The Ghost Slayers - Mike Ashley (ed)

 Thrilling tales of occult detection...  Yes!   Ghost-finders - my absolute fave.   And favourite amongst them, John Silence and Thomas Carnacki, both prominent in this compilation of classics by Mike Ashley for the British Library.   My second faves, Aylmer Vance and Flaxman Low, both appear, too.   The Silence and the Carnacki were both familiar to me - Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson both only wrote one collection each and I have long had both - but I was reminded how superior Blackwood was with Ashley's choice of 'A Psychic Invasion.'   Sadly, 'The Searcher of the End House' is to my mind one of the lesser Carnacki tales.

New to me were the tales by Bertram Atkey, Dion Fortune, Moray Dalton, Gordon Hillman and Joseph Payne Brennan.   The latter two were especially effective.   'Forgotten Harbour' (1931) by Hillman is a tale of spooky doings at a fog-bound lighthouse, absolutely dripping with menace.   Brennan's story, 'In Death as in Life' is by far the most recent of the tales, dating only from 1963, but his ghostfinder, Lucius Leffing, is a Victorian out of his time, and the ghost when it manifests is literally dripping, truly horrible, and squishy.   Brennan's real stroke of genius is to make himself Leffing's Dr Watson.

A fantastic collection, essential for any fan of the sub-genre.

Plays 3 - Steven Berkoff

 Steven Berkoff entered the theatre about the same time I began training for it.   He has therefore always figured in my theatrical consciousness, though I have never seen his work and, for some reason, none of it has joined my vast collection of plays - until I picked this up earlier in the week.

The collection here is of his minor work, two of which have never been performed (though there has been an acted-out reading of The Messiah).   That does not mean they are neglible.   All three appeal to me largely because they happen to be subjects which I have researched: the blood libel of Jews in medieval England, Jesus the man, and the Oedipus myth.

Ritual in Blood is the fully realised play, given at Nottingham Playhouse in 2001.   I wish I had been involved with theatre at that time - I would have loved to see it.   The piece is ambitious, dozens of characters coming and going, and Berkoff and I come to same conclusion: it's all, always, about money.  The Messiah naturally deploys similar devices - Berkoff famously developed idiosyncratic, highly personal forms of acting and writing.   I feel sure he would have reworked some elements of this text had it gone on to be fully staged.   I have considered the same twist or explanation for the miracle but did not find it entirely satisfactory here.

Oedipus I thought was excellent.   Firstly we are not dealing with the same level of reality here.   It has always been a myth and Berkoff's style is brilliantly 'mythic'.   Like Sophocles, he makes the action continuous - one unbelievably awful episode - and breezily ignores or overrides the obvious problems involved.   Indeed, it is the pace which gives the piece its power.   I especially enjoyed his device for a couple of necessary flashbacks: instead of dull narration, characters act out the incidents as if they were there, witnesses to things happening now, before their eyes.

Fascinating and intriguing.

The Unknown - Algernon Blackwood

 Another excellent collection from the sadly defunct Handheld Press.   The idea here is to demonstrate Blackwood's range beyond the usual suspects, 'Wendigo' and 'The Willows'.   Editor Henry Batholomew four key topics - Canada, Mountain, Reincarnation and Imagination - and illustrates each with three examples, an essay or article, and two short stories.

I was especially taken with the Reincarnation section, which firstly demonstrates how Blackwood came to view the topic, then follows with 'The Insanity of Jones' from 1907 and 'The Tarn of Sacrifice' from 1921.   'The Insanity of Jones' was my favourite in the book, a tale of ancient revenge carried out in the present.   The third wheel as it were, the spirit who sucks the meek clerk Jones into his act of revenge, was truly scary.   I would also single out the story 'By Water' in the final Imagination section, largely because it is the story Blackwood talks about writing in the essay 'The Genesis of Ideas' which immediately precedes it.

Highly recommended.

Downward to the Earth - Robert Silverberg

 Interesting concepts abound here.   A decade after the planet was restored to its sentient people, Edmund Gundersen feels a compulsion to return to Belzagor to put things right on his own account.   A former worker for the colonial power, Gundersen was peripherally involved in some of the misdeeds that went on.   He encountered the notorious Kurtz (yes, Kurtz) who shared snake venom with one of the two sentient people, the elephantine nildoror.   Gundersen once saw Kurtz, venomed up to the gills himself, dance with the nildoror.   Gundersen's time on Belzagor wasn't all bad, though.   He met and fell in love with the beautiful Seema.

