Speculative Fiction Junkie

3/07/2010

Review - Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers

D.P. Watt

Weird fiction may be a relatively small subgenre but I'm learning that it is as thoroughly developed and full of mysterious alleyways and hidden treasures as any mature literature is. While it has no shortage of giants, many of whom enjoy cult-like status, weird fiction also has plenty of lesser known authors producing truly excellent work. I don't remember where I first heard about D.P. Watt or his collection of six short stories entitled Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers. It is inexplicably not talked about very much, but it is a prime example of the sort of treasures that weird literature is yielding these days.

First in the collection is "Dr. Dapertutto's Saturnalia," the short but chillingly effective story of a minor Soviet official trying to apprehend the person who sent him a reel of film, which in the official's eyes is a gesture that constitutes a "blatant and insolent manifestation of bourgeois decadence." What he sees when he views the film disturbs him, but not nearly as much as what he encounters when he personally attempts to apprehend the film's sender.

The second story, "Room 89," is even better than the first. In it, a stodgy conservative intellectual vacationing in a hotel on the Isle of Wight slowly comes to share the fate of his intellectual opposite, a noted political agitator who always wished "to change whole social systems which had run for centuries." This story is throughly traditional in many ways but, like "Dr. Dapertutto's Saturnalia," feels decidedly modern in the starkness of its conclusion.

Next is "The Hobby," a short piece about a once able man worn down by a series of personal tragedies. He now seeks refuge in his hobby of building doll houses, in which he becomes increasingly engrossed. This is a good story but easily my least favorite in the collection.

The fourth story, and the one I find the most difficult to understand, is "Glorious White Marble Lady." On the surface this is a tale about the acquaintance between a man putting on an amateur production of Pygmalion and a young woman who auditions for a part in it. It seems to be concerned with the transitory nature of people and events and with our attempts to lend them more permanency.

The penultimate tale was one of my favorites. Entitled "Of Those Who Follow Emile Bilonche," it is the story of a man's lifelong obsession with acquiring the works of an author by the name of Emile Bilonche.

The final story, "The Comrade" tells of a man who loses his father to a mysterious illness, only to have two men arrive on his doorstep a few days later and show him how to avoid a similar fate.

The title of this collection, and the predominance of the theater in several of the stories in it, brings to mind the work of Reggie Oliver. But Watt's work is in no way derivative of Mr. Oliver's or anyone else's. The quality of his writing is unsurpassable. He writes in erudite prose and structures his stories perfectly, both of which qualities reveal him to be a master of the English language. Without exception, the stories in Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers are interesting, well told, and unique. Furthermore, they are multilayered and can be read in several different ways. If you enjoy weird fiction, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

I can't find a website or any other information about D.P. Watt, save for a brief statement that his next collection, An Emporium of Automata, will eventually be released by Ex Occidente Press. I do know this, though: with this collection D.P. Watt has emerged as one of the handful of writers carrying weird fiction forward into the new millennium.

Rating: 9/10

The True First

I am about 85% sure that Pieces for Puppets and Other Cadavers was first published by InkerMen Press in 2006 as a trade paperback. The first 100 copies of this edition are signed by the author. I really wish that a hardcover version were available.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

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2/25/2010

Review - The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories

Brian J. Showers

One of the many rewards of running Speculative Fiction Junkie is that readers and other bloggers sometimes introduce me to absolutely wonderful books that I almost certainly would have missed otherwise. Such was the case with The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories by Brian J. Showers, which was brought to my attention by the same kind reader who pointed me towards the work of Adam Golaski.

The handful of tales that make up this collection are ghost stories in the traditional vein set in the Rathmines neighborhood of Dublin. They are told in a conversational tone by a narrator who seems to be taking a leisurely stroll from Dublin and progressing south, telling stories about the places he passes on his way.

After reading the first two stories in this collection, I wasn't quite sure that I was going to like this book all that much because these first two feel totally conventional upon first reading. In the first, "The Bleeding Horse," we learn about the lingering ghostly presence of a horse that died around the time of the English Civil War in an inn that was subsequently named for the singular event. In the second, "Oil on Canvas," events suggest that the presence of a painter who died in a nursing home also lingers. While interesting to a degree, my immediate reaction to these two stories was that they didn't say much other than: "there's a ghost!"

Everything started to change with "Favourite No. 7 Omnibus," the story of an accident on a bridge that sent an omnibus and its passengers to the bottom of a river. Here for the first time the real tenor of what Mr. Showers is doing becomes apparent and we are given a story that is both rich in historical detail and frightening at the same time.

