There was once a classic Weird Tales writer called Nictzin Dyalhis – except that probably wasn’t his real name – and a story called ‘When the Green Star Wanes’, which was described as “a seminal work in the history of pulp [science fiction]” (Everett Bleiler) – except that it’s also sort of old-style nonsense. Bleiler also called it “(d)istasteful and negligible as fiction”. And as you know, dear listener, we love such complicated nonsensicals, so today our regular reviewer Dave Brzeski covers a fun collection of Dyalhis’s work, The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis (DMR Books).

Before you dive in, however, do remember our opening sentence. Who was Nictzin Dyalhis? The whole subject of the man’s birth, marriages, and name(s) has been covered well by others, especially on the Bear Alley site, which is linked in the review below. In short, he may have been a man called Fred Wilstone Dallas, or he may have been someone else entirely. His reported age varies, as do the details of his parents. His forename may have been a complete invention; that Dyalhis surname was supposedly Welsh, or Scottish, or Roman, and so on. He could also have been born in Arizona or Massachusetts – it only gets better the more you dig…

Old Nictzin did, however, apparently invent the ‘blastor’!

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The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis

Author: Nictzin Dyalhis

Introduction: D.M. Ritzlin

Publisher: DMR Books

Format: Paperback, ebook

Reviewer: Dave Brzeski

Nictzin Dyalhis has always been something of an enigma. Researches into his life have always turned up little, and what there is comes with contradictions. The best overview is probably the one by Steve Holland on his Bear Alley Books Blog.

I probably first encountered the work of Nictzin Dyalhis way back in the early seventies. I suspect it was in a used paperback copy of Worlds of Weird (1965), edited by Leo Margulies. A few years back I suggested to David Sutton of Shadow Publishing in the UK, that I’d dearly love to put together a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection. David gave me the go-ahead to do so. The problem, I immediately realised, was actually sourcing the stories. There aren’t all that many, but not all are easy to find – to say the least. The project was shelved.

Dave Ritzlin evidently had the same idea not long after I did, but he got a bit further than me. The resulting book is still not a complete collection of all of Nictzin Dyalhis’s work, but it does include all of the weird fiction/fantasy stuff. Ritzlin confirmed that this was mainly down to those four missing stories being very, very hard to find, at least in their original appearance. Of the remaining four tales, two are westerns and two are crime stories.

This collection opens with ‘When the Green Star Waned’, which was originally published in Weird Tales (April 1925). It’s one of those classic old school science fiction tales, where every planet of the Solar System is inhabited – sort of an alternate universe, where Aerth had history somewhat similar to that of Earth, but it would be difficult to make our history, since this was written, quite fit within this version of the Solar System. All the planets – Markhuri, Vehez, Aerth, and its Moun, Mharz, Jopitar… you get the idea, have very similar spaceships, called Aethir-Torps, but they tend to keep out of each other’s business. Thus it takes quite some time before anyone notices that things have changed on Aerth.

They’ve been invaded and subjugated by creatures from the dark side of the Moun. Creatures that originally came from much further afield. There’s an almost Lovecraftian feel to it all.

It’s interesting to note that this story has the first recorded use of the term, blaster, albeit spelled blastor here, for a ray gun, or energy weapon.

As one would expect, the prose, let alone the science is a little archaic and dated, but it’s a fun read.

Readers who are experiencing the work of Nictzin Dyalhis for the first time in this volume, may be forgiven for thinking, “Yes, ‘When the Green Star Waned’ was indeed fun, if dated, but I don’t see why so many people make such a fuss about this guy’s work.”

‘The Eternal Conflict’ was published in Weird Tales in October, 1925 – just six months after ‘When the Green Star Waned’. You may well wonder, on reading it, if it really was by the same author. This one was good then and it’s good now – excellent in fact. Told by an acolyte of a non-intrusive religious sect on Earth, it’s in equal parts a cosmic weird fiction tale and a classic Angels versus demons story of the battle/balance between good and evil, love and hate, which is as relevant now as it was back then – a true classic.

It was eighteen months before Dyalhis came to light again, this time with the only fantasy story he sold outside of Weird Tales.  ‘He Refused to Stay Dead’ appeared in the May 1927 issue of Ghost Stories. It’s an interesting tale of reincarnation, involving an undead revenant, described by the protagonist as troll and vampyr, albeit he exhibited no recognisable features of either. I was intrigued to note some elements of the occult detective subgenre in this one too. It does suffer somewhat from some common errors including a misunderstanding of the uses of Bell, Book and Candle in Christian lore, a Norseman and Saxon speaking Elizabethan tinged English to generate the proper ancient feel and horns on a Viking helmet. The latter two almost make me wonder if Dyalhis was an influence on Stan Lee! Despite that, it’s an enjoyable tale and I find myself intrigued by possibilities for sequels involving the main protagonists.

October 1927 saw the return of Dyalhis to the pages of Weird Tales, with ‘The Dark Lore’. Again, we have Elizabethan English used to emphasise the speech of demons and such. Plus the very readable, but still somewhat archaic, prose seems even more odd when elements of the modern World, such as an auto-accident are mentioned. All that aside, this quickly took the place of ‘The Eternal Conflict’ as my favourite story so far in the book.

Lura Veyle is a very nasty piece of work. This is a tale of her damnation, and her gradual struggle for redemption as she passes through several Hell dimensions, learning more about herself as she goes. I’m not, I have to admit a believer in religion, but I found this story very moving.

