2024 read #129: Timeline by Michael Crichton.*

Timeline by Michael Crichton*

496 pages

Published 1999

Read from October 30 to October 31

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

This feels like the end of an era. If Kamala Harris wins, she's positioned herself too far to the right to inspire confidence in any lasting progressive change, but at least the MAGA parasite throttling American politics could be finished (barring some episodic violence here and there). If Trump wins — or, more likely, gets appointed against the will of the electorate by a corrupt Supreme Court and Speaker of the House — America as an idea is over.

Though I didn't know it at the time, Michael Crichton's Timeline also marked the end of an era. It was the last present my grandmother bought me before she died. Less poignantly, it also represents a strain of technological optimism that withered away sometime after the turn of the Millennium, its death hastened by conservative politics and 9/11 and Forever War.

Crichton, in his own small way, helped kill the optimistic future: He would soon abandon his career-long shtick of “thrillers that make normies think they learned something” in favor of conspiracy pap and brainrot. State of Fear, one of the origins of the “Humans can't alter the climate, so evil scientists built a weather machine!” bullshit that reached mainstream audiences after Hurricane Heléne, was published just five years after Timeline. So this book was the end of an era for him, as well.

I remember reading Crichton’s introduction here, which in characteristic fashion spoke of the promise, and the dangers, of the coming quantum technology. A teenager at the time, I imagined a future of quantum miracles: teleportation, multiverses, space exploration, potentially even my personal holy grail, travel into Deep Time. Instead, the last twenty-five years have erected a second Gilded Age, with corporations and Big Tech racing to deregulate, stagnate, profit off consumers, and siphon free money from the government. Instead of anything useful or groundbreaking, they've given us drone strikes, social media, private equity, and rockets that blow up. Perhaps the extremely wealthy might know a future of quantum promise, but we peons certainly won't.

I've avoided rereading Timeline as an adult, in large part because it’s not that good. Crichton wrote exactly one and a half okay books in his long career, and this isn't one of them. Perhaps recognizing this, Crichton conspicuously emulates the plot beats of Jurassic Park, even opening with a middle aged man worried about getting lost on vacation as his wife gives insufficient directions. Crichton then follows the JP blueprint through some medical procedural chapters and some boardroom scenes, and brings us to a dig site funded by the nefarious corporation. Knights perform the role of Velociraptors. Even the end goal is the same: a theme park. It’s basically Jurassic Park from Temu.

Those early portions, spackled over the old Jurassic Park framework, are almost okay, at least by technothriller standards. Once the crack team of grad students is inserted into the multiversal Middle Ages, Crichton’s thriller instincts flail about in self-parody. The medieval times ultraviolence overshoots “thriller” and lands in inadvertent slapstick. There’s a sequence with a pine tree and a cliff face straight out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. The action is soundless, weightless, going through the motions. The plot contrivance that inevitably strands the students in 1357 is particularly silly, as well.

Overall, Timeline is somewhat better than I remembered — and inspired way more of my own fictional time travel mechanics than I realized. It’s still a late period Crichton, though, and about a hundred pages too long, at that.

2024 read #128: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 2024 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 2024 issue (146:3-4)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2024

Read from October 25 to October 29

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Here we are, practically in November, but only now do I have my hands on a copy of the Summer 2024 issue of F&SF. I could’ve read it a couple months ago, but I like to collect the physical copies, and didn’t want to spend extra to read the digital version. No new issues have come out since then, though, so my streak of reading the current issue (begun March/April 2023) continues.

—

“What It Means to Drift” by Rajeev Prasad. Saraswathi volunteered to be a “merchant”: a human implanted with artificial remote organs to assist a Titan, a cyborg civil servant grafted around a human consciousness. Saraswathi’s job is to feel emotions, to sustain love and heartbreak for her Titan, Avni. But both Saraswathi and Avni are becoming unmoored, adrift in their respective roles. A solid sci-fi story.

“On My Way to Heaven” by Alberto Chimal (translated by Patrick Weill). This is a long novelette, one built around a topic (alien abduction) that has been considered passé in sci-fi publishing for decades. It also centers a trope that I generaly disdain: Did the speculative element “really” happen, or was it all in the mind of the character? Yet “Heaven” absorbed my attention from the first page, and kept it to the end. It’s written with assurance, pulling you into the complications of family, politics, protest, marginalization, mental illness, music, and UFOs with deceptive ease. Another all-time classic from this era of F&SF.

“Mister Yellow” by Christina Bauer.  Dr. Jordan invents a headset that permits her to interact with other dimensions overlaying her own. Mister Yellow is her contact in the sixth dimension. The government confines Dr. Jordan to maintain control over her invention, but various dimensions affect each other in ways she doesn’t expect.

“Water Baby” by Tonya R. Moore. A vivid and compelling story of rising waters, a disintegrating community, and a mystery from the sea.

