Their Hand Is At Your Throats by John Shire, Invocations Press / Freaksome Tales, Derby Books, edited by William Rosencrans

Two seemingly unrelated new collections, in truth, harbour a definable link. The first in honour of its subject; the second purveyed as pastiche. Each appreciate him well enough to do more than simply mock; their inspiration, overtly, H.P. Lovecraft. If this procures a sigh borne of long having read a multitude of previous poncing copyists, here, each find an extant pulse. Shire's preface reveals his affinity with the subject. '...I've always understood him - the Universe at once malign and indifferent, understood yet made terrible through scientific endeavour.' Most tales, here in his premier collection, though first inde- published between 1997 - 2007 in separate journals, harbour intertextual links. Thus, one wonders what took him so long. Five of the eleven stand out. In 'Investigations,' a hopeless drug addict, habitually-fed as a guinea pig, is taken, by a disturbing pair of suppliers, on an induced journey to a horrific source from which emanates arcane, hidden knowledge. 'Beneath the Black Tower' takes us straight into turn-of-the-century Tibet amongst the British Imperialist troops of Younghusband. Shire makes good new use of the line oft-used about this period, 'perhaps we will never understand,' as one soldier's journal entries relate his mystical and psychological descent in the Gothic, metaphysical structure of the title. Set forty years before, 'Generation' is set in the historical y- fork between discredited alchemy and burgeoning modern science during a monstrous capture in the household of a seemingly well-to-do Victorian family. A tale simultaneously creepy, humorous and well-informed. 'The Tip of the Iceberg' returns us to more familiar horror territory in the same period as science clashes, this time, with religion, as four philosophical seamen embark upon a voyage to the Antarctic and a fate that will ultimately best the philo- sophies of them all. 'Irrevelations' is pure SF. The psychic nature of a 'dead' alien city centred amongst the Mountains of Madness make the authorial link. A spy network's agent is assigned to uncover its true nature with the warning, 'nowhere is safe down there, inside the mind or out.' Shire successfully opens out and makes relevant Lovecraftian fears and assumptions, making them speak to a modern audience. In his Preface, his stated understanding of his subject then suddenly deviates from that of the usual reactionary rebuttalist. 'All it proves to me is that we only have each other. And, therefore, that must be enough...' An unexpected, refreshingly libertarian, conclusion. *********************************************************************** Vachel Vieuxpont Swigferd Gloume - well known to Edwardian scholars as V.V. - 'the Bard from Beyond' - apparently penned over four-hundred short tales and a dozen novels of weird fiction before an enforced weak constitution almost inevitably robbed genre-fiction of another of its mortal heroes at the age of 24. Now, to mark the centenary of his untimely demise, editor William Rosencrans has excavated ten of those formerly un-collected four-hundred from contemporary journals such as London Boys Speculum, The Retractor, The Tonsor's Clarion and, inevitably, Lewd Detective. The results are not bad for a boy forced by his overbearing, homicidal mother to wearing first leg braces, then a whole 'exo-frame,' which, according to Rosencrans, 'held his arms away from his body in the mistaken belief that it would correct his mild scoliosis.' (And, no doubt, onanism). In fact, it lost him the use of his left. His dominated father, just as much a victim of his wife, sealed their son's delicacy of health, ensuring a social shyness that focussed its one outlet into the exercising of a prodigious literary output courtesy of his right. A classic Lovecraftian case if ever there was one. 'Hysteria horrificans,' the opening tale, deals with a Lovecraftian manifestation, if not setting; while the Maestro's influence merely peppers description in the other tales. (Crowley and Burke more obviously informing the rest). 'The Veil Betwixt' is rather more Hoffmannesque as a delusion over a goblin commands a murderous motive. 'And Softly Wailed the Child' is undoubtedly the best tale. More of a conventional mystery, it is also the most satisfying. A Limehouse setting, where-in a police inspector's conscience is caught and diverted by the haunting night cry of a ghostly infant. 'The Hideous Dereliction of Mrs. Blaughducks' concerns the illicit possession and reanimation of the main character's Aunt Myrtle, previously deceased weeks before, by the habitation of a squatting soul. It's the most successful of the darkly humorous gems. 'Manuscript (Found Beneath a Service Pipe)' sees a discredited vivisectionist take glorious revenge against one of his liberal protestors in the most Grand Guignol style. A biographical photo-section from the Gloume Archive tellingly reveals the inbred caste to the family's features that include a 9-year-old V.V., arms akimbo in his exo-frame, as pale and unsmiling as his pale and unsmiling parents before him. So, it is gratifying that the legacy of a poor for- gotten genius, lost so young, lives on in a sympathetic editor's preserving hands.

