Happy Halloween; Recommended Reading

"Yet more disturbing than our view of the asylum was the idiotic gaze that it seemed to cast back at us. Throughout the years, some persons actually claimed to have seen mad-eyed and immobile figures staring out from the asylum’s windows on nights when the moon shone with unusual brightness and the sky appeared to contain more than its usual share of stars." 

"And next to that room would be another room that was unfurnished and seemed never to have been occupied. But leaning against one wall of this other room, directly below the sliding panel, would be some long wooden sticks; and mounted at the ends of these sticks would be horrible little puppets."

"To make things worse, the setting sun would each day slip out of sight behind the asylum, thus committing our town to a premature darkness in the long shadow of that massive edifice."

from Dr. Locrian's Asylum

by Ligotti, Thomas

"In the Forest of the Night" by Alter Reiss

  Last night I woke around 4:00 and headed over to the Great Lovecraft Reread at Tor to see what Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth were reading. It turned out to be, a story I had not read before, one that was available online, and one that I really liked. Alter Reiss’s "In the Forest of the Night" it was first published in the March 2015 issue of the Lovecraft E-zine.

The link to the story is here;

https://lovecraftzine.com/magazine/issues/2015-2/issue-34-march-2015/in-the-forest-of-the-night-by-alter-reiss/

The link to the Reread review is here;

https://www.tor.com/2018/10/24/kentucky-bourbon-and-elder-signs-alter-reisss-in-the-forest-of-the-night/

The story is quite short so I will a provide a few quotes and make some comments but try to avoid spoilers. Why not read it first and come back? 

The first paragraph propels us directly into the heart of the story as well as into the wonderfully atmospheric setting of the tale.

"“And who is this,” said the long-necked paneron, from the bole of one of the great, phosphorescent night oaks, “come to our solitary?”

Jack kept walking, not looking up at the paneron, or at the shimmer spiders, who pulled in their threads at his approach, hissing angrily.

“Abraham Jackson,” continued the paneron. “But he is not the only one to come out of the great mirrored hall in this hour.” It dipped its head lower, claws biting the night oak’s bark. “Two others are in the Dawning Wood, Abraham Jackson…,"

Not that the warning is really needed because Abraham Jackson, normally referred to as Jack or One-eyed Jack has entered the wood under compulsion. And what an eerie wood it was;

"So still that the spiders forgot him, and lowered their strands down, down past the roots of the night trees, into the dreaming world.

Jack watched the sparks rising and falling in those strands. Those were the souls of dreamers; each of the spinners had found a dreamer, and was bringing it upward. The spark would rise as the dreams drew closer to reality, and fall as they fell farther away and the dreamers woke. "

"In the Forest of the night is a nicely realized tale of betrayal and revenge. But the most impressive thing for me was Reisse's world building especially in such a relatively short story. The atmosphere is dark and grotesque with a real sense of place. It has an odd mixture of Southern Gothic and Baroque imagery that is totally appropriate for Reisse's plot. After talking with my wife and a number of friends I realized that a lot of readers visualize the setting or characters as they read. This is something I rarely do, but in the case of the paneron I envisioned something like an armoured pangolin but with the grace and agility of a gecko, and scary of course. What I do instead, while reading is compare the plot, character, tropes within the story to other things I have read. I do not claim that the authors has read or emulated these stories, rather this allows me (and hopefully others) to identify the type of things I like. In  "In the Forest of the Night" the setting reminded me of Clark Ashton Smith's two Maal Dweb stories, "The Flower-Women and "The Maze of Maal Dweb" and Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories both of which are concerned with the adventures of wizards and magic users in a world of deadly perils and strange magical beasts. 

But Jack himself with his bourdon, clasp knife, and silver dimes comes from another tradition. 

Pillsworth in her review says "and this fellow has definitely dropped into the Forest of the Night from some high ridge of our own Appalachian mountains.'" and I would not be surprised. He seems a more violent and morally ambiguous version of Manly Wade Wellman's character Silver John or John the Balladeer. Silver John is a character who battles evil through out the Appalachian mountains, with little more than his silver stringed guitar and the occasional silver dime, in a number of Wellman's short stores and novels. 

