Goth Chick News: Fractured Fairytales – A Review of Isis by Douglas Clegg

Goth Chick News: Fractured Fairytales – A Review of Isis by Douglas Clegg

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isisDon’t talk to a wolf in your Grandma’s nighty, don’t take an apple from a creepy old lady and when in doubt, trust the house mice.

These are the very important lessons taught to us by fairytales, normally animated by Walt Disney and all with happy endings. However, when you read Isis, you’ll learn one more bit of indispensable wisdom: sometimes dead is better, and knowledge can come too late for a happy ending.

This seems to be the year for returning to old-fashioned scares, the kind that get into your head, and Douglas Clegg has done a masterful job at taking the horror story back to the campfire, or in this case, the Victorian mansion. Isis is the story of what appears to be, on the surface, a perfect and wealthy 19th century British family complete with doting mother, war-hero father, and precocious but loving children tended to by domestic servants. Belerion Hall is not a frightening but instead postcard-like stone manor house surrounded by lush gardens in which Iris and her beloved brother Harvey pass enchanted, summer afternoons.

However, things are never quite as they appear.

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The Ship of Ishtar

The Ship of Ishtar

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ship-of-ishtar-piazoThe Ship of Ishtar
A. Merritt (Paizo Publishing, 2009)

I first read The Ship of Ishtar in a 1960s Avon paperback I found in a used bookstore in Phoenix. This copy is so brittle that I have to specially brace the book each time I open it or else the spine will separate like the San Andreas fault and the pages flutter down in a yellow autumn fall.

What I’m saying is . . . I’m extremely glad that Paizo Publishing has brought my favorite A. Merritt novel back into print in an edition that doesn’t make me afraid of the physical act of reading it. (Go buy it here.)

It’s strange that Abraham Merritt, one the biggest sellers in the history of speculative fiction, should need an introduction at all today, but sadly he does. Merritt was a journalist by vocation, the editor of The American Weekly, but his forays into writing ornate “scientific romances” starting with The Moon Pool in 1918–19 made him one of the most popular authors of the first half of the twentieth century. Today, he’s the realm of specialists, collectors, and his work is found in volumes from university publishers and small presses. In his introduction to Merritt’s breakthrough novel, The Moon Pool, Robert Silverberg pondered this turn of events that made Merritt obscure. What happened?

Silverberg offers up his own wonderings, ultimately finding the author’s eclipse inexplicable; but I think Merritt’s unusual mixture of two-fisted stalwart heroes in epic action with grandiose, mind-bending worlds of wonder painted in prose arabesques (and millions of exclamation marks!) makes him an author who doesn’t speak to mainstream genre readers today, even if he invented the clichés of countless contemporary fantasy authors. Clark Ashton Smith started as a specialty author and has remained there. Abraham Merritt was a mainstream writer who managed to Clark Ashton Smith himself after his death, ending up as a specialty author as well. Unfortunately, such is often the way of unusual talents. At least The Ship of Ishtar is now only a few clicks away for you to purchase and enjoy.

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Review Grab Bag

Review Grab Bag

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geneviere Now that I’m earning my living as a writer rather than fitting writing on the edges of my life, I’ve had time to catch up on some reading for fun; I’ve also been playing some more Heroscape with my kids. I’ve only been at this since the new year, but I’ve leapt into the saddle and spurred forward.

First up were two Warhammer omnibuses, Genevieve, by Jack Yeovil (pseudonym of Kim Newman), and Blackhearts, by Nathan Long. I’d started them over the last few years and gotten distracted and very busy. I recently picked up both and pretty much devoured them.

Being omnibuses, each is a compilation of several books and related short stories or novellas.  And being Warhammer fantasy, they’re both set in a sort of fantastic imperial Austria, where magic works, albeit darkly, and there are elves, dwarves, and other supernatural creatures — most especially the powers of chaos — both on the fringes of civilization and working against it from within. Each is somehow available and in print for around $10.00,  and each weighs in at around 760 pages.  Considering how good both books are, the price point for the value within is almost criminal.

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Short Fiction Review #23: McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Thirty Two

Short Fiction Review #23: McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Thirty Two

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8fa88b703af59a7fb42bf6ab2c911549McSweeney’s is a quirky quarterly  that  breaks conventional publishing boundaries with each issue devoted to a unique theme, both in terms of editorial content and physical packaging. For McSweeney’s 32, its last issue of 2009, ten contributors were tasked with writing tales specifically set somewhere in the world that take place fifteen years hence in 2024. According to the editors:

…we wanted to hear about where we’d be — to see what the world could look like when things had shifted just a bit , as it seems like they’re starting to, heading into the second decade of the third millennium…and a semitangible future at last seeming imminent.

For the most part, this is a future defined by natural disaster, frequently involving water. Serendipitously, I read this during a record snowfall in which I was homebound for four days before my driveway could be cleared out. While the state declared an emergency disaster, and unlike a lot of Virginians who lost power as well, it didn’t much matter to me that I couldn’t go anywhere since I was comfortable with reading material, heat, food and Internet access. Not Katrina, by any means, but “normal life” did shut down for a short time. In some of these stories, normal becomes not a return following a disaster, but is defined by the disaster.

