May Cthulhu be good to you.

 

"There is snow on the ground

And the valleys are cold

And a midnight profound

Blackly squats o'er the wold:

But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feasting unhallow'd and old."

from Yule Tide by H.P. Lovecraft

https://kmalexander.com/2016/12/21/h-p-lovecrafts-creepy-christmas-poem/

On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera by Elizabeth Bear.

  I have, I believe, remarked about how coincidence plays a large part in my life and my reading. Lately, I have been reading non-fiction from the library. As normal, the topics reflect my choice of fiction; the Sirens of Mars by Johnson discusses the search for life on Mars, Ancient Bones by Bohme, the evolution of apes and hominids in Europe and Kindred by Sykes provided an overview of the current research on Neanderthal's. The last two works that I discussed on my blog Jagged Orbit, Simak's "The Whispering Well," and Bradbury's The Halloween Tree touched on evolution and early man. Obviously, something is going on. Perhaps deros are shooting rays into my brain to direct my reading (see Richard Sharpe Shaver), or maybe stuff just happens.

Early this morning, Bear's story appeared on the Tor.com banner and, well, it had both R'lyeh and Carcosa in the title. I was up with insomnia anyway, so here was a gift. I just discussed three of Bear's mythos stories, and this did not disappoint. It starts in true pulp fashion with the protagonist and her companion reloading their weapons as they shelter behind a flimsy barricade. A tentacle has just smashed her GoPro, so we are in reasonably familiar territory. Then Bear proceeds to tell us how we got here. "My name is not Greer Griswold. I’m approximately fifty-two years old. I don’t know who my birth parents were, and my adoptive parents are dead. I have never married; I have no children; I have very few close friends. I’m a physicist at a notable northeastern US institution you would have heard of if I named it." 

Spoilers ahead, I suggest you read the story first, then see if you agree/disagree with me.

And while your there I recommend Lavie Tidhar's stories "Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law" and "In Xanadu".

  

Greer decides to take a DNA test; she is nearly one-twentieth Neanderthal (yeah!!), but 10.2% is undetermined. Luckily one of her few friends is Michael Roberts, a geneticist at the same institution. Roberts initially dismisses her results as contamination in the sample. But after additional research, he finds similar results appeared in a thesis that eventually was rejected. This leads them to the author Albert Gilman a recluse living on Cape Ann. I will stop the summary; the story is available on the Tor website. Why did I like it. Bear is a fine writer; I loved this line, "Unless his peculiar transformation had been more than merely cosmetic and he’d returned to the deeps like a hatchling sea turtle." She is also very inventive. Her story Dolly is a lovely discussion of the rise of sentience in a robot.

https://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2017/03/dolly-by-elizabeth-bear.html

I fully intend to discuss her story 'The Deeps of the Sky', a brilliant first contact story that can be read here. 

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_06_18_reprint/

How inventive since Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", writers have struggled with describing his concept of non-Euclidean geometry. Bear does not struggle, she nails it 

“Octagons,” I said. “Traditionally, they don’t interlock without small squares to make up the corners.”

“But honeycomb?”

“Hexagons,” I said. “Like the basalt pillar we were on. Your bathroom tiles, those are octagons. With the little black squares between the corners, because that’s how topology works.”

Well, that was how topology worked where we came from. Here, apparently octagons interlocked." 

I love good mythos tales, I love prehistory, and I am interested in DNA and evolutionary science and increasingly, I love Elizabeth Bear's sf short stories and mythos tales. 

Photos

Detail from "Moving to New Hunting Grounds" by Zdenek Burian, I received my first book in the Augusta/Burian series on prehistoric life, Prehistoric Sea Monsters (they aren't) as a child and the die was cast.

Kindred, I borrowed this from the library and realized I would want to reread it and make notes in the text. So I returned it so the next in line could enjoy it and got my own copy from a local bookstore who delivered it and some Jeff Vandermeer books. 

On my next visit to my local library branch I found three more books on Neanderthals on the shelf. I had to request Almost Human on Homo naledi from another branch but I was able to get it before the library closes again until the new year and I thought it made a nice addition to the photo. 

Be careful out there.