First published in Weird Tales, September 1928, ‘The Oath of Hul Jok’ is a direct sequel to ‘When the Green Star Waned’. This one is so, so good… and so, so wrong! On the one had, it’s a superb example of the sword and spaceship sub-genre as popularised by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Leigh Brackett. On the other hand it’s deeply sexist (albeit the women – referred to herein as the protagonist’s ‘Love-girls’, if you can believe it – do show themselves to be people to be reckoned with, once they’re no longer mind-controlled), pro- torture and pro-genocide.

It’s interesting to note that way back in 1928, Dyalhis had pretty much predicted the invention of computer tablets, with direct text messaging.

It wasn’t until the April 1932 issue that another Dyalhis story graced the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Red Witch’ is a tale of reincarnation and eternal lovers. When Randall Crone falls in love with flame-tressed Rhoda Day, he soon finds he has a rival. We flash back to the stone age, when Ran Kron fights alongside the mighty Athak, eventually becoming his blood brother… until that is, Athak sets his sight on Ran’s beautiful bride, Red Dawn. Throw in a crippled weapon-maker/magic man and a mighty stone axe worthy of an H. Rider Haggard adventure and you get a pretty good page-turner of a story.

I was intrigued to find out if making ‘The Sapphire Goddess’ the title story had any reasoning behind it other than it was a cool title. Indeed it does have a lot going for it. Originally published in the February 1934 issue of Weird Tales, this is a classic sword and sorcery tale, which falls somewhere between the fantasies of Lord Dunsany and the more pulpy style of Robert E. Howard. There’s also a strong similarity to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamworlds stories. A modern day man (he was modern when it was written) finds himself transported back into the body of one of his previous incarnations, that of a great ruler in a classic fantasy realm. I can easily see this having been voted best story of the issue by Weird Tales readers. The editor states in his introduction that he thought it was the best story in the anthology Worlds of Weird (1965), which was where he first encountered Dyalhis’ work.

It was close to four years later, in December 1937, before Dyalhis was to return to the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Sea-Witch’ was worth the wait! A truly excellent tale of Norse legend and long awaited justice, with a star-crossed lovers reincarnation element thrown in for good measure. As per usual for this author, it’s sword and sorcery with the emphasis heavily on the sorcery. This was the point at which I really began to be seriously depressed that Dyalhis wrote so few tales.

This excellent collection closes with ‘Heart of Atlantan’, which was published in the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales. Like ‘The Sea-Witch’, this one involves the narrator meeting and becoming rather enamoured with an ancient sorceress – this time, it’s the very lady who brought about the doom of Atlantis. Having accused Dyalhis previously of showing the sexist attitudes of his time, it can’t be denied that he certainly had a thing for immensely powerful women.

‘Heart of Atlantan’ was to be the very last story the World would see from The Mysterious Mr Dyalhis. There are only four more known stories not included in this collection. These are not fantasies, being two westerns and two crime stories, and three of them at least are very hard to track down. However, Wildside Press dedicated the fourth volume of their The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack Kindle series to Nictzin Dyalhis and, along with six of the stories which can also be found in this volume, they included – ‘For Wounding—Retaliation’, originally published in the 20th November 1922 issue of Adventure.

This was his second ever story, his first having appeared in the 20th October 1932 issue of the same magazine. Since I have a copy of this ebook on my Kindle, I decided I may as well see how this story holds up…

I can’t deny that the writing style seemed a little less accomplished than in the fantasy stories, albeit that may be down to the fact that Dyalhis was attempting to take on a style that I’m less familiar with. The hero is an aged Native American – Pima to be exact – woman. The story is surprisingly anti-racist for the time, racism actually being a major factor of the story.

I asked Dave Ritzlin and he confirmed my theory that he limited The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis to the fantasy stories for the exact same reason that my own plans had stalled – simply because the other stories were too hard to find. It’s a shame, and I still hold out hope one day for a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection; you never know there may even turn out to be a few more that have yet to be uncovered.

The Sapphire Goddess is available in print, and a very affordable Kindle version of this book is also available through Amazon – links below:

on amazon uk

on amazon us

Blimey, there’s a lot of creativity going on out there, so let’s slam out a mid-week medley of hot-off-the-press independent press projects. Today we spotlight author and publisher Nicole Givens Kurtz and her new supernatural private investigator mystery, a debut sword and soul fantasy novel from Sarah Macklin, and a new Mapp and Lucia book by Hugh Ashton. And we also have news of a big dark humour initiative from Crystal Lake Publishing – Coffee Beans and Conquest – in which that ancient reprobate John Linwood Grant himself is involved…

KILL THREE BIRDS

Nicole Givens Kurtz is an experienced American writer with many short stories and novels behind her, and she has a new book coming out on 20 July 2020, called Kill Three Birds.

“Sent to investigate a string of murders in a quiet remote egg, can Hawk Tasifa find the killer before she becomes the next target? Prentice Tasifa is an investigative hawk whose been deployed from The Order to the small egg of Gould, a mountain village. A missing girl had been found dead. Hawks investigate strange and difficult situations throughout the Kingdom of Aves. They can “see the unseen,” by accessing a unique ability to activate hawk-like vision, a trait they carry through their bloodlines. “When Prentice arrives in Gould, she soon discovers that there isn’t just one bird dead, but three. There’s a serial killer operating in Gould, and she has to find the person before she ends up next.”

