Tuesday 8 October 2024

#OcTBRChallenge 2024: an A to Z of books and audiobooks

I always look forward to #OcTBRChallenge, where the idea is to clear as many books from your TBR list as possible in a month. I like to slice my collection a different way each year, and this time I'm reading as many of my short books as I can in A to Z order. The first one I finished was Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix, about a family plagued by an actual monster under the bed.

B is for Bad Machinery, Vol. 10: The Case of the Severed Alliance, by John Allison. Her friendship with Shauna on the rocks, Lottie volunteers to work at a local newspaper. She discovers that the Chamber of Commerce is making blood sacrifices! Smashing, but sadly the last volume.

C is for Claudine à Paris by Colette, beautifully read by Isabelle Carré. Finished this, but have to admit I didn't follow it. I've been trying to improve my ear for French, and listening to this definitely helped, but I'm still picking out words and phrases rather than following the story. I listened to some of it with Android captions on, but it defeated the point since I just started reading instead of listening. If I listen to another French audiobook, I'll read a plot summary beforehand, so that I have some kind of framework to drop the bits I understand into, or maybe listen to a book I already know well.

D is for Doctor Who: UNIT Dominion by Nicholas Briggs and Jason Arnopp. As UNIT fends off more interdimensional incursions than the Evangelions, two Doctors turn up to help. One is a Scottish chap with an umbrella, the other is a haughty future Doctor, played by Alex McQueen…

E is for Earthdivers: Kill Columbus, volume 1 in a series written by horror author Stephen Graham Jones, art by Davide Gianfelice. In 2112, the native American survivors of an apocalypse try to fix things with time travel, by murdering Columbus before he reached their continent.

F is for Forager, a short graphic novel by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Steven Cummings. A couple on the rocks take their daughter on a spaceship to Mars, where she makes contact with something alien! Feels like a slightly more rushed version of ace Leo books like Betelgeuse or Aldebaran.

G is for Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice, an entertaining Big Finish Doctor Who spin-off by Alan Barnes, starring four of Tom Baker's companions: the second Romana, the first and second K9s, and the one and only Leela. In this story Romana, now President of Gallifrey, gives Leela a mission.

H is for How It Unfolds by James S.A. Corey, both of him: a short ebook with more ideas than most books ten times the size. It's about Roy, who takes part in an audacious colonisation project. Given how much I loved this, I should probably read the Expanse books.

I is for I'm Standing on a Million Lives, Vol. 1, a manga book by Naoki Yamakawa, with art by Akinari Nao, translated by Christine Dashiell. Stories of Japanese teenagers transported to an RPG game world are ten a penny, but its exploration of the game's mechanics is quite fun.

J is for Jeremiah Bourne in Time, a fun four-part Big Finish audio drama written by Nigel Planer. Jerry time-travels like Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time, by focusing on the details. His first accidental trip is to 1910, where he encounters various oddballs played by a splendid cast.

K is for Kounodori: Dr Stork, Vol. 1, by You Suzunoki, a genuinely moving manga book about a doctor who moonlights as an acclaimed and mysterious concert pianist. He cuts performances short when his patients go into labour. I got about 200 of these Kodansha books in a free giveaway.

L is for Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende, about a young couple found curled up asleep on the floor of a supposedly secure museum, first thing in the morning. I like how Amazon First Reads now includes some shorter ebooks – this fab fantasy story was a March 2024 selection.

M is for The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens, where he puts the reputation of this holiest of scammers under the microscope and takes a scalpel to it. Really is shocking to read of her heartless treatment of the sick and dying.

N is for Nameless by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, in which a psychic fights god, who turns out to be an otherdimensional alien imprisoned in an asteroid that's hurtling our way. The art is fantastic throughout, but it felt like the writer's magical beliefs rather swamped the story.

O is for One, Vol. 1: Just One Breath, by Sylvain Cordurie and Zivorad Radivojevic, also about a psychic, this time a "bloodcog" called on to investigate why the world is suddenly at peace. I read a lot of this book while the adverts were on during Rings of Power!

P is for Pay the Ghost by Tim Lebbon. A little girl goes missing and a year later her mum returns, sick and wasted away to nothing, ruined by a year of searching in supernatural territory, needing dad's help. I haven't seen the film, but it sounds like it left out some of the best stuff from the book.

Q is for Quarry's Cut by Max Allan Collins. When a former colleague kills a friend, the erstwhile hitman hunts him to an adult film shoot at a ski lodge. I adored Stefan Rudnicki's readings of other Quarry books, but Christopher Kipiniak's grimmer version here is great too.

R is for The River and the World Remade by E. Lily Yu. In a world of permanent flooding, some moved inland, others have floating homes woven from plastic bags and styrofoam; in this ace story a house-weaver battles a storm to save a young rascal from his own folly.

S is for Stone Ovaries and Bowling Balls Trapped in Beautiful Prodigy World, a title that left little room for much else in my tweet about it! An outrageous, hilarious unsplatterpunk tale by Douglas J. Ogurek, full of unhinged, profane wordplay, like Oscar Wilde writing for Rik Mayall. And it's hilariously read by J James – a handful of glitches can be forgiven on what must have been a very challenging production. I'm biased, obviously – Douglas has probably contributed to more TQF issues than me at this point! – but I was laughing out loud throughout.

T is for Taproot, collecting and expanding a webcomic by Keezy Young. A gay ghost has a crush on a bisexual gardener, whose efforts to keep his plants alive unwittingly cross the line into necromancy! The odd pacing reflects its webcomic origins, but it's sweet and the art is lovely.

U is for Undercover by Tamsyn Muir, a twisty-turny urban fantasy story about a tough woman hired to bodyguard a gangster's ghoul, read by Susan Dalian. One of those nice books where if you borrow the ebook in Prime Reading, you can claim the audiobook to keep for good in Audible.

V is for Vampire Dormitory, Vol. 1, by Ema Tōyama, a gay vampire romance manga book very much aimed at female readers, to the point that one of the boys is secretly female and binding her breasts. Has the cute idea that vampires seduce humans because love makes our blood sweeter.

W is for Walking to Aldebaran, the audiobook jauntily read by the author, Adrian Tchaikovsky. British astronaut Gary Rendell is lost in the Crypts, a mysterious interplanetary nexus where various aliens try to survive among the detritus of each other's failed expeditions, and time gets weird.