Albertine's Wooers

While you wait for the return of Pan . . .

Austria's pre-eminent purveyor of the short tale sees their full reissue in 700 pages of The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig from Pushkin Press; haunting beauties every one and a bargain to be had at £20 or less if you can get passed the lurid orange cover.  Sadly, the final in Wordsworth Editions' 'Mystery & The Supernatural' range is Ernest Bramah's The Eyes of Max Carrados, comprising his blind detective's three original collections' plus one tale previously unbound. Also from Wordsworth, a very welcome release in their 'Classics' range - detailed with black-and-white portraits - Mary Shelley's Mathilda & Other Stories. The former priced as ever at £2.99, the latter an even greater snip at £1.99. New from Eibonvale Press is Caledonia Dreamin'; a fresh anthology described as 'strange fiction of Scottish descent,' edited by Hal Duncan and Chris Kelso; and don't forget issue 2 of Swan River Press's bi-annual essay collection on Irish Gothic in all its forms, The Green Book.

Mercury Blobs by Sylvia Petter, Raging Aardvark Publishing (Australia)

Mercury directly harms the human neurological system causing problems with speech and memory, among other symptoms. It may also be a useful motive for this collection's various protagonists.
   Here we discover forty pieces of flash fiction and, as such, are glimpses into psyches that any one of which may one day play out into further scenes of a longer family saga. Single descriptions here would be unfair, inevitably giving too much away from such economical prose.
  Favoured themes include murderous intent, vampirism, personal fears, food and, inevitably, 'the ways of love.' The stabs of black humour that peppered Back Burning (Interactive Press) (Petter's second collection, Pan Reviewed two years ago) are here further to the fore. Also present are its touches of humility that thankfully never descend to fake or awkward pathos.
  Alongside the more fantasy-orientated sketches, the all-too-short 'true life' takes are, quite simply, moving, intimating the requisite life experience to expand into a future novel. (Elizabeth Jane Howard could do with a successor). So, Petter is especially strong when wryly reflecting upon seasoned relationships alongside those hoped for that may never be.
  Uncanny glimpses occasionally wink from this necessity of what is left out; be it a near-fatal accident ('The Hook'), a window into the mind of a serial killer ('Widow's Peak'), a dalliance with temptation ('Golden Lover'), or an ambiguous motive (and a favourite, 'Uncle Henri').
  The mature perspectives tantalise, crying out for a longer work, which, I hope, Petter will produce in the fullness of time.

　

