April’s Audacious Attempts at Assailing Avenues of Literary Adventure.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Mr. G: What gave me away???? *absently plucks festoons of dust-coated spiderwebs from his clothing, then looks at them with dawning comprehension*
Oh. Yeah.....

Actually it was more of a hunch than anything...

As per usual I always look forward to reading about what literary gems you've manged to extricate from history's dusty past....

[j. d. worthington]

A few more items from Black Wings:

"Usurpsed", by William Browning Spencer (author of the very unusual Lovecraftian novel, Résumé with Monsters) -- I've not read enough Spencer to know how close this is to his other work, but it certainly is different (in some ways) to the above-mentioned novel. It has all the eeriness of some portions of that book, but lacks the rather bizarrely humorous approach of others. In each case, I think it works well for the story, which is a genuinely disturbing and bizarre little piece... perhaps all the more so to me as Spencer, a native Austinite, places some of the action there, and makes it uncomfortably plausible....

"Denker's Book", by David J. Schow -- an odd blending of sf and Lovecraftian horrorwhere the Necronomicon itself is used as the source of power for an instrument exploring space-time and the fabric of reality. On the whole, rather good, but the ending, I must admit, left me quite cold....

"Inhabitants of Wraithwood", by W. H. Pugmire -- a different idiom for Wilum, in my view, and an expansion of the range of his authorial voice, represented by a not particularly likeable sort (coarse, vulgar, yet intelligent and with a refined background) who still can evoke sympathy as he finds himself, after breaking his probationary stipulations, as a guest/inhabitant of a strange place called "Wraithwood", where the inhabitants are even stranger.... As is usual with his work, Wilum here introduces us to a host of bizarre yet oddly attractive characters who definitely live outside the norm in nearly every way; he blends dream and reality with consummate skill; and introduces his trademark blending of horror, repulsion, and poignant, almost heartbreaking, empathy with these strange, twisted beings and the frightening yet alluring world which they inhabit. The connection to Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model", though explicit on one level, has other resonances which will delight fans of the Old Gent's tale... yet this piece is very definitely Wilum's own. A new milieu for his tales, but in its own odd way every bit as captivating as Sesqua Valley...

and "The Dome". by Mollie Burleson -- a very strange, almost elliptical tale which, somehow, manages to evoke a feeling of menace even through an almost painfully mundane set of circumstances... until the genuinely weird sets in. I don't think I'll ever be able to quite look at some of those flea market locales quite the same way again. My only complaint is the final image, which reminded me a shade too much of Gahan Wilson's "H.P.L.", and therefore was something of a jarring letdown.

Note for those expecting "Cthulhu Mythos" fiction -- this anthology ain't it! What these writers have done is take Lovecraftian ideas, themes, motifs, and approaches, but filtered through their own unique lenses, making for a set of original stories which nonetheless prove that, as S. T. Joshi says in the introduction, "the Lovecraftian idiom is adaptable to a variety of literary modes, as Borges's "There Are More Things"and Pynchon's Against the Day are alone sufficient to testify"....

[dask]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

At any rate, glad you liked the story. Have you read Metcalfe's tale, "The Bad Lands"? It, too, is well worth a look (as is the rest of that volume, The Smoking Leg)...

Doesn't sound familiar. Probably pretty good. Someone needs to put out an anthology based on this theme. Call it GEOSFEAR or something.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by dask

Call it GEOSFEAR or something.

OUCH!!! You need to stop listening to U.M.....

[Daisy-Boo]

I'm currently re-reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I first read it years ago and wasn't particularly impressed at the time. I found it to be sterile and plodding.

What a difference a few years' perspective makes. I'm enjoying the book now. The characters are complex and intriguing and the plot makes for engrossing reading. Ill definitely buy more of Simmons' books.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Daisy-Boo

I'm currently re-reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I first read it years ago and wasn't particularly impressed at the time. I found it to be sterile and plodding.

What a difference a few years' perspective makes. I'm enjoying the book now. The characters are complex and intriguing and the plot makes for engrossing reading. Ill definitely buy more of Simmons' books.