X is for XIII Mystery, Vol. 6: Billy Stockton, by S. Cuzor and L.F. Bollee, the life story of a supporting character from volume 3 of the main XIII series. It's misery on top of misery as a child who loses his parents in a plane crash grows up to inflict misery on others in turn.

Y is for The Year of Magical Thinking, the audiobook version of a one-woman play by Joan Didion, based on her memoir of the year that followed her husband's death, and led up to her daughter's death, performed by Vanessa Redgrave. I gave the littler Theakers a big hug after this.

Z is for Zodiac Starforce, Vol. 2: Cries of the Fire Prince, written by Kevin Panetta, art by Paulina Ganucheau. A defeated enemy is so desperate for revenge on Zodiac Starforce that she tries to summon a demon goddess, but gets instead the goddess's pet dancer.

A to Z complete!

Friday 4 October 2024

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Head of Zeus) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #272 (September–October 2017).

It is the year 2454, and the Seven-Ten lists are about to be published. Produced by the most significant newspaper of each hive, these lists rank the ten most important people in the world. But the list of the Black Sakura has been stolen and taken to the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’house, apparently with the help of the so-called Canner device, which conceals a traveller's identity. Whoever did this seems to have several purposes in mind, and knows exactly what secrets they want brought into the light.

Monday 30 September 2024

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #77: Unsplatterpunk! 7 is now out in paperback and ebook!

free epub | free pdf | print UK | print USA | Kindle UK | Kindle US

Welcome to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #77: Unsplatterpunk! 7, edited by Douglas J. Ogurek.

The Good News According to Gore

Get ready to gag, cringe and squirm. Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction erupts with yet another geyser of violence and grossness in this seventh instalment in the UNSPLATTERPUNK! smearies. These six tales, covering everything from a nightclub basement’s revolting contents to bone-crushing brawls atop a mesa, inject a positive message into the characteristic splatterpunk barbarity and filth.

A girl with aspirations of escaping her farming town gives a dilapidated scarecrow a makeover. Alternative music brings comfort to a young woman undergoing cruel experiments. The meaning of a phrase inspired by a nineteenth century event mutates from enigmatic to vile to hopeful. In a disgusting retelling of the mice falling into cream parable, two men find themselves stuck in fluid. Hint: it’s not milk. An ancient stranger unleashes debauchery among the self-absorbed patrons at an upscale bar. Kung Fu Sue returns from her last adventure to break, chop, snap and tear her way through the most unsavoury adversaries.

The stories that follow deliver a heaping portion of broken spines, bashed in skulls and severed flesh steeped in a revolting soup of bodily expulsions. When you emerge from it… if you emerge from it… expect to feel besmirched and enlightened.

The cover art is by Edward Villanova. In the Quarterly Review, Douglas Ogurek and Stephen Theaker look at Bludgeon Tools: Splatterpunk Anthology, edited by K. Trap Jones, Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, 47 by Walter Mosley, Hell to Pay by Matthew Hughes, The Night Parade by Ronald Malfi, Positive by David Wellington, Stitches by Hirokatsu Kihara and Junji Ito, and Stray Pilot by Douglas Thompson, plus, in the film and television sections, Boy Kills World, Civil War, Geethanjali Malli Vachindi, Halloween Ends, IF, Immaculate and Twisted Metal, Series 1.


Here are the virtuous contributors to this issue.

Brett Petersen is the author of The Parasite From Proto Space & Other Stories, drummer for alt-rock group The Dionysus Effect and copyeditor for CLASH Books. He is also a competent visual artist and tarot reader and is proudly autistic. He enjoys Japanese role-playing video games such as Xenoblade and the Trails series, and he lives just outside of Albany, New York. Everything he does can be found at linktr.ee/brettpetersen.

Bryan Miller is a writer and performer based out of Minnesota. His fiction has appeared in The Drabblecast, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Shadowy Natures: Stories of Psychological Horror, The Monsters We Forgot Part 1, and more than a dozen other journals and anthologies. His work has been featured on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, SiriusXM, the comedy special Panic Room, and two comedy albums: 2020 and All the New Ugly People.

Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (transgressive/gory/gross/violent subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World … One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. Ogurek also guest-edits the wildly unpopular UNSPLATTERPUNK! “smearies”, published by Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. These anthologies are unavailable at your library and despised by your mother. Ogurek reviews films and fiction for that same magazine.

Edward Villanova is a horror author, podcaster and content creator who dabbles in horror-themed visual art, and provides the cover art for this issue. He is inspired by the works of Zdzisław Beksiński and Junji Ito, preferring to focus on the implications of a scene depicted more so than the subject of the artwork. He currently resides in Dallas, Texas and is an active member of the Sicilian community there.

Harris Coverley, a returning UNSPLATTERPUNK! contributor, has had more than a hundred short stories appear in publications such as Penumbra, Hypnos, JOURN-E and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books). He has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.

Pip Pinkerton was born and raised in Oakdale, Minnesota. Pip is a wanderer and a dreamer. He loves writing short stories, poetry and screenplays. A former theatre student and current guitar player, Pip co-manages a record shop. When he is not writing or jamming, he is spending time with his trusty rottweiler, Shrimp. Pip’s work appears in Monstrous Femme, and he has a story forthcoming on HorrorAddicts.net.

v.f. thompson is just compost in training. She can be found clowning around Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is the editor of Trans Rites: An Anthology of Genderfucked Horror, and her work may also be found in Monster Lairs from Dark Matter Ink, The Crawling Moon from Neon Hemlock Press, The Hard Times, and a smattering of other publications. Her play, Taproot, is set to be performed as part of Queer Theatre Kalamazoo’s upcoming 2024–25 season.

While Dafydd Rhys Hopcyn-Kitchener’s day job is in accountancy, writing is his real passion. He is a fan of short, sharp page-turners, and he writes to entertain. Check out his Westerns (published by The Crowood Press), his romantic novel Stranger from the Sea (published by DC Thomson) and his self-published horrors.


As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between V: The Ecological Weird – Rafe McGregor

The fifth of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post introduces the ecological weird.

 

New Weird? 