                                                  ALBERTINE'S WOOERS


Reggie Oliver has three works newly available. Virtue In Danger (Ex-Occidente) is a comic novel by the short tale master. Couched within retro theatrical covers and a design of decadent maroon, it tells of the fundamentalist Moral Regeneration Movement and its cult-ish members vying to take over from their adored but ailing leader. The narrative perspective is from one Ivor Smith, an indifferent, independently minded actor unwisely hired by the MRM to theatrically portray their message of high moral tonality. (While "for him the job was simply an escape from a failed marriage and a faltering career"). The lampooning, while undeniably present, is credibly restrained, with the satirical touch of the late Tom Sharpe. In inspiration, I was reminded of the moral campaigners of the Festival of Light and its leaders' attempts to conscript second-rate celebrities to its cause. Recommended. Also out is Oliver's Flowers of the Sea - Thirteen Stories and Two Novellas (Tartarus Press), his sixth collection of strange stories containing ‘Introduction’ by Michael Dirda, ‘A Child’s Problem’, ‘Striding Edge’, ‘Hand to Mouth’, ‘Singing Blood’, ‘Flowers of the Sea’, ‘Lord of the Fleas’, ‘Didman’s Corner’, ‘The Posthumous Messiah’, ‘Charm’, ‘Between Four Yews’, ‘The Spooks of Shellborough’, ‘Süssmayr’s Requiem’, ‘Come Into My Parlour’, ‘Lightning’, ‘Waving to the Boats’ and ‘Author’s Note’. Still available, also from Tartarus, (and reviewed in these pages), is The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler.

PAN NOTIFICATION

PAN NOTIFICATION: THERE WILL BE NO PAN REVIEW THIS WEEKEND SINCE I HAVE GONE DOWN WITH SOMETHING CALLED GASTRO OESOPHAGEAL REFLUX. (BASICALLY, A STOMACH COLD). HOWEVER, PAN WILL RETURN IN A FORTNIGHT WITH A REVIEW OF SYLVIA PETTER'S LATEST AND AN 'ALBERTINE'S WOOERS' SPECIAL ON REGGIE OLIVER. MANY THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT - AND KEEP READING.

The Transfiguration of Mister Punch by D.P. Watt, Charles Schneider & Cate Gardner, Egaeus Press

Egaeus Press's debut releases last year - presenting Stephen Clark's lovingly decadent novel, In Delirium's Circle, followed by George Berguno's vital collection of existential war-torn fables, The Tainted Earth - were likely tough acts to follow. Production-wise, they were also quite beautiful, Egaeus's bi-annual releasing intimating that here was a publisher in Mark Beech who merited a book as much an artistic as a literary artefact, the sparse release schedule thus reflecting production cost.
  The Transfiguration of Mister Punch - Egaeus's latest release - therefore had a lot to live up too. According to Beech, three authors were commissioned "working more or less in isolation from one another" to fantastically re-invent the Punch and Judy mythos in a triptych of macabre tales for a modern adult readership.  Charles Schneider produced 'The Show That Must Never Die,' D.P. Watt, 'Memorabilia - An Evening's Entertainment For Two Players' and Cate Gardner, 'This Foolish & Harmful Delight.'
  Schneider's is a fictitious essay, with anecdotal tales, by a Punch puppeteer whose obsessive adherence to his craft and its history turns encroachingly weird. Black and white photographs punctuate the text, informative at first, but gradually disquieting as if we are being slowly throttled by the collar and forced to consider a perpetrator's defence. Despite its novel presentation in word and picture, it is the most traditional of the three entries in its narrative evocation of a sub-Hammer anthology entry from the 1960s' or 1970s'.
   Watt's tale continues this framing device with the character-narrator addressing the reader directly around four short tales. It is the fourth that is most memorable and genuinely chilling; less in the tale itself as in its depiction. The scene of the carnival-disguised 'freakish mummers' who enter a crumbling inn to confront the cornered, guilt-ridden policeman who finds himself in what appears a purgatorial parallel of his town is especially good.
  Of the three, Gardner's is my favourite. Alongside a giant and especially sadistic Punch and Judy, we begin in Hell itself. They escape to the nearest theatre, taking puppet-maker Stjin, robotic ticket-collector Sir Neville, Rasputin and 'Joan' - a high-strung trapeze doll with a yearn to reclaim her half-forgotten humanity - with them. Clive Barker meets Angela Carter in this nightmarish Grand Guignol of enslavement and human - puppet dismemberment. While the unfolding humanity we hope for is delivered in the character of 'Joan' and her bid to reclaim her past.
  The very tightly edited lines, added to the broad rendering of stark imagery - especially in the second and third tales - make me wonder if one or both of them might have once hankered after graphic realisation. They'd certainly work as well.
  I mentioned the book's appearance.  Clearly, Beech continues as he means to go on. The maroon cover, its gold-embossed title on front and spine, and its wealth of illustrations and photographs evoke a strange, forgotten tome from Edwardian antiquity. Textually, it doesn't quite deliver the high standard, and, by its very nature, single-minded focus set by Egaeus's previous two releases. Yet, as with them, the care and dedication wrought on the production as a whole is equal to them.
 

