Editor Ellen Datlow puts together some really good books and this might be one of my favorite to date. Dark fantasy/horror stories strung along a theme of films and filmmaking. What a brilliant concept.
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I personally feel that short fiction is the ideal format for horror and dark fantasy literature and the theme of film/film-making is absolutely brilliant and Datlow collects a very nice assortment. This collection is highly recommended.
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Looking for a good book? The Cutting Room is an excellent collection of dark stories around a film theme.
These snippets from his complex imagination read like my very own chicken soup for the Tad Williams fan’s soul with bite-sized nuggets of pure enjoyment. I may very well end up with nightmares from “The Storm Door,” but the laughs I got out of the critiques the kid comic book artist received from his creative team in “Some Thoughts Re: Dark Destructor” ensures all is forgiven. Williams has a little bit for everyone in this motley mix of fiction.
With award-winning, superstar editor Ellen Datlow’s “superb sampling of some of the most significant short horror works published between 1985 and 2005” Darkness being featured as part of the Humble Horror Book Bundle, we’re sharing excerpts from nine select stories over the next seven days.
Our next glimpse comes from “A Little Night Music” by Lucius Shepard.
Dead men can’t play jazz.
That’s the truth I learned last night at the world premiere performance of the quartet known as Afterlife at Manhattan’s Village Vanguard.
Whether or not they can play, period, that’s another matter, but it wasn’t jazz I heard at the Vanguard, it was something bluer and colder, something with notes made from centuries-old Arctic ice and stones that never saw the light of day, something uncoiling after a long black sleep and tasting dirt in its mouth, something that wasn’t the product of creative impulse but of need.
But the bottom line is, it was worth hearing.
As to the morality involved, well, I’ll leave that up to you, because that’s the real bottom line, isn’t it, music lovers? Do you like it enough and will you pay enough to keep the question of morality a hot topic on the Donahue show and out of the courts? Those of you who listened to the simulcast over WBAI have probably already formulated an opinion. The rest of you will have to wait for the CD.
I won’t waste your time by talking about the technology. If you don’t understand it by now, after all the television specials and the (ohmygodpleasenotanother) in-depth discussions between your local blow-dried news creep and their pet science fiction hack, you must not want to understand it. Nor am I going to wax profound and speculate on just how much of a man is left after reanimation. The only ones who know that aren’t able to tell us, because it seems the speech center just doesn’t thrive on narcosis. Nor does any fraction of sensibility that cares to communicate itself. In fact, very little seems to thrive on narcosis aside from the desire…no, like I said, the need to play music.
And for reasons that God or someone only knows, the ability to play music where none existed before.
That may be hard to swallow, I realize, but I’m here to tell you, no matter how weird it sounds, it appears to be true.
For the first time in memory, there was a curtain across the Vanguard’s stage. I suppose there’s some awkwardness involved in bringing the musicians out. Before the curtain was opened, William Dexter, the genius behind this whole deal, a little bald man with a hearing aid in each ear and the affable, simple face of someone who kids call by his first name, came out and said a few words about the need for drastic solutions to the problems of war and pollution, for a redefinition of our goals and values. Things could not go on as they had been. The words seemed somewhat out of context, though they’re always nice to hear. Finally he introduced the quartet. As introductions go, this was a telegram.
“The music you’re about to hear,” William Dexter said flatly, without the least hint of hype or hyperventilation, “is going to change your lives.”
And there they were.
Check out the Humble Horror Book Bundle which includes works from Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Joss Whedon, Joe Hill, Max Brooks, Robert R. McCammon, and Dan Simmons.
For more info about Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, visit the Tachyon page.
As befits this meticulously modulated cover, the twenty-three pieces inThe Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screenrarely deal directly with film. Instead, they reflect it, they cast it back and mirror it, often from unique perspectives, more than occasionally using lenses that distort and twist in order to assert deeper realities.