When I introduced the weird tale as originating in Gothic Romanticism in part I, I acknowledged that it was a contested claim and there is a similar dispute about the relationship between the new weird and the weird tale (or old weird). ‘New Weird’ was coined by M. John Harrison (b.1945), an author, editor, and critic associated with the New Wave of science fiction in the nineteen sixties and seventies. There are claims that the coinage first appeared in Harrison’s introduction to China Miéville’s (b.1972, pictured) The Tain (2002) and in an internet forum (where the date is usually given as 2003), but regardless of its precise source, Benjamin Noys and Timothy Murphy note that the term was initially used to refer exclusively to the work of Miéville (who rejected the label). Those who take Miéville to have inaugurated the new weird tale usually identify his Perdido Street Station (2000) as the first in the genre, which was established with the publication of the rest of the Bas-lag Trilogy, The Scar (2002) and Iron Council (2004). Literary critic S.T. Joshi, who has been almost single-handedly responsible for contemporary critical and academic interest in both H.P. Lovecraft and weird fiction also rejects the term, preferring ‘modern weird tale’. Joshi argues that there was no break between the old and new (and no in-between, as I suggest throughout this series), but that later authors simply breathed new life into the genre perfected by Lovecraft.

Part of the process of revitalisation described by Joshi involved the publication of successful weird novels. Lovecraft’s longest narrative was At the Mountains of Madness (serialised in Astounding Stories in February, March, and April 1936), which is approximately forty thousand words long, and his next longest The Shadow over Innsmouth (first published as a novella with a print run of two hundred in 1936 and then posthumously abridged for the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales), which is approximately twenty-seven thousand words long, placing both at the short end of the novella format. Joshi maintains that the weird tale is essentially a tale – i.e., a short story – and I agree that horror fiction in general is much better suited to the short format (and crime fiction to the novella format). The reinvigoration of the weird tale after 1940 saw the publication of novel-length weird tales such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), Ramsay Campbell’s Incarnate (1983), T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies (1984), and Clive Barker’s Weaveworld (1987). Crucially for Joshi, these exemplary weird novels have nothing in common (beyond, presumably, meeting the criteria for his definition of weird fiction), which is why he is reluctant to admit the birth of a new genre or even a transformation of the original genre. Roger Luckhurst prefers the idea of a Lovecraftian revival rather than a new weird, drawing particular attention to the work of Caitlín R. Kiernan (whom I discussed in part II).


Tales of the City?

Jeff VanderMeer (b.1968, pictured), who is one of the three authors most often associated with the new weird – along with Miéville and Kelly Link (b.1969, pictured) – favours the term and refers to Perdido Street Station as the first ‘commercially acceptable’ new weird tale (in virtue of its length). VanderMeer defines the new weird as urban speculative fiction that is based on complex real-world models, employs elements of the surreal or transgressive, and is acutely (if not overtly) aware of the politics of the modern world. In this sense, it is both a continuation and transformation of the weird tale’s pursuit of an abstruse and possibly even unattainable understanding of the supra-natural and the un-rational. Noys and Murphy regard the new weird as indicative of precisely such a transformation, although they trace it beyond Miéville to the nineteen eighties, locating its origin in the work of Thomas Ligotti, Barker, and Brian Evenson. Like me (see part II), they foreground Ligotti’s contribution, claiming that he ‘formulated a new and desolate conception of a fundamentally chaotic universe’. James Machin also supports the classification, but pushes the origins back further still, to New Wave science fiction, which began in the nineteen sixties, was characterised by a self-conscious appropriation of literary modernism, and was associated with the work of Michael Moorcock, Harrison, Harlan Ellison, J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany, and Roger Zelazny.

Where, then, does this leave us…new or not, urban or not, Miéville or more? My view is that Noys, Murphy, VanderMeer, and Joshi are right to foreground the relatively recent development of the novel format in weird fiction. Without it, the genre is unlikely to survive much longer in the twenty-first century and there are unlikely to be repeats of 2018, for example, when three contemporary weird tales appeared on the big and small screen (discussed in my review of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water). Which is not to belittle the wonderful short stories of authors like Link and Sarah Monette – the genre needs both formats. With that in mind, however, there has been an overemphasis on Miéville’s work in discussions of the new weird because he prefers the novel format and often writes very long novels – as opposed to VanderMeer’s, which are much shorter, and Link, who remains faithful to the short story. The focus on Miéville at the expense of others has also created the overemphasis on the urban to which VanderMeer falls foul in defining the new weird. Miéville’s predilection for the urban – in King Rat (1998), the Bas-lag Trilogy (2000-2004), Un Lun Dun (2007), The City & the City (2009), The Last Days of New Paris (2016), and other stories – has produced a misleading association of genre and setting. The urban is more closely aligned with the steampunk genre and the Bas-lag Trilogy more exemplary of that genre than of weird fiction (although the two are quite obviously related), perhaps even its most accomplished novels after William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine (1990). 

Weird Ecology?

Miéville is nonetheless rightly identified as one of the best authors of weird fiction in the twenty-first century, with his initial contribution being King Rat rather than Perdido Street Station. There is of course some irony in VanderMeer defining the new weird in terms of urban settings and themes because it was precisely his work – specifically, his Southern Reach Trilogy – which demonstrated that whether or not the new weird was new, it could function as well if not better in rural settings and with biological themes. Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance were all published in 2014, the cinematic adaptation of Annihilation (directed by Alex Garland) was released by Paramount Pictures and Netflix in 2018, and (as with so many successful trilogies) the Southern Reach will become a quartet with the publication of Absolution next month. VanderMeer’s well-deserved success has, in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century, shifted the initial emphasis on the urban to the rural and highlighted links to what is variously called eco-fiction, cli-fi, or climate change fiction, a category of science fiction (and, perhaps, literature) that probably began with Jules Verne’s Sans dessus dessous (1889, translated as The Purchase of the North Pole). VanderMeer’s bridging of the divide between eco-fiction and weird fiction has led critics to speak of his ecologically minded weird fiction and ‘weird ecology’, to describe him as the weird Thoreau, and to associate his work with global weirding.