The image of Jack moving through a grotesque and twisted landscape of treachery, betrayal and revenge also reminded me of a number of Zelazny's heros or anti-heroes, including Francis Sandow in Isle of the Dead or especially Jack of Shadows (Shadowjack) in the novel of the same name. As I said earlier, I do not claim to know anything about about the author's, in this case Reiss’s inspiration for this work. I do know that it offered an interesting take on a Lovecraft themed story with shimmer spiders fishing for dreamers lost in a strange dreamland, and Great Old Ones yet again awaiting their sacrificial offerings. I loved this story and hope to read more stories about Jack by Alter Reiss.

For another very different take of betrayal and revenge in a Lovecraftian world I recommend "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT" by Michael Shea, and while it is quite different, there the rose garden scene.

New Eldritch Tomes, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs James Blaylock

  A few posts back, I spoke of the death of Peter Nicholls the editor of the 1979, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. As I was preparing for that post, I took out my tattered edition and leafed through looking at the pictures. Which meant looking for my favourite, a 1937 edition of Argosy with an enchanting Burroughs cover by Emmett Watson. I then decided to see if there was a decent/affordable copy on ABE. I found one and since one of the main drawbacks of ABE is the initial shipping costs, I looked to see if the vendor has other items I could add. I knew from previous purchases that this vendor, Leonard Shoup, tends to carry Weird Tales related material so I did a quick search on Lovecraft. And there they were. I could not resist adding The Lurking Fear and Other Stories and The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror to the Argosy and now all I had to do was wait until the frantic barking of the dogs signaled the arrival of our letter carrier

When I first began collecting, rather than simply buying books randomly, I focused initially on two areas. Lovecraft with the obvious (to me) addition of Arkham House and other Weird Tales authors, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I chose Lovecraft because I was introduced to his work by a school chum at 15 and enjoyed it.

These two Lovecraft titles would be considered minor collections at best. The stories in the The Shuttered Room are pastiches or stories based on Lovecraft's notes by August Derleth. The Lurking Fear contains what I think I can safely describe as lesser tales, although I have a certain fondness for the wildly illogical The Lurking Fear, with it's warning against the dangers of inbreeding, cannibalism and a subterranean existence. I purchased them for the John Holmes covers, these were among the first editions (now lost) that I owned.

(Both author's works can be considered problematic in their treatment of women and minorities, I posted my thoughts on Lovecraft here

http://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-real-shadow-over-innsmouth-odd.html )

I chose Burroughs because his books filled the used bookstores of my youth and I loved the covers. James Blaylock in his wonderful Burroughs themed novel The Digging Leviathan expressed this beautifully. 

" Edward St. Ives was a collector of books, especially of fantasy and science fiction, the older and tawdrier the better. Plots and cover illustrations that smacked of authenticity didn't interest him. It was sea monsters; cigar-shaped, crenelated rockets; and unmistakable flying saucers that attracted him. There was something in the appearance of such things that appealed to the part of him that appreciated the old Hudson Wasp …,.  Once a month or so, after a particularly satisfactory trip to Acres of Books, he'd drag out the lot of his paperback Burroughs novels, lining up the Tarzan books here and the Martian books there and the Pellucidar books somewhere else. The Roy Krenkel covers were the most amazing, with their startling slashes and dabs of impressionist color and their distant spired cities half in ruin and shadow beneath a purple sky." (17)

Cover by Timothy McNamara (as by Ferret)

Roy Krenkel below

I have to admit this purchase was rooted very much in nostalgia or perhaps immaturity if you like. I have lately found the rise of irrationalism worldwide troubling and some days the world seems unrecognizable. As I get older my reading and collecting helps keep me mentally active, engaged and grounded. The process of aging has been beautifully described by Wendell Berry in his novel (a favourite of mine) Jayber Crow.

 "Back there at the beginning, as I see it now, my life was all time and almost no memory. Though I knew early of death, it still seemed to be something that happened only to other people, and I stood in an unending river of time that would go on making the same changes and the same returns forever.
     And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time." (24)

I try very hard to avoid wallowing in memories of the past, and make sure that I read new and diverse works and authors, but I, like Edward St. Ives, cannot resist the occasional winged T-Rex. 