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The stories range from relatively straight-forward narrative; to narrative transmuting seamlessly into script, bringing characters—and readers—into the texture of a film; to narrative as verbal representation of filmic hyper-realism, existentialism, absurdism, surrealism, and several other –isms. The first, Edward Bryant’s “The Cutter,” reads literally as a man’s descent into madness from unrequited love; on other levels, it seems concerned with society’s unrequitable love for realities that can exist only in movies. The last, Kim Newman’s devastatingly funny “Illimitable Dominion,” conjures a world overtaken by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and the spate of Poe-based films that were produced in the mid-1960s. Every story in between modulates carefully between direction and indirection, between implication and inference.
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A film exists as images projected onto a screen. The processof film, this anthology proclaims, is never-ending, stepping down from the screen and into the imaginations of the audience, where it continues to grow, to permute, to change…itself and the beholder.
With award-winning, superstar editor Ellen Datlow’s “superb sampling of some of the most significant short horror works published between 1985 and 2005” Darkness being featured as part of the Humble Horror Book Bundle, we’re sharing excerpts from nine select stories over the next seven days.
Our next glimpse comes from “Stitch” by Terry Dowling.
Soon Bella would find the nerve to go upstairs. Soon she would be able to excuse herself from her uncle and aunt and climb the familiar old stairs, counting every one, enter the toilet in the alcove of the upstairs bathroom, and confront Mr. Stitch.
She couldn’t leave without seeing him. Not this time. It was Auntie Inga’s birthday, occasion enough, yes, but this time Mr. Stitch was the reason for being here. Bella had always tried to see him once or twice a year, just to make sure he was still there, shut tight behind the glass, locked in his frame. This time it had to be more.
“Your boyfriend couldn’t make it, Bel?” Auntie Inga asked, but gently, in case there was a point of delicacy involved.
“Roger? No. He had to work, like I said.” Bella knew she had said. It had been the third or fourth line out of her mouth when she arrived. “Sends his best wishes though. ‘Manniest happiest returns’ — quote, unquote. His exact words.” What he would have said anyway. “He has to work every second Saturday.”
Bluff and hearty as ever, but it’s what you often had to do where Roger was concerned. Maybe it would have been better if he were here. Having someone to be with her through it. Through this. Bella couldn’t remember feeling such dread.
But this time she had to be alone. This time she wanted more.
“This photo of your mom was always my favourite,” Auntie Inga said, returning to the page in the old album, going through them as she always did when Bella visited. Possibly when anyone visited.
Bella ignored the mention of her mother, concentrated instead on what Uncle Sal was doing. He smiled kindly at them both and poured more coffee. Bella couldn’t remember him any other way. It was as if at some point in his life he had discovered the word “avuncular” and had resolved to be precisely that for the rest of his days. With Mr. Stitch upstairs, it made him seem positively sinister, a gleefully distracting conspirator. An avuncular usher, Bella thought, then was reminded of the old witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel. And witch rhymed with stitch, so back she went, into the panic loop again, with both hands steadying her coffee cup, her heart hammering and her feet flexing inside her shoes, itching to run. If only Roger could have been here, could have at least made an effort to understand what this meant. Stayed close. That would have made all the difference.
Though alone, alone. Some things had to be done alone. And today had to be different. Today she had to change it all.
Check out the Humble Horror Book Bundle which includes works from Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Joss Whedon, Joe Hill, Max Brooks, Robert R. McCammon, and Dan Simmons.
For more info about Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, visit the Tachyon page.
With award-winning, superstar editor Ellen Datlow’s “superb sampling of some of the most significant short horror works published between 1985 and 2005” Darkness being featured as part of the Humble Horror Book Bundle, we’re sharing excerpts from nine select stories over the next seven days.
Our next glimpse comes from “The Power and the Passion” by Pat Cadigan.
The voice on the phone says, “We need to talk to you, Mr. Soames,” so I know to pick the place up. Company coming. I don’t like for company to come into no pigsty, but one of the reasons the place is such a mess all the time is, it’s so small, I got nowhere to keep shit except around, you know. But I shove both the dirty laundry and the dirty dishes in the oven — my mattress is right on the floor so I can’t shove stuff under the bed, and what won’t fit in the oven I put in the tub and just before I pull the curtain, I think, well, shit, I shoulda just put it all in the tub and filled it and got it all washed at once. Or, well, just the dishes, because I can take the clothes over to the laundromat easier than washing them in the tub.