Although I shall discuss the precursors to and origins of the Southern Reach Trilogy in more detail in part VI, I want to recommend two things here that will conclude my answers to the questions raised earlier. First, that the ‘new weird’ and its affiliation with Miéville and the urban be retired in favour of the ecological weird. If weird fiction (and, indeed, literature) is to, in VanderMeer’s words, remain acutely aware of the politics of the modern world, then it must reflect on the conditions of its own production in the Anthropocene and on the kind of issues I discussed in my essay on climate change culture, published in TQF76 in April. This does not restrict the category to stories with a rural setting or biological themes and reinforces the value of Miéville’s King Rat, which is outstanding ecological weird fiction. Replacing ‘new weird’ with ‘ecological weird’ also reveals what seems to me to be a clearer origin of the transformation of the weird tale, which I locate in Ballard’s four prototypical climate fiction novellas: The Wind from Nowhere (1961), The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World. Ballard was dismissive of The Wind from Nowhere, but aside from being his first published novella, Kate Marshall makes a convincing case for it anticipating what I am calling the ecological weird and what she calls novels by aliens. Second, as with occult detective fiction, the ecological weird is a category within weird fiction and, as such, requires only a minor revision of my previous definition: the ecological weird is philosophical in virtue of presenting or representing a fully-fledged and fleshed-out worldview, generically hybrid in character, and foregrounds the alienation within ourselves. It is to this (self-)alienation that I turn in part VI.

 

Recommended Reading

Fiction

China Miéville, King Rat, Macmillan (1998).

Kelly Link, Get in Trouble: Stories, Canongate Books (2015).

Jeff VanderMeer, Finch: A Novel, Underland Press (2009).

Nonfiction

Jeff VanderMeer, The New Weird: ‘It’s Alive?’, The New Weird, Tachyon Publications (2008).

S.T. Joshi, The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction, McFarland & Company (2001).

M. John Harrison, Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir, Serpent’s Tail (2023).

Friday 27 September 2024

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF64 (March 2019).

A rogue security bot believes itself to have been responsible for a massacre, and is determined to find out the truth of the matter. Like Dumarest’s search for Earth, this seems to be an efficient way of thrusting the protagonist into a series of otherwise unrelated adventures. In this book, having barely survived its experiences in All Systems Red and left the comfort of its armour behind, the rather neurotic SecUnit hops on an unmanned research vessel heading the right way. The vessel’s piloting construct is much more intelligent than expected, but the ART, as the SecUnit calls it (short for Asshole Research Transport), comes to share the SecUnit’s love of trashy serials like Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, and then takes an active interest in the SecUnit’s mission. They work together on both the cover mission (a contract to protect a group of polyamorous techs whose research has been stolen) and the covert mission (visiting the scene of the massacre). Their friendship is very sweet, and their combined abilities mean that they meet every challenge in an interesting and novel way. The novella leaves plenty of mysteries in the air, about the SecUnit and its new, surprisingly powerful buddy, so there’s more to look forward to, but it tells a good self-contained story. We’re used to utterly competent heroes in science fiction, and the SecUnit is definitely that when it comes to a fight, very enjoyably so, but it is also intensely anxious in social situations: every great hero must have a weakness. It’s all very entertaining. Stephen Theaker ****

Tuesday 24 September 2024

The Super Mario Bros. Movie | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Beloved brothers and unconventional stars: animated film bridges generations of gamers and gives second fiddle a chance to shine.

Poor Luigi – he’s not as brave, smart or popular as his brother Mario. After all, it’s always been Super Mario Bros… not Super Luigi Bros. Initially, the 2023 animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie, directed by Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic and others, continues the disparity. Luigi totes the heavy plumbing equipment behind Mario. A flashback shows a boy Mario coming to Luigi’s defence when the latter gets picked on. However, this film also tantalises the viewer with the prospect of Mario’s tall, awkward, skinny green shadow coming into his own.

Against the advice of family members, the brothers have given up a cushy demolition job to pursue their dream by opening a plumbing business in Brooklyn. When they inadvertently get sucked into a different universe, Mario (Chris Pratt) gets transported to a vibrant kingdom with giant mushrooms, toad figures and the beautiful Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). Luigi (Charlie Day) ends up in a dark wasteland full of threats. And of course, Luigi doesn’t have nearly as much screen time as Mario. 

Mario and Princess Peach set out to save Luigi and stop Bowser (Jack Black) from taking over this universe. This brutish, fire-breathing turtle thinks the princess will marry him because he stole a magical star that gives him power. It’s a reasonable assumption, but this is a children’s movie – the princess has zero interest in Bowser. Despite his spikes, horns and heavy-metal headquarters, Bowser comes out of his shell when alone. This is best exemplified in a melodramatic albeit entertaining piano-accompanied ballad (highlighted by Blackesque vocal antics) in which huge images of the princess’s head float in the background. 

The film makes up for its rudimentary plot (i.e. stop the bad guy and save Luigi) with stunning animation (including a chase scene that takes place on a rainbow and a reckless first-person POV ride), contemporary dialogue, humour and plenty of action. Despite her princessy wardrobe replete with pink dress and tiara, Princess Peach surprises with un-princesslike behaviour. She is a woman of action, and her conversations with Mario are rapid and unsentimental. 

Mario also encounters another classic video game character: Donkey Kong. Though the two have an adversarial relationship, they learn that they have a similar motivation. A favourite minor character is an imprisoned star whose hopeless statements contrast with its echoing, high-pitched vocals, joyous movements and bright blue light.

Perhaps the film’s greatest asset is its use of the Super Mario Bros. imagery that links generations of video game players: green pipe portals, colourful spotted mushrooms, floating platforms, lava and many others. 

Mario’s biggest strength (or is it a weakness?) is that he doesn’t know when to quit. Much of the film involves him and his allies taking a beating, then hitting the power-up squares and eating the mushrooms they provide to obtain a temporary special power: getting bigger and stronger, transforming into some kind of animal hybrid, and sometimes mutating into something less desirable. It’s the underdog turned powerhouse that kids have enjoyed since Popeye popped his first can of spinach. And surely there’s a part of us as adults that love it as well. Douglas J. Ogurek ****

Friday 20 September 2024

Everything Belongs to the Future, by Laurie Penny (Tordotcom) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF65 (December 2019).

Close to the end of the twenty-first century, things don’t seem to have changed a great deal in the UK. The seventeenth Halo game is out, the Mercury Music Prize is still running, and economic inequality is still a serious problem. The one big difference is that those with the necessary wealth or privilege can “fix”: take drugs to stop the progression of ageing.

Monday 16 September 2024

Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between IV: Detecting the World-Without-Us – Rafe McGregor

 

The fourth of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post introduces the world-without-us.

