“The Oram County Whoosit”

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This week’s weird fiction being discussed over at The Weird Tradition group on LibraryThing.

Review: “The Oram County Whoosit”, Steve Duffy, 2008.

Cover by Obrotowy

I liked this story. Not only does Duffy provide two well done narrative voices but some evocative historical details and also a bit of a rumination on the myth of the American West.

The story starts out on a rainy day in Oram, West Virginia, a coal mining town.

The narrator is Fenwick, a newspaper photographer, waiting for the arrival – along with the town’s dignitaries — for Horton Keith, a famous writer who will become even more famous in the intervening years between 1924, when this story takes place, and the 1980s when Fenwick is telling it. 

Keith has come to town to investigate a report of a something found in a lump of coal from the mine. After meeting Fenwick and finding him suitable company, the ambitious Keith points out the local miners trudging off to work and then briefly mentions his days as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco and, on the quest for adventure, how he joined the Klondike gold rush. He juxtaposes the joy the prospectors approached their work, even though neither he nor many others found significant amounts of gold, with the attitude of men who will see pay, however small, for their work. The prospectors were dreamers like him, and they sensed, with the closing of the American West, this was their last chance for adventure. 

Discussion then returns to the reports of the “toad in a hole” as Fenwick calls it. He’s skeptical of such reports and attributes them to either fraud of the Fiji Mermaid variety or newspapers desperate for stories. 

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Eldritch Prisoners

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Well, Twitter has its uses. It was the first place I heard about this book which just missed showing up for my birthday. Given that it has a David Hambling story, I bought it immediately.

Normally, a story by him would get its own post, but this is a Cthulhu Mythos anthology from Crossroad Press, and they’ve become increasingly elaborate affairs whose independent stories – often parts of authors’ series – also form part of complicated suites and mosaics. Like Time Loopers, this one doesn’t even have a listed editor which leads me to believe it was entirely executed by its authors. In fact, I suspect it was conceived around the same time.

Review: Eldritch Prisoners, 2023.

Cover by Leigh Whurr

One character in this book says, “Questions are a burden, answers are a prison”.

After finishing it, making notes, skimming parts of it again, I still feel somewhat burdened and not totally imprisoned.

Whether it’s my deficiencies as a reader or because it’s a deliberately and resolutely mysterious work, I’m not sure I completely understood what happened.

However, I can unreservedly recommend three of its four stories.

Having always meant to return to David Conyers’ Harrison Peel series after reading “The Eye of Infinity”, I was pleased to see Peel show up in Conyers’ “Broken Singularity”. It’s the oddity here, broken up into four parts, starting and ending the book and in between the stories, and often casting some dim light on their events.

Peel awakens naked from a pod to join three other people. There’s a drill-instructor like voice yelling them to get into their spacesuits and get working or the oxygen privileges will end. The work is to explore an airless planetoid and bring back information. None of the four can remember how they got there. Peel may be the primitive one here since the rest are posthumans, but his military training kicks in, and he takes command while the rest dawdle. Not that the party lasts long after seeing the oddity of a Humvee on the surface. Approaching it, it morphs, launches weapons, and reduces two of the party to cubes of their constituent chemical components.

Debriefed on the mission, he meets a woman who seems familiar. Well, part of her: a disembodied head and arm. She hints that maybe he should check out the connections on the pod he emerged from.

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“The Eye of Infinity”

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Since it’s relevant to an upcoming review, here’s a retro review of mine that originally appeared on the Innsmouth Free Press website on December 1, 2011. Conyers has been busying putting out collections of his Harrison Peel stories on Kindle, so this one is, or soon will be, easily available.

By Randy Stafford

Conyers, David. The Eye of Infinity. Perilous Press (2011). 84 pp. USD $12.00. ISBN 978-0-9704000-4-8.

As Cody Goodfellow suggests in his introduction to this novella, the modern writer of Lovecraftian horror isn’t content to populate his stories with wimpy students of folklore and mathematics, hapless college professors and genealogists. The new version of the Lovecraftian hero is as comfortable wielding a Glock as reading a grimoire. Some versions are even government employees and battling cosmic horrors is in their position descriptions. They don’t wade through erudite analyses of occult tomes and abstruse dimension-rupturing mathematics. They’ve got people and supercomputers for that. Thus, we have the Lovecraftian espionage tale as most famously practiced in Charles Stross’ Laundry series. Goodfellow doesn’t see this as some sort of post-modern genre mashup but merely continuing the Weird Tales tradition of “blending genres to wring unique new surprises out of familiar pulp tropes”.

I have to admit, though, I haven’t read enough of any author’s “tradecraft meets Lovecraft” stories (to borrow Tim Powers’ description of his novel Declare) to fairly compare them with Conyers’ work in that area. I haven’t even read the prequel to this story, The Spiraling Worm co-authored by John Sunseri with Conyers.

