Absolution - Jeff VanderMeer

 Absolution is the fourth and final part of the Southern Reach Series, written ten years after the first trilogy came out - in one triple release - in 2014.

Southern Reach is the agency tasked with reclaiming the Forgotten Coast.   The problem is Area X, a space that has been sealed off beyond the Border, where bizarre things occur.   The first section of Absolution is the story of an early expedition in which biologists go to the Forgotten Coast to research alligators, some specimens of which they take with them.   In Area X they are plagued with carnivorous rabbits, each of which carries a camera.   The biologists cope with the rabbits, wiping them out the American Way, only for more rabbits to arrive with more cameras to munch up the dead rabbits.   Some of the cameras are captured.  They show videos of the the expedition members doing things they would never dream of doing.   Then one of their number goes rogue, morphing into something more than human, rampaging through the camp with one of the alligators as a sort of pet sidekick.

All this is gleaned by a longstanding agent known only as Old Jim, who is plucked off skid row and rehabilitated by the Central command of Southern Reach.   Part of his rehab involves puttting together the story of the expedition.   He becomes obsessed with the enigma "Rogue".

Next up, Old Jim is sent to the Forgotten Coast.  His cover is as the new owner of the local bar where expedition members drank twenty years before.   He is joined by his daughter Cass - only she isn't reeally Cass but another agent sent to spy on Old Jim.   They establish a real relationship and together get a long way into the central mystery of Rogue.   But at the last minute, after things have been getting increasingly weird for some time, the Border comes down.   How and where from are questions never answered.   All we know is that, one year later, another team is sent in to Area X to find out what happened and, perhaps, to recover Old Jim.

With this second team things start extremely weird.   We experience it all through the eyes of James Lowry, a foul-mouthed gung-ho action man, whose response is to shoot before thinking.  And with Lowry the last man standing - standing on the edge of the intestinal link with reality, discussing matters with his bio-hazard skin-suit - the tetralogy ends.

It is a powerful piece of work, perhaps best approached by reading the four novels in the intended order.  Nevertheless, VanderMeer dragged me in.   I genuinely couldn't stop reading, albeit I wasn't always enjoying myself.   Old Jim is a compelling character, Cass an effective mirror for him.   Lowry (Young Jim, ppssibly?) is less so and I didn't care much about his fate.   VanderMeer's writing is dense and sparky and I am definitely on the lookout for more.

The Weight of the Dead - Brian Hodge

 A novelette, a work of fiction longer than a short story, shorter than a novella, typically between seven and seventeen thousand words: that is what Brian Hodge has written here.   It turns out to be the perfect length.   Less would have been inadequate, more would have been padding.   It is a form I really must experiment with myself.

The Weight of the Dead is not post-apocalyptic, it is post-frazzle.   Within living memory the Day the Sun Roared caused a power surge which burned out all electrics, instantly turning the Technological World into what survivors called the World Ago.   Without tech or transport humankind reverted to nomadic lifestyles.   A generation later they began to settle into fortified villages, like the one Melody Banks lives in.   Melody is fourteen; the male of the species is being to notice her.   One such, Ted Harkin, became inappropriate, causing Melody's father Grady to beat his brains out.   Now Grady must pay the price.

The villagers are not barbarians.   They do not have the death penalty.   Instead, Grady Banks must bear the weight of his crime - literally.   Harkin's corpse is fastened to him and he is banished into the woods outside the defences until such time as his burden is lifted, either by death or putrefaction.  Obviously Melody can go out and visit, take her father food and necessary supplies, but she cannot take anything that might free him of Ted's corpse.

The woods are not entirely safe.   Myths and rumours have already evolved about the people who wander out there and what they might have become...

A really skilful, beautifully written and controlled, example of short weird fiction.

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.

British Weird - ed. James Machin

 It's a shame Handheld Press went out of business, because this is a nicely-presented anthology, part of a series which has decided to venture off the usual track in order to introduce to fans of the genre some long forgotten classics.   Here, for example, we have Arthur Machen's 'N', which happens to be the starting point for Alan Moore's marvellous Great When which I reviewed here earlier this year.   In the same vein is 'Mappa Mundi' by Mary Butts, who was an occultist contemporary of Machen and Aleister Crowley.   Editor James Machin has also included an essay by Butts from 1933 in which she has some startling things to say about alternative realities and her personal experience thereof.   I had never comes across John Buchan's weird fiction before but must find more of it.   I'm not particularly a fan of E F Benson or Edith Nesbit but they certainly merit inclusion here.   I am a big fan of Algernon Blackwood and thoroughly enjoyed 'The Willows', which I had not come across before.

