"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
Thursday, December 7, 2023
The hellscape of KISS avatars and AI art
Monday, October 9, 2023
October reading update
Thursday, June 16, 2022
On staying in and weaving out of reading lanes, and Stephen King’s Christine
Feel the fury, of a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury
My reading often keeps me in a well-worn, familiar travel lane.
That lane is, broadly, fantasy. Sword-and-sorcery being the sweet spot.
Adjacent lanes are horror, SF, and adventure fiction/historical fiction.
I also read a lot of non-fiction—some for work, some for self-improvement, but also stuff like WWII history, true crime, maritime disasters. I put non-fiction in a separate category. I read it with a destination in mind, getting things done for important reasons, like learning a new skill. Think airline business travel. As opposed to fiction which (ideally) is like getting behind the wheel of a 1969 Chevelle SS and hitting the gas.
Come to think of it, sword-and-sorcery is like a 1960s/70s muscle car. Loud, powerful, a little dangerous. Like a vintage muscle car I enjoy its aesthetics, how it performs. It has its drawbacks. It’s not always safe, or reliable. It has poor gas mileage. But, when its Robert E. Howard, or Fritz Leiber, or Poul Anderson, or Jack Vance, it’s pretty reliably fun, at least. Sometimes, more than that.
But occasionally I turn the wheel, to the left and right, and veer out of my reading lane. Once in a while I go off-roading, or change cars altogether.
The driving metaphors are coming freely/obnoxiously because right now I’m immersed in Stephen King’s Christine. I haven’t read this one in oh… 25 years? 30? I don’t know about you, but my mind is a sieve when it comes to retaining (most) details of books read long ago. So my memory of Christine is awful scant. The good news is, this 40-year-old book (published 1983) is almost new to me at this point.
Christine is quite good so far, very compelling. As King often is, especially his older stuff.
Anyways, the experience got me to thinking… what is my lane, and why do I stay in it? What causes me to drift, or swerve?
Underneath it’s all the same urge. To find great writing.
I place good, entertaining writing as the highest value in my fiction reading, regardless of what form it takes. Good writing is followed by interesting ideas. Third, but still important, are the comfortable, familiar tropes (swords, wizards, battles, magic, monsters).
It’s rare to get all of these in the same spot. When it does occur, as with something like The Lord of the Rings, “Beyond the Black River,” or Watership Down, it’s a book or a story that I will cherish, and return to again and again.
Back to Christine. This book definitely checks the first two boxes. It’s out of my fantasy/S&S lane. But, it delivers with good writing that is just plain fun. It almost feels cozy, with its ability to put me back in a time (it’s set in 1978) that is pretty close to my youth. The nostalgia is nice.
And, it contains an interesting idea.
The idea is the dangerous transition to adulthood. That’s what Christine represents. She is the machine that kids inherit, at 16 or 17 or 18, that guides them into a different phase of life. Buying your first car is a rite of passage. It feels adult, but it also allows you to escape the confines of your home, or immediate neighborhood, and go places. Making the transition to adulthood is something we all must do, and not all of us make it (literally—some die on the roadways, and figuratively--some remain stuck in perpetual childhood or adolescence).
That’s scary, and King skillfully handles this idea in Christine. As with this passage, my favorite so far:
By the time I had the mounted tire back in my trunk and had paid the guy two bucks for the job, the early evening light had become the fading purple of late evening. The shadow of each bush was long and velvety, and as I cruised slowly back up the street I saw the day’s last light streaming almost horizontally through the trash-littered space between the Arby’s and the bowling alley. That light, so much flooding gold, was nearly terrible in its strange, unexpected beauty.
I was surprised by a choking panic that climbed up in my throat like dry fire. It was the first time a feeling like that came over me that year—that long, strange year—but not the last. Yet it’s hard for me to explain, or even define. It had something to do with realizing that it was August 11, 1978, that I was going to be a senior in high school next month, and that when school started again it meant the end of a long, quiet phase of my life. I was getting ready to be a grown-up, and I saw that somehow—saw it for sure, for the first time in that lovely but somehow ancient spill of golden light flooding down the alleyway between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint. And I think I understood then that what really scares people about growing up is that you stop trying on the life-mask and start trying on another one. If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
I love that line, “end of a long, quiet phase of my life”… that so describes my early years, too. And King’s familiar, blue-collar details—the Arby’s, the bowling alley—make it feel real, and relatable.
