Last month, I stated that I would post a review of The Atrocity Archives Charles Stross, and I shall!
The Atrocity Archives, as I described in my earlier post, can be likened to a "a mash-up of Lovecraft's "mythos", Cold War espionage thrillers, and Office Space". The book's premise is that esoteric mathematical formulae may be used to punch holes in the barriers between different universes, sometimes allowing nasty entities to enter our own:
I could wibble on about Crowley and Dee and mystics down the ages but, basically, most self-styled magicians know shit. The fact of the matter is that most traditional magic doesn't work. In fact, it would all be irrelevant, were it not for the Turing theorem- named after Alan Turing, who you'll have heard of if you know anything about computers.
.................
The theorem is a hack on discrete number theory that simulatneously disproves the Church-Turing hypothesis (Wave if you understood that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted in to P-complete ones. This has several consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms - translation: all your bank account [sic] belong to us -- and ending with the ability to computationally generate a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time.
This latter item is just slightly less dangerous than allowing nerds with laptops to wave a magic wand and turn them into hydrogen bombs at will. Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct- except for the little problem that this isn't the only universe we need to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of other universes there are things that listen, and talk back...
The Laundry is the fictional (?) governmental agency of the U.K. which deals with such "reality incursions" (much like the Men in Black of UFOlogy, comics, and film). The protagonist, Robert Howard (heh), is a relatively new agent of The Laundry, being conscripted after he "worked out the geometry curve iteration method for invoking Nyarlathotep and nearly wiped out Birmingham by accident." Howard is gifted, but brash, and often insubordinate- chafing under the restrictions of agency bureaucracy, and eager to make the transition to fieldwork. The narrative begins with his initial foray into the field, and paints a distinctly unglamorous image of the work- Howard stands in the rain outside a nondescript corporate park, waiting for an opportunity to enter an office undetected to scrub some data from a desktop computer.
The narrative, after a view of Howard's unconventional home life, then delves into office politics and the minutiae of bureaucracy, as Howard navigates the Byzantine regulations of the civil service, and eventually receives training in the more esoteric aspects of fieldwork, including "certification of weaponry expertise, unconventional, level two". After these blackly humorous sequences, the espionage narrative starts.
Howard's first international assignment involves an attempt to extract a Miskatonic University educated philosophy professor from the U.S., an endeavor which rapidly degenerates ("goes pear-shaped" in Stross' lexicon), leading to a roller-coaster ride of a plot involving Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, Nazi necromancers, tentacled horrors, a visit to the museum of evil of the novel's title, and an eerie incursion through a hole punched between universes to a dying world. Stross ably builds suspense as Howard tries to piece together the reality of the situation into which he is thrown, as the circumstances in which he finds himself quickly degenerate into a nightmare. The novel is, in some sense, a bildungsroman, as the brilliant smartass Howard matures into a careful, loyal agent acting in defense of all that is human and humane.
The Atrocity Archives is chock full of Easter eggy goodness- Stross cites the espionage novels of Len Deighton and the stories of the Old Gent of Providence as influences. The villains of the novel are somewhat reminiscent of the baddies in Illuminatus!. One particular description in the book calls to mind Jack Vance's The Face. The intersection of computing and the occult reminded me of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and my favorite bit of internet "conspiracy" kookery. The overall theme of the book, supernatural espionage, is similar to that of Tim Powers' Declare (Stross mentions that a friend of his told him not to read the book, because it would have derailed his creative process).
While familiarity with these works would definitely heighten one's enjoyment of the book (the Lovecraft is probably essential groundwork, though), the book stands on its own merits. Stross shares with the late, lamented John Bellairs (one of my favorite authors) a knack for leavening his horror narratives with humor. This particular bit demonstrates Stross' irreverent wit (although the shade of the martyred Alan Turing, victim of bigotry, looms over the entire novel) and skewering of genre conventions:
“Once a year (REDACTED-SPOILER) drags (REDACTED-SPOILER) out to Pride so he can maintain his security clearance.’
‘I see.” She relaxes a little but looks puzzled. “I thought the secret services sacked you for being homosexual?”
“They used to, said it made you a security risk. Which was silly, because it was the practice of firing homosexuals that made them vulnerable to blackmail in the first place. So these days they just insist on openness- the theory is you can only be blackmailed if you’re hiding something. Which is why (REDACTED-SPOILER) gets the day off for Gay Pride to maintain his security clearance.”
The Atrocity Archives is accompanied by an additional novella, The Concrete Jungle, and (perhaps the best part of the book) an afterword, in which Mr. Stross discusses Cold War espionage tales as horror fiction, and Lovecraftian horror tales as espionage fiction (most of HPL's stories involve investigations of one sort or another).
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query stross. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query stross. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Papal Conclave Poll
Now, for a Big Bad Bald Bastard first, I am conducting a poll! Since today marks the beginning of the Conclave to elect the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, I am polling my readers about who they wish to see in the papal throne:
Now, for a quick introduction to the candidates, and a bastardly summation of the pros and/or cons to each candidacy...
First up, we have Shane MacGowan, the monsignor of The Church of the Holy Spook. Shane would be the first Irish pope, which would be a fitting, if belated, display of gratitude for that whole preservation of scholarship through the Dark Ages thing. The one possible wrinkle with Pope Shane I is that he might distribute amphetamines in lieu of communion wafers.
Next up, we have M. Bouffant, who also has had a career doing pastoral work. While most popes have tried to concentrate on esoteric affairs rather than worldly ones, I can't think of anyone whose comtempt for worldly matters exceeds that of Monsieur Bouffant. Also, moving the papal residence to L.A. would make pilgrimages easier for working class residents of Latin America.
