The Merry Men and Other Stories by R. L. Stevenson - a brief review

The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The stories in this collection are linked by being largely moral in nature. The Merry Men focuses on guilt, conscience and payment for sins; Markheim follows a similar line with a supernatural interference; Thrawn Janet is an episode of a priest and a possessed woman; Will O' the Mill is a contemplation on whether it is better to experience all the world or live a simple life; Olalla is a bizarre story of a fallen and ruined family and choosing to sacrifice personal happiness to prevent future evil; finally The Treasure of Franchard highlights the importance of family, simple things and the evils of money, at least too much of it in the wrong hands.

Despite that, none of them beat the reader over the head with didactic ramblings, and each story has a charm and character of its own to keep the reader intrigued. Olalla ends disappointingly to mine, but the hook of the secret was only just strong enough to keep me going with it anyway. The descriptions in The Merry Men, of the raging sea and the desolate land, are beautifully rendered in true Stevenson style.

In all, this is a pleasant and enjoyable collection, but not one of much mark.



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Farewell Brian Aldiss, RIP

It is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to Brian W Aldiss, a stalwart writer and scholar who passed away on the weekend aged 92.

I think the first book of his that I read was Billion Year  Spree, his history of science fiction. It's a fascinating read and influenced me greatly. I was doing my Honours at the time and his definition of science fiction, particularly that it is set in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould, shaped my thinking at the time and infiltrated my whole thesis, even if it was off topic. My ideas on genre have shifted in the last couple of years, and I do not hold so closely to Aldiss' own, but they're still influential, and I wouldn't be where I am without them.

I haven't read his most famous fictional works, the Supertoys stories that Spielberg's movie AI was based on, or the Helliconia series, but I have read a couple of others. The first was Frankenstein Unbound. It took me a bit to accept what was going on and for a while I probably would have said it wasn't that good. But, it stayed with me, I read it almost two decades ago but have clear memories of scenes within it. It wasn't what I expected, but it was good enough to get past my initial reaction and hook me.

Sadly, my memory of Moreau's Other Island is vague and of disappointment. The other book of Aldiss' that I've read is Nathaniel and Other Stories, an anthology of his early short stories. Off the top of my head I can only recall one. It was about a sentient bomb, sent across space. There was an alien world at war with Earth, and they sent a series of such bombs at a speed sufficiently faster than that of light to arrive on Earth before humans evolved, thus preventing their enemy from ever existing. Only, it turned out humans worked it out and the bomb wiped out its originating planet instead. That was just the meat of the story, the real flavour came from the bomb itself, its excitement and relief that its journey was coming to an end, its sense of purpose. And then it finds it's been tricked, and its whole reason for being flipped on its head. I'm not surprised it stays with me.

So Mr Aldiss, I say farewell and thank you. Stories and ideas are the most precious of gifts, and yours have proven very valuable already, and I can truly say they have changed my life. The good news is, though you may no longer be with us, your gifts are and there are more treasures for us all to unearth.

Keep dreaming my friends.

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I just spent the better part of two days reading this so I figure I should write something about it. I'd like to say I did that because it captured me completely, but the truth is I powered through it because of an assignment and because I'm not at work this week. Not that it didn't capture me and I'm glad I read it in such a consolidated period.

It's a very well written and quite sumptuous story cycle, the interconnections are laced through ever-so neatly down to a pair of pants I presume one character bought second-hand after another had given them to charity. Numerous lives are wound as threads through this tapestry, covering a good fifty or so years. It could be argued the last story ties up too many of those threads, but the resolution is still ambiguous and the way the characters come together is not convenient plot wrangling like a melodrama but a clever device, itself a metaphor for the interconnections and networks we create every day on social media.

I would have liked a little more playing with modality, not just the PowerPoint presentation and the blog-style interview piece. And it might have been nice if there were fewer doomed relationships and drug-ruined lives. Somehow the whole cycle became quite morose despite its more optimistic ending (in a ruined world where everything is still ruined). But that's part of the point too. The characters are cogs as much as individuals and the machine wears them out eventually.