Black Helicopters and The Tindalos Asset by Caitlin R. Kiernan (To Frank Belknap Long the father of the Hounds)

  Anyone who has followed my blog knows I love the works of Caitlin R. Kiernan. However, I don't love all of them. Some works are too sexualized, topical (with references to serial killers, snuff films), perhaps too modern or contemporary for me. But she writes enough works that I enjoy that I am always ready to read more. The themes I enjoy and which I think she does quite well at are science fiction, UFO conspiracy theories, Lovecraftian/mythos fiction and stories related to the work/ideas of Charles Fort. I have previously discussed the first volume in The Tinfoil Dossier series, Agents of Dreamland here 

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2017/04/agents-of-dreamland-by-caitlin-r-kiernan.html . 

I will avoid repeating myself, so if you want to read my take on Kiernan's work, I suggest you start there. In the Author's Note to The Tindalos Asset, Kiernan provides information on the genesis of the three works and I will paraphrase it here. Agents of Dreamland was written in about six weeks in the summer of 2015. and was published by Tor 2017. Tor released volume two, Black Helicopters in May 2018. A shorter version appeared in the Subterranean Press collection Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea in 2015. I originally read this version in a latter Subterranean Press collection. 

The original version of Black Helicopters, which I preferred, predated Agents of Dreamland. While some elements appear in both novels, the expanded Tor edition feels like it has shoehorned into the sequence which has become The Tinfoil Dossier. The Signalman does not appear until page 149 of the 196-page novel and even then seems perfunctory. Immacolata Sexton disappears, and instead, we have another deathless/long-lived Barbican operative called Ptolema, the Eygptian, Ancient of Days. One thing I noticed is that this story has multiple characters, primarily women, who seem to have a number of names. There are the albino twins Bete and Ivoire, their handler Dr. Twisley, and the soldier mathematical savant 66. Childhood and how it moulds identity does seem to be an important theme.

  

 I will not discuss the plot in great detail. There are two main threads one deals with an invasion of shoggoths from the seas around Deer Island, Maine. The second revolves around the history of the twins and the efforts of various groups to control or destroy them. There is a lot of interplay between various agencies with conflicting and sometimes inexplicable agendas. The action does not proceed chronologically. The narrative moves between the past, the present and even the far future. Keirnan dates the chapters, and this does help. My wife and I watched the X-Files for many years, and I tended to prefer the standalone episodes, often with supernatural plotlines. The long, complex unfolding of conspiracies turned me off. Here I think the plot might have grown too convoluted for me. It seemed to grow more and more intricate like the origami swans Bete is obsessively making until I could not follow the pattern anymore. Not a bad read but it was my least favourite in the series

The third volume, The Tindalos Asset, was begun in 2017 and completed in 2019. Some sections appeared in Ellen Datlow's Children of Lovecraft (2015) as "Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille." I loved The Tindalos Asset. It is a wonderful homage to Charles Fort as well as a great continuation of the story of the Signalman and his fight against the end of the world. The story begins with a visit by the Signalman to Ellison Nicodemo. (The book is dedicated to, among others, In Memory of Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) Visionary. Hero. Mentor. Friend.) Nicodemo was once one of Albany's most effective assassins. However, something went horribly wrong, and I mean horribly, during an assignment in Atlanta. Now she is an alcoholic drug addict, slowly killing herself in a filthy apartment in LA's Koreatown. The Signalman, who was once Nicodemo's handler, has been sent by Albany to recruit her for one last assignment. It seems Jehosheba Talog, Mother Hydra's current best bud and Nicodemo's Atlanta target, has come back and in a big way. We have strange deaths, even stranger births, bizarre ritual murders, weird weather, extinct animals, cryptozoology, mass hysteria in asylums incuding the Butler hospital in Providence, R.I of course, outbreaks of nightmares and stuff falling from the sky. Lots of stuff, big stuff, "Why, that's nothing. Pshaw, even. We got a goddamn sixty-five-foot sperm whale-Moby-Dick's own great-great-grandkid-stretched across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. " (85). The pace at which the incidents detailed in the dossier is terrific, one breathtaking revelation layered on atop the other, each worth of Fort himself. Why does Albany think Nicodemo can help. Well, not only was she an effective assassin in her own right but when she is in danger, a "hound" appears from a handy angle to defend her. It is all here Kiernan at her best she has summoned Fort's legions, 

“A procession of the damned: By the damned I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed will march. You'll read them, or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten. Some of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering, animated by companions that have been damned alive. There are giants that will walk by, though sound asleep. There are things that are theorems and things that are rags. (Charle Ford, The Book of the Damned. 