That book introduced Harrison Peel, an Australian soldier on loan to America’s National Security Agency. In that book, Peel traveled the universe via an alien wormhole system; encountered shoggoths; partnered up with fellow spy Jack Dixon, an ex-Illinois cop; and fell in love with Nicola Mulvany during some nasty events in Nevada.

This story starts with the hideous looking corpse of a radio astronomer in New Mexico, a dead man who now has too many eyes and too many mouths. Dixon and Peel quickly discover a trail that leads to a secret U.S. government project, INFINITE EYE. It uses the wormhole network of the Pentapods, aliens that built a city in the Antarctic millions of years ago, Conyers’ obvious updating of Lovecraft’s Old Ones from At the Mountains of Madness. With a six trillion dollar budget, it’s obviously something important, so Peel goes on a jaunt, guided by an ex-mountaineer and NASA employee, across several worlds and light years to see what lies at the end of this covert network.

Conyers’ story works as a spy thriller – with Peel and even his NSA superiors locked out of the secrets of INFINITE EYE and somebody suborning or murdering members of the project – and as Lovecraftian horror justified by quantum physics and sudden, violent assaults on Peel and others. Indeed, it becomes clear INFINITE EYE may threaten humanity.

Peel isn’t a supersoldier physically or emotionally, and I liked that. He’s beginning to feel the erosion of his psyche from all the horrors he’s seen, and Nicola has given him an ultimatum: either quit after his next mission, marry her and start a family or let her join him and use her training as an ex-counter intelligence agent with the FBI.

There were some problems, though. Yes, Agent Peel, modern ammunition will, in fact, fire in a vacuum. The gunpowder has its own oxidizers. That technical error took me out of the story and wasn’t even justified as being crucial to Conyers’ plot. The dialogue between Peel and Nicola was sometimes flat and sounded like bald character exposition mixed with some training script for police crisis counselors. Conyers’ avoids falling into some logic potholes only by sheer speed of narration.

Still, though, I liked the story enough that I’m going to pick up The Spiraling Worm and will follow Peel’s future adventures.

And, lest you think $12 is a mite steep for a novella, this one comes with some nice black and white drawings by Nickolas Gucker. His work nicely illustrates dramatic points of the story – whether they’re alien landscapes or sudden and gruesome deaths.

“The Sadness of the Executioner”

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And so, on the occasion of the Weird Tradition taking up discussion of this story, I return – reluctantly – to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series.

As it turns out, I go a long way back with this story. It was in the book that exposed me to sword-and-sorcery, Flashing Swords #1. I didn’t feel any need to immediately follow up with any of the authors in that book, though, later I did become a fan of Poul Anderson. Now, Flashing Swords #2 . . . I immediately sought out Michael Moorcock’s Elric series after coming across it there.

Review: “The Sadness of the Executioner”, Fritz Leiber, 1973.

I admit I didn’t mind this one so much. 

It’s fairly short and about Death at the heart of Shadowland. But even Death has his masters, and he’s got a quota of people whose expiration date has arrived in the city of Nerewhon:

“one hundred sixty peasants and savages, twenty nomads, ten warriors, two beggars, a whore, a merchant, a priest, an aristocrat, a craftsman, a king, and two heroes.”

Mostly easy, but things are running close. He’s got 12 heartbeats to dispatch the last 12 people.

And, so, he turns attention to two heroes or, at least, Fafhrd and Mouser. Sure, they had “served him well and in vastly more varied fashion than the Mad Duke” whom he just killed. But even pawns that get promoted have to be taken off the board eventually.

And so Death moves another piece to make the strike: Esafem, one time harem-girl, now mutilated and depiliated and on a second career as a blacksmith, scantily clad in metal breast cups from which poisoned – if alluring – needles jut.

(Spoilers ahead)

Of course, our two heroes manage to beat their fate.

Death is sort of a stand-in for an author. He likes to use the material at hand to make his deaths believeable, but, if pressed for time (as happens when Fafhrd and the Mouser evade their deaths) he’ll resort to deus ex machina as he does by killing two paragons of chivalry – which Fafhrd and the Mouser definitely aren’t.  It’s interesting that even Death has his masters and will eventually die.

Stealing Other People’s Homework: “Pipsqueak Prometheus”

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Digging around on the excellent Tellers of Weird Tales, I found this article on L. Ron Hubbard from Bill Blackbeard who was, at one time, the world’s greatest collector of newspaper comic strips.