And if you want to get a feel for what Nicole writes, you can read the first chapter of Kill Three Birds online simply by following this link:

https://midwestbsfa.com/2020/06/08/excerpt-of-nicole-givens-kurtzs-kill-three-birds/

“You wanna see what a killer looks like? Look in the reflecting glass,” Prentice Tasifa said over her shoulder. Her voice rose above the evening’s insects chittering. Not getting a reply, she stood up and looked over to Dove Baltazar. “Anyone is capable of killing.”

“Those that are with the goddess and follow along her path, don’t slaughter others.” Dove Baltazar said, with a sweeping arm across the bloodied body between him and Prentice. The white, gold-trimmed sleeves of his cloak just missed the carnage. “Hawk Prentice, try to remember how this woman lived. Holy. Pure.”

“She’s a teenager.”

Prentice pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Baltazar, like most in the rural egg, was about to discover the true nature of human beings. Anyone was capable of great violence when dumped in the right situation. Doves like him only saw goodness in people. That was their role.

You check out the full range of Nicole’s writing through her Amazon author pages:

https://www.amazon.com/Nicole-Givens-Kurtz/e/B0057XEF0G?ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vu00_tkin_p1_i0

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicole-Givens-Kurtz/e/B0057XEF0G?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1593613421&sr=8-3

Regular listeners will know that we are always keen to support good small and independent presses, so we must mention that Nicole is also owner of Mocha Memoirs Press.

Mocha publish “engaging stories that amplify diverse experiences with vivid storytelling, robust protagonists, and fearless voices.”

And they do produce all sorts of fascinating books. We’ve been aware of them for a while because they have also published in another of our favourite areas, Holmesian pastiche and related fiction, such as with An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which came out in 2015.

You should definitely go check out their site and full catalogue:

https://mochamemoirspress.com/

THE ROYAL HERETIC

Now, another new book from an independent press, this time from Milton Davis’s MVMedia. MV have a great range as well, but have been especially noted for their work on Sword and Soul. This fantasy/historical sub-genre brings Black fantasy characters to the fore and offers every reader a chance to go somewhere different. It abandons the pseudo-medieval European settings of most fantasy books, and takes us to rich new cultures, the perils of the open savannah, and Afrikan ports full of intrigue.

Sword and Soul not only gives Black readers real involvement in the action, but at the same time it’s a shot in the arm for the Fantasy genre as a whole (we’d recommend something like MVMedia’s Griots collection of short stories as an introduction to the  fun — and fear).

This week MVMedia have published Sarah Macklin’s debut novel (we’ve already nabbed a copy to see what she’s come up with). The Royal Heretic is out right now.

“Bakari is the netkoleh, ruler of the Ega empire and the living embodiment of the gods. When his eldest son and heir falls ill and dies, Bakari drowns in despair. He decides that the gods are nonexistent and bans the empire’s religion. He expects the people to rejoice at being “liberated” but talk of rebellion soon begins instead.

“In the north, in a long ago conquered kingdom, the second queen of the empire is sent to deliver the news. Her father, the king, wants to bargain with the netkoleh but she and her siblings know the man can’t be reasoned with. Their religion was the last bit of dignity th Ega had left their people. To defy this decree will bring the wrath of the netkoleh down on their lands and hopefully the path to freedom.”

“Macklin has created a vibrant world with a conflict that is simultaneously deeply personal and epic in scope. Do not miss this one!”
Rodney Turner, Microphones of Madness

The Royal Heretic is available in print and epub directly from MVMedia and on Amazon (all three links below)

https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/the-royal-heretic

https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/the-royal-heretic-epub

https://amzn.to/2NN96zE

MAPP’S RETURN

Also on our ‘Must Read’ pile is Hugh Ashton’s sequel to his recent (and delightftul) short novel in the style of E F Benson, Mapp at 50. Faithful to Benson’s original Mapp and Lucia stories, we are once again drawn into a delightfully wry, very English world of village intrigues, posturing and general cattiness, with the new Mapp’s Return, from j-views Publishing. A beautiful cover again, as well.

“Since the disaster that was her fiftieth birthday party, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint has been avoiding Tilling society. But just as she decides to re-enter the round of bridge parties and dainty teas, an unexpected visitor to Mallards throws her plans for a triumphant return as the social leader of Tilling into confusion. Lucia and Georgie, Diva, the Padre and Evie, the Wyses, and quaint Irene (and of course, Major Benjy and Mapp herself) all come alive again in this tale of genteel snobbery and social climbing.”

mapp’s return amazon uk

mapp’s return amazon us

We covered Hugh’s Mapp at 50 here a few weeks ago: http://greydogtales.com/blog/past-and-future-dreams/

COFFEE BEANS AND CONQUEST

Finally, dear merciful gods, we have to mention another Brand New Thing, this time from Joe Mynhardt‘s independent press Crystal Lake Publishing. We say ‘have to’, because we’ve been contributing to it. Here comes the spiel…

COFFEE BEANS & CONQUEST IS LIVE!! But don’t celebrate just yet, dear friendo, cuz you’ll have to JOIN US to survive.

Sent to Earth to prepare the world for the coming of the elder-gods, the Preditor is here to save you from being harvested when the world is ultimately invaded and destroyed. Only those wise enough to subscribe to this newspaper (and partake in the Preditor’s Guatemalan Butt-Blend coffee bean side hustle) will be saved.

Our crack team of interdimensional journalists include:

• Jasper Bark
• John Linwood Grant
• Jessica McHugh
• Patrick Freivald
• Justin Coates

and a group of informants that can’t be named (for their own safety), with special guests including visitors from the past, beings from alternate dimensions and timelines, characters from popular as well as estranged fiction, and of course the elder gods (Cthulhu fhtagn!).