So, hell, I just pull the shower curtain, stack the newspapers and the magazines — newspapers on top of the magazines, because most people don’t take too well to my taste in magazines, and they wouldn’t like a lot of the newspapers much either, but I got the Sunday paper to stick on top and hide it all, so it’s okay. Company’ll damned well know what’s under those Sunday funnies because they know me, but as long as they don’t have to have it staring them in the face, it’s like they can pretend it don’t exist.
I’m still puttering and fussing around when the knock on the door comes and I’m crossing the room (the only room unless you count the bathroom, which I do when I’m in it) when it comes to me I ain’t done dick about myself. I’m still in my undershirt and shorts, for chrissakes.
“Hold on,” I call out, “I ain’t decent, quite,” and I drag a pair of pants outa the closet. But all my shirts are either in the oven or the tub and company’ll get fanny-antsy standing in the hall — this is not the watchamacallit, the place where Lennon bought it, the Dakota, yeah. Anyway, I answer the door in my one hundred percent cotton undershirt, but at least I got my fly zipped.
Company’s a little different this time. The two guys as usual, but today they got a woman with them. Not a broad, not a bitch, not a bimbo. She’s standing between and a little behind them, looking at me the way women always look at me when I happen to cross their path — chin lifted up a little, one hand holding her coat together at the neck in a fist, eyes real cold, like, “Touch me and die horribly, I wish,” standing straight fuckin’ up, like they’re Superman, and the fear coming off them like heat waves from an open furnace.
They all come in and stand around and I wish I’d straightened the sheets out on the mattress so it wouldn’t look so messy, but then they’d see the sheets ain’t clean, so six of one, you know. And I got nothing for anyone to sit on, except that mattress, so they just keep standing around.
The one guy, Steener, says, “Are you feeling all right, Mr. Soames?” looking around like there’s puke and snot all over the floor. Steener don’t bother me. He’s a pretty man who probably was a pretty boy and a pretty baby before that, and thinks the world oughta be a pretty place. Or he wants to prove pretty guys are really tougher and better and more man than guys like me, because he’s afraid it’s vice versa, you know. Maybe even both, depending on how he got up this morning.
The other guy, Villanueva, I could almost respect him. He didn’t put on no face to look at me, and he didn’t have no power fantasies about who he was to me or vice versa. I think Villanueva probably knows me better than anyone in the world. But then, he was the one took my statement when they caught up with me. He was a cop then. If he’d still been a cop, I’d probably respect him.
So I look right at the woman and I say, “So, what’s this, you brought me a date?” I know this will get them because they know what I do to dates.
Check out the Humble Horror Book Bundle which includes works from Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Joss Whedon, Joe Hill, Max Brooks, Robert R. McCammon, and Dan Simmons.
For more info about Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, visit the Tachyon page.
Each story is fascinating, and certainly terrifying, but it’s all building toward Greta, whose story has never really ended, and when she finally reveals it, it’s a punch in the gut in its insidiousness, and also its potential for wide scale disaster. It’s disaster that the group will eventually attempt to avert, and watching them come together to do it is a joy to behold. I fell in love with each of these damaged people, and as fragile as they are, they’re equally heroic, and the strength they’ve found in order to keep living after such trauma is haunting, and oddly inspiring.
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Gregory has always been good at the little things, the subtle things, even as not so subtle stuff starts happening. This is a creepy book, but it’s also oddly charming, but then, I love stories about broken people that find comfort in each other. There are also a few surprises at the end that are creepy and sweet at the same time. How does he do that?? I suppose much the same way he manages to make a book that comes in under 300 pages so nuanced and complex. This is a scary, funny, bittersweet, fantastic book, and Gregory’s imagination is twisted and wonderful. Good thing we’ve gotHarrison Squaredcoming up in 2015. I’ll be the first in line.