I suspect King was remembering a similar scene from his past, that flood of golden light, and that realization. And channeling his own experiences of growing up, and making the difficult transition to adulthood.
Christine also has something of the tropes I like. A demonic, ghostly car. But, this comes third. A possessed car is kind of a dumb idea to be honest. King makes it work, because he has the first two elements down pat.
In summary, here’s what I like about fiction.
- A great story that takes you to another place. When the author does so with tension, spooled out, building to a crescendo, maybe 2-3 times during the same book or story, I’ll read this book.
- The interesting idea underneath.
- The cool details, the paint and polish and shiny hood ornaments. Aka, the genre.
A bad story will miss on all three, or focus on one to the detriment of the others. You need balance. The worst is probably the story that aims at no. 3 and fails even at that. Think of the loud and dumb barbarian protagonist that apes Conan, or the splatterpunk horror author who copies King’s gruesome details but whose writing lacks heart or purpose, or the requisite skill.
So yeah, Christine is not sword-and-sorcery, but is very much in an adjacent lane of my reading tastes. It checks (most of) the boxes I enjoy.
Now we’ll see if King can stick the landing—not his strongest suit.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
The fine sounds of a silver stringed bard
Ghouls, guitars, and gals... good stuff. |
My latest essay/review is up on the blog of Tales from the Magician's Skull. Check out The Far-Flung Literary Webs of Manly Wade Wellman.
I have been a fan of Wellman for some time, but only casually, and only through his Kardios S&S stories and a handful of other tales. I had not read any of his Silver John stories.
That was a mistake I'm glad I rectified with the collection Who Fears the Devil?
These stories are set in mid-20th century America but have a sword-and-sorcery heartbeat and soul to them. A wandering outsider/bard, armed with a silver-stringed guitar instead of a sword, running afoul of monsters and magic and ne'er do well-ers in the deep woods of Appalachia. All told with a master story teller's skilled hand.
If you haven't yet read of John, aka., John the Balladeer, aka. Silver John, you're in for a treat.
Saturday, October 30, 2021
The Wolfen, Whitley Strieber
I own this same edition... |
I have some history with this book. My grandfather, a WWII veteran whose experiences in the Pacific I detailed here on the Silver Key, liked to read--specifically, he favored thrillers, horror, men's adventure, war novels, and other fun potboilers. He kept a few shelves of books in his basement, and a couple more shelves of paperbacks behind his leather easy chair. As a boy of probably 8-10 years of age I remember creeping behind his chair in his living room, reviewing the spines of books he had on his shelf, and selecting The Wolfen purely for its evocative title. The menacing eyes on the cover reflecting a woman in terror assured me I had made a good selection.
I still remember reading it, all those years ago, and being absolutely terrified, beset with nightmares in the days after. The book opens with a highly effective scene of two cops assigned to dump duty, marking up abandoned cars in need of crushing at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The place is typically no threat, with only a few homeless, rats, and stray dogs to contend with. But on this night the two policemen are surrounded, savaged, and eaten by a pack of werewolves in the most savage manner imaginable. These creatures are so fast that the cops aren't able to clear guns from their holsters.
Streiber's great conceit with The Wolfen is that werewolves have been living among us for thousands of years. Only scant, half-forgotten accounts remain. These are not classic Lon Chaney werewolves--men by day which transform into beasts by the light of the full moon--but an advanced series of semi-intelligent predators, wolf-ish but with fearsome paws that can grip like hands and end in razor claws, rudimentary intelligence, and faces that have something of humanity in them. Living stealthily on the edges of society, these incredibly efficient hunters and killers live off humanity, who exist side-by-side with the packs in blissful ignorance. The Wolfen plays on the theme of the threat of urban decay. Recall that New York in the 1970s was in deep crisis, a time when "wholesale disintegration of the largest city in the most powerful nation on earth seemed entirely possible." The wolfen are symbolic of the rot that accompanies urbanization.