She brings us quotes from Lewis Carroll and Tennyson. Keirnan's own background in palaeontology means her pallid data in often geological and marine-based. Her extensive knowledge of Lovecraft has us revisit the house on Benefit Street in Providence R.I., otherwise known as "The Shunned House." I have followed Kiernan's blog for years, and I know she does a great deal of research to add a level of reality to her otherwise fantastic tales. So we begin to know things about the recurring characters that bring them to life. What beer they drink, songs they listen to, movies they watch. On the plane, Nicodemo is drinking National Bohemian and smoking Chesterfields. The Signalman's mixtape includes Connie Francis and Kitty Wells, he references John Ford westerns, and his watch was "made in 1888 by the Elgin Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois. We get the scientific names of many of the critters that fall from the sky or the cutting edge materials used in the interrogation room. This level of detail is supplied to make the story live, but it is not laboured; the pace of the story is not slowed; it is just there. Without the details, the scientific names, the historical references, the quotes, the names of the songs or bands playing on the jukebox, a Kiernan story would seem incomplete or colourless. And how do all these elements fit together to make a mythos tale? Is a marriage of Charles Fort and HPL. made in heaven or hell?

“It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.” 

- Charles Fort,The Book of the Damned

"Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again." 

- H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon

I think they go very well together.

Cover Credits:

Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea, Illustration Lee Moyer, Photograph Kathryn A. Pollnac

Black Helicopters, photograph Don Seymour, design Christine Foltzer

Agents of Dreamland, design Christine Foltzer

The Tindalos Asset, design Christine Foltzer

The Hounds of Tindalos

Arkham House, Hannes Bok

Jove/HBJ, Rowena

Belmont, Uncredited

To Charles Fort With Love, Richard Kirk

Nov. 2nd, 2020, Today

“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in 

their own time, wondering what happened and 

why the world blew up around them.”

from Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury slight spoilers and it will appear on my HPL blog as well.

  

I was reading Roger Zelazny's A Night in Lonesome October as my Halloween read, but as always, I could not read a chapter a day. Instead, I rushed ahead then read all the short stories based on this theme from the various Lovecraft eZine Megapacks. This meant that once I had decorated and left out Wagon Wheels and hand sanitizer for the little ghouls and goblins (about 12 kids and assorted parents), I needed something to read. 

Ray Bradbury was one of the most formative authors I read as a child/young adult. And there on the shelf was a title I had never read before The Halloween Tree. No one does Halloween, autumn or childhood like Bradbury. And no one illustrates Bradbury like Joseph Mugnaini. 

"Shrieking, wailing, full of banshee mirth they ran, on everything except sidewalks, " (4)

The story itself is simple; eight boys go out trick or treating in a small Midwestern town, pure Bradbury. But the boy Pip (Pipkin), who is the most vital, energetic, of the group, the very image of unbridled boyhood is missing. He has told them to go ahead, and he will catch up. But it is obvious something is not right with Pip. As loyal friends, the group follows Pip's instructions and visit the biggest, scariest, spookiest house in town.

"So, with a pseudopod thrust out here or there, the amoebic form, the large perspiration of boys leaned and made a run and a stop to the front door of the house which was as tall as a coffin and twice as thin." (19)

 Here they meet Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, probably the scariest, creepiest, spookiest person in town. They see the Halloween Tree hung with strange jack-o-lanterns and embark on a tour of Halloween's history on a giant kite formed from old carnival posters. 

"And then down they sailed off away deep into the Undiscovered Country of Old Death and Strange Years in the Frightful Past..."(54)

"And the million tiger-lion-leopard-panther eyes of the autumn Kite looked down, as did the eyes of the boys."(55) 

One and on, I read past cavemen and mummies, both Egyptian and Mexican. The Druids appeared the Roman Legions attacked, witches stirred black cauldrons and burned for it. The great cathedral of Notre-Dame appeared resplendent with gargoyles. 

And finally, '"Quiet as milkweed, then, soft as snow, fall blow away down, each and all."

The boys fell. 