On the rare lucky day that he’s taking a break from global domination, you might even be blessed with a visit from our Preditor-in-Chief with his Letters from the Preditor column. But don’t take my word for it. The Preditor breaks it all down here in a completely professional, non-eggyweggish milieu. (https://youtu.be/goIujws7VN4)

The $3 tier of Coffee Beans and Conquest gives you access to all the crazy text articles, reports, interviews, reviews, columns, and jokes. The $5 tier gives you full access to all articles, interviews, and jokes, including video, audio, and livestream news.

JOIN before the end of JULY to receive FOUR Dark Humor eBooks for FREE, including Jessica McHugh’s ridiculous (she says) collection of jokes and writing prompts, “Virtuoso at Masturbation & More McHughmorous Musings.”

https://www.patreon.com/ConquestBeans

SO SIGN UP FOR COFFEE BEANS AND CONQUEST TODAY!

Do you like Holmes, M R James, strange investigations, Victorian tales, and period drawings?  Of course you do, so today, dear listener, we offer chaotic interconnections, as we recently found something online we rather liked. No, not chicken carcasses this time, but  art by Sidney Paget, the great Holmes illustrator, gifted to the co-creator of detective Flaxman Low, writer Hesketh Prichard, by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

For quick context, writer Hesketh Prichard (of whom we say much more later) was a friend of Conan Doyle, and a fellow member of the Authors Cricket Club, founded in 1892. You can see both of them in the photograph below:

Authors v Artists, May 1903: Authors in back row, left to right: E. W. Hornung (1st), E. V. Lucas (2nd), P. G. Wodehouse (3rd), J. C. Snaith (4th), A. C. Doyle (6th), H. V. Hesketh-Prichard (7th), A. Kinross (furthest right). Front row: S. F. Bullock (2nd from left), J. M. Barrie (3rd from right), G. C. Ives (2nd from right), A. E. W. Mason (sitting on ground).

J M Barrie and Conan Doyle both encouraged Hesketh Prichard to write fiction, and it seems that Conan Doyle gave at least two copies of Sidney Paget’s Holmes illustrations to his friend.

One was the plate “Is there any other point which I can make clear?” from the ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’. The other is shown here, “Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes” from ‘The Adventure of the Norwood Builder’. Note the inscription…

Rather neat, we thought. And searching around, it seems that more details of the nature and whereabouts of Paget’s Holmes illustrations can be found here, on a site dedicated to tracing them: http://www.bestofsherlock.com/sidney-paget-original-art.htm

HOLMES AND THE WEIRD

Following those links, now to a tale which manages to include both Flaxman Low and Sherlock Holmes whilst at the same time following up on elements of an M R James story.

Some time back we delved into the issue of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and wilder re-imaginings of the Great Detective (see our article  shades of sherlock). And we said that we ourselves liked and wrote straight, canonical Holmes adventures, but that sometimes a really well-written excursion into the supernatural could work.

Since then, old greydog has edited two chunky volumes of such stories for Belanger Books, Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives, with tales which question or reinforce Holmes’s scepticism. Both volumes are out now, some 700pp of mystery and malevolence.

Anyway, back then, we also mentioned The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ed. John Joseph Adams, 2009), but had only dipped in and out of that anthology.

Afterwards, we came across this review, entirely by accident, on Goodreads:

The Things That Shall Come Upon Them (Barbara Roden)

“…this story should be taken as the model for Holmes-meets-Occult kind of adventures… But more importantly, in this story Sherlock Holmes does NOT do anything that goes against the canonical template of his thoughts & action, and the supernatural element is presented with its chilling moments and menace through the interpretations of the events as done by Flaxman Low… And the topping is that the story actually ties up a few loose ends in one of the greatest horror stories of all times (clue: the most-anthologised story by M.R. James).”

The tale was originally published in the Gaslight Grimoire anthology in 2008. In the introduction to it in Improbable Adventures, the author says:

“The story setting – Lufford Abbey – former home of Julian Karswell of M R James’s classic ‘Casting the Runes’ – came after I watched, with our son, the film version of ‘Casting the Runes’, Night of the Demon, and found myself wondering what happened to Karswell’s home after he died in somewhat mysterious circumstances, in France. The involvement of a ‘Dr Watson’ in James’s story was a gift from the writing gods.”

And here, for reference, is Dr Watson, from M R James’s text:

The conductor George was thoughtful, and appeared to be absorbed in calculations as to the number of passengers. On arriving at his house he found Dr Watson, his medical man, on his doorstep. ‘I’ve had to upset your household arrangements, I’m sorry to say, Dunning. Both your servants hors de combat. In fact, I’ve had to send them to the Nursing Home.’

‘Good heavens! what’s the matter?’

‘It’s something like ptomaine poisoning, I should think: you’ve not suffered yourself, I can see, or you wouldn’t be walking about. I think they’ll pull through all right.’

THE THAMES HORROR and Other Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, four of Barbara Roden’s Holmesian tales including the above, is also available from Amazon and Calabash Press:

thames horror from calabash

thames horror on amazon uk

Finally we travel from Arthur and Monty directly to Hesketh,  and in relation to Paget’s work, consider some illustrations by B E Minns.

Benjamin Edwin Minns (1863 – 1937) was a leading Australian watercolorist, but from 1895 to 1915, he worked in England, contributing to St Paul’s Magazine, Punch, The Strand Magazine, the Bystander and other publications as well as sending drawings to The Bulletin.