I still have my grandfather's same paperback copy, and I loved it almost as much during this recent Halloween inspired re-read as I did as a kid nearly 40 years ago. I know that Streiber has gone off the deep end and is a bit of a pariah in horror circles, but he wrote The Wolfen (1978) very early in his career, and the book throws off sparks. If you like monsters and mayhem and hard-boiled police investigations and gunplay, you'll like The Wolfen.
Friday, October 8, 2021
Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season
My latest post is up on the blog of Tales from the Magician's Skull: Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales for the Haunting Season.
I'm feeling the Halloween season. Over the last three nights, while doing some late evening bookkeeping, I've had in the background Poltergeist, The Witch (2016), and Scream. I do love horror movies... but I also love sword-and-sorcery, and as my post shows one needn't necessarily choose one over the other.
What are your favorite horror-infused S&S tales?
Monday, December 14, 2020
The Last Wolf, a review
Last night I rented this new documentary which debuted on what
would have been the 75th anniversary of Wagner’s birth. It’s
available on Vimeo for rent ($2.99) or purchase ($5.99) and runs just north of
an hour and 40 minutes of screen time.
The Last Wolf
covers the details of Wagner’s life, from his birth in 1945 to his untimely
death in 1994, as told through a series of wide-ranging interviews. Filmmakers
Brian McKnight and Brandon Lunsford have done a wonderful job seeking out and
arranging thoughtful interviews with Wagner’s siblings, his ex-wife, childhood
friends including John Mayer, and several horror and fantasy luminaries
including the likes of Peter Straub, Dennis Etchison, Stephen Jones, David
Drake, S.T. Joshi, and Ramsey Campbell, among others. We get everything from
Karl’s precocious early days in the classroom as the youngest of four children in
Wagner household, to his days as a medical student, breaking into writing, hanging
out with the likes of Manly Wade Wellman, founding Carcosa Press, and tearing
up the scene as a charismatic figure at fantasy and horror conventions. It
includes some actual footage of him speaking on panels and the like, which is
surprisingly hard to find.
The filmmakers also used a substantial amount of footage of
Wagner’s former residences and schools, artistic long shots of creeping Kudzu
vines and menacing sticks, and the like, which lends the film an arresting
visual appeal. Wagner is feted as underappreciated but major horror author and
editor who married pulp traditions and Weird
Tales with a modern horror sensibility and helped ring in the horror boom
of the 1970s. The film takes its time (which I loved) on the mimeographed fanzines
and small press magazines of the 1970s, the likes of Whispers for example, that provided Wagner and many other authors
an important outlet to tell their stories. “Sticks,” perhaps Wagner’s greatest
story, appeared in Whispers. A LOT of
love and care and effort went into this documentary, and it shows. Kudos to
everyone involved in this project and I gladly would have watched another hour
of run time.
The Last Wolf is
not perfect. I think it suffers a bit from a lack of a strong narrative thread.
The absence of an agenda is refreshing and the interviews carry the documentary
along, but the story meanders without an omniscient voice overlaying some basic
facts and dates. This will not impede or deter any of Wagner’s hardcore fans,
but will make the film less accessible to a general audience.
The film is broken up into four parts. Part 3 (“Undone by
his Own Bad Habits”) treats with Wagner’s alcoholism, which ultimately cut his
life short at age 49. This tragic aspect of his life was not sugar-coated, and The Last Wolf spends time examining the terrible impacts wrought by booze on his professional writing life and his personal
friendships. There is also talk at the end from his siblings about his languishing
literary estate, and the apparent lack of interest in his works by major
publishing houses. This helps explain why his works remain hard to obtain in print
(although I have to think some smaller press publishers would gladly take up
the offer to reprint the Kane stories, at least). Straub theorizes that
Wagner’s lack of novel output is partially to blame, as short stories are a
hard sell these days unless your name happens to be Stephen King.
You should support these types of efforts with your dollars.
Per the producers all the money made streaming the film will help produce a
limited edition DVD/Blu-ray copy with some additional scenes. Show your
appreciation and go watch The Last Wolf.