Of course, as is plain in the book, the titular Goon Squad is time itself and its relentless march. Perhaps that makes the moroseness of the overall cycle inevitable too. But there are the pauses, the moments within the song that is an individual's life that we can grab, and there's always a chance for repeat refrain before the end.



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Keep Dreaming!

Rays of Life - some stories in Astounding from 1930

I'm about halfway through the second issue of Astounding (February 1930) and there's been an interesting common thread in a three of the stories so far. While vastly different in approach and atmosphere, they all feature the discovery of a 'Life' ray at their heart. There are some spoilers ahead so if you want to read the stories first they can be found here.

The first was Harl Vincent's Old Crompton's Secret. This story didn't go anything like I expected. The blurb describes a rejuvenated old man with the memory of a crime, the illustration is of a fight scene between Old Crompton and a younger man. Then the story opens with a description of the enigmatic town hermit - Crompton - who has been there so long even the old folk can't remember when he arrived or why he's such a grouch. So at this point I was assuming his dark secret/remembered crime was why he was a hermit. But no, the crime happens three-quarters of the way through the story and turns out to not actually have happened ... as in the murder victim isn't dead.

So from that angle I wasn't a particular fan of the story but in other ways it was an intriguing setup. The old hermit gained a new neighbour, a young scientist who turns as hermetic as he is, and the nature of his experiments result in a three-foot-tall rooster. It is finally revealed that the young scientist has discovered the secret to life itself - which he funnels through electric rays in a particular configuration. Most interesting is his motivation. Having discovered this world-changing technology he immediately thinks of all the money and influence he will make offering the use of his rejuvenating machine to old rich people. It's possibly the most mundane motivation for such a scientist I've encountered. Mad ideals, world domination, saving lost loved ones ... nope, just getting rich and influencing people.

The next story's scientist was less materialistic and was probing the mysteries of life and death for the sake of doing so more than anything else. Interestingly he was also a side character in what was, in the end, a form of locked-room horror story. The story was The Corpse on the Grating by Hugh B Cave and is a first-person account of a mysterious night a doctor has when he and a famous scientist are called to visit a professor who proceeds to explain that he was on the verge of discovering the secret of life itself and restoring it to a dead man. He claimed mild success on a corpse but when the narrator called on him to prove it he said it hadn't proved as successful as he'd hoped so he'd dumped the body.

On their way home the doctor and scientist argue over the possibility of the professor being right, then they discover a dead man in a warehouse gate. It's the watchman and he appears to have died of fright. From here the story becomes the haunted house type, the doctor goes inside on a dare and ends up encountering the corpse the professor had disposed of. It turns out the professor should have been more patient.

The third 'life ray' story in the issue is an altogether different affair again. It's Creatures of the Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis. It follows the adventure of another young scientist with incredible intellect and stunning looks. He is led to discover another scientist's great work. This scientist is an expert in electricity and has discovered the ray of life. He used that ray to create a tropical paradise in a hidden valley in the Antarctic where he has through use of his ray and a eugenic breeding program, advanced human evolution to the point of 'perfection'.

The story has our hero declaim the ideals of the scientific tinkerer of humanity revolting, primarily because of the manipulation of breeding people and using the ray to fast-track growth and development - at 20 years of age 'Eve' had spawned five generations. Indeed, the central villain is one of the 'perfect' humans who despises the lesser humans, except one woman, and his equals who are perfect and thus boring, so he aims to destroy them all. Of course, that doesn't quite pan out, but the paradise is most certainly lost in the end and shown as a foolish quest.

So three very different stories, all within the Frankenstein galaxy if not solar system. Fascinating concepts. In the middle of these three stories was a very different tale of alien invasion by Charles Willard Diffin, Spawn of the Stars. It had monstrous protozoa in near-perfect flying saucers with hydrogen-based attacks that precede the Manhattan Project by a decade which is interesting in itself. In the end the world is saved by sunlight - and good-old American military bravery and self-sacrifice of course.

Keep reading, keep exploring and thinking. And most of all - Keep dreaming!