Like a bushel of chestnuts, their feet rained to earth."(81)

This was my childhood, not the reality of it but some of the sense and feel of it. The books I read, the stories I was told, the movies I saw. The paper decorations, the pumpkins, cats and cornstalks decorating the houses I walked past. The autumnal sound of dry leaves underfoot, the smell of apples and the first cold brush of winter buried amid the horse chestnuts and multicoloured Indian corn. And I realize now it had continued to be my life. Reading Bradbury, I understood that the things that interested me as a child are largely the things that interest me today. I still love rocketships, dinosaurs, and books with mummies, witches and werewolves on the covers. I have been fortunate that Helen shares many of these interests; we have visited Hadrian's Wall, York Minster Cathedral., Saint Mark's in Venice. When I finished, I felt grateful that in a trying year, I had the joy of reading this book and this author. I became aware that I can enjoy my life, the people around me and my pursuits in peace and security and how rare that is. 

Having finished The Halloween Tree, I looked for another Bradbury work to at least flip though before bed. Obvious choices would have been his collection The October Country or short stories like "The Illustrated Man" or "The Pillar of Fire." But the images in one of my favourite books called to me instead. 

"The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. "(3) Fahrenheit 451

I am posting this on both Jagged Orbit and Beyond the Walls of Sleep, cause I can. 

The Boojum universe of Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette (dedicated to Gardner Dozois, 1947-2018)

  This site serves, I think, as ample evidence that I am a dedicated Lovecraftian.  If you doubt me ask our resident couch potato Whateley.

I have indicated in earlier posts that I am aware of Howard's shortcomings both as an author and as a person. That said, I am obviously not alone in my appreciation of his work. A vast number of authors have incorporated some aspects of the mythos into their work. And some of it is wondrous. One can swim in vast seas of mythos fiction without ever reading Howard's work, although one would be the poorer for it. Some authors even can make something out of the thin gruel of (to my mind) Howard's most flawed stories like "Herbert West Reanimator" or "The Horror at Red Hook." 

 In these stories Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette have beautifully combined the mythos' vast apparatus with elements from Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Graham, Rudyard Kipling, and too many other authors to list. They have written three short stories, "Boojum" (2008), "Mongoose" (2009) and "The Wreck of the "Charles Dexter Ward" (2012) in a series I am referring to here as the Boojum universe. These stores can be read individually, although events that occur in one story may be referenced in the next. I would however suggest reading them in publication order. All three stories occur in the same universe; when a strangely altered/organized humanity has begun to explore the solar system. The authors do not provide great blocks of narrative exposition. Instead, terms or descriptions offer hints, leaving the reader to draw their own connections or conclusions. Names are particularly evocative in these stories and refer not just to Howard's work but also to current authors of genre literature. I love this sort of thing. 

These stories have been reprinted in numerous anthologies. I have provided full text links to two below. I read them in Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction. Boy do I miss buying these every year. 

"Boojum" 

This story is set on the live ship Lavinia Whateley. Vinnie, as the crew calls her, is an immature deep space swimmer that evolved in the high-temperature envelopes surrounding gas giants. Boojums look similar to spiny lionfish and seem to have lots of tentacles (naturally). Vinnie is crewed by pirates led by Captain Song, a leader feared even by her crew. Our protagonist is Black Alice Bradley, a junior member of the engineering team. The story begins when the Song orders an attack on the steel ship Josephine Baker. The attack succeeds, and Black Alice and her friend Dogcollar are part of the landing party. They encounter two gillies who fearfully agree to join the crew. The alternative is to remain aboard the Josephine Baker when Vinnie eaters her. They also find a cargo hold full of Mi-Go cylinders. I will not go into more detail, but we already see that Bear and Monette have created a fictional universe rich in reference and textuality. Readers familiar with mythos or general genre fiction may find more parse within the story, but it is quite enjoyable either way. The joy is that the authors are not filling in the blanks for you. It is evident that the solar system has become a very unusual place. Just how unusual it is up to the reader to find out. 