Machin's introduction is excellent.   I note he has written a book on Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939.   That sounds like exactly my cup of tea.

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!

The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen

 Arthur Machen was a Victorian bookman who is remembered today for his weird fiction, most of which (four stories) is collected in this Dover Thrift edition.  Machen was a member of the Golden Dawn so one might expect high magic to figure in his stories.  In fact his theme is primitive paganism and elemental beings.  The theme is in the title of 'The Great God Pan' but the structure of the piece is unexpected.  A doctor literally opens the mind of the young girl he adopted, sending her mindless but also unleashing a devilish offshoot on a death-dealing spree around London.  'The White People', nearly as famous in its own right as 'Pan' , is a bizarre account of what might be fairies or, more likely, those who live underground like the Tuatha.  'The Shining Pyramid' is definitely about the underground people and 'The Inmost Light' has underpinnings of alchemy whilst echoing the beginning of 'Pan' in the forbidden use of someone's essential being.

The stories are weird, not overtly horrific.  Machen deals in suggestion, unease, and comes at his horrors obliquely which only makes them more disturbing.  I am very impressed/

The King in Yellow - Robert W Chambers

The King in Yellow is in every sense a strange book. It's a collection of stories but not one of them is called The King in Yellow. In fact The King in Yellow is a printed playscript of material so mind-blowing that anyone who reads it risks insanity. The fictional text pops up in the first four stories but only in the first (and best) 'The Repairer of Reputations' does it fully do its damnedest. The story is truly macabre. To start with, it is set in 1920, a quarter of a century after it was written. New York has become very much as it is today, cracking down on immigrants, isolationist, and populist. In a move that is almost inevitable for Trump's second term, New York now boasts a Lethal Chamber in Washington Park. Sitting in the park and watching the euthanists run up the steps to the Chamber is the epitome of popular pastimes. Castaigne, our narrator, has just been released from psychiatric care. He is not mad, he tells us, and never was. He told his psychiatrist he wasn't mad and has offered to prove it by killing him. In the meantime he has cured himself by reading The King in Yellow. Now all manner of things are clear to him. First and foremost he must prevent his cousin from marrying the daughter of Hawberk, the artisan restorer of ancient armour. Castaigne has an ally in Mr Wilde, the repairer of reputations, who happens to live upstairs from Hawberk. Wilde is a midget with a fingerless hand who engages in perpetual strife with an extraordinarily vicious cat. Wilde has a book called The Imperial Dynasty of America, which is naturally of great interest to Castaigne, given that he and his cousin both feature towards the end.

This sounds bizarre, and it really is, startlingly so for 1895. The writing is simply dazzling. Chambers was an art student in Paris and has a tremendous gift for description. My favourite line comes from a story at the other end of the collection, but is typical of the whole book: "when again he raised his eyes, the vast Boulevard was twinkling with gas-jets through which the electric lights stared like moons." This comes from a second cluster of loosely linked stories featuring several re-occurring art students. These are not horror stories or even weird fiction, but they are very good. My second favourite, "The Street of the First Shell' is also set in the Latin Quarter but a generation earlier, in 1870, when Paris was besieged by the Prussians. This prefigures the historical fiction with which Chambers made his fortune.

The King in Yellow is and always was a curiosity. Apparently Chambers never wrote anything else quite as weird. Its influence was certainly telling; the links with Lovecraft are clear. I recommend it to all students of the genre.

The Lurking Fear - H P Lovecraft

This Wordsworth collection concentrates on the non-Cthulhu. non-Arkham stories. The main preoccupation here is the Gothic, specifically inbreeding and ancient bloodlines tainted. The introduction by Matthew J Elliott is useful and the last entry is Lovecraft's own insights into his craft .Notes on Writing Weird Fiction'.


As for the stories themselves, some are unfinished or abandoned drafts, included for the completists. But there are also classics like 'The Music of Erich Zann', 'Beyond the Walls of Sleep', 'The Beast in the Cave' and, my favourite, 'The Rats in the Walls'. Overall, though, you wouldn't want this collection to be your first acquaintance with Lovecraft. There are many better and more typical collections, of which I have quite a few.