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.

Menace of the Monster - Mike Ashley (ed)

 Classic Tales of Creatures from Beyond, says the subtitle.   These things are always subjective.   Lovecraft's 'Dagon' is a classic, no question, but this version of War of the Worlds, an abridgement for a continental abridgement, and a Boys' Magazine version of King Kong belong more in the Interesting Curiosity department.   The latter, by the way, is much better than the former, despite the former being done by Wells himself.

Among the others, I liked 'The Dragon of St Paul's' by Reginald Bacchus and C Ranger Gull and 'Discord in Scarlet' by A E Van Vogt, which Vogt successfully claimed was source material for the Alien  franchise.   These stories illustrate the dichotomy editor Ashley has juggled with here.   'Dragon', like 'Dagon', is really weird fiction, or even weird adventure; 'Discord' is science fiction, pure and simple.  I am perfectly happy with the mix but suspect purists might jib.

Of the others, I found 'Personal Monster', by 'Idris Seabright' aka Margaret St Clair (1911-95) stayed with me longer than any other.   The ending I thought was masterful.

NOTE: Turns out I made it to my 1000th post sooner than expected.   This is it.   Monsters, sci fi, classic and weird ... I guess that about sums up this blog.   On to the next milestone!

Dark Magic - Mike Ashley (ed)

 Another Mammoth anthology edited by the great Mike Ashley.   This one errs more towards fantasy than my usual horror preference, but there are nevertheless some cracking stories here.  There are examples from the genre greats like Clark Ashton Smith and Michael Moorcock - a particularly fine one by Ursula K Le Guin - and really interesting contributions from contemporary writers I'm unfamiliar with but who I am now interested in reading more from.   In this category I'm especially enthused by Peter Crowther, James Bibby and Esther M Friesner.   There are one two duds, but that's a matter of taste and inevitable in any big collection.   That said, there is no bad writing.

The Platform Edge - Mike Ashley (ed)

 From the British Library series 'Tales of the Weird, comes this collection of neglected ghost stories set on the rail system.   Mike Ashley always tries to avoid the well-known regulars, thus there is no 'The Signalman' by Dickens.

There is, however, 'A Short Trip Home' by, of all people, F Scott Fitzgerald, which turns out to be startlingly effective.   Of the Victorian entries I liked 'Railhead' by Perceval Landon, of whom I had never heard but who turns out to have been a friend of Kipling (he lived in a cottage at Batemans) and the author of 'Thurnley Abbey', a ghost story which M R James considered 'almost too horrid.'  I must look it out.

Of the more modern ones, I am always intrigued byR Chetwynd-Hayes, represented here by 'The Underground'.   Of those inbetween, I really liked 'A Subway Named Mobius' which, according to editor Mike Ashley, is the only short story by American astronomer A J Deutsch.

A good collection, then, casting light on several intriguing writers.

The Society of Time - John Brunner

This fantastic British Library collection, edited and introduced by Mike Ashley, contains the original three long short stories/novellas, plus two additional time-based stories, 'Father of Lies' and 'The Analysts'.

In John Brunner, I have now found a sci fi writers whose interests sit closely with mine and who can actually write in a highly-acceptable literary style.  The problem with many sci fi authors is that they prioritise ideas over craft-skill.  I can understand this to an extent; describing the challenging in a basic, functional manner might seem an obvious turn to take, however going too far can easily put off the more discerning reader, and has done in my case many times.   You really need to give your writing a bit of character - and fortunately Brunner has it in bucketloads.

For the Scoiety of Time trilogy Brunner envisages a world in which the Spanish Armada succeeded.  England is now - in the twentieth century - a well-integrated part of the Spanish Empire, which divides the world more or less equally with the Confederation, dominated by China and Russia.   Thanks to the victory of the Spanish Hapsburgs in 1588 there has been no Austro-Hungarian Empire, thence no World Wars.   On the negative side, because of the dominance of the Catholic Church there has been very little progress - no industrial revolution, no cars or planes.   People still ride about and defend themselves with swords. 

Science has, however, made one stupendous advance: it has become possible to travel back in time.  The potential benefits and dangers of this are so extreme that the Empire and the Confederacy have come together to lay down rules, adminustered by twin societies in the two jurisdictions.  Time travellers have to be licensed by their society, their expeditions severely restricted.   In all three stories, therefore, the rules are broken and the very existence of the 'contemporary' world is threatened.

In all three cases Brunner's hero is Don Miguel de Navarro, a young licentiate of the Imperial Society.   In 'Spoil of Yesterday' occupt licentiates have been selling time trips to rich diletantes.  Someone has brought back an Aztec mask as a souvenir, not realising how an out-of-time artefact can turn the world on its head.  'The Word Not Written' is set in London on New Year's Eve.  Society members will gather at their HQ for midnight mass but first there is a spectacular party thrown at the Prince Imperial's Palace at Greenwich (the Prince is Head of the Society).  Don Miguel is not one of nature's party-goers but he forces himself to attend and is paired off with the Scandanavian ambassador's daughter.  Scandanavia is naturally a progressive country and Lady Kristina is a liberated ypung woman.  She wants to see how orifinary people celebrate, so Miguel escorts her into central London (Londres, in Brunner's Spanish empire).  There they realise something has gone out-of-time when an Amazonian female warrior first excites the mob, then fights them off.   Meanwhile their is an insurrection.  The Empire is about to be overthrown - until Father Ramon, the Jesuit master-theoretician of the Society, steps back in time and fixes the anomaly.  The third and final story 'The Fullness of Time' is set in America where, in a fun development, the Empire has chosen the Mohawks to bring together the traditional tribes.  The anomaly in this case is a modern drill bit in a mine supposedly sealed in ancient times.  Father Ramon suspects Confederate involvement.