A subsequent tale, "Quis Separabit," is even better. It is the story of the Blackberry Fair, a local fair regrettably situated in such a way that it obstructs an old road traditionally used for funerals and, it is rumored, traversed by the souls of the dead. There's a reason, we learn, that both vendors and visitors are not allowed to remain in the fair after dusk.

The capstone of this collection, and my favorite by far, is "Father Corrigan's Diary," which is the lengthiest story in The Bleeding Horse. For years the eponymous man of the cloth's diary has bored helpless Irish students for whom it has been assigned reading. In this story, though, we are allowed to read its final pages, pages that did not make it into the published version because of the light they shed on the man's decline and the fantastic allegations he makes in them.

By the time one finishes reading The Bleeding Horse it's clear that the book is not so much a collection of separate tales as it is a single story; the story of a place still haunted and shaped by the traces of those who made their mark on it in the past. I don't think I've ever read a collection of stories that imparts a greater sense of history than this one does. Everything in the Rathmines portrayed by Mr. Showers is infused with the past as though it were an organic force with a will of its own. Past events find their way into paintings, people, junk, buildings, even the very ground. It is history turned almost literally into paint, flesh, and stone.

When the supernatural element takes center stage in what are already great, four dimensional stories, the result is that Rathmines becomes far richer than some of the most intricate fictional worlds, a place where the veils of time and reality are removed but the setting nonetheless manages to maintain its anchor in the real world. Put differently, Mr. Showers manages to expand reality rather than show the reader an alternate reality, with the result that the reader is left with a sense of awe at the possibilities that abound in a world that often feels mundane.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you've liked any of the books reviewed here, I can practically guarantee that you will enjoy The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories was first published in 2008 by Mercier Press, which is, according to its website, Ireland's oldest independent publishing house. I have to confess that I wish they would have used some higher quality paper in this book.

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2/16/2010

Review - Horrible Imaginings

Fritz Leiber

After being completely mesmerized by Jean Ray's The Horrifying Presence (review here), I quickly learned that there are only a few other collections of Mr. Ray's short fiction available in English. One of these was published by a small press whose work I had never come across before called Midnight House. Their collection of Mr. Ray's stories, My Own Private Specters has long been sold out, but I nonetheless wanted to familiarize with the output of the press and so ended up acquiring a copy of Horrible Imaginings, a collection of Fritz Leiber's short horror fiction. Prior to reading this collection, I had never read anything by Mr. Leiber (one of the many enormous holes in my reading). I can now say that while I'm very impressed with the quality of Midnight House's books, I was less impressed with the work of Mr. Leiber.

While Jean Ray's stories remain chillingly effective today, the stories in Horrible Imaginings do not, in my opinion, stand up quite as well. There are definitely notable exceptions. "Diary in the Snow," for example, is a terrifying treasure that could just as well have been written by Simon Strantzas or Adam Golaski as Mr. Leiber. In it, an aspiring science fiction writer joins a friend in the latter's remote mountain cabin to jump start his writing. Against a backdrop of severe winter weather, a series of increasingly strange events afflict the writer and his host; events that have more to do with the unfolding story the writer is working on than either man imagines. This story, however, was regrettably unique in its effectiveness.

In other instances, Mr. Leiber explores themes that have since been more deeply and satisfyingly explored by later writers. Here, I'm thinking of two stories in particular. The first is "The Hound," in which a young man is pursued by a creature that is, for lack of a better description, a product of the city dwellers' relationship with the city, a beast spawned from the singular psychological state of modern man. The second is "The Girl with Hungry Eyes," a tale about a photographer's professional relationship with a girl who personifies the vampiric nature of advertising in modern times. Both of these stories are ably told and interesting, but the subject of modern man's relationship with cities has been more deeply explored by dozens of authors, and done so with greater effectiveness and nuance. The result is that these stories end up feeling more like historical curiosities than anything else.

My final beef with Horrible Imaginings is that Mr. Leiber sometimes has a tendency to write in a way that can be very tiresome, using a lot of words to say not a whole lot and overusing parentheticals. He doesn't do it very often but when he does it can be difficult to persevere. I had to make no less than five separate attempts to make it through the first story in the collection, the eponymous "Horrible Imaginings."

Despite these criticisms, in addition to the stories already mentioned several others are also worth reading, even if they aren't mindblowingly amazing. These include "The Automatic Pistol," "Answering Service," and "The Ghost Light."

