no longer is, and there’s no cure.

So what is the scarecrow? I think you’ve answered that question eloquently. Essentially, he’s the daddy of them all, the Last Boss, the overlord — because he is our fear of the unknown. I italicized that as an homage to Lovecraft, who told us what our greatest and strongest and oldest fear is.

Durbin went on to add a more personal note…

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Do I really need to sell you on an adventure tale that has a riverboat, zombies, fox-men, music as magic, and epic mayhem? No. I don’t. That story sells itself. But to further your interest in Mike Allen’s first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, have an earful…

Erzelle plays harp on a riverboat full of ghouls…and people who eat ghouls because they think it will make them immortal. Idiots. Her parents were murdered and Erzelle’s being fattened up for feasting on. But Olyssa changes all that. Olyssa becomes the Roland-Yoda-Mother-Master that young Erzelle needs.

The relationship is mutually beneficial. Olyssa and Erzelle play music together that can murder you. If you deserve it. So don’t deserve it, eh? Add in Olyssa’s epic familial quest and you have Mike Allen’s dark fantasy, The Black Fire Concerto.

If you didn’t know of Mike Allen before, GD shame on you. He is the editor of the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies and of the recently webified magazine, Mythic Delirium. He publishes (and writes) mad crazy good poetry and fiction.

Black Gate loves talking to people. Yep. We do.

*waves to all you nice people in the interwebs*

We especially love talking to wild writer poet metalhead types who wear highly visible hats and spend equal time inking their own work as publicizing the work of others.

As such, Black Gate grabbed Mike Allen for a GChat. Yes, a GCHAT! Isn’t technology fabulous? We admit, it’s hard to get steady wi-fi, as Black Gate’s summer headquarters is at Camp Arawak (cheap rent due to some unfortunate murders)…but GChat it was.*

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