New Eldritch Tomes

The nightgaunt(s) have appeared at our strange high house bearing even more eldritch tomes for this humble branch of the Miskatonic University library system. I can only assume Nodens, "Lord of the Great Abyss" has subcontracted them to Amazon. 

Cover by Jason Van Hollander

I was happy to see Volume Six of the Black Wings series, although I preferred the covers of the previous volumes with their monstrous menacing creatures, vast against the background of star charts. Some good authors here, I am looking forward as always to Caitlin R. Kiernan, as well as the stories by Darrell Schweitzer, Don Webb. I am sorry to see there is nothing new by John Langan or Brian Hodge. Still I expect great things.

Cover by Ken W. Kelly

I have read some excellent mythos stories by Michael Shea, "Coping Squid", "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT" and "The Presentation"  in DEMIURGE: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea. So I decided to give this a try

Cover Art by Randy Broecker, Design Michael Smith

I have the Arkham House edition of Inhabitants but this edition from PS Publishing has lots of great extras, including first drafts and August Derleth's editorial responses to the stories.

Cover Art by Randy Broecker, Design Michael Smith

I now have all four volumes of the PS Publishing series of Caitlin R. Kiernen's collected stores.

Cover Art by Richard A. Kirk, Design by Michael Smith

Cover photo Paul Moore

I encountered this novel in a review by Michael Dirda, wow a sequel to  The Night Land, I had to buy this. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/stories-that-are-strange-fantastical--and-utterly-engrossing/2018/04/25/8baf4250-4706-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.80472055a800

"While one of Iain Sinclair’s own urban fantasies involves the search for a reputed lost sequel to “The House on the Borderland,” Avalon Brantley, who died in 2017, actually produced her own in The House of Silence (Zagava Books). In it she drew additional inspiration from Hodgson’s brooding science fictional quest-romance “The Night Land,” the last published of his four novels. Alas, I haven’t yet had a chance to do more than look at Brantley’s book, but it has already been widely acclaimed a sui generis masterpiece. Earn bragging rights by being the first on your block to read it."

It came with a copy of The Little One about which I know nothing, except the house seems eerily familiar.

Cover photo Dare Wright

New Eldritch Tomes

Well a busy couple of weeks, the additions to my library are multiplying faster that the prodigy of Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.

First, I purchased this Penguin addition mainly for the introduction by series editor Guillermo Del Toro, and the notes by S. T. Joshi that include works not covered in either Joshi's Annotated Lovecraft volumes or Klinger's The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. The main story I was interested in was of course "Beyond the Wall of Sleep". Cover by Paul Buckley. 

PS Publishing discounted these three volumes of stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan, which originally came out as fairly pricey Subterranean Press editions. I really wanted Caitlin's science fiction stories collected in A is for Alien but could not resist the special offer. I also preordered the PS Publishing edition of her to To Charles Fort With Love. to round out the set. Cover Art by Richard Kirk Cover Design by Michael Smith.  

Then a trip to one of the Fair's Fair used bookstores in Calgary also produced some gems. I began collecting Groff Conklin anthologies after reading Bud Webster's essay on Conklin, see below. In the Grip of Terror was one I have long coveted and I was really happy to see it contained the original (very dark) version of "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury that appeared in Esquire in July, 1950. Perma Books edition (1951) cover uncredited.

http://www.philsp.com/articles/anthopology_101_02.html

You cannot go wrong with any of the Benson brothers, and I love these Panther editions. Great Cover by Bruce Pennington.

I am always on the lookout for Badger Books after following the Unsubscriber website below. Cover uncredited.

https://unsubscribedblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/a-badger-book-on-sunday-with-the-reverend-r-l-fanthorpe-chapter-33/

Donald Wandrei's Memories of H.P.L.

  

 While I have continued to sample not just Lovecraft's stories but related works by other authors that comprise the vast industry of pastiche that has come to surround him, I have been remiss in not updating my blog. I had planned a look at some of the excellent stories I have read by authors like Darrell Schweitzer, Don Webb, John Langan, Brian Hodge and of course Caitlin R. Kiernan but got sidetracked while I was walking by my shelves. I was once again memorized by the lovely Virgil Findley cover for the Arkham House edition of Marginalia By H.P. Lovecraft. A quick look at the table of contents and I turned to the essay "The Dweller in Darkness" by Donald Wandrei, and was hooked, because no matter how far we journey beneath the sea, not matter how vast time, space, the contents of the human mind are, for me it always comes back to Howard. 