“Metis in the Belly of the God” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Brief retelling from Greek mythology, as strange and excellent as you'd expect from Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

Next, a poem: “In Her Footsteps” by Suzanne J. Willis. It's all right, though its stated origin as background for a novel feels obvious; it doesn't feel complete in itself.

“She's a Rescue” by Marie Vibbert. The literature of kids/teens coming of age in single-family space freighters is small, but I’m always happy to see it grow. This one is a solid entry, expertly balancing its family drama with its blue collar spacer vibes.

“Snowdrop” by Raul Caner Cruz. A sweetly domestic retelling of “The Snow Child,” rich with a sense of place.

“Dog People” by Esther Friesner. Humorous contemporary fantasy mixing the undead with classical goddesses in upscale Manhattan. It felt like a throwback to the consciously cheesy humorous fantasy of the 20th century. Not really my kind of thing. 

“What You Leave Behind" by Ken Altabef. A magical realism-esque piece literalizing the grief and trauma of terrorism. Also not my kind of thing.

“Another Such Victory” by Albert Chu. Quite simply the best mecha pilot story I have ever read. It’s never been a subgenre that interested me, but this long novelette is stunning, immersive, vital, unremitting in its allegory against imperialism and systems of oppression. Another instant classic. I don’t subject contemporary short fiction to my arbitrary letter grades, but if I did, this one would be an A.

“Growth Rings of the Earth” by Xinwei Kong (originally published 2018). This almost-novella feels like the kind of grand, sprawling, consciously philosophical sci-fi you’d find in Asimov’s in the late 1990s, the kind of sci-fi that first fired my ambitions to become a literary SFF author instead of a mere pulp writer. In the moderately near future, most humans have abandoned their bodies to upload their consciousness to a digital “heaven.” Our narrator is the last human on Earth, raised by physical book enthusiasts who lived out their days in the Library of Congress. There’s a plot strand about the kind of artificial intelligence you used to find in a lot of sci-fi before, say, 2022, when planet-killing spellcheck software peddled by billionaires co-opted the term “AI.” True to the 1990s Asimov’s comparison, there’s also some iffy age-gap sex, which was unfortunate. I wish we could bring back the sprawling Big Idea sci-fi vibe of that era without its more questionable trappings. Still, aside from that, this is a worthwhile read.

After two longer stories, we’re treated to a couple poems. First: “I, Magician” by Julie Eliopoulos. I liked it.

Next: “City as Fairy Tale” by Richard Leis. Also solid.

“Jacob Street” by L. Marie Wood. GPS horror that saves itself from comparisons to a certain episode of The Office by unraveling into a delightfully feverish spiral. Pretty good.

“Red Ochre, Ivory Bone” by Deborah L. Davitt. Seeing that title on the table of contents, I didn’t expect a multi-species space opera piece. I think it’s a difficult vibe to capture in short form; at times, the story derailed to offer descriptions of the many species present at the station, which is a lot of information to throw at the reader. The plot itself draws from medical examiner procedural tropes. Yet Davitt pulls it all together into a satisfying story.

One last poem, one I’ve been looking forward to: “In a castle far from every prince” by Marisca Pichette. It is excellent, as always.

“The Glass Apple” by Ivy Grimes. A strange and beguiling original fairy tale. Quite good.

“Slickerthin” by Phoenix Alexander. An amazing endcap to this issue, delightfully visceral and goopy and queer, a take on Greek folklore like nothing else I’ve read. Excellent.

—

And that’s it for this issue! Definitely not my favorite of the Thomas era, but still solid.

F&SF has been criticized for sitting on stories for unprofessional lengths of time; they’ve been closed to submissions for well over a year now, as Thomas works through the stockpile of material the magazine had already accepted. Perhaps I’m reading into things, but at times, this issue felt a little bit like the result of that process. Not the dregs, per se. Many stories were good, some even exceptional. But overall, this didn’t rank up there with what Thomas has been releasing during her tenure. (Or maybe I’m just too depressed to appreciate anything, with the election looming so near.)

2024 read #127: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 4 by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 4, story by Kanehito Yamada and art by Tsukasa Abe

Translated by Misa ‘Japanese Ammo’

188 pages

Published 2021 (English translation published 2022)

Read October 28

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (maybe 3, if I’m generous)

I’m struggling with my attention span lately. The election (and its inevitable fascist violence, no matter the outcome) is a week away. Even short stories are too much for me right now. So back into the Frieren well I go.

This tankōbon begins unpromisingly, with a humorous interlude of Frieren, having learned that skilled cleric Sein likes older women, awkwardly trying to flirt to with him to get him into the party. Maybe humor is harder to translate than other things. It gets worse in the next chapter, which is some cringey heteronormative “boys and girls are so different!” stuff, extremely entry-level romantic manga material.

This volume eventually settles into a more typical groove, with self-contained episodes of adventure and character development, with villagers giving side quests, but even there, I’m beginning to lose some of my patience for this series. Yamada and Abe have a tendency to speed through big chunks of time in montages, and in many cases, those single-panel moments of adventure are more interesting than the rather banal focus of that chapter.