Defeated Dogs by Quentin S. Crisp, Eibonvale Press / Lost Tales Vol. 1 by Lord Dunsany, Pegana Press

Four characteristic approaches to the tale emerge from a close reading of at least two of Quentin S. Crisp's original collections, of which this is the fifth. The first is the personal metaphysical travelogue, where the author is the roving outsider contemplating his disquieting responses to place and time with an ominous observation of minutiae most of us otherwise take for granted. (Here, in 'The Gay Wolf' and 'The Gwyllgi of the Lost Lanes').
  Next comes the fictional (though, one senses, not entirely fictitious) memoir, where elements of autobiography are re-evaluated and extrapolated to fantastical, yet still credible, conclusions spawned by long-held and internalised fears.  ('Sado-ga-shima,' 'The Broadsands Eyrie'). There is the Eastern epic myth, where Crisp's knowledge of Japanese history is drawn upon to portray beautifully circuitous plot-driven fables, quite on a par with the likes of his academic ancestor, Lafcadio Hearn. (As in 'The Temple'). 
  Finally, there are the straight horror and SF tales where Crisp, alone on such occasions, excuses himself to become the third-person or character narrator. (In 'The Fairy Killer,' 'Dreamspace,' 'Tzimtzum,' 'Lilo' and 'Non-Attachment').
  While I hope I'm open-minded enough to enjoy all four approaches, it is in this last (pardon me) 'category' where Crisp's literary discipline truly shines.  In the first three there is often the sense that he is trying too hard to involve the reader in the ongoing, as-yet-unresolved issues, tensions and hang-ups of his youth.  Whether there is a worthwhile resolution for himself in writing these out in this format only he, as author, can know. The reader can be left hanging, since the unresolved memories are, seemingly, real and not those of a completely fictitious character whose story arc can always be neatly concluded. Personally, I like this involved introspection although the uninitiated should be in sympathy with the darkly melancholic mood to so willingly follow.
  Alongside 'The Temple,' other favourites include the aforementioned 'The Fairy Killer,' where one man's smug, taunting assertions of unbelief reap a broad and terrible cost. A lighter fantasy with a darker underbelly is unlikely to be found.  While 'The Gwyllgi of the Lost Lanes' features one of the most credible evocations of a haunting I've read in some years; cool, journal-style observations adding greater chills than the usual overwrought descriptions.
  This is an equally diverse, but less wilfully idiosyncratic, collection than All God's Angels Beware!, and all the better for it. (Although 'Ynys-Y-Plag' from that release is - in this reviewer's eyes - fast becoming a classic).  Yet, I wonder if Crisp finds his more linear tales easier to write than the personal travelogues.  Then again, I also wonder if they afford him less closure.