   Of all the members of the Lovecraft circle my favourites are Clark Ashton Smith and Donald Wandrei, who with August Derleth was a co-founder of Arkham House Publishing. Wandrei's essay concerned a visit to Providence in the summer of 1927. Wandrei was about 19 at the time and had hitchhiked from Minnesota after an invitation to visit. 

Of his first meeting he says. "The elderly lady who admitted me led me through the hall of a well-kept old frame house. I was ushered into a room, a room of many surprises.
   Though it was afternoon, the windows were all closed and the curtains lowered. One shaded electric bulb threw a weak cone of light upon a desk and chair. In the surrounding gloom, masses of books lined wall bookcases, were piled on tables, stood on stacks on the floor. Scores of magazines, mainly Weird Tales, and a great heap of Providence newspapers were at hand, all in orderly array. A large number of opened letters were arranged on one side of the desk; and on the other lay a thick file of sealed envelopes ready to mail. There was a wash basin in one corner, a two burner gas stove in another. Beside the burner stood a little cabinet with an assortment of small groceries-sugar, coffee, chocolate, jars and packages of cheese, cans of condensed milk and baked beans, bread and crackers and cookies." (362)

    A number of Lovecraft's other friends appear during Wandrei's visit including Frank Belknap Long and his parents (The Hounds of Tindalos) H. Warner Munn (Tales of the Werewolf Clan) and M.C. Eddy (with HPL, The Loved Dead). Highlights for Wanderi include a conversation among the tombs of the St. John's church yard (loved by Poe) until 2:30 a.m, a walk on which Lovecraft points out a house that will become the setting for his story "The Dreams in a Witch House", meeting a huge number of cats and accompanied by Lovecraft's friend James F. Morton a trip to Warren Rhode Island where they eat some 28 flavours of ice cream. It is on this visit that Wander is introduced to several of the defining characteristics of Lovecraft's nature, he writes and is more animated at night, he has an almost pathological aversion to sea food and he cannot tolerate the cold. 

   This is a great remembrance by a man who (along with Derleth) would play a very important role in the posthumous appreciation of Lovecraft's work. Lovecraft pens a long description of the visit to Maurice W. Moe on July 30, 1927.
   " Young Wandering Wandrei was the first to come and the last to leave. He blew in on July 12; and at one established himself in a delightful poet's garret in this very house, which the landlady let hime have for $3.50 per week.*  The next day I took him to archaick Newport where he wander'd through the living past and revelled in his first sight of the wine-dark sea from titan cliffs." H.P.Lovecraft, Selected Lellers 1925-1929, edited by Agust Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (155). 

Certainly reading this letter it is hard to reconcile this visit with the image of Lovecraft as a misanthropic recluse, he talked a good game but obviously his heart was not in it. 

* (Wandrei complains of bedbugs.The landlady is also able to accommodate the Longs for a dollar a head each by vacating her study and reception area, Lovecraft was quite a cash cow for her in July 1927)

And just as I type these last few lines the portal has opened and the Black Wings of Cthulhu 5 has appeared in my mail box.

Agents of Dreamland by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  

Tor, 2017 cover photo Getty Images, Design Christine Foltzer

“The Signalman lights another cigarette. At fifty-five, he remembers when it wasn’t necessary to disable the smoke alarms of hotels rooms. Too often, it occurs to him that he’s lived just long enough to have completely outlived the world that made sense to him, the world where he fit.” (38)

Agents of Dreamland a new novel by Caitlin R. Kiernan was released at the end of February 2017, a few days after receiving my preorder I sat down to read it. A few hours later after completing all 123 pages I got up. No breaks, asides, snacks etc. I may read a short story in one sitting but never a novel not even a short one. So yes, I think it is good, yes I think it is riveting, yes I think your should buy it (no borrowing), and read it. Not convinced, the long version.