The additional stories are both associated in theme and time of writing (the early Sixties).  In 'Father of Lies' a small corner of rural England appears to have been sealed off from modernity, to the extent that dragons and ogres live there.  'The Analysts' has the advantage of a compelling character, Joel Sackstone, who has turned his unique gift of visualisation into a profession.  He looks at architect's models and visualises them in reality: how people will move about there; the limitations of the plan and the solutions.  He is called in by his main employer who has been asked to design a very odd building for a mysteruous research organisation.  Joel visualises it in practice and realises that all the odd angles and levels are leading visitors in a direction that doesn't really exist.  He tries it out in his main room at home - and walks clean through the solid wall.

As I mentioned, Brunner was writing this stuff in the early Sixties.  He was slightly ahead of his time, albeit he reflects and develops trends that were incipient at the time - women's liberation, mixed marriages, racial prejudice, even plundered treasures.  He wrote lots before his death in 1999, but to my horror yesterday, none of my usual obscure book dealers in London had a single one!   I shall have to delve deeper and venture further afield, because I absolutely want to read more. 

The Darkest of Nights - Charles Eric Maine

 Charles Eric Maine (real name David McIlwain) was a pioneer of British sci fi in the late Forties through to his early death in 1981.   To my mind, only John Wyndham is better.   Maine's gift is for very near future cataclysm brought on by man's reckless technical innovations.   In The Tide Went Out nuclear tests crack the earth's crust and all the water drains away.   Here - startlingly - a covid virus develops in the Far East and becomes a worldwide pandemic.  In reaction, governments hugely restrict personal freedom and protect the elite in secure underground bunkers.

The relevance is so extreme that even this British Library reprint predates Covid 19.   The novel itself came out in 1962.   I mean ... wow!  OK, there are differences.  For one thing there are always two versions of the Hueste virus; one which kills in hours, another which is harmless to the victim, granting them immunity but making them carriers.  Actually, that second version sounds very much like Covid 19, now I come to think about it.   The other major difference is that the underclass rise up in rebellion when they are effectively left to die by the state.   Of course, Maine wrote before social media - indeed, before absolutely every household had a TV.

As ever, once he has set up his disaster, Maine personalises it through characters at the heart of the dilemma.   He does so especially well in The Darkest of Nights.   Pauline Brant works for the International Virus Research Organisation (IVRO) in Tokyo, and is thus on hand when the virus first begins to spread.   She is sent back to England where she reunites with her husband Clive, Foreign editor for a major Fleet Street newspaper.   Clive has been offered a gig in America and wants a divorce so he can marry the boss's daughter.   Pauline asks for time to think it over.   Then the virus comes to Britain and Pauline is subsumed back into IVRO where she meets DR 'Vince' Vincent.   The triangle plays out to very end, with a twist I didn't foresee.

Whilst not perhaps the Maine novel closest to my academic interests (that remains Spaceways), The Darkest of Nights is a better novel than The Tide Went Out, itself very good.  My appetite for more is whetted and fortunately series editor Mike Ashley includes some useful pointers in his introduction.

Four-Sided Triangle - William F Temple

 Another of the British Library's wonderful reprints of mid 20th century UK sci fi.  Four-Sided Triangle was originally a short story in the US magazine Amazing Stories (November, 1939).   Temple then expanded it into a novel during his wartime service - as Mike Ashley recounts in his useful introduction, Temple had to do so three times, having twice lost the manuscript in battle action.

The end result is a peculiar animal.  The padding is obvious and in expanding a very short story into a 300 page novel is going to take some significant new material (a subject I hope to expand upon myself in a forthcoming monograph).  But the question arises, what if anything could be cut?   And I can't answer that one.   The story certainly takes a while to get going but I could argue the delay is necessary to establish the credentials of reckless inventor Bill.   Perhaps moving the key development into a prologue to hook us in would be the answer.

However what Temple has really done in adding material is develop characters we are intrigued by, something so often lacking in science fiction of the period.   The story of their relationship is as old as the hills - two friends love the same enigmatic girl, but only one can have her.   The twist, the sci fi maguffin, is to make a duplicate so they can both have one.   Again Temple cleverly develops this through his narrator, a bachelor doctor too old to be interested in young girls but who happens to be Bill's foster parent.   He sees what the youngsters cannot, he is a practitioner of other people's science, not an innovator.

It's slow but it is engrossing.   Nothing else Temple wrote came anywhere near, apparently, though the British Library has also reprinted his Shoot at the Moon, which I will certainly try.   I am also intrigued to find that Four-Sided Triangle became an early Hammer film, directed by Terence Fisher and available on DVD.   That might be on my list of acquisitions too.

From the Depths - Mike Ashley (ed)

 

Building on the success of their classic crime series, the British Library now does reprints and collections across many genres, including the supernatural.  From the Depths is specific - 'strange tales of the sea' - but right up my alley as a diehard fan of William Hope Hodgson.  The great man appears here with one I hadn't come across before - 'The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship' - but there are other tales of the Sargasso, by Ward Muir and Frank H Shaw, plus two of floating islands.  The last, 'No Ships Pass', is by Lady Eleanor Smith, is very weird and captivating.  A great collection.  Not a dud amongst them.  I wonder if there is a Volume Two...?