Next up, we have Massimo. Do I even need to spell out how awesome a pope in a luchador mask would be? Plus, daily Mass would be a lot more hilarious than it currently is.
Now, we're coming up to Pupienus Maximus, who should be Popeienus. Perhaps what the Church needs now is a motorcycle-riding, man-Ho loving Portland cooking machine. Plus, Portland is supposed to have the most strip clubs per capita in the U.S. while the Vatican has none that I know of. Bringing a Portland vibe to the Vatican would address this glaring lack of nudie bars.
Charles Stross, being the antipope, would, if elected pope, create a pope/antipope reaction which would further the field of particle physics in a way which the LHC could never accomplish.
Paul Ryan would take the name Pope John Galt I and attempt to interject an Ayn Randian worldview into the doctrine of the church. The benefit of a Ryan papacy would be that the U.S. would finally be rid of the sociopathic schmuck, and having a Randian disciple pope would cause Ayn to turn over in her grave to such an extent that we could attach magnets to withered remains and generate enough power to address all of the nation's energy needs.
Now, Fidel Castro... Fidel means "faithful", and faith is a necessary characteristic of a pope.
Kathryn-Jean Lopez, while not a male (unless you count the mirror universe K-Lo with a beard, who is a lefty, atheist writer for the world's best website), is holier-than-the-pope, so she would make an excellent candidate for someone whose honorific is "Your Holiness".
Finally, we have Morrissey, whose candidacy I've touched on before. If elected pope, the "Pope of Mope" will make an ex cathedra pronouncement that transubstantiation no longer transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, thus allowing vegans to partake of communion. While this would initially create some doctrinal problems, I think a solution inspired by a really terrible movie would be possible. One possible complication of a Morrissey papacy is that it would make Mojo Nixon an anti-pope, and a protracted Charles Stross/Mojo Nixon flamewar of epic proportions could possibly rend the internet asunder. Of course, there is a slight chance that Mojo Nixon and Charles Stross could merge to form a superantipope... such a collaboration could be very fruitful, as both Stross and Nixon have written about horrors that humanity was never meant to behold.
Alright, that's our Papal Conclave poll, my first poll ever. Don't forget to vote! Forgetting to vote causes people to worry about your whereabouts. If you have any write-in candidates, please post them in the comments. Off the top of my head, I can think of two splendid alternate candidates. Pope Thunder I would be sure to canonize both Joseph of Strummermathea and Jerry of the Jam. The second great alternate candidate is Italian Spiderman, who would usher in a "puncho puncho" papacy.
Now, for a quick introduction to the candidates, and a bastardly summation of the pros and/or cons to each candidacy...
First up, we have Shane MacGowan, the monsignor of The Church of the Holy Spook. Shane would be the first Irish pope, which would be a fitting, if belated, display of gratitude for that whole preservation of scholarship through the Dark Ages thing. The one possible wrinkle with Pope Shane I is that he might distribute amphetamines in lieu of communion wafers.
Next up, we have M. Bouffant, who also has had a career doing pastoral work. While most popes have tried to concentrate on esoteric affairs rather than worldly ones, I can't think of anyone whose comtempt for worldly matters exceeds that of Monsieur Bouffant. Also, moving the papal residence to L.A. would make pilgrimages easier for working class residents of Latin America.
Next up, we have Massimo. Do I even need to spell out how awesome a pope in a luchador mask would be? Plus, daily Mass would be a lot more hilarious than it currently is.
Now, we're coming up to Pupienus Maximus, who should be Popeienus. Perhaps what the Church needs now is a motorcycle-riding, man-Ho loving Portland cooking machine. Plus, Portland is supposed to have the most strip clubs per capita in the U.S. while the Vatican has none that I know of. Bringing a Portland vibe to the Vatican would address this glaring lack of nudie bars.
Charles Stross, being the antipope, would, if elected pope, create a pope/antipope reaction which would further the field of particle physics in a way which the LHC could never accomplish.
Paul Ryan would take the name Pope John Galt I and attempt to interject an Ayn Randian worldview into the doctrine of the church. The benefit of a Ryan papacy would be that the U.S. would finally be rid of the sociopathic schmuck, and having a Randian disciple pope would cause Ayn to turn over in her grave to such an extent that we could attach magnets to withered remains and generate enough power to address all of the nation's energy needs.
Now, Fidel Castro... Fidel means "faithful", and faith is a necessary characteristic of a pope.
Kathryn-Jean Lopez, while not a male (unless you count the mirror universe K-Lo with a beard, who is a lefty, atheist writer for the world's best website), is holier-than-the-pope, so she would make an excellent candidate for someone whose honorific is "Your Holiness".
Finally, we have Morrissey, whose candidacy I've touched on before. If elected pope, the "Pope of Mope" will make an ex cathedra pronouncement that transubstantiation no longer transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, thus allowing vegans to partake of communion. While this would initially create some doctrinal problems, I think a solution inspired by a really terrible movie would be possible. One possible complication of a Morrissey papacy is that it would make Mojo Nixon an anti-pope, and a protracted Charles Stross/Mojo Nixon flamewar of epic proportions could possibly rend the internet asunder. Of course, there is a slight chance that Mojo Nixon and Charles Stross could merge to form a superantipope... such a collaboration could be very fruitful, as both Stross and Nixon have written about horrors that humanity was never meant to behold.