It is July 9, 2015, the Signalman, whose nickname comes from the antique silver watch he carries is waiting in Winslow Arizona for a meeting with Immacolata Sexton. The Signalman is an agent for a secretive agency based in Albany, New York, Sexton an agent for a European group referred to as Barbican Estate (think Brutalist architecture). They are meeting to share information on a cult leader named Drew Standish.  He has been on both groups radar for some time but now disturbing things have been found at the Moonlight Ranch, the current quarters of his cult located on the shores of the Salton Sea. Sexton’s group wants access to the site and Albany wants everything they have on Standish. There are a number of reasons for urgency in investigating this case not the least of which is as the Signalman reminds Sexton 

“New Horizons makes its closest approach to Pluto five days from now. So you’II excuse my sense of urgency,” (19)

The story is told from the point of view of the Signalman, Sexton and a cult member called Chloe Stringfellow. Immacolata Sexton is the most interesting of the three, as her memory extends not just into the past, how long is unclear but she is adult at the time of the Vermont Floods of 1927, but into the future as well, so her character witnesses most of the events of the story. Kiernan has used this long lived incredibility competent and very dangerous female agent before, the Eygptian - Ancient of Days, El Judio Errante, Kundry, Ptolema (lots of names if you live a long time I guess) is central to Kieran's 2012 novella “Black Helicopters” but Sexton is even more developed. The Signalman, the hard drinking totally disillusioned investigator, is of course a fairly common character see my post on the district attorney Edward D. Satterlee in Chabon’s "The God of Dark Laughter” or for Kiernan’s previous use of this type of character there is the scrubber Dietrich Paine found in her brilliant 2004 short story “Riding the White Bull”. 

That Agents of Dreamland is Lovecraftian is obvious. I wonder if it could not be considered a type of prequel to her “Black Ships Seen South of Heaven”, 2015 in Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, editor S.T. Josh. Not only is the New Horizons probe central to the events of that story but the Los Angeles Sexton will encounter in the future bears striking similarities to the USA depicted in “Black Ships Seen South of Heaven”. 

However you need not read one to enjoy the other. In “Agents of Dreamland” Keirnan has a number of references that certainly led me to think of Lovecraft’s own work. Among the other items the Signalman provides Sexton with is an antique gold coin, part of Wizard Whateley’s horde from “The Dunwich Horror” perhaps. Early references to Vermont and Eli Davenport conjure up “the Whisperer in the Darkness” even before it becomes more overt. But Keirnan also goes further afield with references to Charles Mason, Area 51, the Enochian language of John Dee, Boaz and Jachin the metal pillars in the Bible, there are Beatles LPs playing and Standish refers to the cultists with names taken from the Heaven’s Gate cult. There are brief references to two of my favourite individuals Alfred Russell Wallace and Ray Harryhausen, but my favourite reference of all is to zombie ants. If you have not read about them previously read the book then look them up, I remember reading about them some years ago and it blew my mind. Keirnan has a science background and published articles in vertebrate paleontology before turning to fiction and I really enjoy the fact that she brings this scientific literacy to her stories. These references are not tossed in at random, they make sense in the context of the story, providing a depth and richness that would be lacking without them. I am sure I missed some, but I have read this novel twice and will read it again. 

After watching the movie The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) as a child I also love any reference to the Salton Sea, sorry I am more like the Signalman than I like to admit.

Keirnan is interviewed in the great documentary “Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg9VCf5einY , 

and she talks of Lovecraft’s use of the motif of “Deep Time”, basically the vast age of the earth as a theme or pivot point for stories like “At the Mountains of Madness”, and one of my favourites “The Shadow Out of Time”. As a paleontologist Kieran would obviously be interested in this concept and she has investigated it in a number of works, indeed my TBR pile contains a copy of Kiernan’s Threshold: A Novel of Deep Time, It was while thinking about Kiernan's use of this motif that I realized that much of SF or cosmic horror is linked to this concept for what is space if not a manifestation of "Deep Time" when even the light reaching us from the nearest stars reflects a period immeasurably distant from our own.

Kiernan has written a number of pastiches, tributes, riffs on, Lovecraft, but what I enjoy is that they do not need to start with a forbidden book or the inheritance of dubious goods or real estate. She realizes that a cosmic threat can be a virus, a signal or even just the focus of the attention of something that was better left undisturbed.