Sometimes a tinge of melancholy will pass through the story, the inescapable drift of time and memory, and I’m reminded of why I’m interested in Frieren the character and her journey in the first place. But I’m losing any hope that Frieren the manga will ever become as good as Delicious in Dungeon or Witch Hat Atelier.

Still, the final chapter of this volume introduced the human mage Übel, who looks like if Little My from Moominvalley grew up to become a leather-clad assassin, so once again I’m intrigued enough to continue.

2024 read #126: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 3 by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 3, story by Kanehito Yamada and art by Tsukasa Abe

Translated by Misa ‘Japanese Ammo’

196 pages

Published 2020 (English translation published 2022)

Read October 26

Rating: 3 out of 5

The best thing about library books — aside from the fact that they’re free — is that I don’t have to pace myself reading through series. I checked out volumes two through seven of Freiren, and I fully intend to keep speeding through them as my interest allows.

This volume concludes Frieren’s confrontation with the demon Aura the Guillotine, which starts out interesting but wraps up with a power-level cliché straight out of Dragon Ball. The rest of the book is a scattershot series of vignettes and side quests that don’t even try to live up to the stylish menace of the demons. Some backstory and character moments are sprinkled in, and we get a new addition to the party in Sein the priest, but overall I felt it was an unremarkable outing.

2024 read #125: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 2 by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Volume 2, story by Kanehito Yamada and art by Tsukasa Abe

Translated by Misa ‘Japanese Ammo’

196 pages

Published 2020 (English translation published 2022)

Read October 26

Rating: 3 out of 5

When I read Frieren’s first volume, I wasn't sold on it. It was fine, perfectly adequate, but it didn't grab me the way the first installments of Delicious in Dungeon or Witch Hat Atelier did. It intrigued me enough to keep going and see if I would get hooked, but not enough to want to spend actual money on it.

Enter the arcane magic known as library cards.

This second volume continues along in a similar meter. I like Frieren as a character. I think a near-immortal elf confronting the mortality and loss of her old companions is a neat twist on the standard Tolkien / D&D legendarium. But the very nature of her characterization makes Frieren seem flat on the page, distant and unresponsive. Her apprentice Fern, despite being human, is similarly stoic, rarely reacting with more than half a smile. This book adds apprentice warrior Stark, who at least has some pep in his personality, but compared to Delicious or Atelier, both of which had vivid and memorable characters and creative elaborations on their respective tropes, Frieren continues to be just… fine.

There’s nothing wrong with a good old fashioned fantasy adventure. Chapter 14 even introduces some stylish antagonists: demons, who look more or less like tieflings in ruffled dresses and shirts. The demons have no nuance to them, just pure eeeeeevil, but they’re fun.

2024 read #124: Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Fall 2024 issue.

Hexagon Speculative Fiction Magazine, Fall 2024 issue (18)

Edited by JW Stebner

47 pages

Published 2024

Read October 25

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

We live in a golden age of speculative short fiction. Short form sci-fi and fantasy are the best they’ve ever been, full stop. Diversity, depth of character, quality prose, an unparalleled range of styles and subgenres—SFF is unmatched right now. Random token-pay webzines will consistently publish better stories than The Big 3 did forty years ago; the occasional story will surpass most things The Big 3 published twenty years ago. Yet there’s less monetary support than ever, at all levels of the field.

I’m trying to do a better job at keeping up with the market, including spending more time with those amazing indie magazines. Today, I’m returning to Hexagon to read the current issue, my second in a row from them.

—

“A Death Rattle’s Chime” by Adialyz Del Valle Berríos. When I say that fiction in token-pay markets today is superior to mainstream newsstand fiction from forty (or even twenty) years ago, I have stories like this in mind. It’s a bleakly atmospheric eco-fantasy set on an island that disappears a little bit more each full moon, where our narrator processes fish from a decaying sea. A haunting, exquisite story. Somehow this is the author’s first published story. An amazing start!

“A Thousand Steps Up Godwich Road” by Michael M. Jones. Urban legend piece with a twist ending. Nothing remarkable, but nothing to complain about.

“Gusher” by EC Dorgan. A pleasing petroleumpunk tale that could have come straight out of the 1990s, all about mall rats and “oil vamps” in a Saskatchewan boomtown, with the unexpected bonus of dinosaurs. One of the most creative takes on vampire lore I’ve ever read. Excellent (and I’m only slightly biased here because of the momentary dinosaurs).

Next comes a one-page comic: “Craftsman No. 1: ‘Already Cut and Fitted’” written by Jimmy Stamp, illustrated by Xavier Saxon. I felt indifferent about its reheated cosmic horror, aside from the role of the craftsman kit home, which I appreciated.

“The Gold Coast: At One with the Fun!” by Aggie Novak. A mutated amusement park needs to be fed, and Soph has the ill luck of shuttling an Aquaduck full of tourists to their imminent doom. Fascinating and enjoyable blur of genres. Quite good.