But now Seema is partnered up with Kurtz.   Kurtz, she says, is off on an expedition, but her sulidor (the sulidoror are the other sentient people on Belzagor, giant ape-like people) tells Gundersen that Kurtz is hidden away on the compound, ill.    Gundersen sees him - and is horrified.

It is rare for a planet to have two sentient races, particularly two races so strikingly different.   Both have speech, both are said to have souls.   The land is divided between them.   The nildoror have the fertile plains, the sulidoror occupy the misty uplands.   The nildoror are vegetarian grazers, the sulidoror omnivore hunter-gatherers.   There is no emnity: the two races come and go across one another's territory   Both have seemingly come to terms with their colonial past in which the sulidoror were servants, the nildoror transport.   They continue to provide these services for human tourists.   Now they do it by consent.

Gundersen has always got on reasonably well with the natives of Belzagor.   He can speak both languages, though he is not so fluent with the gestures that provide nuance.   He politely seeks permission from a senior nildor to go to the hill country.   Permission is granted so long as he brings back Cedric Cullen, who has apparently commited a serious transgression and exiled himself among the sulidoror.   Gundersen wants to find out what happened to Kurtz in the hill country.   Most of all he wants to find out about the rebirth ceremony the nildoror undergo there.   Every twenty years ot so a nildor is summoned to the rebirthing.   This was Gundersen's transgression: he needed nildoror to help repair a breached dam and prevented them going on their rebirthing trek.    So off he goes - into the heart of darkness.

Yes, Downward to the Earth is a sci fi take on the Conrad classic.   The question in both is what has Kurtz found that has turned him into a monster?   'The horror ...  the horror...."    Silverberg's version pays off big time, with a twist that I absolutely didn't see coming.   This is the first time I have read any Silverberg.   I was very impressed.

New Worlds 8 - (ed) Hilary Bailey

 New Worlds magazine was founded before WW2 and taken over by Michael Moorcock in the sixties.   With the aid of an Arts Council grant Moorcock turned New Worlds into the monthly journal of the British New Wave in sci fi: Moorcock himself, Ballard, Aldiss etc.   Around 1970 the magazine started to flounder.   Moorcock persuaded Sphere to continue it as a 'quarterly' paperback.   By 1975 when this eighth and last edition came out, Moorcock's wife Hilary Bailey was editor and their close longterm collaborator M John Harrison was literary editor.

Bailey made a good job of editing this one.   The stories appear in descending order of quality.   We start with Harrison's 'Running Down', a Yorkshire-set tale combining his interest in climbing with nature horror.   Then we have 'White Stars', an interlude from Moorcock's long-running and intricate Dancers at the End of Time thread.   I was initially put off Moorcock by Dancers when I was a young teenager, but I thoroughly enjoyed 'White Stars'.   Barrington Bayley's 'The Bees of Knowledge' is different and well-written.   Peter Jobling's 'Building Blocks', which Bailey in her introduction suggests might be a debut piece, is equally interesting but not quite so well written.   The other, shorter, stories did not greatly appeal.

I was fascinated by the two book reviews at the end, one by Harrison, the other by John Clute.  Is this what sci reviews were like in the Seventies?   By way of illustration, I give you title of Clute's ten-page review of Brian Aldiss's novel, The Eighty-Minute Hour: 'I say Begone! Apotropaic Narcosis, I'm Going to Read the Damn Thing, Ha Ha.'   Worryingly, Harrison's marginally shorter review of Thomas M Disch's collection Getting into Death is in similar vein.

John Clute went on to become one of the founders of Interzone, which is in many ways was the successor to New Worlds.   The issue I have just acquired contains work by Harrison and Aldiss and Thomas M Disch.   I'll report on it shortly.

Block 46 - Johana Gustawsson

 Johana Gustawsson is the Queen of French noir.   She was born in Marseilles, lived in London and now lives in Sweden.   This, the first in her series featuring Canadian profiler Emily Roy and London-based true crime writer Alexis Castells, who is Spanish, takes place in Sweden, London, and Germany, specifically in Buchenwald concentration camp in the closing years of World War II; everything else takes place in 2014, which I assume is when the book was written.

Alexis is drawn in when her friend, the jewellry designer Linnea Blix, fails to turn up for her launch party in London.   Her mutilated body is found in Sweden, an out-of-the-way town called Falkenberg.   Emily Roy is the profiler sent to assist the Swedish police.