Initial Response to Each to Each by Seanan McGuire

I just read the opening story in Lightspeed No 49, the Women Destroy Science Fiction Special. It's Each to Each by Seanan McGuire. I'm torn over it in a number of ways.

It's about a Navy made up of genetically modified women, essentially engineered mermaids, and how the 'modifications' as they're called have unexpected consequences. The women begin to feel non-human, to lose all connection with land dwellers and to have a deep emotional and psychological connection with each other. It's a great idea and well examined in the story which is well written and clearly had an effect on me.

As I come to write this next point I realise I'm not as torn as I first thought. The idea of altered humans and the mysteries of the deeps reminded me of pulp age stories and I was thinking of ways it could have worked better in those terms. I was thinking about its atmosphere and how it could have been built up with a greater sense of fear of the unknown - as with the pulp horror I was thinking of. I even started to think how changing the narrator to the unaltered captain could have helped and thinking of ways the story could still work.

And now I realise that's the problem. The plot could still develop but the story would be irreparably altered. Fear of the unknown was not the point - in fact there's a certain lure to it. The story is about the new type of women, the way they've been shaped by the military which is driven by society, and how in so doing a new community/species/world is created. It does that perfectly. Is it an analogy for how society tries to shape women the way it wants them to look? Yeah I'd say so, there are parts that rather beat the reader over the head with that message, but it also goes beyond that to raise questions of humanity. It doesn't answer them, just raise them.

So it reflects society as it is but peers into deeper issues at the same time - which is the point of science fiction isn't it? I'm not so torn after all, I just needed to adjust my headset. Well done Seanan McGuire.

Keep dreaming!

First Response to Robert E Howard’s Pigeons from Hell

I just finished reading this delightful little horror story from Robert E Howard and I’m fairly impressed. It was originally published in Weird Tales in 1938, a posthumous publication. You can read it here.

It’s a classic horror in many ways, travellers stop the night in an abandoned house, only one leaves alive and that just barely. There’s an old legend of a violent and cruel family, there’s darkness that seems almost palpable, there’s dead men walking and terror-induced bouts of insanity.

At the heart of the mystery is voodoo, which I didn’t expect at first. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but does of course paint the practice as evil. The murderous creature in the house is a zuvembie, that is, a creature who used to be a woman but who is now a twisted creature with hypnotic powers that delights in killing people. I have no idea if there’s more lore about zuvembies but I may investigate later.

What was interesting was the portrayal of African Americans in this story. Usually Howard’s stories have non-whites as borderline savages or openly savages. Even the other story of his I’ve read set in America in relatively recent times, Black Canaan, has ‘blacks’ as the villains – the chief villain being a voodoo priest intent on killing ‘whites’. It’s degrading stuff and I have to pull a lot of mental trickery on myself to read it.

But this story, while it still has a voodoo man who’s made a pact with a demonic snake spirit and a vengeful ‘mulatto’, displays none of the usual hatred or condescension. And the villain is from a white family known and reviled for its cruel treatment of African Americans even post slavery. I’m not saying it’s an accepting story, there are still clear racial divides, as there were in society at the time, but it’s certainly a step up from Black Canaan.

Anyway, that aside, it is a good horror story with a nice atmosphere of impending doom. Some extended dialogue with theorising about, and attempted rationalising of, events does break the mood however which is unfortunate.

And what about the pigeons? Sadly, they’re just window dressing.

Keep dreaming!

Le Fanu’s Madam Crowl’s Ghost – Initial Reaction

Full disclosure, this was the second time I read this story, but my memories of it were vague at best. I had an image of the diabolical ghost from the end of the story in my mind but I remember feeling rather nonplussed by the story as a whole.

So why read it a second time? I think because I felt nonplussed and that didn’t make sense to me. Le Fanu entered my consciousness when I read Carmilla while studying vampires in my Honours year and he blew me away. If you haven’t read Carmilla, do it, the prose is beautiful. I then read the next story in the anthology I was using, Schalken the Painter. For the life of me I can’t remember what happens but I know I enjoyed it immensely; I must reread it too.

