Always a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is MissinAlways a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is Missing’, which fleshes out the story of a missing girl in the form of an oral history (Ash Egan please write a novel in this format!!). I also loved ‘A Gradient Descent’ by David Worn, the juicy, entertaining story of a programmer's futile battle with an evil AI, and the simple-but-creepy approach of Martin Taulbut’s ‘The Ogilvie Transcript’. As for the visual aspect, the found documents in Biscuit Starberry’s ‘You Are Going to Die’ take the prize for best presentation, and with ‘Making a Claim’, Louise Hughes delivers an actually original twist on climate change satire. Great fun as ever, I loved the creativity of every approach here. ...more
Sometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightSometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightful ‘Having a Wonderful Time’, the first two-thirds are a mixture of weaker pieces (‘Zodiac 2000’) and acquired taste (the two longest stories; see below). I wasn’t sold on the book until I hit ‘The Dead Time’, after which every story – ‘The Smile’, ‘Motel Architecture’, ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ – was a hit.
Together, ‘Myths of the Near Future’ and ‘News from the Sun’ clearly form the centrepiece of the book. They’re the most substantial and also, I discovered, the only two stories original to this collection; the others were all first published in magazines. The echoes between them reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Ice and some of her other novels, the way her arrangement of three character archetypes recurs across different novels in different guises. Here Ballard’s central group is of a similar makeup but slightly refracted, there’s the doubling of obsessions with voyeurism, sickness, abandoned Americana – plus the idea of space travel as an aberration that’s thrown humanity so out of joint it's resulted in mass infirmity and madness.
Ballard is a writer I always think I’ve read more than I actually have, and apart from anything else, this was incredibly useful as a snapshot of his short fiction. I can now see connections with both Ballard's peers and contemporaries, and writers I love who were clearly inspired by him (Nina Allan and Joel Lane, to name a couple). ‘The Smile’ would make a great pairing with Daphne du Maurier’s similarly macabre ‘The Doll’, and ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ reminded me so much of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom’ (has anyone done an anthology of 20th-century stories that predicted a video-centric society? If not, they should)....more
A so-so short story collection that drew me in by putting its best foot first. ‘Until the Seas Rise’, which sees a thwarted crush play out against theA so-so short story collection that drew me in by putting its best foot first. ‘Until the Seas Rise’, which sees a thwarted crush play out against the backdrop of a tsunami warning, took me straight into the world of the book. It’s a vivid, tangible story with instantly real characters. Unfortunately, there’s only one other in the book that comes anywhere close to this standard. Coincidentally, or maybe not, it’s one that expands on a detail from ‘Until the Seas Rise’: the presence of ‘fog catchers’, who quite literally trap fog in jars. In ‘The Fog Catchers’, a paranoid conwoman hooks up with a guy she meets at a hotel, only to attract exactly the type of attention she’s trying to avoid. Lots of interesting ideas and details.
Overall the book is intriguing and definitely cohesive, with a sense of all the stories taking place in the same universe, both because specific details recur, and because the themes are consistent: time travel, climate change, how relationships are impacted by technology. However there’s a repeating problem of inconclusive endings, and so many stories feel like they could have been tighter and more focused – actually, it almost feels like they haven’t been critiqued at all. ‘The Encroachment of Waking Life’ has a promising setup, but as soon as you ask a few questions about the premise it falls apart. ‘A Minor Disturbance’ builds tension without payoff. Another story is a retelling of a classic fairytale that telegraphs its whole deal within the first few sentences; why make it so obvious what’s going on?
Felicelli obviously has talent, but I just don’t think these stories have been through the sort of editing process that would help them reach their full potential. Too many weak endings here, too many similar protagonists....more
Usually, the more you read of a writer’s work, the clearer their project becomes to you; I think the opposite might be true of M. John Harrison. I donUsually, the more you read of a writer’s work, the clearer their project becomes to you; I think the opposite might be true of M. John Harrison. I don’t mind, though. (And reading Ballard’s Myths of the Near Future has given me a better idea of the sci-fi landscape within which Harrison’s earlier stories existed – 1975’s ‘Settling the World’ and 1971’s ‘The Causeway’ would slot pretty comfortably into that collection.) As ever with Harrison, parts of this book remained obscure to me, inaccessible, but when it’s good, it’s like nothing else. ‘Running Down’ and ‘A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium’ are stunning. ...more
A sweet short story set in the world of JS&MN (though it resembles the stories in The Ladies of Grace Adieu more than the novel itself). Slight, bA sweet short story set in the world of JS&MN (though it resembles the stories in The Ladies of Grace Adieu more than the novel itself). Slight, but charming. Also gave me Over the Garden Wall vibes....more
Journal entries tell the story of a tumultuous season in a mystery world. This chapbook weaves together strange events with backstories for each of itJournal entries tell the story of a tumultuous season in a mystery world. This chapbook weaves together strange events with backstories for each of its character, telling a lot of story in a small number of pages. Enjoyed the creative names for months (Meltwater, Stillwind, Amberlight)....more
(Review written April 2017.) Every time I started a new story in Children of the New World, I kept thinking: surely at least one of these is going to (Review written April 2017.) Every time I started a new story in Children of the New World, I kept thinking: surely at least one of these is going to be something less than absolutely brilliant, surely this is the one that's going to let me down. Spoiler: it doesn't happen.