Mr. Leiber is a highly respected author, but Horrible Imaginings just wasn't for me. The physical quality of the book, on the other hand, was very impressive and is consistent with the highest quality books being published by small presses today. I'll be reading more books from Midnight House in the future.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

Horrible Imaginings was first published by Midnight House in 2004. It was limited to 520 copies, of which 500 were offered for sale.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

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2/06/2010

Review - Putting the Pieces in Place

R.B. Russell

You will never this read book. That's right. You will never read this book. The reason has nothing to do with its quality but instead is attributable to the fact that it became nearly impossible to find shortly after publication. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that I had to work harder to get my hands on a copy of R.B. Russell's debut collection of short stories, Putting the Pieces in Place, then I have ever had to work to find any other book.

My initial interest in the book was a result of the praise heaped on it by two of my favorite book bloggers: Colin of Tales from the Black Abyss and Mihai of Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews. Interest blossomed into a more pressing hunger after I finished reading Mr. Russell's second book, Bloody Baudelaire (review here), which was excellent and stood out enough to make it onto my Top 5 Reads of 2009 list.

After months of searching every nook and cranny of the internet, I finally managed to find a copy of Putting the Pieces in Place. While it was definitely worth the wait and effort required to track down a copy, Bloody Baudelaire is the superior work in my opinion, which is good news for Mr. Russell's potential readers since copies of the latter are still available.

Putting the Pieces in Place is a collection of five short stories. The first story, "Putting the Pieces in Place," is the most conventional of the five and is more or less a traditional ghost story. It is the story of a man obsessed with collecting everything that has any connection with Emily Butler, a violinist who he clandestinely heard play one evening when he was young and who died tragically. The distinguishing characteristic of this story for me is the great gulf of melancholy that it leaves in its wake.

Next is "There's Nothing That I Wouldn't Do," a disturbing tale about a young woman studying abroad and the consequences of her relative indifference towards a young man's affections. This is probably the most straightforward story in the collection.

The next story, "In Hiding," is my favorite of the five. In it, a British politician seeking refuge in a small Greek village from a scandal back home is invited to visit an island off the coast. While happy and tranquil on the surface, the two men he meets there are not what they initially seem. This is the most subtle and satisfying tale in the book and in several ways reminds me of the stories of Jean Ray.

"Eleanor" is my least favorite in the collection. An elderly author and creator of a famous science fiction character encounters her at a science fiction convention.

In the final story, "Dispossessed," a young woman finds herself without a place to live when the elderly woman she cares for dies. As she is about to leave, a member of the family informs her that he owns some apartments and that she is welcome to stay in one of them until she finds her bearings. What follows is a series of creepy and ultimately violent events.

The hallmark of these stories is their subtlety. The best of them embed a grain of quiet unease in the reader which swells as each story progresses. Mr. Russell, more so than most authors of horror and the strange tale, knows that the greatest source of unease isn't necessarily the obviously odd or frightening, but is often the slow weirdness that can creep into a conversation that is slightly off kilter or the wanderings of the mind and feelings of a character who lacks direction. Putting the Pieces in Place is a wonderful debut from an author who is among those leading the way in blending horror and the strange tale. I prefer his second book to this collection only because Bloody Baudelaire contains a sense of atmosphere and layers of tension that Putting the Pieces in Place does not.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

Putting The Pieces in Place was first published by Ex Occidente Press in January of 2009. There were only 400 copies made and good luck finding one of them! However, as I said above, copies of Bloody Baudelaire are still floating around and Mr. Russell also has a forthcoming collection being published by PS Publishing in the not too distant future.

[This review was not based on a review copy]

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1/31/2010

A Few Changes to SFJ

Dear readers,

A few changes have taken place here at Speculative Fiction Junkie over the past few days, and there's at least one more in the offing:

(1) There's a new background image. If you're screen is wide enough, you'll see a dark background image with some calligraphy on it. I created the image by taking a public domain image of an illuminated manuscript, cropping it, and then messing with the color and hue values. I'm quite pleased with it.

(2) Speculative Fiction Junkie now has its own domain! That's right: the new address is, fittingly,

http://www.speculativefictionjunkie.com/

Within a few days, visitors should start being automatically redirected to the new address. That's the hope anyway. It seems just as likely that something will get colossally messed up and I'll have to start over. Cross your fingers.

(3) I created a tag cloud. It's in the right-hand column.

(4) I've got a new feature that I hope to roll out in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Thanks for visiting, as always!

-Ben