(We can’t help feeling that Minns looks rather like M R James in the painting above)

As part of his work for London publishers, he produced a series of plates for Flaxman Low’s adventures in 1899…

HESKETH, VAYDOUX AND SLOTHS

We think it’s fair to say that if you are called Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard (1876-1922) and nicknamed ‘Hex’ at school, you ought to do something interesting with your life. The fascinating HVH-P did not let anyone down.

He hunted for (probably) extinct giant sloths in South America, helped counter German snipers on the Great War, played a mean game of cricket (as above), and explored the world. Through Trackless Labrador is one of his, for example, and he brought back some of the first reports of vodoun from the interior of Haiti. He could have been invented for the Boy’s Own Library.

In 1899, Prichard was the first white man to cross the interior of the black island republic since 1803, and he wrote a rather prejudiced book about it called Where Black Rules White. The nasty politics of the period (and basic humanity aside), it does include an interesting chapter on Vaydoux (voodoo, vodoun), where he describes practices he saw for his own eyes:

“As she danced she cleared her throat and spat with a noise like artillery coming into action. The huge black woman in the centre droned on, and to the drum-beat was added the chink of a key on metal. The Mamaloi quickened in her sinuous dancing. The heat was terrific; humanity sweltered there. And over all presided a portrait of the German Emperor, whose eye I seemed to catch at this juncture.

“The Papaloi, a small and filthy old man, crouched at one side, as the Mamaloi caught the cock from the hands of the big woman, and, holding it by the neck, flung it over her head and shoulder. Her face was distorted with frenzy; round and round she twisted, accompanied by a swifter measure of the same dead song. She laid the cock upon the heads of the worshippers and began to whirl more and more rapidly to the hurrying, maddening drumming. Suddenly she straightened her arm, spun the cock round and round, its flapping wings beating impotently upon the air. A snowstorm of feathers floated up as she stood with rapt eyes and bared teeth, twirling; then she flung up her hand, and the headless body flew over her shoulder.

“Her excitement was horrible; she pressed the bleeding neck to her lips, and, when she slowly withdrew her hand, stood for an instant fixed and immovable, her lips and teeth stained red.”

With his mother Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard, ‘Hex’ wrote a series of occult detective stories. She also accompanied him on some of his travels, but that’s another matter…

THE FLAXMAN LOW STORIES

Warning: Occasional spoilers do follow.

M R James, said of the stories which follow:

“K and Hesketh Prichard’s ‘Flaxman Low’ is most ingenious and successful but rather over-technically ‘occult’”

The adventures of Flaxman Low were originally attributed to E and H Heron, possibly because the printers couldn’t fit both their full names on the covers. Published in 1898-99, there were twelve stories in total, stories which brought his character onto the occult detective roll of honour. These tales are interesting, unusual and come with a twist of the new science of psychology (these are the 1890s, remember). But wait…

We re-read the Heron family, and realised that this stuff is, in fact, frequently nuts. Enjoyable, but nuts. The detective himself is “one of the leading scientists of the day”, whose real name is not disclosed. He is also an accomplished sportsman, and a record-breaking hammer-thrower, strong and lean with a high forehead, long neck and thin moustache. We learn this early on, which gets us all a-quiver and ready for the horrors.

And boy did we have trouble picking which horrors to feature. So much gold in a shallow river. We have rarely felt so dumbfounded when we put a book down. Here are two of Flaxman Low’s encounters and discoveries, to give you the idea:

• A dead black servant found mouldering in a tiny cupboard after growing poisonous fungi, derived from deadly African spores, in there. Helpfully we are told: “how or why he made use of them are questions that can never be cleared up now”.
• A ghost which eventually turns into a vampire which decides to inhabit the remains of a recently-unwrapped Egyptian mummy. As an extra, the ghost/vampire/mummy may have come originally from an ancient barrow-mound. It’s like the entire Hammer Horror catalogue in twelve pages.

Flaxman Low the Man has a number of noble characteristics, apart from his high forehead. Firstly, he attributes almost everything to his advanced knowledge of psychology and study of psychic manifestations. When he can’t really answer someone’s question, he helpfully replies:

“Everybody who…. investigates the phenomena of spiritism will, sooner or later, meet in them some perplexing element, which is not to be explained by any of the ordinary theories. For reasons into which I need not now enter, this present case appears to me to be one of these.”

A wonderful paragraph, which in greydog’s humbler stories would have been rendered thus:

Inspector Chiltern: What was that, then?

Henry: Haven’t the faintest, old chap.

Secondly, he decides for quite unknown reasons to put everyone in danger (except himself) by declaring halfway through most stories that he has pretty much solved the case but won’t give them the answer until lots more harm has been done. We felt very Miss Marple sometimes, even at the end:

“But Aunt Jane, you still haven’t explained how the one-armed werewolf which killed Colonel Smythe knew that the spectral squid would be blamed…”

Thirdly, he likes burning/shooting/knocking things down as a quick end to the matter. If he had been written with a touch more Indiana Jones, the stories would be perfect. We have to commend to you the final scene with the barrow-wight/ghost/vampire/mummy, in which it is despatched by putting the bullet-riddled and beaten remains into a boat and giving them a Viking funeral. You couldn’t make this up – except the Heron family did.