Alright, that's our Papal Conclave poll, my first poll ever. Don't forget to vote! Forgetting to vote causes people to worry about your whereabouts. If you have any write-in candidates, please post them in the comments. Off the top of my head, I can think of two splendid alternate candidates. Pope Thunder I would be sure to canonize both Joseph of Strummermathea and Jerry of the Jam. The second great alternate candidate is Italian Spiderman, who would usher in a "puncho puncho" papacy.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Catching up with the Laundry
My landlord has disconnected the washer and drier prior to moving them to another part of the basement (pity that, my gi has been festering in my gym bag since Saturday). Even with the washer and drier being disconnected, I needed to address my Laundry quandry, so I purchased The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. Often billed as a mash-up of Lovecraft's "mythos", Cold War espionage thrillers, and Office Space (which sounds like it could have been awful in the hands of a hack), the book is a snarktastic, subversive piss-take on the thriller and horror genres. For a taste of Stross' espiohorror tales, A Colder War (which I read a few years ago) is a good (and free!) start.
I'll put up a review of The Atrocity Archives in the near future- I was so taken with the book that I purchased the the sequel soon after finishing the book. I'd write more, but I've gots a book to read!
I'll put up a review of The Atrocity Archives in the near future- I was so taken with the book that I purchased the the sequel soon after finishing the book. I'd write more, but I've gots a book to read!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Current Reading List
Besides ordering John Bellair's Magic Mirrors, I ordered Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard (how could I resist purchasing a novel which takes its title from a poem by Clark Ashton Smith?), a supernatural "historical" romance, which details the interactions between the Romantic Poets of the early 19th Century (Keats makes a cameo in the novel, and Byron and Percy Shelley are fairly major characters) with a class of ancient, predatory elemental entities. Powers bases these vampiric beings on the nephilim of the Old Testament and the lamia of Greek legend. Powers portrays his nephilim as predators, but also as sources of inspiration (I'm about halfway through the novel, and Powers so far hasn't mentioned the Leanan Sidhe, the destroying muse of Celtic legend, but his "neffies" are a very similar concept).
The subject matter is also reminiscent of Powers' supernatural espionage novel Declare, which presents the role of similar supernatural beings in the Cold War (a trope employed by Charles Stross in such works as A Colder War). Powers also makes brief mention of fictional poet William Ashbless and Kusiak's tavern, from The Anubis Gates, one of my all-time favorite novels.
The subject matter is also reminiscent of Powers' supernatural espionage novel Declare, which presents the role of similar supernatural beings in the Cold War (a trope employed by Charles Stross in such works as A Colder War). Powers also makes brief mention of fictional poet William Ashbless and Kusiak's tavern, from The Anubis Gates, one of my all-time favorite novels.
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl...
One of my weekly must reads is Tor Books' Lovecraft Reread, in which Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth conduct a study of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and authors, who like themselves, were inspired by the 'Lovecraft Mythos'. It's a fun sort of book club, and Ruthanna and Anne do a great job at exploring and deconstructing the good (an imaginative blend of science fiction and horror fiction) and bad (racism and xenophobia) of Lovecraft.
The current discussion involves “The Seal of R’lyeh” by August Derleth who is simultaneously lauded for saving the writings of Lovecraft from lapsing into obscurity and derided for imposing his own biases on Lovecraft's conceptions, namely a trite good-vs-evil narrative and a silly correspondence between Lovecraft's alien 'gods' and the classic elements. Lovecraft's eldritch elders were portrayed as being so alien that human concepts of morality were meaningless to them and human knowledge of matter was insufficient to comprehend their makeup. Derleth's fiction in effect hammered Lovecraft's creations into anthropocentric holes.
Since I'm discussing the story and its tropes, I figure that I should give any readers a huge SPOILER WARNING for a whole bunch of stories, starting with H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. For those who have no interest in reading the story, but want to continue, here's a nice minute-and-a-half summary:
Alright, with that out of the way, Derleth's story is based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a continuation of the narrative of the inhabitants of that decaying seaside town. It follows the Derlethian cliché of a young man inheriting an ancestral home and discovering the recondite, outré lore hidden within. Derleth used the same trope in such forgettable stories as "The Return of Hastur" and "Beyond the Threshold"... lot of grandfatherly and avuncular wizards in Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches. In the case of "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist inherits a home in the vicinity of Innsmouth, which instantly telegraphs the direction in which the narrative will go to the Lovecraft savvy. The story does, however, portray the Innsmouth natives in a somewhat sympathetic light, and even features an example of a 'sexy Deep One':
She was twenty-five, but there were days when she looked much younger, and other days when she looked older. I went to her home, found her, asked her to come towork for me days. She had a car of her own, even if but an old-fashioned Model T; she could drive up and back; and the prospect of working in what she called strangely,“Sylvan’s hiding,” seemed to appeal to her. Indeed, she seemed almost eager to come, and promised to come that day still, if I wished her to. She was not a good-looking girl,but, like my uncle, she was strangely attractive to me, however much she may have turned others away; there was a certain charm about her wide, flat-lipped mouth, and her eyes, which were undeniably cold, seemed often very warm to me.
Even though the initial portrayal of the Deep Ones was meant to elicit revulsion, the sexy fishwife trope actually began with Lovecraft himself:
She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval metaphysics at Miskatonic. The daughter of a friend of mine had met her before—in the Hall School at Kingsport—and had been inclined to shun her because of her odd reputation. She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people. There are tales of horrible bargains about the year 1850, and of a strange element “not quite human” in the ancient families of the run-down fishing port—tales such as only old-time Yankees can devise and repeat with proper awesomeness.