I was struck by this summation of Hubbard’s Final Blackout:

“Final Blackout” begins as a sketch, a vivid depiction of military life on the blackened battlefields of a world-wide war, rising in its early scenes to a graphic presentation of this kind of experience that has seldom been equaled in popular fiction, yet it bloats and fades in the middle into a pointless rambling odyssey in which a single man named simply the Lieutenant, plays God, and, wholly invincible, carves for himself out of the hulk of war-devastated England a throne upon which he can receive from the entire populace the same homage and worship he received from his men on the battlefield. This is not, of course, the avowed purpose of the Lieutenant, but it is subconsciously Hubbard’s, and its obsessive emergence ruins the body of the novel, logically and artistically. We can accept the invincibility — within limits — of the Lieutenant on the battlefield, where his survival after years of combat has proven him a capable soldier, but that this invincibility can be turned to the solution of any social problem, or the downing of any moral or economic obstacle, is, as presented, beyond the reader’s ability to swallow. It is Doc Savage; it is Superman; it is the pith helmet triumphant; but it is not effective fiction. This is a case where the development of a truly believable character of superior mental and moral endowment, rather than a soldier-savior-stereotype, would have made a fundamental difference and saved a potentially powerful novel, but such a character is beyond Hubbard’s ability to create—or understand. “Final Blackout” is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for Hubbard, nothing more.

Walpurgis III

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We’re back to the point where I occasionally dig into archive to post reviews of a sort from the past.

This one was inspired by Bookstooge’s recent mention of Mike Resnick’s Widowmaker series.

This is the one and only novel I’ve read by Resnick and is set in the Birthright Universe as are the Widowmaker books.

Raw Feed (1992): Walpurgis III, Mike Resnick, 1982. 

I’ve enjoyed Mike Resnick’s alternate history short stories but expected this to be a schlocky, if fun, adventure novel. But it turned out to be surprisingly thoughtful – a rumination on the question of evil and its degrees – as well as a fast-moving, well-told action tale. (Though some details of assassin Jericho’s exploits – like how he dispatches so many troops at once in the final confrontation with Conrad Bland – are left vague but Resnick covers this weakness skillfully). 

Conrad Bland is a mass murderer of the political variety who has taken refuge on the world Walpurgis III, a planet of Satanists. He is capable of any evil act as the narrative shows, and aphorisms from him at the beginning of each chapter reveal the sick mind behind the monstrosities. In a sly bit of satire, Resnick has the Satanists of Walpurgis III talking a good show about worshipping evil and committing it, but, with the exception of the areas under Bland’s control, not fully living up to their principles. It’s as if Resnick is saying that no society can actually allow such evil to be committed. It literally self-destructs if it does. 

Against this ultimate monster is dispatched the ultimate assassin – Jericho. This story details his hunt, a ruthless hunt in which he kills several innocents, even his own fellow agents. Policeman John Sable has to decide which is worse: the compulsive evil of Bland or the ultimately more dangerous evil of Jericho (more dangerous because he slips past Bland’s defenses, his cordon sanitaire of death, to kill him), an evil of calculation and ruthlessness.

Sable takes the only rational, pragmatic, and moral choice: he lets Jericho kill Bland and then arrests him.

Medi-Evil 2

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Well, I promised myself more of Paul Finch’s Medi-Evil anthologies. And, having to spend the evening of my birthday in a hotel room in Fargo on a busines trip during winter, surely I deserved it.

Behind the scenes, this is something of a big day for the MarzAat blog. I’ve at last eliminated the backlog of read books to review.

Review: Medi-Evil 2: Tales of Historical Horror and Fantasy, Paul Finch, 2011.

It’s 1070 in England, and the Harrying of the North is still underway by William the Conqueror four years after he took England. He called it suppressing rebellion. Some modern historians call it genocide. “Twilight in the Orm-Garth” starts with Eric, a destitute man, making his way to Wilbury Castle. It’s the home of the Dagoberts, a family that came over with William, and on a strategic and anciently fortified site on the eastern shore of England.

It turns out Eric isn’t a nobody. Or, at least, he wasn’t always. He’s the third son of Count Dagobert. The reunion is not a joyous affair, and his father and older brothers Rolf and Anselm want to know why he is no longer the knight he was when he left the castle to join Hugh the Red, William’s chief lieutenant in the Harrying.

Normans, of course, followed the law of primogeniture. The oldest brother, here Rolf, will inherit everything when the count dies. The other brothers must make their own way in the world. Anselm became a bishop. And Eric, once betrothed to Ella, a woman of noble Saxon birth whom he loved, is in no position to marry.

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“Tainaron: Mail from Another City”

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The topic of a recent discussion over at the Weird Tradition group at LibraryThing.

Review: “Tainaron: Mail from Another City”, Leena Krohn, trans. Hilda Hawkins, 2005. 