 


Search and Solve

In part III, I defined occult detective fiction as subgenre of weird fiction and suggested that the easiest way to understand it was as stories that place a detective character in a supernatural setting. The detective can be identical to a crime fiction detective, such as Detective John Hobbes (played by Denzel Washington) in Gregory Hoblit’s Fallen, or a crime fiction detective with esoteric knowledge, heightened sensitivity to the supernatural, or both, such as Sarah Monette’s (b.1974 and also writes under the penname Katherine Addison, pictured) Kyle Murchison Booth. The detective may have some supernatural powers himself, such as Mike Carey’s Felix Castor, or be a supernatural being, such as Cassandra Khaw’s John Persons. The setting can similarly be almost – but never actually – identical to the real world, as in Mark Valentine and John Howard’s Connoisseur, or one in which the illusion of the everyday conceals a supernatural reality, as in ABC and Showtime’s Twin Peaks (1990-2017). Alternatively, the setting can be one in which the supernatural is a ubiquitous to the real world, as in David Tallerman’s Detective Fièvre, or a different world entirely, itself a speculative fiction, as in Simon Kurt Unsworth’s Hell in his Thomas Fool series. The combination of a more or less realistic detective with a less or more supernatural setting provides the subgenre with its great variety, from Kat Richardson’s Greywalker (2006-2022) to the Millers’ Philosopher Rex (2010) to Fox’s Sleepy Hollow (2013-2017) to Brian Taylor’s Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024). Regardless of the variations in detective protagonist and occult world employed by authors, studios, and directors, occult detective stories usually follow the plot structure associated with detective fiction, which involves that protagonist either searching for a murderer or searching for a missing person (one of the reasons Monette’s Kyle Murchison Booth stories are so striking is that she rarely deploys either).

In explaining the difficulty of creating compelling occult detective fiction in part III, I noted that detective fiction stages the tension between the sequence of events that underpin the narrative and the story that we read or watch. Cultural critic Fredric Jameson (b.1934) takes this tension further, describing the structure of detective stories in terms of two complementary formal devices: the first, which he refers to as temporal or objective, is the solution to the murder or disappearance; the second, which he refers to as spatial or subjective, is the search itself. For Jameson, the search is more significant than the solution and is the focal point for authors because they need to delay the solution as long as plausibly possible (otherwise all murder mysteries would be short stories or television episodes). In combining sequence of events and story, solution and search, the creators of occult detective fiction have a little more flexibility than their crime fiction counterparts and the protagonist-driven-plot can take one of three forms. Detectives are standardly employed to investigate someone else, which is also true of occult detectives. In Paul Crilley’s Poison City (2016), for example, Lieutenant Gideon Tau of the South African Police Service’s Delphic Division is called to investigate the murder of a ramanga, a low-level vampire. The first variation is two detectives investigating one another, which is not necessarily restricted to the work of the occult detective, but easier to achieve with an occult element. In the first season of Amazon Prime Video’s Carnival Row (2019), Inspector Rycroft Philostrate (played by Orlando Bloom) and Piety Breakspear (played by Indira Varma), the Chancellor’s wife, investigate a murder and missing person’s case respectively. Unbeknown to one another, Breakspear is the murderer Philostrate is seeking and Philostrate the missing person Breakspear is seeking (‘missing’ because of his identity as the Chancellor’s natural son). The second variation is the detective investigating herself, a paradox which is almost impossible to represent without an occult element. Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987) is a rare and rich success: private investigator Harry Angel (played by Mickey Rourke) is hired to find a missing person, only to discover that he himself is that person (though the plot is considerably more complex, the starting point is that Angel has amnesia following a war injury).


Horror of Philosophy

If the occult detective story stages a series of tensions – rationality and extra rationality, sequence and story, solution and search – but is also, in virtue of being first and foremost a weird tale, essentially rather than accidentally philosophical, the obvious question is the purpose to which all of these carefully curated tensions are put. My definition of weird fiction in part II and, by extension, of occult detective fiction in part III, was that it typically foregrounds the difference between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is. Occult detective fiction explores this difference in its search and grapples with what philosopher Eugene Thacker (year of birth unavailable, but appointed to his first academic position in 2000, pictured) calls the world-without-us in the Horror of Philosophy, a trilogy of short nonfiction. His overarching aim is to first introduce the concept of the world-without-us and then demonstrate that supernatural horror is better equipped to explore that concept than traditional philosophy. As such, In the Dust of This Planet (2011) is primarily focused on conceptualising the world-without-us, which is an articulation of human limitations and contrasted with two related concepts, the world-for-us and the world-in-itself. Starry Speculative Corpse (2014) focuses on reading works of philosophy as if they were horror fiction, which reveals philosophy as a self-defeating activity, undermining its own foundations and paralysing its own thinking. Tentacles Longer Than Night (2015) reverses direction, focusing on reading horror fiction as if it was philosophy. Thacker refines his concern with supernatural horror to the cosmic horror that H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937, pictured) popularised, analysing his apparent futilitarianism to identify the indifferentism at the core of his weird tales. Indifferentism provides the best possible approximation and appropriation of the world-without-us and horror thus succeeds where philosophy fails.

The best way to approach the world-without-us, which will also be of use in explaining Jacques Lacan’s metapsychology in part VI, is to start with philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) transcendental idealism. Kant differentiates between appearances on the one hand and things in themselves on the other. Appearances constitute subjective reality (the reality of the perceiver) and things in themselves objective reality. Transcendental idealism is an epistemological position maintaining that humans only ever gain access to the phenomenal world of appearances (the world of human experience) and that the noumenal world (the world as it is) remains necessarily inaccessible. What is important to recognise is that Kant’s epistemology is neither pessimistic nor nihilistic. The technological advances made by humanity evince a significant overlap between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds (much like that mentioned in part II), but no scientist (or priest or artist) can make a claim to truth beyond the phenomenal. Thacker begins with the world-for-us, abbreviated to World, which is ‘the world that we, as human beings, interpret and give meaning to, the world that we relate to or feel alienated from, the world that we are at once a part of and that is also separate from the human.’ When the World ‘resists, or ignores our attempts to mold it into the world-for-us’, we conceive of it as the world-in-itself or Earth and the parallels between World and phenomena and Earth and noumena are obvious. Like noumena, Earth is a paradoxical concept – because as soon as we conceptualise it, we transform it into the world-for-us.