It was probably a year or two after that that I read Madam Crowl’s Ghost and I was quite surprised to be so disappointed. Having forgotten the details I couldn’t remember why such a master of 19th century supernatural thrillers would disappoint me. So I reread it to see if it was as drab as I recalled. It wasn’t.

I think the problem I had was it’s written in first person, which I love if it’s done well, and in the dialect of the narrator, which makes sense but in this case I think it probably threw me. The narrator is an old woman relating events from the first time she worked as a servant and her language is of the English working class from a century and a half ago. This kind of language is not conducive to feats of ‘high’ prose. Combine that with the late reveal which seems low key in modern terms and I think that was why I failed to be impressed.

Reading it again I appreciate the skill Le Fanu displayed in using the language of this elderly maid to build the sense of mystery around Madam Crowl. The story shows her in glimpses and through gossip, before a late scene where she scares the daylights out of the narrator. All that before she’s died, so the ghost only comes in right at the end, more as a way to reveal the answer to the mystery of the woman than anything else. Le Fanu builds the mystery through intimation and subtle hints which leaves us needing answers to solve the disquiet building in our minds and the narrator’s as she remembers the events of her youth.

By modern standards the story is a bit too anticlimactic and is paced rather slowly, but in the end that’s neither here nor there. It’s a strong suspense story of its day and demonstrates Le Fanu’s writing powers could match the dialectical challenges. It’s also interesting in the manner of its telling.

Most first-person narrations are given by people who only recently experienced the events they’re describing, at least in the last few years. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say there’s no discernable age difference or at least that age has nothing to do with story. Sometimes it will be an adult referring to events in childhood but I can’t think of any examples of that predating Madam Crowl’s Ghost (not that I’m an expert so that could be total rubbish). Having the story of an old woman told through the eyes of another old woman who is remembering meeting the first woman as a young girl changes things slightly.

That she was young at the time, and a maid where the titular character is aristocracy, gives us the mode of the story – fleeting encounters, gossip and innuendo. We’re also given her perspective which cannot help but have a heightened sense of fear due to her inexperience and the new surroundings.

But Le Fanu doesn’t spoon-feed us her terror with a close report of events; rather he shows it to us through the memories of an old woman. This costs him a certain immediacy in the key scenes but their vividness is now coming to us from years hence. These events have marked this woman for life and remained with her as fresh as yesterday. Even with her decades of experience since then the events of that time have lingered in her mind as a terrible mystery. It’s a tricky line but Le Fanu walks it skilfully.

The dénouement does wrap things up rather too neatly and the suspense is lost in the last couple of pages. Instead it shifts to the scandalous truth behind the mysterious old woman – a common enough ending for the time but it’s hard to read its efficacy these days when we’re much harder to be shocked. And that is likely the biggest reason for me not liking the story initially. I guess I’ve encountered the type enough now to enjoy the build of the story and not worry too much about the ending.

Keep dreaming!

Author Profile - Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith came from a poor background and spent much of his early life trying to earn money for his family. But even while young he displayed a love of story and a passion for language. Some of his earliest works were written as a teenager and they were strongly influenced by the Arabian Tales, an influence that would linger.

He abandoned prose for some years and was a fairly successful poet. After his first published volume he was taken under the arm by George Sterling and mingled with fellow poets of the time including Ambrose Bierce.

Nowadays he’s remembered for his short fiction works which he wrote primarily for pulp magazines like Weird Tales. In fact, in terms of the ‘weird’ fiction of the pulp era he was one of the three heavyweights along with Lovecraft and Robert E Howard, and while those two may be better known these days I would argue Smith is the better writer of the group.

The ties between the three, while primarily through letters, were highly influential however as they borrowed names and ideas from each other frequently. So the building and weaving of certain famous or infamous mythos began. Smith set many tales in Hyboria which shared and helped build Howard’s Hyperborean setting where Kull, Conan and Red Sonja ran about; and he used names from Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos thus building on their renown and our knowledge of them within that crazy mixed-up universe.