The sexy Deep Ones trope has also cropped up in stories by James Wade and Charles Stross, and movies such as Grinding Nemo and The Shadow of Innsmouth adaptation Dagon, in which Macarena Gomez manages to be both sexy as hell and super-scary:
Hey, baby why don't you smile more?
"The Seal of R’lyeh" is basically the old tale of 'boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl mutate into fishpeople and go on a quest for the home/tomb of their evil alien god'. In the usual Lovecraft tale, the protagonist goes mad when he (it's always a d00d) learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos. In "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos, is okay with that, and goes off to have adventures with his squamous squeeze. I don't know if Derleth intended his story to be a spoof of his mentor's body of work, but "The Seal of R’lyeh" is a perfect inversion of the typical Lovecraft tale.
The story suffers from Derleth's typical sins of name-dropping Lovecraftian entities to pad the word count, and of referring to events from other 'mythos tales', which the narrator shouldn't be aware of. A little bit of Derleth goes a long way, but the general consensus, shared by myself, is that his stories usually wear out their welcome after a while. In one criticism of the story under consideration, Tor reader Ophid remarked:
I agree with most point, but Ada reminded me of a RomCom cliche: the woman who’s “different” simply because she’s not blonde and fashionably dressed and also just snarks at the male protagonist. Besides her appearance, I have no idea why Marius likes her; all she does is dangle what he doesn’t know in his face and makes digs at how little his parents taught him. Then she saves him from drowning and suddenly they’re married.
To which some Bastard replied: Heh, Manic Ichthy Dream Girl!
The current discussion involves “The Seal of R’lyeh” by August Derleth who is simultaneously lauded for saving the writings of Lovecraft from lapsing into obscurity and derided for imposing his own biases on Lovecraft's conceptions, namely a trite good-vs-evil narrative and a silly correspondence between Lovecraft's alien 'gods' and the classic elements. Lovecraft's eldritch elders were portrayed as being so alien that human concepts of morality were meaningless to them and human knowledge of matter was insufficient to comprehend their makeup. Derleth's fiction in effect hammered Lovecraft's creations into anthropocentric holes.
Since I'm discussing the story and its tropes, I figure that I should give any readers a huge SPOILER WARNING for a whole bunch of stories, starting with H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. For those who have no interest in reading the story, but want to continue, here's a nice minute-and-a-half summary:
Alright, with that out of the way, Derleth's story is based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a continuation of the narrative of the inhabitants of that decaying seaside town. It follows the Derlethian cliché of a young man inheriting an ancestral home and discovering the recondite, outré lore hidden within. Derleth used the same trope in such forgettable stories as "The Return of Hastur" and "Beyond the Threshold"... lot of grandfatherly and avuncular wizards in Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches. In the case of "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist inherits a home in the vicinity of Innsmouth, which instantly telegraphs the direction in which the narrative will go to the Lovecraft savvy. The story does, however, portray the Innsmouth natives in a somewhat sympathetic light, and even features an example of a 'sexy Deep One':
She was twenty-five, but there were days when she looked much younger, and other days when she looked older. I went to her home, found her, asked her to come towork for me days. She had a car of her own, even if but an old-fashioned Model T; she could drive up and back; and the prospect of working in what she called strangely,“Sylvan’s hiding,” seemed to appeal to her. Indeed, she seemed almost eager to come, and promised to come that day still, if I wished her to. She was not a good-looking girl,but, like my uncle, she was strangely attractive to me, however much she may have turned others away; there was a certain charm about her wide, flat-lipped mouth, and her eyes, which were undeniably cold, seemed often very warm to me.
Even though the initial portrayal of the Deep Ones was meant to elicit revulsion, the sexy fishwife trope actually began with Lovecraft himself:
She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval metaphysics at Miskatonic. The daughter of a friend of mine had met her before—in the Hall School at Kingsport—and had been inclined to shun her because of her odd reputation. She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people. There are tales of horrible bargains about the year 1850, and of a strange element “not quite human” in the ancient families of the run-down fishing port—tales such as only old-time Yankees can devise and repeat with proper awesomeness.
The sexy Deep Ones trope has also cropped up in stories by James Wade and Charles Stross, and movies such as Grinding Nemo and The Shadow of Innsmouth adaptation Dagon, in which Macarena Gomez manages to be both sexy as hell and super-scary:
Hey, baby why don't you smile more?
"The Seal of R’lyeh" is basically the old tale of 'boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl mutate into fishpeople and go on a quest for the home/tomb of their evil alien god'. In the usual Lovecraft tale, the protagonist goes mad when he (it's always a d00d) learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos. In "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos, is okay with that, and goes off to have adventures with his squamous squeeze. I don't know if Derleth intended his story to be a spoof of his mentor's body of work, but "The Seal of R’lyeh" is a perfect inversion of the typical Lovecraft tale.
The story suffers from Derleth's typical sins of name-dropping Lovecraftian entities to pad the word count, and of referring to events from other 'mythos tales', which the narrator shouldn't be aware of. A little bit of Derleth goes a long way, but the general consensus, shared by myself, is that his stories usually wear out their welcome after a while. In one criticism of the story under consideration, Tor reader Ophid remarked:
I agree with most point, but Ada reminded me of a RomCom cliche: the woman who’s “different” simply because she’s not blonde and fashionably dressed and also just snarks at the male protagonist. Besides her appearance, I have no idea why Marius likes her; all she does is dangle what he doesn’t know in his face and makes digs at how little his parents taught him. Then she saves him from drowning and suddenly they’re married.