There was a time when futurist stories were about how humanity overcame its limitations, both in terms of earthbound existence and its evolutionary defects (remember that what was supposed to be so “innovative” about the original Star Trek was that it depicted various races working together in harmony, forgetting that women of any race were stuck in miniskirts and mostly served as subserviant love interest for the captain). It would seem that from the perspective of the oughts of the 21st century, the future does not look particularly bright.

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A Look at the Blackwyrm Novella Series

A Look at the Blackwyrm Novella Series

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blackwyrmIn the age of fat fantasy series, doorstop thrillers, and historical epics it’s often impossible to find a short, satisfying read. Gone are the days of the 60,000 word science fiction novel, or even the novella doubles series Ace once put out. Long a standard of genre fiction — both the worlds of SF and of fantasy having a host of renowned novellas and short novels considered classics in their respective fields — these short, sharp stories are increasingly ignored for multi-book works of massive length. But, sometimes, it’s nice to get a book done in a day or two, it’s nice to explore an idea, premise, or setting without committing to dozens or hundreds of hours with it.

Which is  why I was very interested to see indie game company Blackwyrm’s new fiction line of novellas and short novel chapbooks. With an ambitious schedule of a book a month last year, Blackwyrm produced books ranging up and down the genre spectrum — from military fantasy to psychic thriller, from slipstream SF to  crossgenre mashup. In fact, all of the Blackwyrm titles I’ve seen do something a little bit different with genre tropes, and indeed they’ve billed their line as ‘Experimental Fiction.’

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LAST OF THE DRAGONS

LAST OF THE DRAGONS

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last-of-the-dragons2I don’t think I’ve gone to see a children’s play since my youngest brother was in a community church production of Grease. I’ve certainly never attended one with an eye out for analysis.

What would be the point? It’s children’s theatre. It’s so easy to dismiss with contempt, unless you’ve got a sparkly-eyed niece accompanying you, all gung-ho to see sword-fighting Princesses and golden Dragon puppets singing and dancing – which I didn’t. I had to guard against any immediately snarky but-I-studied-acting-in-college reactions.

See, I’ve got this new gig reviewing shows. This means free theatre. I love theatre. I love it. And I’m not the kind of girl who can afford this particular jones regularly – only when very special friends are in very special productions. So – free ticket? The word “Dragons” in the title? And, oh, hey – fantasy! I write this stuff! I read this stuff. I’m totally game.

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Clash of the Titans: The Alan Dean Foster Novelization

Clash of the Titans: The Alan Dean Foster Novelization

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clash-of-titans-coverUpdate: Alan Dean Foster has generously provided some comments of his own about the novelization. Please see the comments section.

2010: The Year We Remake Clash of the Titans.

I have never thought that re-making Ray Harryhausen’s final movie, the 1981 telling of the Myth of Perseus and Medusa, was a smart idea. I don’t, in principle, oppose re-makes (what good would that stance do in these strange times anyway?), but the original Clash of the Titans is a 100% auteur film, a movie that exists because Ray Harryhausen did the stop-motion effects. Harryhausen defines the movie. Any re-make would simply tackle an old myth with new—and not necessarily more interesting—effects to cash-in on Generation X name recognition. And then when I actually read the plot description of the 2010 Clash, I shook my head in mystification . . . this Hades vs. The Other Gods concept is antithetical to Greek Mythology. The original Clash alters many elements of Perseus’s story, but it still feels similar to how the Archaic and Classical Greeks must have imagined their Heroic Age.

A deeper reason that I’m doubtful of the re-tooled Clash of the Titans is the enormous personal investment I have in the original film. No other movie from my childhood has had such a direct effect on my later interests as an adult. Unlike many childhood loves, Clash of the Titans holds up perfectly today; the magic remains, and many scenes still give me shivers. Nostalgia alone does not carry the film; it can carry itself quite proudly.

But . . . I’m not here today to review the original Clash of the Titans. I’m planning to do an extensive analysis of it later this month, but for the first post of 2010 I’ve decided to take a different tactic as a warm-up and approach Clash of the Titans from a side road; a road rarely taken in film or book critiques: the movie novelization.

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Last Night I Finished This Crooked Way

Last Night I Finished This Crooked Way

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thiscrookedway
Last night I finished This Crooked Way, by James Enge.

I was on the train, halfway home. There is very little more irritating than finishing a book when you’re just halfway to your destination. Luckily, I had George R.R. Martin’s Fevre Dream in my backpack, the first two chapters of which were quite good, so I didn’t suffer long. And anyway, good as it was, I kept being drawn back to thoughts of This Crooked Way, connecting dots, remembering the heights, the depths, the scaffolding of each story, and how it made me laugh – out loud – so often that I surprised myself.

There are some books that make me read them aloud – mostly their dialogue, but also certain killer phrases or descriptions. It’s my actor’s training, I suppose. Plays are not meant to be read on the page; you have to voice them lest they lose vibrancy and dimension. Some books, my favorite kind of books, leap into my throat and start declaiming themselves. And it doesn’t matter if I’m on a public train, or tromping to work in the snow with my fingers freezing, because I’ve left off my gloves, because it’s hard to turn pages with gloves on – none of that matters, because the words are just that important.

And This Crooked Way is like that.

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