There are tales in the collection which have genuine merit, but you have to pick and choose. To finish this piece we want to ruin one particular tale in more detail. The Story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith is the first Low appearance. It starts with the traditional motif of Flaxman Low being called in by a chum. The chum has inherited a house, and surprisingly, the house can’t be let for long because the tenants run away or shoot out the skirting boards. Financially embarrassed, the chum asks for help, and…

This story is wonderful, especially as it veers into Lovecraft before Lovecraft in its descriptions:

“The sensation he experienced as it moved was of some ponderous, pulpy body, not crawling or creeping, but spreading… then he became conscious of a pair of glassy eyes, with livid, everted lids, looking into his own… they were watery, like the eyes of a dead fish, and gleamed with a pale, internal lustre.”

This description follows the sighting of a bladder-like object regularly going into one of the rooms, but never there when pursued. “The bladder-like object may be the key to the mystery.” Low pronounces before any real investigation has started. There’s a detective for you.

It turns out that a leprous uncle who disappeared had died in the house, and is haunting it. Flaxman Low has a novel solution – they pull the house down. In doing so they find a malformed skeleton “under the boarding at an angle of the landing”. Low reveals that the uncle’s spirit has been intermittently animating the remains, at which point we kneel before Hesketh Vernon Hesketh Pritchard (and his mum) in awe.

You see, the bladder object was a bandaged, leprous foot, apparently visible when the rest of the body was not; marks on the sand-strewn landing were caused by walking sticks – lame ghost, apparently; the spirit had somehow become huge and pulpy despite animating a wrecked skeleton, and anyway, the leprous uncle who could hardly move had for some reason hidden himself ingeniously under the landing floorboards before he died.

We so get it. And there are many different versions of the collected tales available, new or second-hand, some of which only include six stories – look for the longer editions if you want to get all twelve.

The excellent blog site Skulls in the Stars has a nice summary of Flaxman Low, and it seems a shame not to quote that:

• Preferred tools: encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural,
• incredible observational skills
• Opponents: malevolent spirits
• Success rate: Above average
• Affectations: Always has a theory, but hardly ever shares it
• Quotation: “Yet I can assure you that if you take the trouble to glance through the pages of the psychical periodicals you will find many statements at least as wonderful.”

Assessment: Low is a moderately good psychic investigator, though a relatively passive one. He allows skeptical and unprepared bystanders to accompany him on dangerous cases far too often. Furthermore, he is often slow to act, to such an extent that people often die before the problem gets resolved. Still, he knows his supernatural phenomena, and he generally puts an end to the troubling manifestations.

We applaud Skulls in the Stars, a site which manages to combine optics and physics with a love of classic pulp and horror. Such an animal suits our own lurcher-and-weird-fiction outlook. You can find it here: skulls in the stars

And there you have him, Flaxman Low, the occult detective with a difference. You really have been warned. For more on occult detctives in general, purchase a copy of Occult Detective Magazine, and see other pages here, or call in at Tim Prasil‘s site, which includes a very helpful chronology:

The Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives

(Some of the above on the Flaxman Low tales appeared on this site in 2016)

More to come in the next few days. Subscribe for free (top left) to be alerted when we next venture out. No vampiric mummy barrow ghosts will call…

“It’s not Frankenstein – it’s Frankenstein’s monster!”

Today, dear listener, we explore recent books by those who have followed in the wake of the remarkable Mary Woollencraft Shellfish, author of Extreme Surgery for Girls: How to Construct A Real Husband (aka Frankenstein). And even better, we have spared any  expense by commissioning someone already into this stuff, our regular guest reviewer Dave Brzeski. It took us several lightning storms to get Dave going again and off the slab, but here we are…

FRANKENSTEIN IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY

by Dave Brzeski

Mary Shelley created a monster! I’m not talking about Frankenstein’s creation here – I’m talking about the book itself. Rarely has a single novel given birth to so many ‘sequels’ and re-imaginings as Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus.

There are an awful lot of Frankenstein books on the market these days. For the purpose of this review, I’m limiting myself to novels – no comics, short stories, TV shows, films etc. They must be either stand alone, or part of a series first published since the beginning of the millennium. And I must consider them to be of a decent standard. Life is too short to waste time on bad books. I have no doubt missed more than a few. Please feel free to mention any egregious omissions in the comments.

This article/review has been a long time coming. I actually wrote most of the Planisek part back in 2014, for a review on the British Fantasy Society website. I’d originally intended to cover all the books that were currently available in each series, but Frank Schildiner was already working on his third when I first came up with the idea – in fact it’s now available. Then I decided that it had been so long between volumes of Pete Planisek’s trilogy that I’d need to re-read the first volume, before I could move on to the second. I also realised that Dean Koontz’s series ran to five volumes and there was simply no way… Putting this piece together was going to have to be squeezed in between other review commitments, editing various books and a magazine. If I stuck with the original plan I’d never get it done. So I decided to limit it to the first book in each series.

1) Derrick Ferguson

Derrick Ferguson’s The Madness of Frankenstein (Pulpwork Press 2014) has to be considered from the perspective of what it actually is – and that is a love letter to Hammer Films!

It’s a page-turner of a novella, which follows Peter Holden, an enthusiastic doctor who considers Frankenstein to be a misunderstood genius. Holden himself is under trial at the beginning of the story, for Frankenstein-like crimes and blasphemy and about to be sentenced to death, when he is rescued by a beautiful messenger who convinces his judges that he could provide useful information if given over to the care and questioning of Doctor Edward Voss, director of the Vandicutt Institute for the Incurably Insane.