To which some Bastard replied: Heh, Manic Ichthy Dream Girl!
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Done with Living a Lie, or Eldritch L.A.
For years, I have represented myself as a huge Tim Powers fan. I will readily tell anyone who asks me about my literary tastes that one of my all-time favorite novels is The Anubis Gates, a book so tightly constructed that one could poke it in one place, and the whole thing will jiggle like a jello mold. Seriously, get your hands on a copy of this book NOW... I really should post a review of the book one of these days, I'm due to re-read it.
Other Powers books that I have enjoyed immensely are The Stress of Her Regard, a tale of destructive supernatural muses, and Declare, a supernatural thriller that reads like a "straight" take on the subject of Charles Stross' "Laundry" novels. I have also enjoyed On Stranger Tides, the mother of all supernatural pirate novels and The Drawing of the Dark, a historical fantasy romp in which **SPOILER** and **SPOILER** defend Vienna from a Turkish sorceror in order to protect a magical batch of **SPOILER**.
While portraying myself as a Powers fan, there has been one vexing lacuna in my appreciation of his oeuvre... I had never read Dinner at Deviant's Palace, his postapocalyptic take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I finally got my hands on a copy of the book, and it is classic Powers (albeit a SciFi/Fantasy, not a historical fantasy). In typical Powers fashion, the protagonist is a sympathetic character with a lost love who is put through some serious physical punishment in the course of the book... Powers loves to knock the hell out of his protagonists. The hero of Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a professional musician that undertakes harrowing liberation/deprogramming missions to rescue the abductees of a sinister cult. The milieu of the novel is an "after the bomb" Los Angeles metropolitan area, with Venice being portrayed as a particularly horrific hellhole, centered on the eponymous evil nightclub:
Though in his years in Venice Rivas had prided himself on being a particularly wild, nothing-to-lose young man, boating by moonlight down canals sane people shunned even at noon and participating in several foolish duels, he had taken care never to venture within blocks of Deviant's Palace. But the stories he'd heard about the place still colored his nightmares: stories of fantastic towers and spires that threw dark stains on the sky, so that even at noon stars could be seen twinkling around the warped rib-cage architecture of its upper levels; of nonhuman forms glimpsed weeping in its remoter windows; of what creatures were sometimes found dying in the canals that entered the place through high arches, and what things these creatures sometimes said; of wooden gargoyles writhing in splintery agony on rainy nights and crying out in voices recognized by passersby as those of departed friends... The place was supposed to be more a nightclub than anything else, and Rivas remembered one young lady who, after he'd impatiently broken off their romance even more quickly than he'd instigated it, had tearfully told him that she was going to get a waitress job at Deviant's Palace. He had never permitted himself to believe that she might really have done it, in spite of the evening when a walruslike thing that a gang of fishermen had netted and dragged to shore and were butchering by torchlight rolled its eyes at him and with its expiring breath pronounced the pet name she'd always called him ...
Powers' "Ellay" is a setting in which a flashy mode of transportation is an old Chevy body mounted on a horse-drawn wagon, antique pistols retrofitted to fire poisoned darts are fashion accessories for rich women, and money has such denominations as fifths, half-pints, and jiggers. The use of language is up to Powers' high standard, with a lot of "oh, shit!" moments as the reader has a flash of comprehension- for instance, the seemingly innocuous sentence "Why don't you go home and just deal with things you know something about, sport?" is an insult sufficient to provoke a duel. A couple of classic Powers touches pop up here and there in the narrative- the malevolent floating horrors known as hemogoblins remind this reader of a particularly memorable creepy floating horror in The Anubis Gates, and a "translation" of Ovid's Metamorphoses by William Ashbless to open up Book Two (as far as I got in the book) had me bursting out with laughter.
While I haven't finished the book, I know that I am hooked because one of my first inclinations was to grab a map of the Los Angeles metropolitan area so I could place the narrative in a better geographic context (I got your number "San Berdoo"). As far as the postapocalyptic speculative fiction genre goes, the book stakes out a mid-point between the serious-yet-with-comedic-touches A Canticle for Leibowitz and the gonzo "mutants with telepathic powers" fantasy Hiero's Journey- though it has to be said that the religion depicted in Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a far cry from the civilization-preserving churches of those novels.
Yeah, I was done with living a lie, so I finally picked up Dinner at Deviant's Palace. Finally coming clean with my appalling lapse is as sweet as Currency Brandy. I apologize to any readers (and you know who you are) who might have thought that I was conversant with the work... and I swear I didn't read this Boing Boing blurb before getting the book. If I had, I probably would have paid a lot more than I did for my copy.
Other Powers books that I have enjoyed immensely are The Stress of Her Regard, a tale of destructive supernatural muses, and Declare, a supernatural thriller that reads like a "straight" take on the subject of Charles Stross' "Laundry" novels. I have also enjoyed On Stranger Tides, the mother of all supernatural pirate novels and The Drawing of the Dark, a historical fantasy romp in which **SPOILER** and **SPOILER** defend Vienna from a Turkish sorceror in order to protect a magical batch of **SPOILER**.