—

And that’s it for this issue! A solid read, well worth your time, especially “Chime,” “Gusher,” and “Gold Coast.”

2024 read #123: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith.

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

76 pages

Published 2011

Read October 24

Rating: 4 out of 5

A meditation on loss, grief, and survivorship, spanning from the cosmic to the intimate. Grand science fiction promises of tomorrow unravel and lose their meaning in the violence of today. But life continues, in some fashion, through laundry and early mornings, through poverty meals and the memory of those gone. Smith's words are disarmingly direct, crisp and clean and quietly vital: "The grass bends / then learns again to stand."

2024 read #122: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.*

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury*

294 pages

Published 1962

Read from October 21 to October 24

Rating: 4 out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

I first read this book about twenty years ago, freshly stamped into adulthood, wearied with the anchors of childhood trauma. Even in my premature old age, I don’t think I caught the fact that this book is about getting older, not then. That it’s about the end of childhood, the tangible bruises of maturity, the price so many would pay to go back. Rereading it here in 2024, a long track indeed into the wrong future, when my knees and ankles ache and fascism once more slithers openly in the halls of power, it hits particularly hard.

Bradbury’s greatest strength as a writer is his earnestness, the breathlessness with which his words tumble over themselves to press hot poker emblems of sensation and longing into your skin. No adjectives, no arabesques, no multi-jointed similes are enough for Bradbury’s sentences. His words carry this book, jabbing elbows and uppercuts until you get out of its way, a clattertrap locomotive shedding sparks and trailing fume. The more mixed the metaphor, the better.

Beneath all that, Something Wicked is very much a novel of its time, a nocturnal book of fathers and sons, where mothers sleep serene in their own lack of interiority. Bradbury reserves his vision for white men and boys who have no need to consult elsewhere, because the answers are theirs and theirs alone. It’s a stifling perspective, a claustrophobic mirror maze that reflects its own concerns back to it. A worthy classic, yes, but riven with the rust of its age.

2024 read #121: Jesus Loves You God Hasn’t Decided Yet by K. Blair.

Jesus Loves You God Hasn’t Decided Yet by K. Blair

13 pages

Published 2024

Read October 21

Rating: 4 out of 5

A micro chapbook: nine poems about religious trauma, slow apocalypses, wax play, and standing up despite the patriarchy. Blair excels at parallels, shocks of connecting synapses that throw sexual and religious motifs into chiaroscuro relief. Birds deliver prophecies, and kings turn women into birds; women and birds alike wind up in cages. Christ’s stigmata might give him a shiver of arousal, like pressing upon a bruise. Proverbial father figures and daddy issues loom in the heavens: “As long as you realize that / Father is always right.”

A breathtaking and brilliant little collection.

2024 read #120: Polar Horrors: Strange Tales from the World's Ends, edited by John Miller.

Polar Horrors: Strange Tales from the World's Ends, edited by John Miller

350 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 8 to October 21

Rating: 2 out of 5

As autumn cools (however reluctantly, in our age of global climate change), it seems fitting that my next British Library collection should be a chilly one. (It’s also the last one I own that I haven’t read. Technicalities.)

—

“The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon” by James Hogg (1837). A novella of some 80 pages, yet in spite of its early date, I found it engagingly readable. (There is excellent English prose dating much further back, of course, but when writing from this era is bad, it’s bad.) Hogg’s narrative voice has a cheeky thread of satire woven through it. His rustic sailor recounts the scientific bent of his captain with irony and indifference, and the story generally spoofs the tropes of the shipwrecked survivor genre, particularly the castaway’s newfound piety and trust in Providence. Allan praises his God and the Bible, yet remains an awful and unrepentant cad. His first impulse after the shipwreck is cannibalism; only his inability to access his late crewmates redirects his focus to the ship’s supplies instead. Once he gets into the wreck, he drinks a hogshead of brandy in a closet for a whole month, waking with a beard. Allan proceeds to orphan, then tame, a polar bear cub he dubs Nancy. The two of them go on a whirlwind tour of the Arctic, riding in comfort on a mountainous iceberg. When they find a lost settlement of Norwegians, Allan earnestly tries to become a bigamist, then abandons his children to polar bears when he gets a chance to escape, all while praising his Lord. They story would have been a classic at a quarter of the length, but even as it is, I’d give it a solid C+

“The Moonstone Mass” by Harriet Prescott Spofford (1868). There isn’t much substance to this tale about a man who, desirous of fortune, heads out in search of the Northwest Passage, gets stranded on a block of ice, and is tantalized by an unobtainable lump of moonstone. Spofford tries to turn it into a prose poem of the far north, but the tastes of the era make it seem stuffy rather than evocative to modern eyes (or to my eyes, at any rate). D+?