A sign of your maturing tastes perhaps?....

I know Hyperion is generally seen as a classic of the Genre and I have a copy myself but I'm yet to read it. Sounds like something I should be promoting in the TBR pile then.....

I also have a copy of his brick-like novel Terror, which looks intriguing but I likewise haven't read yet. His Song Of Kali, which is very good and won several awards as well as being published in the excellent Masterwork series I have read.

[Daisy-Boo]

Defintely a sign of maturing tastes Gollum. :-)

[Ursa major]

I'm still in the "I don't like Hyperion" club; I started gripping the membership card even tighter after reading the first sequel.

(Apart from overuse of the word, lapis, there are some serious problems in the author's handling of time, which is unfortunate given the subject matter.)

[Daisy-Boo]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

I'm still in the "I don't like Hyperion" club; I started gripping the membership card even tighter after reading the first sequel.

(Apart from overuse of the word, lapis, there are some serious problems in the author's handling of time, which is unfortunate given the subject matter.)

I had to smile when I read this. I'd also noted his fondness for the word lapis. What made it so amusing to me was that there is an Afrikaans word, lappies which is similarly pronounced. Lappies are rags, or scraps of material. So whenever I read lapis, I'd think of lappies and have a silent giggle. Juvenile humour, I know.

[GOLLUM]

I've started reading a novel by Jose Donoso, who is generally regarded as Chile's greatest post modern writer. This landmark Latin American novel seen as Donoso's masterpiece and one of the key novels of the magic realist boom is entitled Obscene Bird Of the Night. The Title is interestingly enough taken from a letter written to Henry James by his father and is proving to be a quite extraordinary work in the way it employs fractured literary techniques in a quite sophisticated manner and is representative of an almost schizophrenic-like mind that lives in a dream-like state adopting the guise of various and at times interchangeable characters within the storyline including a Boy born with a deformity and forced to live with other "freaks" of his kind in attempt to shield him from the knowledge that he may somehow be different. Explored are life's dualities including life and death and order and chaos with the overarching premise being that in spite of "man's" efforts to build an illusion of order that ultimately anarchy overcomes with the only possible result being a descent into further madness.

Despite the fairly heavy overtones I'm enjoying this a lot so far, albeit I'm not yet that far into the book. I had no clear idea of what I was picking up from the second hand bookshop but the cover, which I'll feature in my review, was one of the things that first caught my eye and of course the description and apparent stellar reputation this novel holds in Latin America and the wider literary community including its author who appears to be viewed quite favourably by scholars and critics alike as sitting equally besides the likes of Carpentier, Cortazar and Marquez.

[Taltos]

Read Charles Stross Saturn's Children - it took longer to finish than predicted - looses steam at some points but a nice thought exercise how robots could live after their creators have dissapeared (also I liked the "detailed" descriptions of the possibility of travel between solar system planets and times and distances involved)
Also finished Neal Asher Shadow of the Scorpion - a nice and fast paced story how Cormac became ECS agent
Now back to Alistair Reynolds Pushing Ice - was about 1/2 through, when more interesting things "came up", I want to finish ASAP as I'm getting Turn Coat at the and of this week.

[Talysia]

I'm now moving on to Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Guild.

[pyan]

Just finished Changes, the new Dresden Files episode from Jim Butcher - and if I ever meet the man, I'm going to rip his arm off and beat him to death with the stump...


Argghh!

It's going to be at least a year until the next one...

[Mouse]

Currently reading Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, which is a horror book for teens. It's a story containing short stories, if that make sense? So there's one story, but within that there's short stories too.

Anyway, so far they've all been quite predicatable. Interesting, because they're all about sailors, but predicatable. But I've just read one called "Nature," which is a horror story about snails! Really good, the best one in there so far.

[Ursa major]

Originally Posted by pyan

Just finished Changes, the new Dresden Files episode from Jim Butcher - and if I ever meet the man, I'm going to rip his arm off and beat him to death with the stump...


Argghh!

It's going to be at least a year until the next one...

You could always rip off a leg, you know.