This story is long enough that the anthology’s introdctory blurb calls it a short novel. It is narrated, seemingly, by a woman given that we have a dream with a rapist and mention of a dress she wishes she had. 

The 30 letters of varying lengths are addressed to someone, seemingly in Europe, who never answers back. They seem to be to an old lover. 

The story is long on strange elements and short on dialogue and a conventional plot except in the sequence of events mentioned in the letters.

Tianaron is a city full of what seems like a variety of sentient, insectoid life. No explanation is given as to how it came to be. Indeed, the narrator reached it by ship though she can’t remember exactly how. There is no mention of the city being on another planet other than on Earth. 

There are many oddities the narrator, sometimes accompanieed by local native guide Longhorn, encounters. 

The dead of the city are taken to subterranean rooms where they are consumed, except for some part of their body taken as a token by loved ones, by what seems the young of the city, beetles basically.

There is a prince long ignored who know who sees no one for years on end. 

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1816: The Year Without Summer

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This is one of the rare books I got through a Kickstarter offering.

Review: 1816: The Year Without Summer, ed. Dickon Springate, 2019.

Cover by Mihail Bila

No, it’s not a non-fiction book about the climatic, political, social, and economic effects of Mount Tambora exploding in 1815. It’s something more unique. While there have certainly been other historically themed Lovecraftian horror anthologies, none have been this tightly focused. There’s one story set in each month of 1816. (The cover is incorrect. There are actually 13 stories here.)

There are a few things to note. First, not all of these stories are Cthulhu Mythos stories. Second, not every story strikes me as even Lovecraftian. Third, while there aren’t any bad stories here, the anthology does get off to a slow start.

David Southwell’s “Foreword” tells us how the book came to be and seems to see this as a collection of alternate histories about the hidden role of Lovecraftian entities in altering history’s trajectory.. I’d argue they are more secret histories.

Editor Springate’s “Prologue” sets up the book’s conceit that the events leading to Tambora’s eruption actually started about a 1,000 years ago in Newfoundland.,

And Newfoundland is where G. Groff’s “The Sepulchred Conflagration” takes us. In the wake of a Viking raid on the local skraelings, we meet a shaman who failed to stop their desecration of a local shrine to Katkannalu (seemingly the local name for Cthulhu). We then shift over to Tambora and then St. Johns, Newfoundland and get an explanation for that town’s long history of devastating fires. While the opening was certainly unusual for a Mythos story, the story struck me as a bit awkward because of its bridging the story’s opening premise and the year 1816.

The anthology settles into to its rhythm with C. K. Meeder’s “Documentation of Varied Scientific Endeavours”, and chemist Sir Humphrey Davy is the first of many historical figures we’ll come across in the book. It’s January 1816, and his journal relates how he visited a coal mine in the north of England to test out his new safety lamp. But he’ll find something weird and disturbing there.

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“I, the Vampire”

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Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of the weekly weird fiction reviews. I’ll offer no reasons or excuses but just get to the review.

Review: “I, the Vampire”, Henry Kuttner, 1937.

Cover by Bruce Timm

This is one of  those formula stories where you pretty much know almost all the plot twists ahead of time.

The title, after all, tips you off. Then there’s editor Fransworth Wright’s blurb:

“Dark horror settled down like a fog on Hollywood, the world’s film capital, as an evil thing preyed on the celebrated stars of filmdom – an odd and curious story.”

On the first page, there’s mention of the “vampire man” – that would be Chevalier Futaine, an import from Paris who, it is hoped, will be the next Hollywood horror star after Boris Karloff. Yes, he does, indeed, turn out to be a real vampire.

And we can spot, right away, Futaine’s past and future victims.

The only surprising thing is that Chevailer Funtaine decides, after setting his sights on the narrator’s fiance, Jean (who Futaine believes is the reincarnation of a past love of his, Sonya), not to turn Jean into a vampire because he regrets doing that with Sonya. The woman Sonya he loved was not the same as Sonya the vampire.

(Spoilers ahead) 

We don’t actually know if the narrator ends up killing Futaine, but the latter gives him the key to his otherwise impregnable crypt so he can kill him during the day. 

Besides the surprising ending, the Hollywood details are interesting. Marijuana use is mentioned as is the downward trajectory of many actors via alcoholism. That’s exemplified by Hess Deming who the narrator, an assistant director, suspects will end up getting fewer and fewer jobs and eventually gassing himself to death in some cheap apartment. There is a Hollywood fixer of sort (he does “delicate jobs for studios”) in the man who tries to break into Futaine’s crypt at the request of the narrator.

Kuttner also updates the vampire myth a bit by showing how vampires can’t be clearly photographed – which leads to a cameraman being murdered by Futaine to keep his secret.