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Stephen King, Halloween, and the joy of reading
I own this edition, just a lot more beat up. |
Monday, October 14, 2019
Remembering Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994)
Kane navigating his skeleton crew. |
Friday, September 28, 2012
The Zombie Survival Guide, a review
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Audio zombies: A review of We’re Alive: A Story of Survival, season one
Thursday, June 7, 2012
A brief tribute to the stories of Ray Bradbury
I came to Ray Bradbury at what is likely a later age than most. I never had to read Fahrenheit 451 in school; if I read one of his short stories as a student I have no recollection. Several years ago, in a desire to start filling in some gaps I had in classic genre fiction, I gave Fahrenheit 451 a try. It was a powerful read and made a profound impact on me. It prompted me to seek out more Bradbury—and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Since then I’ve marveled in the wonders of Dandelion Wine, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Martian Chronicles. If somehow you haven’t read any Bradbury yet my advice is to pick any of the above titles and dive in. I’d recommend one over the others, but there’s no need: They’re all pretty much brilliant. You won’t be disappointed.
I’ve always been a little leery of science fiction and have read far more deeply of fantasy. Rightly or wrongly, my perception is that SF worships at the altar of technology, and is fixated upon cold, clinical subject matter for which I have little interest. But if the genre contained more books like The Martian Chronicles, I might view it a lot differently (a parenthetical aside: Though it may be the subject of a catchy song, to call Bradbury “the greatest sci-fi writer in history” isn’t accurate. Dark fantasy, horror, soft sci-fi, traditional literary fiction—Bradbury has written in them all, and sometimes all at once. He is in many ways genre-defying). Bradbury’s stories are in tune with our humanity and his fiction is life affirming. They remind us that We’re human, and we’re alive, damn it. Bradbury often said that he loved life and was driven to write not only by his love of libraries and of reading, but of the very act of living itself. And that’s potent fuel for a lifetime of stories.
To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Some nice ink for a deserving writer
It's so nice to see hardworking mid-listers who do their job and do it well eventually get their due. Lansdale in my opinion is one of the great storytellers of our generation. By that I mean he writes fun, captivating tales that are almost impossible to put down. Though often violent and visceral, his writing also contains that rare quality that only a few authors are able to pull off: Humor.
Lansdale has written many books since his debut novel in 1980 and also seems to crop up regularly in anthologies. I've recently read two of his short fiction pieces in the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois anthology Warriors and the John Skipp-edited Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead. Both were among the standouts in these respective collections (if I see an anthology with Lansdale's name on it, I will buy it. I can't think of a handful of current writers for which I would say the same). He also wrote the foreward to Mark Finn's biography of Robert E. Howard, Blood and Thunder.
If you ever want to explore his writing, I personally recommend starting with Mucho Mojo or The Bottoms, which are probably my favorite two works of his.
I did not know until I read the New York Times piece that Lansdale was recently honored with a Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Horror Writers Association. It's certainly well-deserved. Lansdale speculates in the article about why he is enjoying a sudden run of recent popularity: “People who grew up on my books are now able to get the point across to others that they’re worth reading,” he said.
Here's one other person who feels the same way. I personally think HBO should scoop up the rights to his Hap and Leonard series. They would make for some great viewing.
Monday, March 19, 2012
25 years of Evil Dead 2? Groovy.
If you're a fan of the film I recommend reading the linked article above. Evil Dead 2 is much better than the original, and I think it's better than Army of Darkness. The latter is a great film, too, and perhaps a bigger cult favorite with its higher memorable quote quotient, but this bit from the article sums up why I prefer Dead by Dawn over AoD (by a hair):
Army of Darkness has more than its share of fanatics, given that it provided many with their access point to the Evil Dead universe, but for me it’s never quite measured up to its predecessors. By taking the action out of the cabin and into a much larger-scale, higher-production value setting, it lacks that DIY charm, and the oddball humour sits awkwardly with the concessions made to a fairly standard studio blockbuster format; it doesn’t help that the horror elements are significantly pared back. Worse still is how Ash’s characterisation changes between the films. Far from the witless but well-meaning would-be tough guy of Evil Dead 2, in Army of Darkness he’s a mean-spirited, arrogant bastard with whom it’s very hard to empathise. Sure, Army of Darkness provides Ash with many of his most celebrated one-liners – the immortal “Gimme some sugar, baby,” and “This is my boom-stick!” amongst others – but none of them quite measure up to that single, immortal word that is evoked for the first time in Evil Dead 2… “Groovy.”For further reading, my own take on how I discovered the greatness of Evil Dead 2. Just like the writer of the article above I was hooked after the possessed hand sequence. My favorite part: When Ash slams a bucket over his sawed off appendage, then weights it down with a copy of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Just indescribably awesome.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison, a review
I now believe that television itself, the medium of sitting in front of a magic box that pulses images at us endlessly, the act of watching TV, per se, is mind crushing. It is soul deadening, dehumanizing, soporific in a poisonous way, ultimately brutalizing. It is, simply put so you cannot mistake my meaning, a bad thing.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
I’m an Elvis man when it comes to zombies
Whether or not you buy into the theory I think it can be profitably applied to the dual nature of zombie fiction.