With award-winning, superstar editor Ellen Datlow’s “superb sampling of some of the most significant short horror works published between 1985 and 2005” Darkness being featured as part of the Humble Horror Book Bundle, we’re sharing excerpts from nine select stories over the next seven days.
Our next glimpse comes from “Dancing Chickens” by Edward Bryant.
What do aliens want?
Their burnished black ships, humming with the ominous power of a clenched fist, ghost across our cities. At first we turned our faces to the skies in the chill of every moving shadow. Now we seem to feel the disinterest bred of familiarity. It’s not a sense of ease, though. The collective apprehension is still there — even if diminished. For many of us, I believe, the feeling is much like awaiting a dentist’s drill.
Do aliens have expectations?
If human beings know, no one’s telling. Our leaders dissemble, the news media speculate, but facts and truths alike submerge in murky communications. Extraterrestrial secrets, if they do have answers, remain quietly and tastefully enigmatic. Most of us have read about the government’s beamed messages, all apparently ignored.
Do humans care?
I’m not really sure anymore. The ships have been up there for months — a year or more. People do become blasé, even about those mysterious craft and their unseen pilots. When the waiting became unendurable, most humans simply seemed to tune out the ships and thought about other things again: mortgages, spiraling inflation, Mideast turmoil, and getting laid. Yet the underlying tension remained.
Some of us in the civilian sector have retained our curiosity. Right here in the neighborhood, David told us he sat in the aloneness of the early morning hours and pumped out Morse to the silhouettes as they cruised out of the dark above the mountains and slid into the dim east. If there were replies, David couldn’t interpret them. “You’d think at least they’d want to go out for a drink,” David had said.
Riley used the mirror in his compact to send up heliograph signals. In great excitement he claimed to have detected a reply, messages in kind. We suggested he saw, if anything, reflections from the undersides of the dark hulls. None of that diminished his ecstasy. He believed he was noticed. I felt for him.
Hawk — both job description and name — didn’t hold much with guesses. “In good time,” he said, “they’ll tell us what they want; tell us, then buy it, take it, use it. They’ll give us the word.” Hawk had plucked me, runaway and desperate young man, literally out of the gutter along the Boulevard. Since before the time of the ships, he had cared for me. He had taken me home, cleaned, fed, and warmed me. He used me, sometimes well. Sometimes he only used me.
Whether Hawk loved me was debatable.
Watching the ships gave me no answer.
I attempted to communicate every day. It was a little like what my case worker told me about what dentists did to kids’ mouths before anyone had invented braces. When he was a boy with protruding teeth, my case worker was instructed to push fingers gently against those front teeth every time he thought of his mouth and how people were making fun. “Hey, Trigger! Where’s Roy?” Years of gentle, insistent touches did what braces do now.
I tried to do something like that with the alien ships. Every time I fantasized smooth, alien features when I shivered in the chilly wake of an alien shadow, I gathered my mental energies, concentrated, shot an inquiring thought after the diminishing leviathan.
Ship, come to me… I wanted it to carry me away, to take charge, to save me from any sense of responsibility about my own actions in my own life. I knew better, but that didn’t stop the temptation.
Once, only once, I thought I felt a reply, the slightest tickling just at the border of my mind. At the time it was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, more a textural thing: slick surfaces, cool, moist, one whole enclosing another. (A fist fills the glove. One hand, damp, warm: the wrist — twists.)
Check out the Humble Horror Book Bundle which includes works from Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Joss Whedon, Joe Hill, Max Brooks, Robert R. McCammon, and Dan Simmons.
For more info about Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, visit the Tachyon page.
We Are All Completely Fine is a fabulous, complicated novella about a group of five damaged people and the psychologist who brings them together.
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Gregory writes in ways that touch the heart of what it means to be human. He also writes in ways that are horrorific, surprising, and humorous.We Are All Completely Fineis like a psychotherapy text in comic book form, making it accessible and applicable in ways one would have never considered. There are moments that make me squirm, but they are done with such sophistication that Gregory brings me to a place of compassion.