Smith’s stories I must admit are not strong in plot, some of them barely even have one. Take The Abomination of Yondo, it tells of a man exiled from a harsh country into a desert known to contain horrors. We learn a little of why he was exiled but not a great deal, otherwise he simply walks on, encounters one monstrosity, continues on then encounters something so utterly terrifying he flees back to face torture and execution to escape the mad fear. Not much of a plot, but as we read it we drink in the details of the desert and its horrors, we sense the dread and the unnatural atmosphere of the place.

And that’s the key to Smith’s fiction – atmosphere. He creates the world we are reading about so vividly it really is like visiting the places ourselves. His use of language is rich and exorbitant, you may need a dictionary at times I know I did, and he clear took great delight in playing with words to build up these fantastic vistas and horrific scenes of death and worse. Make no mistake, these stories can be highly macabre, some seem to exist for no other reason than creeping you out. In that regard he was something of a successor to Poe.

I could say lots more about him of course but the best way to experience his writing is for yourself and I highly, highly recommend you do.

Keep dreaming!

Author Profile - Edgar Allan Poe

I’ve decided to start a series of author profiles. Not just any authors of course, but ones who have influenced me – positively – or that I’m interested in, intrigued by or who fit in the nebulous conglomerate of sub-genres I’m most ‘in’ to. So who better to start with than Edgar Allan Poe who is all those things?

It’s worth noting that in more recent times he would probably have been known as Allan-Poe as he adopted Allan into his name from his foster father who was a more positive role model than his biological one. So from the get-go Edgar had emotional damage and an alcoholic father. The course for this tormented genius was pretty much set from there.

I won’t get into his biography that can be found out easily enough if you’re interested. What I do want to talk about is his broad scope of influence. Some call him the father of modern horror, which is debatable but certainly he is best known for his macabre works. He’s also possibly the father of modern crime fiction, with his tales of ‘ratiocination’ as he called them seeing Auguste Dupin solving crimes through logical deduction years before Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

Moreover, aside from writing short stories and poems, Poe was talented editor and essayist. He had a passion for the facts and was sometimes in trouble for presenting them too harshly in the eyes of people involved. For instance, his logical mind saw him demonstrate Maelzel's Chess Player, which was supposedly a machine that could play chess, had a man hidden inside - this ruse had fooled thousands.

These aspects of his career have a great bearing on his fiction as well. His stories are filled with facts, at least as known to him at the time, which influence the narrative. Take Descent into a Maelstrom, which is about a ship caught in a giant whirlpool; alongside his evocative prose the tale details a means of escape then believed to be scientifically accurate. It’s since been debunked so if you’re in a maelstrom, don’t try it, but Poe couldn’t have known that.

His first major success, MS Found in a Bottle, also discusses a theory then believed to be true – that the South Pole would be ocean not land, again clearly no longer believed – all while dealing with a man alone on a ghost ship. And the level of detail in The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall are considerable. That story also bears the marks of the other overlooked aspect of Poe’s writing – his humour.

There’s no humour or indeed relief in his most macabre tales, his goal is to chill the reader and he typically succeeds. But in works like The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall or The Man Who Was Used Up, his humour is right at the fore, if somewhat droll. And of course what is now sometimes read as the story The Balloon Hoax was a hoax he wrote in one of his newspapers at the time.

These things went into his work, and his work went into the world’s consciousness and infused themselves into its literature. He’s influenced numerous writers across a range of fields and continues to do so today. So, gentle reader, I implore you, read more Poe.

Keep dreaming.

Joseph's Story

I know many will not believe my story; I can barely believe it myself, but it happened nonetheless. I’m not even sure where to begin telling it. She meant the world to me, still does, but when she told me she was pregnant then claimed it was God’s will so I shouldn’t be upset … and that she was still a virgin anyway – well, it was pretty hard to take. At least I thought she should be honest with me. Still, I loved her and didn’t want her to suffer for some mistake. I was going to break it off quietly, let her find a way out on her own. Then he, she or … I guess it, came.