                                                                        *        *        *

In Brendan O' Connell's enjoyable introduction to Defeated Dogs, he alludes to Crisp's "myth-forging fantasy haunted by more than the ghost of Lord Dunsany." The man himself has now reappeared in rare form - in both meanings of the term - in a hand-stitched, mauve-covered, limited edition chapbook of Lost Tales, in what Michael Swanwick describes as being sourced "from microfiche copies of the magazines they were published in for the first and only time." In this case, between May 1909 and March 1915.
  In the past I've made it clear that, in the field of fantasy, Dunsany's surface exotica has left me cold. His apparent influence, that spawned the sword n' sorcery epics of Le Guin, Tanith Lee, Tolkien, Moorcock, etc., ensured I'd be giving this particular sub-genre a wide berth.  His non-SNS work (such as The Blessing of Pan and The Charwoman's Shadow) being more welcome but all too rare.
  Lost Tales, however, is a revelation in the former field. Its beauty - swiftly apparent - is the distilled essence of what made his longer, more elaborate work charm so many for so long. Shorn of the interminable asides, musings and epic descriptions of sand-blown travel across vast oasis, what remains here is the poetry, wry wit and child-like wonder at their source.
  From when the 'diaphanous figure of 'Romance' enters with the night draughts of a darkened house lit by a solitary candle in the first tale, to a foreign agent's search for field gun metal from an unlikely source (in the pre-WW1 'The German Spy') to Man's ingratitude after a sardonic contest of wills between God and Satan in the last, ('The Eight Wishes'), this is a precious blueprint of the ambitious fables to come. It is also a laudable starting point from which the initiate Dunsany novice should depart.
  Mike & Rita Tortorello, Pegana's publishers who recovered and reprinted these century-old tales, state there will be a second volume  - entitled The Emperor's Crystal - very soon. This slender but vital collection of little gems would justify its purchase.
 

Written By Daylight by John Howard, Swan River Press

"I think these ideas are irresistible and ideal material for stories. We are surrounded by tokens of people and events outside ourselves—everything and everybody that isn’t me—they come from somewhere, and if we let them go again, they pass to somewhere else, neither of which can be known with certainty."
(John Howard, from an interview with Mark Valentine, May 2013)
  It is worth reflecting upon this quote when reading this delicate, quite elusive, new collection.
  In "Where Once I Did My Love Beguile," the fate of a boy and a broken pocket watch become inextricably linked, in a near covert tale of time reversal that reads as having been written with the child reader in mind. 'Silver On Green,' reflecting Howard's long interest in foreign coin collecting, sees a European radical with a Blakean sensibility exiled among London's cosmopolitan Bohemia until a warning visitor from his homeland darkly confirms his earlier belief that silver may 'wax and wane like phases of the moon, but the form endures and deep within...remains constant.' A strange tale in another sense, from a twist that, like others here, requires re-reading to even begin to uncover its portent.
  'Winter's Traces' is a real gem that could so easily have failed. A journalist relates his scouring for source material to write a profile-obituary on the late, 'prolific composer of light orchestral music,' William Winter. There is little uncanny about this tale other than  ambiguous gaps in Winter's chronology and a possible reason the late composer cited as to why he withdrew from public life and ceased composing.  Tales about music so often feel overly contrived; but Howard seems to know enough about the critics' point-of-view to seemlessly pull it off.  In 'Out to Sea,' being careful what you wish for becomes an unforeseen initiation as an ominous band of rowers ferry unsuspecting hopefuls between a Mediterranean mainland and six idyllic islands in a seemingly blind gamble.
  'Time and the City' evokes a science fantasy of a fading era where an explorer delineates an impenetrable map of unknown origin through an uncharted region of the distant past from the prone position of an induced coma. 'Into an Empire' is, perhaps, the most beautifully written entry, about a collector of "coins, banknotes, and postage stamps," the transience of objects and the traces they leave behind - evoking the opening quote. It isn't so much a tale as a rumination upon one with a precise o.c.d. routine for buying and receiving who belatedly, unwittingly, discovers what he'd been searching for in the wider, instinctive world around him.
  The dust jacket is worth a mention; a lovely collaboration between the artist Eoin Llewellyn and designer Meggan Kehrli of a sleeping man in Forties-style suit amid a dream landscape of autumnal browns, greens and blues.
  The remaining five in this collection,'Westernstrand,' 'The Way of the Sun,' 'The High Places,' 'Wandering Paths' and 'A Gift for the Emperor' each originally featured in Secret Europe (with Mark Valentine, Exposition Internationale, 2012) so already reviewed in these pages.
  Most of these tales are so subtle as to defy any category of the strange at all, but reward re-reading and are all the greater for it.