“The Captain of the ‘Polestar’” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1883). The least offensive Doyle story I’ve read as an adult, though he still pulls his characters from his catalogue of racial stereotypes and physiognomic bullshit. At its heart this is a ghost story, though one that doesn’t make a lick of sense if you think about it for a minute (why would a young woman murdered in Devonshire lure her sweetheart to his death in the Arctic?). Unsurprising coming from the pen of the Spiritualist evangelist who would later inflict The Land of Mist upon the living. Overlong, but it could have been worse? D+

“Skule Skerry” by John Buchan (1928). It's a stretch to include this tale of a liminal isle in the Orkneys in a collection of Arctic fiction, but I'm glad to have the chance to read it. This feels like the sort of story Robert Macfarlane would weave an essay around, linking it to, say, the work of some 1980s woodcarver, the back to the land movement, and the impact of overfishing and plastic pollution on shorebirds. But that's enough Robert Macfarlane fanfic for this review. “Skule Skerry” is, when you boil it down, the story of a comfortably well-off man who gets nervous on an island, yet it's so beguilingly described that I can't complain about it. C+?

“The Third Interne” by Idwal Jones (1938). Of all the stories of the Far North that found their way into Weird Tales, surely some of them would have been more apt for this anthology than this “mad science in a Siberian prison” number. Seemingly inspired by the supposed experiments of Sergei Brukhonenko, this piece certainly fits the bill for a lurid Weird Tales page-filler, but wasn’t what I wanted here. At least it was written serviceably well. C-

“Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard” by Aviaq Johnston (2019). Brief but good modern day yarn about a supernatural shadow lurking inside a blizzard. B

At this point, poised between the Arctic and Antarctic sections of the collection, I spent another week (hopefully the last) attending to a family crisis on Long Island. I couldn’t find the book, and assumed I left it at home. I tried to interest myself in other books, but nothing stuck. While packing for my trip home, I found I’d brought Polar Horrors after all. So I didn’t read for a week for no good reason.

Anyway. At least I’m home now.

“A Secret of the South Pole” by Hamilton Drummond (1901). I struggled to get into this one, in part because it always takes a while to get back into reading after an extended pause, in part because of the narration, which is filtered through the dialect-heavy speech of an old salt. I did enjoy it as an early precursor of weird fic. Three sailors find a drifting derelict, centuries old, with a mystery — and death — in its hold. Maybe C-

“In Amundsen’s Tent” by John Martin Leahy (1928). In the right hands, pulp can be an amazing aesthetic. But then you get stories like this one, which remind you why pulp was a term of dismissal for so long. I wanted to enjoy this early prototype of polar creature horror (published a decade before Who Goes There?), but the framing device yammers on at length, dropping character names like Bond McQuestion and Captain Stanley Livingstone. The meat of the story was equally amateurish, with awkward dialogue and repetitive, antiquated rhetoric. Leahy strains toward cosmic melodrama, but lands in the vicinity of silly: “It would mean horror and perhaps madness!” Still, there’s a kernel of a cool idea in here, buried under Leahy’s unpracticed efforts. Maybe D

“Creatures of the Light” by Sophie Wenzel Ellis (1930). Tediously overlong novella that reads like a paint-by-numbers of 1930s sci-fi: Life Rays! Eugenics! Psychic powers! An electric super-plane! A secret facility in a verdant Antarctic valley! A hunchbacked super-scientist breeding the Adam of a new age! Replacing placental gestation with Leyden jar mothers! At least, I’m pretty sure it was all meant as a broad criticism of the contemporary scientific eugenics movement, though Ellis never extricates herself from the more casual layman’s eugenics of her time, with physically perfect modern man Northwood growing disillusioned and disgusted with the methods (though not the ideals) of the disfigured Dr. Mundson. There's some faint entertainment value in how ludicrously au courant this story is, but it's a lot of eugenicist garbage and internalized misogyny to slog through. D

“Bride of the Antarctic” by Mordred Weir (1939). Refreshingly competent prose and storytelling elevate this Antarctic ghost story. Predictable but enjoyable. C+

“Ghost” by Henry Kuttner (1943). Charming techno-ghost story set in an Antarctic supercomputer complex (though Kuttner employs the delightful term “radioatom brains”). The story’s reliance on outmoded psychology theory dampens my enthusiasm a bit, but I’ll still give it a respectable C

“The Polar Vortex” by Malcolm M. Ferguson (1946). After his death, Lemming, a multimillionaire who dabbled in science, is revealed to have orchestrated a sadistic “experiment” at the bottom of the world, exposing an unsuspecting layman to the immensity of the night sky. It’s certainly a concept, I suppose, but this story left me flat. A shrug. D?

—

And that’s all for this collection! Somewhat disappointing, especially considering how many stories could have fit the bill for this anthology. But there were several okay stories, and I’m not sorry I read it.

2024 read #119: From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea, edited by Mike Ashley.