While portraying myself as a Powers fan, there has been one vexing lacuna in my appreciation of his oeuvre... I had never read Dinner at Deviant's Palace, his postapocalyptic take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I finally got my hands on a copy of the book, and it is classic Powers (albeit a SciFi/Fantasy, not a historical fantasy). In typical Powers fashion, the protagonist is a sympathetic character with a lost love who is put through some serious physical punishment in the course of the book... Powers loves to knock the hell out of his protagonists. The hero of Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a professional musician that undertakes harrowing liberation/deprogramming missions to rescue the abductees of a sinister cult. The milieu of the novel is an "after the bomb" Los Angeles metropolitan area, with Venice being portrayed as a particularly horrific hellhole, centered on the eponymous evil nightclub:
Though in his years in Venice Rivas had prided himself on being a particularly wild, nothing-to-lose young man, boating by moonlight down canals sane people shunned even at noon and participating in several foolish duels, he had taken care never to venture within blocks of Deviant's Palace. But the stories he'd heard about the place still colored his nightmares: stories of fantastic towers and spires that threw dark stains on the sky, so that even at noon stars could be seen twinkling around the warped rib-cage architecture of its upper levels; of nonhuman forms glimpsed weeping in its remoter windows; of what creatures were sometimes found dying in the canals that entered the place through high arches, and what things these creatures sometimes said; of wooden gargoyles writhing in splintery agony on rainy nights and crying out in voices recognized by passersby as those of departed friends... The place was supposed to be more a nightclub than anything else, and Rivas remembered one young lady who, after he'd impatiently broken off their romance even more quickly than he'd instigated it, had tearfully told him that she was going to get a waitress job at Deviant's Palace. He had never permitted himself to believe that she might really have done it, in spite of the evening when a walruslike thing that a gang of fishermen had netted and dragged to shore and were butchering by torchlight rolled its eyes at him and with its expiring breath pronounced the pet name she'd always called him ...
Powers' "Ellay" is a setting in which a flashy mode of transportation is an old Chevy body mounted on a horse-drawn wagon, antique pistols retrofitted to fire poisoned darts are fashion accessories for rich women, and money has such denominations as fifths, half-pints, and jiggers. The use of language is up to Powers' high standard, with a lot of "oh, shit!" moments as the reader has a flash of comprehension- for instance, the seemingly innocuous sentence "Why don't you go home and just deal with things you know something about, sport?" is an insult sufficient to provoke a duel. A couple of classic Powers touches pop up here and there in the narrative- the malevolent floating horrors known as hemogoblins remind this reader of a particularly memorable creepy floating horror in The Anubis Gates, and a "translation" of Ovid's Metamorphoses by William Ashbless to open up Book Two (as far as I got in the book) had me bursting out with laughter.
While I haven't finished the book, I know that I am hooked because one of my first inclinations was to grab a map of the Los Angeles metropolitan area so I could place the narrative in a better geographic context (I got your number "San Berdoo"). As far as the postapocalyptic speculative fiction genre goes, the book stakes out a mid-point between the serious-yet-with-comedic-touches A Canticle for Leibowitz and the gonzo "mutants with telepathic powers" fantasy Hiero's Journey- though it has to be said that the religion depicted in Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a far cry from the civilization-preserving churches of those novels.
Yeah, I was done with living a lie, so I finally picked up Dinner at Deviant's Palace. Finally coming clean with my appalling lapse is as sweet as Currency Brandy. I apologize to any readers (and you know who you are) who might have thought that I was conversant with the work... and I swear I didn't read this Boing Boing blurb before getting the book. If I had, I probably would have paid a lot more than I did for my copy.
Friday, March 29, 2019
This Indecision's Bugging Me
I typically listen to my local NPR affiliate, mainly so I don't have to hear any of those accursed Kars4Kids commercials that play on the local CBS news radio station. At 3PM, the BBC Newshour is broadcast, and the main topic was the Brexit shitshow. The exit was supposed to have occurred today, but the numbnuts in Parliament haven't been able to figure out the terms of their divorce from the European Union, so there's a three week delay period until a 'hard Brexit' is bound to happen.
Americans tend to be fooled by British accents, they tend to assume that Brits are educated, sophisticated people, forgetting that the UK is home to the football hooligan and the lager lout... and these knee-biters seem to be running the country. The populace of the UK hasn't exactly covered itself in glory, but as an American, I have to note that the entire Anglophone world seems to be suffering from a malaise, rooted in bigotry and exacerbated by Russian propaganda campaigns on social media.
I'm generally in agreement with John Lydon about the English people- they tend to be a decent lot, led by some of the most horrible people around. With Brexit, though, the damage was self-inflicted by plebescite. Good guys like Charles Stross have sounded alarm about availability of medicines, and there was talk of impending food scarcity should a no-deal Brexit ensue. The government of the United Kingdom has inflicted two major famines on colonized peoples, and it looks as if it's going to inflict a third, this time on its own people.
The whole situation is beyond fucked up, and the Irish border situation is cause for alarm, so how about a musical interlude to take our minds off of this bloody mess?
Weird, when that song was released, it was considered one of the Clash's few non-political songs.
Americans tend to be fooled by British accents, they tend to assume that Brits are educated, sophisticated people, forgetting that the UK is home to the football hooligan and the lager lout... and these knee-biters seem to be running the country. The populace of the UK hasn't exactly covered itself in glory, but as an American, I have to note that the entire Anglophone world seems to be suffering from a malaise, rooted in bigotry and exacerbated by Russian propaganda campaigns on social media.
I'm generally in agreement with John Lydon about the English people- they tend to be a decent lot, led by some of the most horrible people around. With Brexit, though, the damage was self-inflicted by plebescite. Good guys like Charles Stross have sounded alarm about availability of medicines, and there was talk of impending food scarcity should a no-deal Brexit ensue. The government of the United Kingdom has inflicted two major famines on colonized peoples, and it looks as if it's going to inflict a third, this time on its own people.