The stories here are soft sci-fi, sitting in the near-future genre alongside Black Mirror, Her and Luke Kennard's excellent The Transition. A few of the stories hint at a shared universe, different points in could-be future, giving the collection a David Mitchell vibe. Virtual existences loom large. Memories are bought and sold, jobs performed remotely, social media accessed through implants rather than devices. Real-life parenthood is an anachronism: instead, couples raise clones of themselves or adopt, and buy robot siblings for their kids. Real-life relationships are replaced by artificial memories and real-life sex supplanted by impossible erotic experiences in virtual reality. Meanwhile, the real world is ravaged, depleted. The background details are just as effective in setting the scene. In one story, a baby gnaws on a discarded iPhone; in another, hybrids have been superseded by solar cars – to the point that the next-door neighbour who still insists on driving the former is depicted as the equivalent of a climate change denier.
Several of the stories come with commentary (but not preaching) built in, taking aim at the tendency for technology to create as many problems as it solves – or solve problems that never really existed in the first place. This is most obviously satirised in 'Moksha', in which spiritual enlightenment is achieved by way of an obscenely expensive, underground electrical procedure, with seekers of this high ignoring and avoiding anything that might actually make them happy; and in a section of 'Excerpts from The New World Authorized Dictionary', in which we learn that addiction to 'continual wireless therapy' leads to the creation of a social network for chronic users to provide each other with virtual support, and so on, ouroboros-like. Weinstein also works in a number of nods to climate change and what the 'new world' might mean for nature. In 'Heartland', soil has become such a valuable commodity that everyone's sold it off, turning land into clay fields; on the news, 'it's day nine hundred of the oil spill'. 'Fall Line' is set in a rapidly melting ski resort, post-'Big Thaw'. The characters in 'Migration' rarely leave their homes – they log in to school and work, order their food online – and when one of them ventures outdoors, they encounter a positively post-apocalyptic landscape of overgrown gardens and abandoned malls.
It's hard to pick favourites, but for what it's worth... 'Saying Goodbye to Yang' opens the book with a bang (rhyme not intended) and perfectly sets the tone, combining a futuristic scenario with direct, matter-of-fact narration. 'The Cartographers' is an ingenious tale, a kind of cyber-noir which feels too complete for you to have any sense of the devastating twist until the last minute. 'Children of the New World' perhaps realises the potential of the collection most successfully: I loved the humorous details (spam emails and viruses embodied as sinister or pathetic figures appearing unexpectedly in your home), but this is also the most emotionally affecting story. 'Fall Line' is one of the simplest, in that its portrait of an ex-skiier whose career comes to a halt after a terrible accident could be set against almost any backdrop – it just happens to take place in a world where people stream video through their eyes and snow is the stuff of legend. 'Migration' balances reality and fantasy as immaculately as anything I have ever read (which is something you could also say about the entire book).
What makes the stories work so wonderfully is not their vision of the future, but their human elements. It's the way in which Weinstein draws a line through the past, present and potential future to show what remains constant. There are all types of relationships here, families and couples and friendships, and almost everything about the interaction is familiar, full of sentiment and empathy and ordinary mistakes. As one character says, 'human contact is all there really is'. There are a couple of little weaknesses here and there, but nothing with the power to dull the transcendental glow of Children of the New World as a whole. A fantastic collection.
I received an advance review copy of Children of the New World from the publisher through NetGalley....more
(Review written November 2016.) Many of these stories have similar features: ponderous beginnings – through which you must slog to get to the good stu(Review written November 2016.) Many of these stories have similar features: ponderous beginnings – through which you must slog to get to the good stuff – and sudden endings, cutting them short just as they've become interesting. One of them actually ends in the middle of a sentence. 'The Room in the Tower', 'Mrs Amworth' and 'The Man Who Went Too Far' are worth seeking out; the rest, sadly, feel like filler. It seems this is often the way with collections of ghost stories by authors who wrote them but weren't best known for them (see also E. Nesbit's Horror Stories).