From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea, edited by Mike Ashley

317 pages

Published 2018

Read from October 4 to October 8

Rating: 2 out of 5

Back at it again with another themed volume of public domain tales from British Library. With life stuff continuing out of my control, I want escapism, but can only manage bite-size morsels. Short stories are the obvious choice, and these collections are often more fun than strict reference to quality would suggest.

This volume differs from the other BL books I’ve read by presenting its stories out of chronological order. I suppose some thematic structure might emerge as I read.

Into the briny deeps!

—

“The Ship of Silence” by Albert R. Wetjen (1932). This is an ably-written and winningly atmospheric tale of a derelict ship found adrift, Mary Celeste-style, the sole clue to the crew’s fate found in the screams mimicked by a parrot. Gets surprisingly good mileage out of never actually solving the mystery of the disappearance, and never showing us the monster (which is heavily implied to be prehistoric). A respectable B-

“From the Darkness and the Depths” by Morgan Robertson (1913). Another solid entry, hailing from that early period of modern physics when “Röntgen rays” were cutting edge, and the possibilities of other rays seemed endless. Talk of rays (and the applications of ultraviolet photography) is only a prologue to a yarn about an invisible creature shaken loose from the seabed by the eruption of Krakatoa, and the capsized mariners who must contend with it. “Darkness” isn't at the same level of pulp storytelling as “Ship of Silence,” but for what amounts to a man's-life adventure with a high body count, it's creative and atmospheric. C+

“Sargasso” by Ward Muir (1908). Ah, the peril of the Sargasso! It’s right up there with quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle on the list of childhood anxieties. This story’s diary format puts us at some remove from the action, but otherwise it’s a deliciously pulpy tale of seaweed that seems to have a mind of its own, and the creatures that prowl its surface. Could easily be a seafaring D&D encounter, which I count as a recommendation. C

“Held by the Sargasso Sea” by Frank H. Shaw (1908). Published the very same month as Muir’s story above. Clearly, the Sargasso was a pressing concern in 1908. A persistent anti-union, anti-working class vibe clouds this piece, which is about the bond between a ship and her captain, and what the ship does after its worthless layabout crew mutinies. The narrative mocks the mutineers for wanting to get rich without labor, as if the capitalist class didn’t have a monopoly on that endeavor. Even aside from its distasteful classism, this just isn’t an interesting story. D-

“The Floating Forest” by Herman Scheffauer (1909). Mediocre old melodrama about insurance fraud (and its comeuppance) on the high seas. Overwrought, disjointed, and not especially interesting, although I did enjoy the concept of a floating wreck accumulating vegetation before drifting into the open ocean. D?

“Tracked: A Mystery of the Sea” by C. N. Barham (1891). The turn of the century fad for the occult manifests in this soggy story of a "clairvoyante" locating a lost ship. Barham's phraseology reads like an early 2000s forums dork straining to emulate Victorian diction: "The narrative will be unquestionably denounced as an utterly unreliable romance. It will be accepted as a positive proof that the writer is wholly destitute of the critical faculty. Nay, more: not a few will from henceforth conclude that I am facile princeps in the reprehensible art of lying." This, mind you, arrives four pages into a preamble on clairvoyance and somnabulism. Just a bad time all around. Maybe F+

“The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship” by William Hope Hodgson (1911). Not as engagingly weird as the other Hodgson pieces I've read; in fact, it gets a trifle repetitive. Nonetheless, this tale of a drifting derelict, and the surprisingly populous yacht that tries to salvage her, is welcome after the last few stories. Vague spoilers: the mystery’s denouement is in the idiom of Jules Verne. C-

“From the Depths” F. Britten Austin (1920). A German officer, formerly a submarine commander during the Great War, passes himself off as a Swedish captain, commissioned for an operation to salvage ships sunk by U-Boats in the war. Inevitably, we get vengeful ghosts communicating in Morse code. The melodrama of it all almost works. Characterization is next to nonexistent, but I’ll be generous and say C-

“The Murdered Ships” by James Francis Dwyer (1918). A scuttled ship seeks vengeance on the crew that did her in. Nothing especially interesting to me. D

“The Ship That Died” by John Gilbert (1917). Continuing the Great War preoccupation with “dying ships,” this one is kind of a pointless yarn, enlivened only by the imagery of a ship rotting and sloughing away (which is, inevitably, explained by a throwaway reference to an unknown ray). Not much else here. D?