The whole situation is beyond fucked up, and the Irish border situation is cause for alarm, so how about a musical interlude to take our minds off of this bloody mess?
Weird, when that song was released, it was considered one of the Clash's few non-political songs.
Friday, October 21, 2016
Tallow Drips Upon a Withered Hand
It's October, my busy month, and I'm swamped at work every weekend... time to set up a post in advance. Halloween being right around the corner, I figure I'll post something appropriately creepy... One of my prized possessions is a copy of the first paperback edition of Katharine Briggs' British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler, a gift that my father purchased for me while on a business trip that took him to London. Yeah, I was a nerd from day one.
One of the most outré bits of folklore in the book involved the Hand of Glory, a black-magic talisman used by thieves breaking into a house or business. Creating a hand of glory is a grisly affair, involving the amputation of a hanged murderer's hand. From clergyman and folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould's monumental Curious Myths of the Middle Ages:
The Hand of Glory .. is the hand of a man who has been hung, and it is prepared in the following manner: Wrap the hand in a piece of winding-sheet, drawing it tight, so as to squeeze out the little blood which may remain; then place it in an earthenware vessel with saltpeter, salt, and long pepper, all carefully and thoroughly powdered. Let it remain a fortnight in this pickle till it is well dried, then expose it to the sun in the dog-days, till it is completely parched, or, if the sun be not powerful enough, dry it in an oven heated with vervain and fern. Next make a candle with the fat of a hung man, virgin-wax, and Lapland sesame.
In this particular tale of the hand of glory, the hand has the power to render the sleeping unwakeable and to open all locks:
Several stories of this terrible hand are related in [William] Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England. I will only quote one, which was told me by a laboring man in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and which is the same story as that given by Martin Anthony Delrio in his Disquisitiones Magicæ, in 1593, and which is printed in the Appendix to that book of M. Henderson.
One dark night, after the house had been closed, there came a tap at the door of a lone inn, in the midst of a barren moor. The door was opened, and there stood without, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold. He asked piteously for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; though there was not a spare bed in the house, he might lie along on the mat before the kitchen fire, and welcome.
All in the house went to bed except the servant lassie, who from the kitchen could see into the large room through a small pane of glass let into the door. When everyone save the beggar was out of the room, she observed the man draw himself up from the floor, seat himself at the table, extract a brown withered human hand from his pocket, and set it upright in the candlestick; he then anointed the fingers, and, applying a match to them, they began to flame.
Filled with horror, the girl rushed up the back stairs, and endeavored to arouse her master and the men of the house; but all in vain, they slept a charmed sleep; and finding all her efforts ineffectual, she hastened downstairs again. Looking again through the small window, she observed the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb gave no light: this was because one of the inmates of the house was not asleep.
The hand cannot be extinguished through conventional means:
The beggar began collecting all the valuables of the house into a large sack -- no lock withstood the application of the flaming hand. Then, putting it down, the man entered an adjoining apartment. The moment he was gone, the girl rushed in, and seizing the hand, attempted to extinguish the quivering yellow flames, which wavered at the fingers' ends. She blew at them in vain; she poured some drops from a beer-jug over them, but that only made the fingers burn the brighter; she cast some water upon them, but still without extinguishing the light. As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashing it over the four lambent flames, they went out immediately.
Uttering a piercing cry, she rushed to the door of the room the beggar had entered, and locked it. The whole house was aroused, and the thief was secured and hung.
The Hand of Glory has made it into several modern works of fiction- in my mind, most notably in John Bellair's The House with a Clock in its Walls. A variation on the theme plays a major role in Charles Stross' 'Laundry' books, in which the talismans can provide protection from observation and be used as projectile weapons- in a further deconstruction of the trope, they can be made from pigeon feet. The hand of glory also figures prominently in the 'weird tale' Dead Man's Hand by Manly Wade Wellman, a tale which also introduces Wellman's take on a particularly 'Lovecraftian' subject- the survival of hostile not-quite-humans in what Robert E. Howard dubbed the dark corners of the earth.
The hand of glory lends its name to the title of a Smithereens song I first heard as a high schooler, the lyrics of which the title of this post references:
The Smithereens song is actually a cover of a song by the late Jimmy Silva.. As Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken explained to music journalist Joe Clark:
Joe: All right. What is the song "Hand of Glory" about, and what are the damn fucking lyrics that I can't understand?
Dennis: I'll give you Jim Silva's number. You can call him. He's the guy who wrote that.
Pat: Jimmy Silva was a--
Joe: He sung it. He must know.
Pat: I sung it. I always felt I did a very piss-poor interpretation.
Dennis: It's an obscure kind of lyric. It's about this medieval ritual to ward off evil spirits froma a person's house, where you take the hand of a freshly-hung felon, chop it off, pickle it with these various herbs and things in, dip it in tallow, light the fingers, run around the house several times, and what it's supposed to do is, for a robber that wants to rob the house, it makes the people inside the house asleep.
Jim: No, it's an unborn hand. It's a--
Dennis: Well, that's another interpretation of it. So there''s your answer.
Pat: But anyway, to make a long story short
Jim: That's some weird shit, man!
Joe: [Laugh] That's even weirder than what I thought it was [namely, finding a severed hand in a railway yard]!
Pat: I could never get behind the lyric of that song. It was more the type of song that had a lot of energy live and it always went over great, and we thought we'd give it a shot in the studio, and it wound up on the album.