It’s a fast-paced pulp adventure story, told with tongue firmly in cheek and many a sly wink. The astute reader will recognise many of the names that characters and places are given – such as Wrightson and Moorcock. Some are clearly nods to Ferguson’s influences. Justicer Wrightson is a Solomon Kane like figure – if Kane was a total arsehole. Those of us well versed in classic television shows will know that trusting a witch named Angelique is never going to end well. The Hammer Film influence is served with a good helping of 1980s horror movie gore just for good measure. Those who prefer a clear cut good versus evil element to their fiction should be warned – there are no good characters to be found in this book, and little evidence of any with a balanced state of mind.

It is, I have to say, not a perfect book. There are a few anachronisms and too many typos. One can’t look too closely at the science involved, obviously – let’s not forget that this aspect is influenced not only by Hammer Films, but also the earlier Universal horror classics. Having said that, I was very taken with the clever, if unlikely variation on a crash cart, which was powered by a tank of giant electric eels. By sheer coincidence I recently watched the I, Frankenstein film (which came out in 2014, same year as this book) which used the same idea. Curiosity led me to ask Derrick Ferguson who actually originated the idea and he informed me that it was first seen in the Kenneth Branagh movie, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994).

In conclusion, this is a fairly fast, fun read, although it would have benefited from one more editing pass. I was quite sorry to discover that Ferguson has no plans to continue this into a series.

2) Frank Schildiner

Frank Schildiner has contributed three novels to the Frankenstein mythos so far. All are actually continuations of the French pulp Frankenstein books of Jean-Claude Carrière. Carrière’s version of our favourite monster is given the name Gouroull and he’s not the sympathetic character we’ve come to know and love. Gouroull is pure evil – a nihilist who wants nothing more than to eradicate humanity. He reminded me slightly of the Marvel Comics villain, Thanos, except if Gouroull met Lady Death, he’d likely want to destroy her too! Gouroull is also insanely powerful, easily besting warriors, witches and even vampire lords in his quest to procure a suitable skeleton on which to build a mate.

The first book, The Quest of Frankenstein is entirely given over to Gouroull’s obsession with creating a new race. In this quest he is aided by H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West. The crossovers do not end there. Gouroull encounters many well-known characters from film and literature in his travels. Schildiner even gives us a helpful chapter by chapter breakdown of his character sources in the Afterword.

Do I like the basic concept of an utterly evil, insanely powerful Frankenstein’s Monster? – not particularly, if I’m honest. I’ve yet to read any of Carrière’s six Gouroull novels. English translations are finally being published, but since they were written in the late 50s, they don’t fit the brief of this article. As it is, I rather suspect I wouldn’t be a huge fan. That said, Schildiner writes a fast-paced pulp adventure that I found myself enjoying very much and I do plan on reading the follow-ups at some point.

3) Edward M Erdelac

Edward M. Erdelac is the third of the modern pulp fiction authors whose take on the Frankenstein legend I’m examining. This one was a surprise! I am well familiar with Erdelac’s work and have enjoyed all that I’ve read, but I wasn’t truly prepared for the sheer scope of Monstrumführer. On the one hand, it’s another classic pulp adventure involving the infamous Dr. Mengele’s attempts to use Dr Frankenstein’s notes to turn the tide of the second world war. On the other it’s a thought-provoking and informative look at that dark period of human history through the eyes of Jotham, a young Jew, as he witnesses and experiences horrors that remain for most of us the province of books and movies. Erdelac pulls no punches whatsoever, as he not only calls to task the pure evil of the Nazis, but also the Jews for the attitudes that fuelled the rage against them in the first place. The monster himself is put to good use as a relatively objective viewpoint. I honestly can’t recommend this one highly enough.

4) Pete Planisek

OK, Planisek, where’s book two? This was my initial reaction on finishing Pete Planisek’s Frankenstein: A Life Beyond. This is the first book of a trilogy, and trilogies can be very frustrating when they’re this interesting, and the following parts are not yet available.

There are a lot of direct ‘sequels’ to Frankenstein around, but this one easily puts all the others in the shade. So much so that, in my own head, I’m accepting this as cannon with the original.

Ernest Frankenstein is the brother of Victor, creator of the famous ‘monster’. He’s relocated to Ireland, after the deaths of his entire family, and is married to Ailis Iierney Frankenstein. Ernest returns to the city of his birth, Geneva, to find out the truth about the mysterious fate of his brother, Victor. He leaves his wife pregnant and gravely ill, although he isn’t aware of this. As he continues on his quest, he meets his wife’s half-sister, now a spy for the French, and a mysterious clan of gypsies, now divided into two warring factions over differing interpretations of an ancient prophecy. Victor’s creation is ever present, but solidly in the background for most of the book and Ernest is totally unaware of the details of his brother’s work.

The book is well-written and meticulously researched. It’s set for the most part in 1809, but has frequent flashbacks to events involving the Frankenstein clan – blissfully unaware of exactly what Victor is up to – which run concurrently with Mary Shelley’s novel.

If I have any criticism, it’s that the character of Ernest’s best friend, Jack Clerval – the son of Henry Clerval from the original novel – reads very American to me. I’m fairly sure the Clerval family had no American roots, so perhaps Planisek, who is American, slipped in his prose style a little here.

This is a complex, well thought out and exceptionally entertaining novel. As I mentioned, this is the first of three books, but it does end in a reasonably satisfying place. Nevertheless, I’m very much looking forward to reading the follow-ups. Book two, Frankenstein: Soul’s Echo has actually been available for a couple of years now, but given the huge wait between that and the first volume, I’ve decided to hold off until I have all three in my hands and then read the entire series.