Spinach A brother and sister work as mediums, each claiming to have the power to channel a spirit guide. When one of their best clients encourages them to holiday in her seaside cottage, they head off, only to find that the previous tenant is still very much there... in spirit. This doesn't go the way you might think – the siblings really do seem to be able to channel ghosts, and their communication with this one is successful, though it leads to a macabre discovery. I liked the depiction of these characters, and the dialogue is sharply observed and amusing, but the story doesn't have a proper ending. As an opening to the collection, I enjoyed 'Spinach', but it adjusted my expectations: rather than fully-formed ghost stories, I assumed the rest of the collection would be made up of similar witty scenes.
In the Tube A more traditional ghost story, using the familiar 'storytelling' framing device: a first-person narrator hears a spooky tale from an acquaintance. The acquaintance has been haunted by visions of a man, both before and after his demise by suicide. Again, the story ends abruptly. Contrary to my aforementioned expectations, it isn't especially witty, and doesn't seem likely to stick in my memory for long.
The Man Who Went Too Far A lovely atmosphere in this, with description that really captures the beguiling magic of its rural setting. Two old friends meet after several years' separation, but Darcy is alarmed and intrigued to see that Frank has the appearance of a man fifteen years younger. His explanation is that he has adopted a way of life that brings him closer to nature, ridding himself of all pain and suffering (or proximity to it). However, it's not hard to guess from the title how this is going to pan out. In the end, the story seems to read as a cautionary tale about the dangers of eschewing Christianity.
Mrs Amworth A very enjoyable vampire story set in an otherwise sleepy, picturesque village. It doesn't exactly offer a new take on the genre but, even so, I'd probably say this is my favourite of the collection so far.
(The above reviews were written separately as part of a review-in-progress, each one completed after I finished the story. At this point, however, I got a bit fed up and resolved to finish the rest off in one go. I also remembered why I don't usually do this: because it ends up taking me a month to read a sub-200-page book.)
The other five stories are a similarly uneven bunch. The best of the lot is 'The Room in the Tower', in which a man finds a recurring dream appearing to come true, and is menaced by a diabolical painting; it's by far the most successful at conjuring up a genuine sense of dread and terror. The story that follows it, 'The Bus-Conductor', is both unremarkable and far too similar to 'In the Tube'. There are two stories about gigantic evil slugs (!), which makes this sound like a MUCH more exciting book than it is. And the last one is about poor put-upon caterpillars taking revenge on a couple of obnoxious caterpillar-taunting fops. At least that's how I read it. ...more
I loved Newman’s Municipal Gothic so much that I bought and started reading this new collection immediately after finishing it. There’s definitelyI loved Newman’s Municipal Gothic so much that I bought and started reading this new collection immediately after finishing it. There’s definitely more of a folk horror flavour to Intervals of Darkness. Things rise up from the earth, or the sea: an ancient skull in ‘Poor Ned’s Head’, a pair of antlers in ‘The Horns in the Earth’. Echoes of history reverberate through ‘Second Homes’ and ‘Tales from the Levels: ‘Remembrance’’; rural communities reject and/or terrorise outsiders in ‘Night of the Fox’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’.
At the same time, the book continues and reinforces the political slant evident in Newman’s first collection. This is most apparent in two stories I can’t help but think of as a pair, ‘British Chemicals’ and ‘Industrial Byproducts’. In ‘Chemicals’, company directors discuss a factory worker’s mysterious death; though they acknowledge a strange presence on the factory floor, they ultimately decline to award his family compensation, adding a final indignity to a lifetime of exploitation. Strange elements notwithstanding, ‘Byproducts’ really feels like more of a realist, miserabilist story, in which a working-class couple struggle to maintain optimism in the face of the daily grind. The effects of decades of work manifest in unusual physical ways, but really the point is that these shining, beautiful people are ground down to nothing by the simple act of trying to survive.
I loved ‘The Horns in the Earth’, in which a cynical writer visits a series of council estates, hoping to find a topic for a book. He ends up being haunted (and somewhat oblivious about it) after digging a pair of antlers out of an old rubbish heap. ‘Winter Wonderland’, charting a doomed family outing to a Christmas theme park, is excellent, and so cinematic it feels like a ready-made basis for a film. I also enjoyed the Aickmanesque ‘Night of the Fox’, and ‘Competing Theories with Regards to the Origins of the Ghost of Totterdown Lock’ with its multitude of voices.