Then a boy turns up murdered in London, with the same signature wounds.   Is it a copycat, a serial killer with broad tastes, or (as Emily suggests) a pair of killers operating together, one of them dominating the other?

Interweaved with the investigation narrative is the story of young Erich Hebner, a German student sent to Buchenwald as a political prisoner.   He has a measure of medical training and is recruited by the camp doctor, Horst Fleisher, with the gruesome experiments he carries out in Block 46.   After the war, Hebner drifts around Europe, ending up living in the same cul de sac in Falkenberg where Linnea Blix had her hideaway.   That's got to be more than a coincidence right?   I confess I didn't see the final twist coming.

The action moves along at a punchy pace.   The writing is neat, controlled where it needs to be, more expansive where it doesn't.   There's a lot of dialogue which all rings true.   The characterisation is what it needs to be with a series - that is to say, a lot remains to be discovered about Roy and Castells.   On the other hand we get plenty of insight into Erich and other characters involved in the main plot.

I enjoyed Block 46.   I already have the other two Roy/Castells novels on my Kindle and will read them soon.   I was interested in Johana Gustawsson because Thomas Enger collaborates on a series with her as well as Jorn Lier Horst on the Blix/Ramm series.   Wait a minute ...  Linnea Blix and Alexander Blix?   That's got to be more than a coincidence.   Right?

Viriconium - M John Harrison

 Discovering the work of M John Harrison over the last year or so has been a profound experience.   He is by far the best of his genre, though that poses the question: what exactly is his genre?   I'll take a stab at dark imaginative fiction.   It doesn't matter if it has a sci fi setting, an imagined world outside time, or a neglected corner of this world, Harrison always goes further, adding a sense of the inexplicable, which is pure Harrison.

This Unwin paperback from the mid-80s combines two books of the Viriconium series, the novel In Viriconium (1982) and the short stories and associated pieces collected as Viriconium Nights (1984).   There are other Viriconium works, notably The Pastel City and A Storm of Wings.

Viriconium is everywhere and nowhere.   It is not always Viriconium; sometimes it is Uroconium, or Vrico.   It is medieval and sometimes it is fin de siecle Paris.   There is an Artists' Quarter, a High City, and heathland.   The totem of the city, though, is the Mari Lwyd, immortalised by Dylan Thomas's friend Vernon Watkins.  

Characters come and reappear in different contexts.   They have wondrous names and titles.  Ardwick Crome, the Grand Cairo, Morgante who is also Rotgob and sometimes Kiss-O-Suck, Mammy Vooley, Ignace Retz and Dissolution Khan.   One story, 'A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium', is absolutely set in contemporary York and is about how one gets from here to the mystic city via a mirror "in the lavatory og the Merrie England cafe, a little further down New Street than the El Greco, between Ramsden Street junction and Imperial Arcade" in, I think, Huddersfield.   Which feels exactly right.

In Virconium is the most satisfying piece, a sort of love story set in the Artists Quarter during a time of plague.   In this period a pair of demi-gods called the Barley Brothers (Matey and Gog) rampage through the city until they are defeated by the painter Ashlyme.   The stories of Virconium Nights are, by definition, more fragmentary but each has incredible depth, compelling the reader to ask questions and make connections, not all of which are necessarily there.

Fascinating, enthralling, often startling.   M John Harrison is giving my all-time favourite author (the late E L Doctorow) a run for his money.

Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen

 Nobody does these things better than Carl Hiaasen.   Admittedly, his field is somewhat niche - comic capers, Florida-based, hopeless criminals, offbeat investigators, a recurring eco-warrior who was once the state governor - but, now more than ever, someone's got to do it.

It could be argued that history has come to Hiassen.   You land a corrupt populist President in his actual backyard representing everything Hiassen has always railled so vehemently against ...   Squeeze Me (2020) is Hiassen's first term take; I gather he has just released another for the second.   This way, I suppose, something good arises from all the chaos and graft.

Squeeze Me is very good.   It all starts routinely for Hiassen: an elderly and very wealthy widow gets eaten by a giant snake at a high-end Charity Ball.   Wildlife removal expert Angie Armstrong is called in to assist with the cover up.   Angie is somewhat hardass when it comes to wildlife.   She served time for feeding a deer poacher's hand to a grateful alligator.   She's willing to euthanise the snake but insists on delivering it, as required by law, to the state laboratory.   Those organising the cover-up, however, worry sbout the telltale bulge in the snake's gut.   So they hire two deadbeats to deal with the problem.