5) Dean Koontz

The first major work of the new millennium to be based upon Shelley’s creation, albeit the last to be read by me, is probably Dean Koontz‘s Frankenstein series, which began in 2005 with Prodigal Son. Initially published with a co-writer credit for Kevin J. Anderson, this is as much a re-imagining as it is a sequel to the original novel. Interestingly, Anderson’s co-writer credit was removed from later editions, as was that for Ed Gorman on the second book in the series, and from that point on they were published as solely the work of Koontz. The late Ed Gorman stated on his blog that, “I always said those books were Dean’s. As he has explained, collaboration just isn’t for him. They are his and his alone. He wrote them.”

It was originally planned as a TV series, but Koontz walked away, after a disagreement with the studio over changes. The series became a TV movie, I, Frankenstein (2004), with Koontz’s blessing, as long as they removed his name from the credits. He then decided to take the story in a different direction in a series of novels.

I admit to having not seen the TV movie when I read the book, but I can’t deny that after reading the first chapter of Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, I would love to see a faithful TV series adaptation. As with Carrière and Schildiner’s Gouroull, Koontz gives the monster a new name, that being Deucalion. Otherwise, the two versions couldn’t be more different. Here we are reintroduced to Mary Shelley’s sympathetic monster, who after a couple of centuries is living a peaceful existence in a Tibetan monastery. He recognises his capacity for violence, but like a recovering addict he’s actively and successfully taken up a better lifestyle. His peaceful existence is broken when a messenger brings him evidence that his creator also still alive – after 200 years! After his monk friend gives him some extensive tattooing to help disguise the ruined side of his face – a consequence of his having angered his creator – he sets out to investigate.

Carson O’Connor, a maverick female homicide detective with an attitude, firmly cements the TV series feel of the book. She has a partner, Michael Maddison, with whom she shares the inevitable sexual tension. Yes, it’s slightly cliché, but it works. It almost goes without saying that they have rival cops in the police department, who are far less concerned about how they do their job, as long as it gets done and they get the credit. Koontz has a little fun by giving them names from the classic Universal horror films. Jonathan Harker (a character from Dracula) and Dwight Fry (an actor who appeared in Dracula and several Frankenstein films). I confess I found this mildly annoying, as the images I have in my head from those films don’t really fit.

From here on it gets complicated. Frankenstein, under the alias Victor Helios, is up to his old tricks, but so much more so. As one would expect, he’s progressed somewhat from the days of strange equipment, powered by lightning, reanimating patchwork creatures made from corpses. He’s well up on all the latest breakthroughs in cloning and genetic engineering. He has somehow found a way to make himself immortal and he’s far more of a monster than his original creation ever was. Several of his newer creations are now wandering around New Orleans; they look perfectly human, but they most certainly are not. It’s interesting to note that both this, and Schildiner’s novels involve a desire to replace a deeply flawed humanity with an ‘improved’ version, but one is led by Dr Frankenstein and the other by the original monster.

O’Connor and Maddison have a serial killer to catch, which turns out to be two serial killers. Things get weird very quickly. Eventually, they team up with Deucalion and the book ends with that particular case closed. But O’Connor and her partner now know who Helios is, and that he needs to be stopped. A perfect end to a story that is intended as a pilot for a series, even if it never happened. The books continue the story for four more volumes.

As a writer, Koontz is very prolific and I’ve always found his work patchy to say the least. I read several of his horror novels in the 1980s and really liked them. Since then, I’d come to the conclusion that he was simply churning books out and lost interest. This one was, for me, a return to form, despite the clichéd elements. I really enjoyed it and I fully intend to read the rest of the series.

Having previously stated that I was not going to include other media outside of novels in this feature, I found that I simply could not resist searching out a copy of the TV movie and checking to see how much of Koontz’s story and characters survived the adaptation.

In some ways I was surprised at how good a job they did, in others I was pretty disappointed. As one would expect, the story is drastically simplified. Gone is the Tibetan monastery, gone is the opening scene with Carson O’Connor, which would have worked so well as an introduction to the character. Perhaps, had it gone to series, they would have re-instated that scene in episode one. The important plot point of the serial killer murders having been committed by two separate people is ditched. But then they left out so much detail about the killings that it made little difference.

The thing that really struck me was the level at which they sacrificed logic for style. It’s a Frankenstein story, so it must be gothic. This means it has to be very dimly lit throughout and dirty, oh so dirty! Victor Helios’ laboratory, where he makes his creations is filthy. Maybe he so improved on nature with his work that they were immune to infection from the get go – they would have to be! No doubt all the modern scientific knowledge Helios had picked up removed the necessity for complex surgical procedures, so he that he could safely work in ridiculously bad lighting.

It’s not only Helios that suffers from this, though. No one has anything remotely resembling decent lighting in the whole of New Orleans. Now I admit I have never been there, but I doubt it’s quite that bad. We are expected to believe the young girl, who is the killer’s final victim has been in his apartment before. Yet, the entire building looks ready to be condemned and he has the vilest toilet basin I have ever laid eyes on (we see it when he handcuffs the girl to it) and, trust me, I’ve seen some bad ones in my time!

I did, however quite enjoy this TV movie and it would have been interesting to see it go to series. Parker Posey made a good Carson O’Connor. Deucalion (Vincent Perez) has less facial disfigurement here than in the books, so he didn’t need the tattooing to disguise it. Despite it’s many flaws, it’s worth a watch, but I’d recommend reading the books in preference.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397430/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2

In conclusion, there is plenty here to sate the appetite of any Frankenstein fan. As I stated, this article barely scratches the surface of what’s out there. I liked some more than others, but I consider all of the books covered here well worth reading.