Zombies are certainly malleable monsters and can represent concepts like out of control consumerism, or the dangers of conformity, as well as mortality, cancer, and other real-life issues. Zombie literature can be "literary," in short. But in the end when I pick up a zombie anthology I want mostly stories about flesh-eating undead overrunning the world, and humans stubbornly fighting back. World War Z by Max Brooks is still the high water mark for this type of zombie fiction. If you’re going to publish an anthology about zombies, the stories ought to have a lot of red meat and apocalypse to them. Deep literary and/or philosophical subtlety? Yeah, zombie fiction can do that too, but I prefer a little less conversation and a little more action in my zombie stories. Literary is okay in smaller doses.
Fortunately Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead (edited by John Skipp) contains enough Elvis to scratch my rock-and-roll itch. It doesn’t warp the term “zombie” beyond all recognition, as does the John Joseph Adams anthology The Living Dead, which features a few stories with no zombies at all and lots of ham-handed political commentary. There’s a little of that here (Lisa Morton’s cartoonish “Sparks Fly Upwards”) but not enough to be a deal-breaker. Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead contains 32 short stories by such luminaries as Stephen King, Robert Bloch, and Ray Bradbury, as well an introduction by Skipp and two concluding essays on the history of the zombie genre and the reasons for its enduring popularity. Checking in at 700 pages, the book is so thick it “can also be used for staving in heads,” proclaims a back cover blurb. I believe it.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Conqueror Worm
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
--Edgar Allan Poe
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The Rising by Brian Keene, a review
But in author Brian Keene’s universe of The Rising (2004), slow, stupid, Romero-style zombies have undergone a paradigm shift. You thought you were safe behind boarded-up windows, confident they would hold up against the pounding fists of the living dead? Now add a high-speed zombie-driven van into the equation. The man shooting zombies from a roof in The Rising will find the creatures shooting back, or coming around from behind while creatures in front draw his fire. Keene’s zombies can plan, and calculate, and employ tactics. We’re all screwed in this type of scenario, more or less meat for the hungry dead. And that’s before you add in the fact that dead animals are reanimating as well; some of the most dangerous creatures in The Rising are swarms of undead rats and birds, largely resistant to gunfire as they make such small targets.
This all makes The Rising a bleak novel, indeed. But there's a bit more to it than meets the eye.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Zombies on the brain
Did anyone else catch The Walking Dead last night? If so, I'd like to know your thoughts on it and/or the series thus far. Discussion/spoilers follow after the break (now that Blogger has added the "insert jump break" button, I might as well start using it).
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, a review
To be honest, I probably would have bought Wastelands regardless of its editor. I’m a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, from novels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, to films like Escape from New York or Mad Max. Why? As an inhabitant of the northeastern seaboard of the United States I’m not often confronted with existential issues. I know that I’m going to die one day and suffer separation from all that I know and love, but because civilization affords me everything I need—and much of what I want, too—I tend not to think about these issues much. The panaceas of electricity and refrigeration, and healthcare and schools, and television and the internet and books, masks the skull beneath the skin. I’m effectively insulated from the hard life and death struggle that’s woven into so much of human history. But what if it was all stripped away, and life was reduced to its essentials? That’s the question post-apocalyptic fiction asks, and one I occasionally like to ponder. With my feet up on the couch of my air-conditioned living room, of course.
To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.