I hadn't heard the original before, but the Smithereens cover is a pretty faithful rendition:
I love it, I'm going to have to second musician Scott McCaughey's take on the song- the combination of macabre subject matter with a nice jangle-pop song is particularly appealing to me.
Now, to make things even creepier, Yorkshire's Whitby Museum has a purported hand of glory in its collection. Don't go to sleep tonight!
One of the most outré bits of folklore in the book involved the Hand of Glory, a black-magic talisman used by thieves breaking into a house or business. Creating a hand of glory is a grisly affair, involving the amputation of a hanged murderer's hand. From clergyman and folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould's monumental Curious Myths of the Middle Ages:
The Hand of Glory .. is the hand of a man who has been hung, and it is prepared in the following manner: Wrap the hand in a piece of winding-sheet, drawing it tight, so as to squeeze out the little blood which may remain; then place it in an earthenware vessel with saltpeter, salt, and long pepper, all carefully and thoroughly powdered. Let it remain a fortnight in this pickle till it is well dried, then expose it to the sun in the dog-days, till it is completely parched, or, if the sun be not powerful enough, dry it in an oven heated with vervain and fern. Next make a candle with the fat of a hung man, virgin-wax, and Lapland sesame.
In this particular tale of the hand of glory, the hand has the power to render the sleeping unwakeable and to open all locks:
Several stories of this terrible hand are related in [William] Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England. I will only quote one, which was told me by a laboring man in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and which is the same story as that given by Martin Anthony Delrio in his Disquisitiones Magicæ, in 1593, and which is printed in the Appendix to that book of M. Henderson.
One dark night, after the house had been closed, there came a tap at the door of a lone inn, in the midst of a barren moor. The door was opened, and there stood without, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold. He asked piteously for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; though there was not a spare bed in the house, he might lie along on the mat before the kitchen fire, and welcome.
All in the house went to bed except the servant lassie, who from the kitchen could see into the large room through a small pane of glass let into the door. When everyone save the beggar was out of the room, she observed the man draw himself up from the floor, seat himself at the table, extract a brown withered human hand from his pocket, and set it upright in the candlestick; he then anointed the fingers, and, applying a match to them, they began to flame.
Filled with horror, the girl rushed up the back stairs, and endeavored to arouse her master and the men of the house; but all in vain, they slept a charmed sleep; and finding all her efforts ineffectual, she hastened downstairs again. Looking again through the small window, she observed the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb gave no light: this was because one of the inmates of the house was not asleep.
The hand cannot be extinguished through conventional means:
The beggar began collecting all the valuables of the house into a large sack -- no lock withstood the application of the flaming hand. Then, putting it down, the man entered an adjoining apartment. The moment he was gone, the girl rushed in, and seizing the hand, attempted to extinguish the quivering yellow flames, which wavered at the fingers' ends. She blew at them in vain; she poured some drops from a beer-jug over them, but that only made the fingers burn the brighter; she cast some water upon them, but still without extinguishing the light. As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashing it over the four lambent flames, they went out immediately.
Uttering a piercing cry, she rushed to the door of the room the beggar had entered, and locked it. The whole house was aroused, and the thief was secured and hung.
The Hand of Glory has made it into several modern works of fiction- in my mind, most notably in John Bellair's The House with a Clock in its Walls. A variation on the theme plays a major role in Charles Stross' 'Laundry' books, in which the talismans can provide protection from observation and be used as projectile weapons- in a further deconstruction of the trope, they can be made from pigeon feet. The hand of glory also figures prominently in the 'weird tale' Dead Man's Hand by Manly Wade Wellman, a tale which also introduces Wellman's take on a particularly 'Lovecraftian' subject- the survival of hostile not-quite-humans in what Robert E. Howard dubbed the dark corners of the earth.
The hand of glory lends its name to the title of a Smithereens song I first heard as a high schooler, the lyrics of which the title of this post references:
The Smithereens song is actually a cover of a song by the late Jimmy Silva.. As Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken explained to music journalist Joe Clark:
Joe: All right. What is the song "Hand of Glory" about, and what are the damn fucking lyrics that I can't understand?
Dennis: I'll give you Jim Silva's number. You can call him. He's the guy who wrote that.
Pat: Jimmy Silva was a--
Joe: He sung it. He must know.
Pat: I sung it. I always felt I did a very piss-poor interpretation.
Dennis: It's an obscure kind of lyric. It's about this medieval ritual to ward off evil spirits froma a person's house, where you take the hand of a freshly-hung felon, chop it off, pickle it with these various herbs and things in, dip it in tallow, light the fingers, run around the house several times, and what it's supposed to do is, for a robber that wants to rob the house, it makes the people inside the house asleep.
Jim: No, it's an unborn hand. It's a--
Dennis: Well, that's another interpretation of it. So there''s your answer.
Pat: But anyway, to make a long story short
Jim: That's some weird shit, man!
Joe: [Laugh] That's even weirder than what I thought it was [namely, finding a severed hand in a railway yard]!
Pat: I could never get behind the lyric of that song. It was more the type of song that had a lot of energy live and it always went over great, and we thought we'd give it a shot in the studio, and it wound up on the album.
I hadn't heard the original before, but the Smithereens cover is a pretty faithful rendition:
I love it, I'm going to have to second musician Scott McCaughey's take on the song- the combination of macabre subject matter with a nice jangle-pop song is particularly appealing to me.
Now, to make things even creepier, Yorkshire's Whitby Museum has a purported hand of glory in its collection. Don't go to sleep tonight!
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