 

World, Earth, and Planet

Thacker’s third and most significant concept is the world-without-us, or Planet, an attempt to articulate human limitations while avoiding the paradox of trying to comprehend the Earth from a human perspective (and thus transforming it into World). He describes it as ‘the subtraction of the human from the world.’ The Planet and the Earth are both inaccessible to humanity, but where the Earth coexists with the World, the Planet does not. Thacker’s idea is that the Planet is a way of conceiving of the Earth without collapsing it into the World. What Thacker is not doing is extending Kant’s epistemology from two parts to three, from phenomena and noumena to World, Earth, and Planet. He is, rather, replacing the original dichotomy with a novel one, World and Planet. The Planet is a negative concept – the subtraction of the human – and will remain after the human, although it has also preceded and been contemporaneous to and with the human. In the Anthropocene, the age of humanity, the Planet is a more useful concept than noumena and Thacker describes his taxonomy as conceptualising humanity’s home in an era where global climate change has raised the possibility of our extinction. The overarching thesis of his trilogy is that horror fiction (and weird fiction in particular) provides the best exploration of the world-without-us (or at least a much better one than philosophy does).

Drawing on the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976, mentioned in part I in connection with the unhomely), Jameson regards the tension between the solution and the search in detective fiction as staging, enacting, or dramatizing the rift between World and Earth (Thacker’s terminology is a development of Heidegger’s). I think a good way of understanding the philosophical element of occult detective fiction is as staging, enacting, or dramatizing of the rift between World and Planet. In one sense this is problematic because Thacker’s whole effort in replacing noumena with Planet is directed at articulating the fact that the latter cannot co-exist with the World and can never be apprehended or appropriated by humanity – whether by science, religion, philosophy, or art. On the other hand, approaching occult detective fiction in this way draws attention to its own limits, to the essential incompatibility of the detective as the instrument of reason and the supernatural as defiant of reason. The World does not, in Heidegger’s terms, ground itself on the Planet nor does the Planet jut through the World. Planet is a thingness of things (noumena) that resists assimilation, remains opaque, and can only be grasped as an absence of World. As opposed to the relation between World and Earth, the absence of a relation between World and Planet means that the glimpse of irreconcilability is a glimpse of nothingness, subtraction, and absence. It is this glimpse – of what is essentially rather than accidentally unknown – that fuels a fear more compelling than frightening objects, as Lovecraft was well aware, opening his tour de force, Supernatural Horror in Literature (first published in The Recluse in 1927) with: ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.’

 

Recommended Reading & Viewing

Fiction

Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom, Tor.com (2016).

Carnival Row, Season 1, Amazon Prime Video (2019).

Angel Heart, directed by Alan Parker, Tri-Star Pictures (1987).

Nonfiction

Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of this Planet, Zer0 Books (2011).

Rafe McGregor, The Complex Art of Murder, Journal of Aesthetic Education (2022).

Robert H. Waugh, Lovecraft’s Rats and Doyle’s Hound: A Study in Reason and Madness, Lovecraft Annual 7 (2013).

Friday 13 September 2024

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #278 (November–December 2018).

Lior Tirosh, an author of pulp detective novels, leaves Berlin and travels home, where he grew up with a famous, militaristic father. His niece has gone missing: she’s a student who was investigating the construction of a great wall around the nation. Home for Tirosh is Palestina, a Jewish homeland established near Uganda, on land offered by the British. In our world, this offer was turned down in the 1900s; in this world, it was accepted, and so the Jews escaped the Holocaust. But this is not a utopia, and a familiar problem remains: how to handle the claims of others to the same land, and maintain security, when the surrounding territory was long since relinquished by the British.

Tuesday 10 September 2024

Try the New Candy by Aron Beauregard (Maggot Press) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Exceptional entertainer assembles grab bag of depravity and butchery that leaves a few minor cavities.

In Aron Beauregard’s “Still Under Construction”, newlyweds with a “ghoulish curiosity” visit The Museum of Death where they encounter repulsed spectators fleeing a theatre showing gruesome footage. Like the strange (and potentially dangerous) proprietor who runs the ghastly museum, Beauregard challenges readers of Try the New Candy to witness his repugnant subject matter without turning away. 

Although this gore-spattered short story collection from one of the hottest names in splatterpunk bursts with innovative concepts, it suffers from mistakes (particularly in the use of commas), strange point of view shifts, and an overreliance on narrative summary. Moreover, Beauregard’s choice of language can be jarring. It seems strange, for instance, that a non-intrusive omniscient narrator would use the word “asshole” to describe that body part. 

However, except for one story involving a debaucherous night club (an oversaturated topic in this subgenre), I found the collection disturbingly entertaining. The material, filled with bleakness and characters both engaging and unlikable, is so enthralling that the above shortcomings fade into the background. The collection shows that there’s a fate far worse than freezing to death in a broken-down car and that we should be cautious about what we download from the internet.

Gore extravaganza “House Sitting with Dad” drills its way into the reader’s mind. The sadistic adolescent protagonist and his drug-addled, chauvinistic father watch a house for the latter’s friend Joyce. The duo soon discovers Joyce is collecting something much less innocuous than dolls. Part of the story’s appeal is the way the first-person narrator nonchalantly describes the extreme violence he enacts on victims for no other purpose than sexual gratification. 

In the titular story, protagonist Stanley is shy and oafish yet dependable to a fault. His overbearing boss Red tells Stanley he will eventually transfer his business to him, but then seductress Candy enters the picture. What happens when lust triumphs over loyalty? Carnage.  

“The Donor” is an ultraviolent piece about a woman who gets artificially inseminated. The supposed father mutilates her, and the baby grows up to be a disabled and hideous man-child. 

The collection even has two tamer stories. “Five O’clock Shadow” is a touching tale about friendship and belonging in which a barber shop regular finally decides to get his beard shaved. In “More Than a Feeling”, a beloved aunt with a special ability senses something negative about a partygoer’s glove. Nevertheless, when one buys a Cannibal Corpse album, that individual probably isn’t looking for ballads.  

The candy sits in your lap, and the show is about to start. Is there a point at which you’re willing to stop? If not, you may end up in boiling water. Douglas J. Ogurek ****

Friday 6 September 2024

The Invisible Man | review by Stephen Theaker

This review was originally written in March 2020 for a previous iteration of the British Fantasy Society website. See also Douglas Ogurek's previous review of this film for TQF.

It was not so very long ago that many boys and men, when asked to choose a superpower, would without any hint of shame pick invisibility, with the express purpose of denying women and girls the right to privacy and dignity. The last big adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man in 2000, leant heavily into this aspect, Kevin Bacon playing a voyeur and a rapist.