“Devereux’s Last Smoke” by Izola Forrester (1907). The ghost of a Broadway man haunts his young widow when, on her way to remarry, she takes the selfsame steamer he died on. A strain of internalized misogyny sours this one, which felt rote even without it. D

“The Black Bell Buoy” by Rupert Chesterton (1907). A tedious affair about a haunted buoy that, once again, becomes an instrument of vengeance. D

“The High Seas” by Elinor Mordaunt (1918). One brother bullies the other from childhood into long-standing murderous rage, then they happen to ship together on the same crew. Incredibly tedious and unnecessary retelling of Cain and Abel. Nothing of interest to it whatsoever. Maybe F+

“The Soul-Saver” by Morgan Burke (1926). Finally, a touch of strangeness that isn’t just a vengeful spirit or some such. Captain Morbond is a violent bully of a man who, over the course of his career, beat two people to death, and he insists that their souls came into his keeping as little white mice. Well, I guess the souls do get a taste of vengeance in the end. Maybe C-

“No Ships Pass” by Lady Eleanor Smith (1932). An astonishingly modern story that, as editor Ashley notes, could have served as the inspiration for Lost. Shipwrecked mariners over the centuries have found themselves within swimming distance of a magical island. Saved, they soon discover it to be inescapable, a limbo where they can never leave, never age, and never die. I could easily see this getting published sometime in the 1990s, antique gender norms and all. Not perfect, but a solid enough B-

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And that’s it for this collection! It began so strongly, yet Ashley’s selections quickly veered out of my own personal sweet spot for old pulp. Ah well. 

2024 read #118: Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 8 by Ryoko Kui.

Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 8 by Ryoko Kui

Translated by Taylor Engel

200 pages

Published 2019 (English translation published 2020)

Read October 3

Rating: 4 out of 5

Spoiler warning if you've never seen the anime.

This volume begins with the fan-favorite changeling arc, a charming and adorable switcheroo that has led to countless cosplays (especially of elf!Senshi, as the old fanfic communities would have dubbed him). But then we reach the end of what’s been adapted into the anime, and we reach completely new-to-me story. A huge milestone!

Immediately, things go off the rails, storywise. I mean that in a good way: Kabru brings the elven Canaries into the dungeon, before we learn who the Canaries are and what their methods are, and chaos is the result. I’m assuming we didn’t just lose a major secondary character — in a story like this, he’s bound to turn up for the next twist in the tale — but it was a dramatic and unexpected moment all the same.

Now I have to wait until next month before I can allow myself to continue the story, for financial reasons. 

2024 read #117: Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 7 by Ryoko Kui.

Delicious in Dungeon: Volume 7 by Ryoko Kui

Translated by Taylor Engel

216 pages

Published 2019 (English translation published 2019)

Read from October 2 to October 3

Rating: 4 out of 5

When I watched the Delicious in Dungeon anime, one of the few things I disliked about it was pacing. The Red Dragon arc seems like it should be a season-ending climax, yet in the story Kui has set out to tell, it’s just a jumping-off point for a deeper, stranger, more complex narrative than a simple culinary dungeon crawl. I think that comes across better in the manga, perhaps because I have the benefit of hindsight, and have adjusted my expectations to fit the story in hand.

This volume guides us through more table-setting: giving depth to Izutsumi and Kabru, and introducing major new factions in the Western Elves and the residents of the Golden Country. Plus, we get Senshi’s tragic backstory, one of the emotional highlights of the series so far.

All in all, a solid installment.

2024 read #116: Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic, edited by Daisy Butcher.

Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic, edited by Daisy Butcher

285 pages

Published 2019

Read from September 28 to October 2

Rating: 2 out of 5

Can we take a moment to appreciate how the editor of an anthology of killer plant stories is named Daisy Butcher?

I’ve gotten hooked on these anthologies from British Library. They were behind the Weird Woods collection I read last year; it could have been weirder and woodsier, but was still an interesting read. In need of dopamine the other day, I splurged on several more volumes. My bank account is unhappy, but it would’ve been unhappy anyway, and now I have books!

Evil Roots differentiates its theme from that of Weird Woods with an emphasis on specific killer plants, often exotic (thus foreign, and threatening), rather than the familiar (though still dangerous) English woods. Butcher’s introduction proposes that Charles Darwin’s studies on carnivorous plants fed (heh) into Victorian and Edwardian fears of nature, of Man (I would specify White, English, Male, Upper Class, Imperialist Man) losing his supposed place in the great ladder of creation. My perspective? I’m just hoping for some tentacle vines and lowbrow cheesiness.

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“Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844). Long-winded and repetitive, this story takes an ungodly number of pages to spell out quite a simple idea: In early modern Padua, Doctor Rappaccini, ruthless mind of botanical science, has cultivated a poisonous daughter through vaguely defined arts of mithradatism, and a young medical student is losing his mind over her. For all its antique storytelling choices, though, I didn’t really hate it. Maybe C-?