The deadbeats inevitably celebrate partial success with a wild night at a downtown titty bar.   Thus the headless snake, complete with bulge, finds its way to the middle of a road which brings the First Lady's motorcade to a halt.   This brings in the Feds and the Secret Service.   It also inspires the First Lady's perma-tanned husband to a new crusade.   Kki Pew Fitzsimmons was a member of the President's Palm Beach fanclub (known as the Potussies, which is at least preferable to their first choice of name) who have raised millions for him.

Obviously, when Hiassen alludes to the President and First Lady, he does not mean D J Trump and the lovely Melania.   The entirely fictional characters in Squeeze Me are referred to only by their Secret Service handles, Mastadon and Mockingbird.   Thus Mockingbird is free to have a hot affair with her personal CIA bodyguard while Mastadon gets hot and not especially heavy with a compliant pole dancer of his acquaintance.   Likewise, the estate where Mastadon and Mockingbird live is in no way to be confused with Mar-a-Lago.   It can't be because Case Belicosa is gross and tacky.

The disappearance storyline concludes about halfway through, which struck me as odd.   The real story is the snakes, which leads us to our ongoing hero Skink and his involvement with the madcap chaos at the Annual Gala Ball at Casa Belicosa.   Which is enormous fun.

I've been reading Hiassen for something like thirty years.   I've even read his collaborations with William Montalbano.   I can therefore state with authority: HIASSEN NEVER FAILS TO DELIVER.

Heroes and Villains - Angela Carter

 Angela Carter has been an inspiration to me, from her radio plays to her arcane fairy tales and her novels, some of which I have reviewed on this blog.   The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus must have been read before I started the blog.   Thankfully Carter managed a significant output before her early death.

Heroes and Villains was published in 1969, which would place it about midway in her truncated career.   She seems to have been in full possession of all her powers.   I found it a masterful piece of writing, beguiling and shocking in equal measure.   As always in her best work, it centres on a young woman discovering her sexuality.

The setting is Britain post apocalypse.   The survivors have grouped into three known clusters, the Professors, the Barbarians and the Out People.   The Professors are the remnants of civilisation who now literally occupy ivory towers.   Barbarians descend from gypsies and travellers.   The Out People occupy the fallen cities and because they hunkered out the blast are often hideously mutated.   The three peoples attack and loot one another.

Marianne is the daughter of a Professor.   As a young child she watched her brother die during a Barbarian raid.   At sixteen she leaves her sanctuary and is promptly captured by the Barbarian Jewel Lee Bradley, the same Barbarian who cut down Marianne's brother, who carries her off to his camp.   As a Bradley Jewel is Barbarian aristocracy, along with his numerous brothers.   Their foster mother Mrs Green was also once a Professor's daughter.   Another Professor who has crossed over is the shaman Donally, who has tutored Jewel.   Donally is so decadent that he keeps his son chained up and beats him.   He fancies himself the last remaining artist and has tattooed the story of Adam accepting the apple from Eve on Jewel's back.

Jewel casually takes Marianne's virginity as a gesture of ownership.   Marriage then becomes inevitable.   Neither much wants it, despite being mutually attracted.   But they come to terms - which is really what the book is about: the accommodations we all make in order to move forward in life.

It is beautifully done.  Carter conjures up an English arcadia re-growing from the blasted ruins.   Her characters are vivid, perverse, compelling.   Her proses sizzles.   Her masterstroke is to leave the story halfway through.   By which I mean, there is a decisive climax, but so many strands cry out for resolution.   We are desperate to find out what happens next.   Our minds inevitably run on - and only the very best of books let that happen.

Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert

 

Flaubert's Trois Contes are often said to be an ideal way of introducing readers to his heavier-duty wotk.   That's definitely how I feel about them.   The range here is quite something: gentle naturalism in 'A Simple Heart,' Gothic myth in 'The Legend of St Julian,' and historicism in 'Herodias'.   It is tempting and inevitable to see them as miniatures of Madame Bovary and A Sentimental Education, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and Salammbo.

I enjoyed them all.   The quality of Krailsheimer's translation helped, as did his introduction.   I found I didn't need the notes but they are there for those who do.   I don't have a favourite; all three have their different merits.   I suppose what held me was Flaubert's profound empathy for his fellow human beings, with their weaknesses and their saving graces.   I found it fascinating how the forerunner of Christ, Iaokanann, is kept 'offstage' while his fate is determined.