This time the invisible man is not naked as he goes about his business and he is not, so far as we can tell, a voyeur. He doesn't sexually assault his victim in the course of the film, though it's established that he has in the past. This is instead a story about coercive control, illustrating how women trapped in such abusive relationships can be driven to actions that seem utterly irrational to society at large.

Monday 2 September 2024

Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between III: The Occult Detective Story – Rafe McGregor

The third of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post introduces the occult detective story.

 


Ghosts and Detectives

In the late nineteenth century, magazine contributors on both sides of the Atlantic began to explore ways in which the relatively new and incredibly popular figure of the private detective could be merged with the much older but still entertaining milieu of the ghost story. One of the progenitors of this exploration was Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), with Dr Martin Hesselius in In a Glass Darkly (1872). The combination of detective protagonist and ghostly setting saw the initial blossoming of a subgenre of ghost-finders, paranormal physicians, and occult psychologists, with notable contributions by: Arthur Machen (1863-1947), with Mr Dyson in ‘The Inmost Light’ (published as The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light in  1894); Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844-1914, writing under the penname L.T. Meade) and Eustace Robert Barton (1869-1943, writing under the penname Robert Eustace),  with John Bell in The Master of Mysteries (1898); Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard (1851-1935, writing under the penname E. Heron) and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard (1876-1922, writing under the penname H. Heron), with Flaxman Low in ‘The Story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith’ (published in Pearson’s Magazine in 1898); Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951), with Dr John Silence in John Silence (1908); William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918, pictured), with Thomas Carnacki in ‘The Gateway of the Monster’ (published in The Idler in 1910); and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), with Simon Iff in ‘Big Game’ (published in The International in 1917). The first woman occult detective was probably Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol’s (1888-1962, writing as Ella Scrymsour) Sheila Crerar, whose adventures began with ‘The Eyes of Doom’ (published in The Blue Magazine in 1920). The most striking feature of this list is the overlap with the canon of weird fiction. Le Fanu was a precursor to both genres and many of H.P. Lovecraft’s (1890-1937) best-known stories could be described as occult detective fiction (although his protagonists rarely survive sufficiently unscathed for further investigations). Of the five authors I identified as canonical in part I, this leaves only Edward Plunkett (1878-1957, writing under his aristocratic title Lord Dunsany), but several of his Jorkens short stories (the first collection of which, The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, was published in 1931) combine mystery with fantasy.

The occult detective became a staple of the cheaper weekly and monthly magazines of the Golden Age of the pulp era, particularly Cassell’s Magazine and Weird Tales. As that era came to an end interest in the subgenre waned, being sustained through the nineteen fifties, sixties, and seventies by three main sources: Dennis Wheatley’s (1897-1977) series of eleven novels featuring the Duke De Richleau (published from 1933 to 1970 and including The Devil Rides Out in 1934); the dogged persistence of short story writers such as Seabury Quinn (1889-1969), whose Jules de Grandin appeared in Weird Tales from 1925 (‘The Horror on the Links’) to 1951 (‘The Ring of Bastet’) and were frequently reprinted and collected during the sixties and seventies; and the successful migration from short story to small screen evinced by the popularity of BBC1’s Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-1967), ITV’s Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969-1971), and ABC’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-1975). The revival of interest in the occult detective at the end of the twentieth century was heavily influenced by migration to another medium, the graphic novel, specifically the Hellblazer and Hellboy comic series, the first created by Jamie Delano and featuring John Constantine (which began in 1988, pictured) and the second created by Mike Mignola and featuring the eponymous half-demon investigator (which began in 1994). The last decade of the twentieth century saw the subgenre regain some of its mainstream appeal, appearing in novels, television series, and feature films. The most commercially successful of these are likely: Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake (the series subtitled Vampire Hunter, with thirty novels 1993-2023); the CW’s Supernatural (fifteen seasons 2005-2019); and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999). 

Character and Setting

The essence of occult detective fiction has remained largely unchanged since its initial popularity, the combination of a crime fiction character with a horror fiction setting. This combination creates an immediate tension because ever since Edgar Allan Poe introduced C. Auguste Dupin in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (published in Graham’s Magazine in 1841) the detective has been the man or woman of reason, a rational agent who restores the moral and social order following its disruption by harm or crime. Poe referred to all three of Dupin’s cases as ‘tales of ratiocination’ and the same could be said of the investigations of Dupin’s most illustrious descendants, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. In contrast, the setting of horror fiction may be more or less like the real world, but there is at least one aspect of that world into which the irrational in the form of the divine, the supernatural, or the paranormal intrudes. One may catch only the briefest of glimpses of it or it may be supervenient on science, but the divine, supernatural, or paranormal is always in excess of human reason, rationality, and ratiocination. One of the advantages of occult detective fiction is that creators can introduce an additional layer of suspense in having the detective investigate both criminal and supernatural cases and Hodgson employed this device with Carnacki very successfully. The world of the occult detective must nonetheless be one in which the supernatural intrudes into the natural in some way, whether or not that intrusion is revealed in every case.

The crucial tension between the rational detective and the extra-rational setting is difficult to master and demands a rigorous internal logic, which may also be more or less revealed in the narrative. There is a special relationship between detective fiction, including occult detective fiction, and narrative. In every narrative there is a real or imaginary sequence of events that takes place in the storyworld. In an autobiography, this sequence of events would begin with the author’s birth or – more commonly – the birth of her parents or grandparents and end shortly before the decision to write the autobiography or with the publisher’s decision to publish the manuscript. In a detective story, the sequence of events begins with the murderer planning the murder or with a person’s decision to disappear and ends with the murderer being identified and usually (but not always) brought to justice or with the missing person found (whether dead or alive). Typically, the story will start after the discovery of a corpse and end before the trial begins. Even within that limited period, however, the represented events will be a selection of all of those that take place in the storyworld. In both documentary and fictional narratives, the narrative is thus a superstructure underpinned by the base of the real or imaginary sequence of events. Detective fiction standardly dramatizes, stages, or thickens the relationship between story and sequence of events by presenting both the story of the crime (the sequence of events) and the story of the investigation (the story itself) together, with the progression of the detective involving her repeating, retracing, or revisiting the progression of the criminal. The tension between the story and the sequence of events is in addition to the tension between the rational detective and extra-rational setting and the combination of the two is, I think, a large part of why occult detective fiction has proved so difficult to master.


