We should probably explain, in case you have a headache. The non-mystery of greydogtales is that we wander all over the place, from lurchers, through strange detectives and Edwardian trivia, to weird and horror fiction. THERE IS NO PLAN! All is whim and confused fancy, so the easiest way to not miss anything is to subscribe for free, on the left. No chicken carcass salespeople will call, and your home is not at risk. Not from us, anyway. So, let’s get on…

Where do you come from? Despite H P Lovecraft’s considerable influence on weird fiction, some of us only found the guy from Providence after we had already gone weird. It may be a Britlander thing, but we ourselves were steeped in the dark and/or wry fiction of Emily Bronte, William Hope Hodgson, H G Wells, Saki and Jerome K Jerome before ever we trod Arkham. Our own main influences can be found in those and other early writers, with HPL following on later, extending the tendrils of cosmic horror which arose in the last days of the Victorian era. It’s probably why old greydog only visits Lovecraftland in his writing on those rare occasions when the Muse has a coughing fit and spits on his shoulder.

However, one independent publisher which has done a lot to explore HPL’s themes imaginatively is the Canadian Martian Migraine Press, helmed by Scott R Jones. There’s always something exciting and different about their anthologies, taking cosmic horror in new directions, re-interpreting Lovecraftian concepts, or simply going deep into the roots of humanity, perception, and madness.

Today we cover their 2017 anthology A Breath from the Sky, reviewed by one of our guest reviewers, author Matt Willis. We asked Matt to have a look at this anthology because no less than six of the stories within were recently given a nod by Ellen Datlow in her Best Horror of the Year (Volume 10). Particularly noted were authors Premee Mohamed, Megan Arkenberg, Cody Goodfellow, Aaron Vlek, Gordon B. White, and Jonathan Raab. A well-deserved moment for the authors and for Martian Migraine.

Oh, and there are loads of new, interesting weird fiction and horror books out at the moment. We’ll try and mention some of them next time…

NOTE: As usual, any opinions expressed below are those of the individual reviewer.

A Breath from the Sky – Unusual Stories of Possession

Editor – Scott R Jones

Martian Migraine Press, 2017

Reviewed by Matt Willis

Having written several stories recently on the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the vessels it can occupy, I was interested to read A Breath from the Sky – Unusual Stories of Possession, and in terms of the sheer breadth of possibilities in this concept I was not disappointed. The collection is not perfect, but anyone who is interested in the idea will find something to intrigue and entertain them.

Editing a themed anthology is no simple business. At the point you send out your open call or your invitations, you lose control of the idea, and when the stories come back, with all those myriad interpretations of the brief, you have to re-establish it as best you can. A good anthology has to not just contain a selection of great stories, it has to hang together as a book as well as any novel, take the reader on a meaningful journey rather than throw them aimlessly from point to point. The choice of stories must be as much for how well they complement the collection as for individual quality.

It can also be a thankless business – readers will inevitably prefer the styles of some writers over others and will inevitably have subjective ideas about what a short story should look like, and how the experience of reading one should be. If there’s something for everyone, there is inevitably nothing that will please everybody. There is, it should be said, much to please readers of short weird and horror fiction.

It felt to me at first that A Breath from the Sky might have set itself too difficult a task to fully succeed. The first angle was to produce a collection of ‘strange tales of possession’, which the anthology certainly is. There are as many different angles to the concept of ‘possession’ here as it is possible to imagine.

In addition though, it tied itself to the HP Lovecraft story ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ as an additional inspiration and hook. I couldn’t help feeling that this additional angle to the theme left A Breath From The Sky sometimes pulling in too many directions. A collection of tales inspired by the Lovecraft story would perhaps have been thematically more cohesive, as would a collection that sought to explore every conceivable angle of possession. In trying to do both, A Breath from the Sky sometimes feels a touch confused. Placing the Lovecraft story third in the running order is symptomatic of this. We’ve barely been introduced to the idea before being taken straight to Lovecraft’s lengthy story of a meteorite and the strange effects it starts to have on a remote area west of Arkham, Massachusetts which, as the collection’s introduction admits, is not overtly a story about possession. This is reinforced by following the story with the only other tale in the collection that is obviously inspired by it, ‘The Monsters Are Due In Mayberry’, by Edward Morris – a few others reference it obliquely, but before and after that double bill, ‘The Colour out of Space’ doesn’t seem to command much influence over the book. Perhaps it would have made sense in this instance to leave it out…

For all that, A Breath from the Sky is home to some fabulous stories, and, as I’ve already alluded to, the variation of interpretations of the concept of possession is in itself impressive. These range from the straightforward tale of a demonic entity inhabiting a human body to much less obvious treatments – strange sounds and signals that appear to take over the personality, seemingly human consciousnesses that find themselves in bodies that don’t belong to them, technology that starts to turn people into something else… There are allegories and fables, and possibly the odd warning.

With due consideration of the fact that everyone’s preferences will be different, I felt this collection really hit its stride about halfway through with a strong run of stories beginning with ‘Viscera’, by Sam Schreiber. This is a story that seems to be about a relatively straightforward demon possession but rapidly evolves into something else. The “demon” Solmaz, who can taste human souls and has disturbing appetites, is an engaging narrator and the story takes an unexpected turn which might be a metaphor for current gender politics or just an imaginative take on “the ghost in the machine”. It’s followed by ‘Everything Wants To Live’ by Luke R.J. Maynard, a refreshingly original rumination on the ever closer relationship between humans and technology and the blurring of the lines between them.

‘The Evaluator’ by Premee Mohamed is reminiscent of an old-fashioned occult detective story with a hardboiled narration and a genuinely chilling adversary with a surprise nature. Of all the stories that echo the “blasted heath” setting of the Lovecraft tentpole story, I felt this one did so with the most originality. ‘Open Night At The Dirtbag Casino’ by Gordon B. White tells of an entity stuck in a brutally Sisyphus-esque routine with no idea why or how they ended up that way, or what their endless ordeal has made of them. ‘But Thou, Proserpina, Sleep’ by Megan Arkenburg an unsettling, poetry-punctuated tale of a visitor who comes through a blizzard into the home of a reclusive academic, was, for me, a highlight.

Overall, A Breath from the Sky is well worthy of attention despite its flaws, which rather pale beside the quality of the writing. The collection is at its best when it has something to say about what it means to be human in the late modern era.

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/d/eUhm2Sa