Now I know people won’t believe this. I walk into my room and there’s this person in there and it scared the daylights out of me. Possibly because it was like daylight only human shaped; bit more freaky than an intruder and somehow more convincing when they claimed to be a messenger from God. Turned out she wasn’t lying, the pregnancy was God’s will and she was still a virgin. I was going to be the step-dad of God’s son. How was I meant to deal with that one? I was still getting my carpentry up to scratch, setting myself up in life and now I have to look after not only a baby but a divinity? Come on. Still, when a glowing celestial being appears in your bedroom and tells you that’s how it is, you don’t argue. Sure I could have argued I was now insane, but that would mean she was too and that didn’t add up. Besides, insane people don’t think they’re insane – do they?

Anyway, any doubts I might have had about my sanity or the general nature of reality got burned away that night the baby was born. She was so brave, my little love. The innkeeper’s wife kept me outside while it happened, I avoided the temptation to talk to the cattle, that would’ve been nuts but they were the only ones there. Then. After, well, it got crowded.

I’d just met my little boy, by proxy at least, when this noise erupted. The sky was rent with this singing, unlike anything I’d ever heard. The voices were so clear and resonant and – commanding. When it became as bright as day at the same time, I knew it was back and it had brought friends. A whole host of glowing beings; flying this time and worshipping the little bub in my wife’s arms … I was more worried about her to be truly honest. She was covered in sweat and looked absolutely exhausted. Utterly beautiful though, so happy, so content, so very much in love with her son. And when she looked up and smiled at me, gripped my hand – let’s just say there was a lot of love in that little huddle. Enough to make the angelic chorus outside seem almost natural.

I wasn’t as impressed when the shepherds turned up. I’d never seen so many of the uncouth vagabonds in the one place before. It stank more than the oxen; I understood then why baths were invented and never begrudged one ever after. All these rough and ready blokes, some with scars from fighting wolves of all things, all gathering round my wife and son … it’s not something you normally want to happen. But the looks on their faces – they didn’t even notice my love, or me. Just him, the divine son.

They didn’t hang around but they got very excited and promised to tell everyone they met they’d seen the Son of God. I thanked them very much, but who listens to shepherd talk anyway?

After that life just seemed to go on. We settled into a new house in Nazareth where people couldn’t do the math about wedding and son’s birthday. Some strange men turned up one year, gave us some really expensive presents – for the King of Kings of course. I asked if they’d mind changing his nappy while they were at it but they declined.

So there you have it, the birth of my first son – so to speak. Like I said, I know a lot of people won’t believe it, but that’s what happened. If you ever meet him, you won’t be so surprised. He has that way about him.

First Response to H P Lovecraft’s The Outsider

This is my initial thoughts on the story, nothing too in depth. Warning, big spoiler, if you want to read the story do that first. It's here.

The beginning of this story reminded me somewhat of Gormenghast but with a more literal take on the idea of Titus Alone. Its mouldy, decaying castle is viscerally described and the infinite loneliness of the narrator is palpable. The nature of this castle with its immense forest is kept a mystery, but there is a hint that not all is as described when we're told the narrator believed himself young because he remembered so little. A failed memory and a life in a place that seems to exist outside the real world.

Only when the escape is made – and leads not to a high tower above the forest, but ground level in an aged churchyard does the mystery of the castle, a veritable crypt, become clear. From there it’s clear what must happen, the narrator must learn it is a dead thing crawled up from its grave, but Lovecraft spins the discovery out to full effect in both horror and sympathy.

The use of nepenthe to erase the sorrow through forgetfulness and allow the ghoul to be just that in some sense breaks the sympathy we might feel for it, but at the same time gives rise to an explanation behind the raison d’être of ghouls and ghosts everywhere. The horror, the otherness and extreme loneliness of their existence drives them to flee the light and take delight in scaring the living who shun them.

Calling the story the Outsider and giving the reader an attachment to the ghoul before revealing its nature allows Lovecraft to make the connection – is this a ghoul or a man shunned for being different? Obviously in the story it is a genuine undead being, but the metaphor is carefully woven so the simple horror of the story is twisted to an analogy of human existence and the loneliness of the ‘other’.

Until next time, keep dreaming!