Archivists, Musicians, and Priests

I concluded part II by defining weird fiction as philosophical in virtue of presenting or representing a fully-fledged and fleshed-out worldview, generically hybrid in character, and foregrounding the difference between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is. This definition would include most of the occult detective stories I have mentioned so far and my take on the genre is that it is most accurately categorised as a subgenre of weird fiction rather than a subgenre of either crime or horror fiction. If one is seeking a more specific definition, then there is no need to reinvent what has already been established: occult detective fiction is philosophical in virtue of presenting or representing a fully-fledged and fleshed-out worldview and foregrounding the difference between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is and featuring a detective protagonist in an apparently supernatural setting. I shall have more to say about the instantiation of the second part of this definition in occult detective as opposed to other weird fiction in part IV. Like the weird tale, the occult detective story is best-suited to shorter formats, such as the short story, novella, graphic novel, and feature film. I include feature film rather than television series because television in the twenty-first century has taken a narrative turn, by which I mean that each season of a series (if not the whole series) tends to tell a single story rather than a different story each episode. One of the great exceptions to this rule of thumb about occult detective fiction is Amazon Prime Video’s Carnival Row (two seasons 2019-2023), specifically the first season, which is vastly superior to the second.

The most exemplary short story series is by Sarah Monette (b.1974 and also writes under the penname Katherine Addison) and features Kyle Murchison Booth, an occult detective who is an archivist at the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum. Booth’s first case, ‘The Wall of Clouds’, was published in 2003 (in Alchemy) and his first ten cases were collected in The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth (2007, with a second edition published in 2011). Seven more short stories and a novella, A Theory of Haunting (2023), have been published since (for a total of eighteen cases), although the stories can be difficult to find online. I mentioned the most accomplished occult detective novella in part II, Victor LaValle’s (b.1972, pictured) The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), a deconstruction of Lovecraft’s less accomplished occult detective story, ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ (published in Weird Tales in 1927). While my graphic novel recommendation is somewhat outré, I trust it will resonate with readers of my generation (particularly those from the UK), Mark Millar and Chris Weston’s all but forgotten Canon Fodder (published in 2000 AD 1993-1995). Like Carnival Row, the first instalment is followed by a disappointing sequel, but the digital versions of both are still available from Rebellion. For a feature film, one can do no better than Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987), starring Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet, Robert De Niro, and Charlotte Rampling, which is an adaptation of William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (1978) and one of the few cinematic adaptations that is unquestionably better than the novel on which it is based.

 

Recommended Reading

Fiction

William Hope Hodgson, The Casebook of Carnacki – Ghost Finder, Wordsworth Editions (2006).

Sarah Monette, The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth, Prime Books (2011).

Rafe McGregor, The Adventures of Roderick Langham, Theaker’s Paperback Library (2017).

Nonfiction

No comprehensive or authoritative study of occult detective fiction has been published to date and the best sources of information are the editor’s introductions in these three anthologies (I began writing such a study in 2020, during the pandemic, but as soon as I understood what a mammoth task it would be, realised I’d rather spend the time continuing the cases of my own occult detective):

Peter Haining (ed.), Supernatural Sleuths, William Kimber (1986).

Mark Valentine (ed.), The Black Veil and other tales of Supernatural Sleuths, Wordsworth Editions (2008).

Stephen Jones (ed.), Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries, Titan Books (2015).

Friday 30 August 2024

Zero Bomb by M.T. Hill (Titan Books) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #280 (March–April 2019).

At the time of writing we are thirty-eight days away from the date on which Britain will currently, as David Allen Green puts it, leave the European Union "by automatic operation of law". An interesting time, then, to be reading and reviewing a novel that portrays how calamitous and corrosive this could end up being – economically, socially and personally. That my adopted home city of Birmingham gets the worst of things in this book only increased its impact for me.

Tuesday 27 August 2024

Renfield | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Action/horror flick sinks its teeth into the contemporary fascination with visceral violence and rips apart cinematic stereotypes.

What do you get when you cross an actor renowned for stagy performances and a classic movie monster typically portrayed with restrained elegance and economy of movement? In the case of Renfield, you get a character who commands your attention. Nicholas Cage’s trademark theatricality spawns a Count Dracula who delights in displaying not just incisors but a mouth full of sharp choppers. He exaggerates his facial expressions, body movements, and vocal style to trounce on our conception of the Dark One. It’s all over the top, and it’s all great.

For nearly a century, the unageing titular character (Nicholas Hoult), inspired by a character of the same name in Bram Stocker’s novel Dracula, has been the count’s “familiar” (aka slave) responsible for corralling victims for the blood-drinking fiend. Now Renfield is attending a therapy group whose members are victims of toxic relationships so he can bring his convalescing boss the bad people he learns about. Alas, what Dracula craves is morally upstanding innocents.

Initially, Renfield appears as a brooding, Tim Burtonesque character. The viewer soon learns, however, that Renfield’s master has endowed him with superhuman strength and reflexes… provided that he eats bugs. This brings us to the film’s second big draw (beyond Cage’s performance): the ultraviolent fight scenes. Renfield doesn’t just throw punches – he tears off arms, cuts people in half, stomps on heads, and uses limbs as weapons. If Renfield does throw a punch, his target’s head explodes. And with all of this comes a torrent of blood. 

By the film’s end, all the kicking, jumping, and throwing starts to grow a bit tedious. Each fight, however, highlights at least one ridiculously violent fatality. In one gloriously unnecessary scene, the screen shifts to an x-ray view to show how Renfield’s attack impacts his target’s organs and bones. 

Another interesting facet of the film is the relationship that the protagonist develops with straightlaced cop Rebecca (Awkwafina). Renfield admires her because she isn’t afraid to die (like he is) and she refuses to let the powers that be corrupt her mission to avenge her father’s death by bringing down the Lobos gang responsible for his death.

Awkwafina commendably avoids the hackneyed female cop, often portrayed as either a know-it-all trying to be cool or a pottymouthed loose cannon trying too hard to be funny. There is no pretension with Rebecca — she tells it how it is while showcasing Awkwafina’s patented dry sense of humour.  

The trailer for Renfield slowly builds up to introducing Cage as the infamous count. Conversely, within the first couple of minutes of the actual film, his whole face, replete with toothy grin, dominates the screen. The contrast pierces the jugular – Nicholas Cage has injected some life into the undead and pulled Count Dracula from the shadows. Douglas J. Ogurek ****