You can read Boojum here.

https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/geekdad/files/boojum.pdf

Boojum was reviewed at the Great Lovecraft reread here. (I have not yet read the review)

https://www.tor.com/2017/06/07/yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-um-elizabeth-bear-and-sarah-monettes-boojum/

"Mongoose"

Mongoose is my favourite of the three stories. Izrael Irizarry and his chesire Mongoose have come to Kadath station to deal with an infestation of insect-like tove. Toves are pests that enter stations or ships through tears in space-time. Once there, they widen the tears, which allow larger creatures, raths and eventually bandersnatch "Pseudocanis tindalosi" to enter. Once babdersnatch appear, the ship or station is doomed. The cheshire are breed by the Arkhamers, one of the several groups expanding through the solar system. Cheshires have four simple and 12 compound eyes and numerous tentacles and barbels. They are deaf but respond to vibrations and can alter their phase, appearing and disappearing at will. The relationship between Mongoose and Izrael indicates that cheshires are intelligent. They communicate reasonably well, and Mongoose can absorb the information from the stories Izreal reads her. She is currently obsessed with Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Izrael also read her Alice in Wonderland so that she would understand the origin of the term cheshire. It becomes evident that "Rikki Tikki Tavi" also made a big impression. In this story, we learn a bit more about the Boojum universe. "People did double-takes as he passed, even the heavily-modded Christian cultists with their telescoping limbs and biolin eyes. You found them on every station and steelships too, though mostly they wouldn’t work the boojums. Nobody liked Christians much, but they could work in situations that would kill an unmodded human or even a gilly, so captains and station masters tolerated them."

There are other stations, Providence, Leng, Dunwich as well as Kadath.

Israel obtained Mongoose when he intervened to help an Arkhamer girl on another station. It seems other space-faring groups distrust Arkhamers. The infestation on Kadath is larger than expected. Eventually, Izrael, Mongoose, and the station's Political officer Intelligence Colonel Sadhi Sanderson must join forces to deal with it.

You can read Mongoose here

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_monette_06_13_reprint/

Deep Cuts in Lovecraftian Fiction discussed these stores here. This discussion led me to the stories.

https://deepcuts.blog/2019/01/05/boojum-2008-by-elizabeth-bear-sarah-monette/

https://deepcuts.blog/2019/01/12/mongoose-2009-by-elizabeth-bear-sarah-monette/

https://deepcuts.blog/2019/01/19/the-wreck-of-the-charles-dexter-ward-2012-by-elizabeth-bear-sarah-monette/

"The Wreck of the "Charles Dexter Ward""

Dr. Cynthia Feuerwerker is a medical doctor currently living on Faraday Station. She has been abandoned there by the captain of the boojum ship Richard Trevithick. Feuerwerker was left behind for illegal experimentation. Her reputation has also prevented her from finding a berth on another ship. Now her oxygen tax is coming due, and if she is unable to pay, she will be spaced. Then Feuerwerker is offered a berth on the Jarmulowicz Astronomica, an Arkhamer ship about to leave on a salvage mission to the boojum medical ship Charles Dexter Ward. The doctor on the Jarmulowicz Astronomica has died, and they want to leave immediately. So Arkhamer professor Wandrei recruits Feuerwerker. Feuerwerker learns later that this was not a popular decision. 

The Arkhamer crews typically do not enlist outsiders. Extended families crew Arkhamer ships and crew members are exchanged between ships as need. The ships are run like a university overseen by a President and faculty counsel with senior members having tenure. This practice makes it hard for Feuerwerker to fit in, although the cheshires always numerous on Arkhamer ships, are quite cat-like and insist on sleeping with her. Eventually, one of Wandrei's students, Hester Ayabo Jarmulowicz, somewhat aggressively befriends her, much to Feuerwerker's surprise. Hester is both a pilot and an astrobiologist. The crew on Arkahmer ships have a role in running the ship but also an academic specialty. Both Hester and Feuerwerker are part of the initial away team that accompanies Wandrei to the wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward. In a lovely touch, the ship they use is named the Caitlín R. Kiernan. Once on board, the women learn this is not a simple salvage operation. 

I love science fiction that deals with the concept of posthuman societies. I am not sure whether these stories qualify in an academic sense, but they certainly had that feel for me. These stories provided a new, exciting and unexpected exploration of the solar system through a Lovecraftian lens, and I really enjoyed them. One quote summed up the mythos quality of the universe Bear and Monette have created, "Galileo, and Derleth and Chen sought forbidden knowledge, too, that got us this far."