“The American’s Tale” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1880). This tall tale of a man-eating flytrap in the Arizona wilderness is remarkable for two things: its astonishingly forced “Western” dialect, and its equally shaky grasp of North American biogeography. Predictable action, broad stereotypes instead of characters, and not much to it beyond that. As was so often the case during this time period, the climax happens “off screen.” D

“Carnivorine” by Lucy H. Hooper (1889). Late Victorian stiffness can’t fully obscure the gloriously absurd spirit of this story, which brings us to rural Campania to witness a giant, betentacled sundew, coaxed into locomotion by an obsessive young scientist. Once again, we don’t get to see the actual climax of the story, just (spoilers!) our narrator bursting in after the fact to dispatch poor Carnivorine with a single bullet, because surely that is how plants work. Still, this was exactly the sort of thing I hoped to read in this book. Maybe, by the standards of its time, I can give this a C

“The Giant Wistaria” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1891). A brief number, and basically just vibes, but I enjoyed it. It’s constructed around the delightful contrast between its New England Gothic overture, set in colonial times, and the idle young holidayers who rent the manse for a lark in the present day. C+

“The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” by H. G. Wells (1894). Another ironic narrative juxtaposition, this time between the protagonist’s dull suburban mediocrity and the febrile “romance” (in the 1890s sense) of colonialist exploration. I’m sure Wells intended social satire on both ends of the orchid collection pipeline, but after reading The Sleeper Awakes, I will never give Wells the benefit of the doubt about the racism his characters express. Maybe D+

“The Guardian of Mystery Island” by Edmond Nolcini (1896). This one feels like a hodgepodge of randomized plot elements. Annoyed by the locals’ superstitions, and intrigued by rumors of Captain Kidd’s treasure, a young man decides to venture to an isolated island off the coast of Maine. He lands in a storm, and gets led by a dog to a dilapidated mansion, where he finds an ancient woman rambling about the French Revolution. When she dies, he goes in search of treasure, and gets attacked by a plant. He goes back to get help from the locals, only to find the woman (and the dog) have disappeared. I presume it’s meant as a sort of ghost story, the woman’s death replaying whenever someone new sets foot on the island, but honestly, it’s just a mess. D

“The Ash Tree” by M. R. James (1904). An Edwardian prototype, perhaps, of the true crime narrative style. It's a rambling and uninteresting fictional history of an aristocratic family’s fortunes after their forebear testifies against a witch. The most interesting aspect is how James lampoons (or at least references) the Early Modern well-to-do's phobia of nature. “It can hardly be wholesome,” says a bishop, “to have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.” That was the only spot of enjoyment I got from this dull piece. D

“A Vine on a House” by Ambrose Bierce (1905). Another disappointment, a brief and fairly pointless anecdote. D

“Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant” by Howard R. Garis (1905). Something approximating an actual story, with the titular Professor Jonkin feeding the titular pitcher plant on beefsteaks until it towers to the peak of the greenhouse, leading to an unsurprising outcome. It isn’t a good story, but it’s a slight step forward. Still D

“The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson (1907). The story I’ve looked forward to the most, ever since I saw Hodgson’s name on the table of contents. Hodgson’s novel The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” may not have been “good” by modern standards, but it was memorable, lingering in my mind long afterward. I’ve wanted to read more by Hodgson ever since. “Voice” is a fungal tale, rather than botanical, but it’s the best story in the book so far, so I’ll forgive the editor for that. Deliciously creepy. In comparison to everything else that came before it in this collection, I’d say it earns a solid B-

“The Pavilion” by Edith Nesbit (1915). Mildly entertaining piece deconstructing gentlemanly hubris. It’s set during the 1860s but was written with full wartime irony. Two gentlemen, competing for the affections of one young lady, make a bet to spend the night in a supposedly haunted pavilion. Her plain friend Amelia, whom everyone ignores, has misgivings. This story has an awesome moment where Amelia — the real protagonist of the tale — reveals a dagger she had concealed in her muslin flounces, quite possibly the earliest example I’ve ever encountered of that particular trope. I can’t take humble Virginia creeper seriously as a bloodthirsty plant, but still, this story deserves at least C+

“The Green Death” by H. C. MacNeil (1920). Perfectly serviceable, if overlong, mystery novelette about an apparent murder at a society soirée. The story’s inclusion in this volume robs us of any suspense over the solution. Even though murder mysteries will never be my thing, I can recognize this as an ably written and effectively structured entry. C

“The Woman of the Wood” by Abraham Merritt (1926). In my limited exposure to A. Merritt, I’ve felt that his stories would have had promise, if only he had been coaxed away from his vile racism. This tale of a Great War vet, recuperating from his PTSD at a serene lake in the Vosges, who gets beckoned into a fight between the trees and some axe-happy landowners, doesn’t fix my issues with Merritt, but it demonstrates his potential. The prose is lovely without being overwrought, evocative, breathing life into the familiar yet alien personifications of the forest. With the exception of the era’s gender norms, “Wood” functions as one of the better faerie stories I’ve read in some time. A respectable B-

“The Moaning Lily” by Emma Vane (1935). It’s almost a shame this story comes at the end, because, while the plot is another spin on the same old formula — botanist collects a vampiric flower, is determined to show it off even at the cost of his life — Vane’s prose is crisp, and this is one of the better variations in the book. It’s also much creepier than many of the earlier iterations on the theme. But it’s fighting an uphill battle for my interest here at the end. I’ll give it a C

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As is often the case with these collections of older stories, I had a better time with Evil Roots than my rating would suggest. The individual stories might not be great shakes, but it’s always fun to read weird old pulp.