Overall, I didn’t fall as hard for this book as I did for Municipal Gothic – maybe it wasn’t the best idea to read the books back-to-back, but I was just so excited to discover a new writer to add to my collection of favourites. Although I’d recommend Municipal Gothic first, Intervals of Darkness is well worth a look if you’re interested in modern British horror....more
First things first: I had no idea that Elizabeth Hand’s ‘Near Zennor’ – literally my favourite short story of all time – would appear in this anthologFirst things first: I had no idea that Elizabeth Hand’s ‘Near Zennor’ – literally my favourite short story of all time – would appear in this anthology. For anyone thinking of buying Bound in Blood, Hand’s story is an absolute masterpiece that is worth the price of the book on its own. I wrote about it in my review of her collection Errantry, and there’s not much I can add to that, but again: it’s a masterpiece.
Yet its inclusion means I find Bound in Blood more difficult to review, overall, than I might otherwise. For me, ‘Near Zennor’ is such a standout it makes even the good stories here look mediocre by comparison. That’s not to say that it’s a bad collection, just your typical mixed bag. As with something like Darkness Beckons, I found this to be such a mixture of styles and subgenres of horror that I inevitably found myself skipping over some of the stories. As a result, I’m not sure I can assign a single rating to it.
With that said, Lucie McKnight Hardy’s ‘Broken Back Man’ is excellent: a barman is spooked when a customer reminds him of childhood night terrors; it’s truly atmospheric and creepy. As a non-enjoyer of cosmic horror, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Charlie Higson’s ‘From the Sea’, an ingenious and funny reinvention of Lovecraft that reminded me of Lynne Truss’s Cat Out of Hell. Other highlights were A.G. Slatter’s enjoyably gothic ‘Bell, Book and Lamp’; Robert Shearman’s odd, original ‘Beneath the Diaphragm, the Gut Itself’; and Alison Moore’s ‘The House Witch’, a typical Moore combination of mundanity and the weird....more
(3.5) An odd, sometimes uneven collection, Mystery Lights, sitting as it does somewhere between conventional literary fiction and the strange and spec(3.5) An odd, sometimes uneven collection, Mystery Lights, sitting as it does somewhere between conventional literary fiction and the strange and speculative. Going in, I expected more of the latter, and I’ll admit to being disappointed that some of the stories are more straightforward than anticipated, and/or hinge on the overfamiliar idea that reality is scarier than an imagined supernatural threat. The thing is, though, when Valencia is firing on all cylinders, she’s really, really good, and the standout stories make the book well worth reading. Excellent sense of atmosphere and place here – especially in the desert settings that appear across so many of the stories – and Valencia has a gift for crafting characters swiftly. Favourites were ‘The Reclamation’, ‘Vermilion’, ‘Dogs’, ‘Reaper Ranch’ and ‘Trogloxene’. You might enjoy this if you liked Meagan Poland’s What Makes You Think You’re Awake? or Kate Folk’s Out There....more
Excellent at a technical/craft level... This immediately struck me as a book you could easily teach: almost every line of every story is carefully calExcellent at a technical/craft level... This immediately struck me as a book you could easily teach: almost every line of every story is carefully calibrated to tell us something about its characters; McFarlane writes around the serial killer theme cleverly, deftly. But I was frequently just bored! It’s almost too perfect to be enjoyable. ‘Hostess’ was the only story that stood out as having anything raw and human and fun at its core. Also there’s a cloying edge to the way McFarlane depicts relationships that I really didn’t vibe with. ...more
An absolutely brutal and brilliant collection. Rejection is short: there are seven stories, of which the first five are substantial character studies,An absolutely brutal and brilliant collection. Rejection is short: there are seven stories, of which the first five are substantial character studies, and the last two a coda to those (the stories are all linked). The character studies, in the main, follow unhappy and self-sabotaging people: in ‘The Feminist’, a man who’s furious his status as a self-proclaimed feminist doesn’t get him dates; in ‘Pics’, a woman whose obsession with a crush destroys her life; in ‘Ahegao’, a gay guy who struggles not with his sexuality but with the fact that he can only get off on a particular, hard-to-articulate fetish. The broader themes here – dating, the internet, the soul-crushing combination of the two, repression, and, obviously, rejection – are explored in a lot of contemporary fiction, but it’s Tulathimutte’s writing that really makes it work: raw, shorn of any restraint, horribly true. The obvious point of comparison is Kristen Roupenian’s You Know You Want This – in particular, ‘The Feminist’ followed by ‘Pics’ reminded me of the one-two punch of ‘Cat Person’ and ‘The Good Guy’ – and I also thought a lot about Paul Dalla Rosa’s use of voice in An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life.
I received an advance review copy of Rejection from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
Issue 4 is bookended by two of the best stories to have ever appeared in this zine. Guan Un’s ‘Feel the Burn’ collects emails from an increasingly belIssue 4 is bookended by two of the best stories to have ever appeared in this zine. Guan Un’s ‘Feel the Burn’ collects emails from an increasingly belligerent gym owner as he tries to get around the problem of a giant spider in the cardio room; it’s perfectly realised and very funny. Kay Hanifen’s lost-documents story, ‘The Lost Park of Max Westgate’, is terrific and terrifying: a billionaire plans a theme park filled with human-animal hybrids, and its head scientist’s journal tells the sorry tale of how it all went hideously wrong (think ‘Abandoned by Disney’ by way of The Island of Dr. Moreau). I also enjoyed ‘Which World Ending Nightmare Are You?’ by Susan Taitel, in which a BuzzFeed quiz gets Lovecraftian, and Sara Omer’s cult story through penpal letters, ‘We See Red’. The prize for most original concept goes to Annika Barranti Klein’s ‘Transmissions from a Dying Whale’, a librarian’s log of the 1,000+ days she spends alone in the ‘World Library’... which is inside a whale. As ever, a highly recommended anthology overall!...more
In this collection, each story is part of a pair, so a detail of one will be reflected or elaborated upon in another. (This is mentioned in the blurb,In this collection, each story is part of a pair, so a detail of one will be reflected or elaborated upon in another. (This is mentioned in the blurb, but I’d forgotten about it when I started reading, so it was only as I progressed through the stories and spotted the links that I became properly aware of it.) It’s a sort of call-and-response structure that makes the book more satisfying as a whole, although at the same time, almost every story can stand on its own.
The stories are set across three centuries in various parts of New England. There are a lot of windswept coasts and woodstoves, quaint little museums and mysterious forests. These are quiet, compassionate stories – it’s not a showy book. The stories are gentle but the writing is sharp, a good combination. The precise way characters’ actions are described, the naturalistic dialogue, reminded me so much of Brandon Taylor; I’ve often wondered what Taylor’s fiction would be like if his characters had a wider range of ages and experiences, and here perhaps is the answer. If you enjoyed the style of The Late Americans but found the focus too narrow, read this.
I loved the pairing of ‘Radiolab: “Singularities”’, a transcript of a podcast episode about a mysterious photograph, and ‘The Auk’, which details how the photograph came to be. Similarly satisfying is the combination of ‘Edwin Chase of Nantucket’, which has a boy struggling to understand his mother’s relationship with an enigmatic visitor who gifts her a painting, and ‘The Silver Clip’ (possibly my favourite?), where the painting resurfaces as part of a new graduate’s unusual friendship with a much older widow. Two of the most effective stories are ‘The Children of New Eden’, about a young couple drawn into a religious cult, and ‘Graft’, in which a woman thinks she may have glimpsed the child she gave up – these stories are not a pair, but they have similar emotional heft and tension. And of course I have to mention the first story, ‘The History of Sound’, which is an excellent opener, instantly engaging, impossible to resist.
Occasionally something doesn’t work: I thought I was supposed to dislike the protagonist of ‘August in the Forest’, but if so, the ending is a shitty outcome for Elizabeth in a way that chafes against the book’s general mood. I also didn’t buy the narrative voice of its partner story, ‘The Journal of Thomas Thurber’, which rings false for its supposed narrator and time period. For the most part though, this works wonderfully, really self-assured writing, a calm confidence to it all, a spellbinding portrait of ordinary lives and the reverberations of small, seemingly inconsequential incidents and choices through history....more
Dead Letters is an anthology with a brilliant concept which just happens to be weighted towards subgenres I don’t much enjoy. If you prefer monster stDead Letters is an anthology with a brilliant concept which just happens to be weighted towards subgenres I don’t much enjoy. If you prefer monster stories, cosmic horror, action/gore and dark fantasy over ghost stories and subtler shades of weird fiction, you might get more out of this book than I did. Which is to say I didn’t love it, but that’s not a value judgement, just a matter of taste. And of course there are some great stories here, especially ‘Re: The Hand (of god)’ by J.A.W. McCarthy, which uses emails and messages to tell the story of a woman who gets trapped at work... with a severed hand... that keeps getting bigger. How you even come up with an idea as original and strange as this story, I’ll never know. Also really liked ‘Something Cool Behind the Waterfall’ by Nat Reiher (similarly original), ‘Family Dirt’ by Justin Allec, ‘The Second Death’ by Christina Wilder, ‘Echo Chamber’ by Gemma Files and ‘Berkey Family Vacation 1988’ by Jacob Steven Mohr....more