Star Wars Special (but only sort of)

January 3, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Let’s give a big welcome, dear listeners, to our special guest today, the New Year. So, 2016 (can I call you that?) tell us a bit about yourself. Only three days old, and yet you’re appearing on greydogtales. Are you nervous? We have a mop and bucket in the corner of the studio, don’t worry about that. The linoleum’s washable. You’re feeling shy? Alright, well would you like to hear what’s coming up for you on this site? Tough luck – we’re doing it anyway.

Today we abandon our typical futuristic, cutting-edge approach (such as our examination of 1897 literature and obscure weird writers who were published seventy years ago) to go Star Wars mad. Which is a serious lie. However, we did have to include a ground-breaking review of the latest film, The Force Awakens, by our old friend Simon Ounsley.

Debonair man-about-town, one of the founders of the award-winning speculative magazine Interzone, and prolific fan writer, Simon graciously went to see The Force Awakens for us (but at his own expense). As a result, we can share this incisive post-modern critique with you, rendered directly from the crayon and bubblegum-packet original he handed us.

important greydogtales health warning: If you have very little sense of humour, this review will make you breathe too hard and post a lot of pointless vitriol on facebook.

So I saw ‘Star Wars – The Franchise Awakes’ today and here is my report. Warning – satirically mutated plot spoilers follow.

I was a quivering wreck by the end because it’s about 95% fight scenes and has disappointingly little of the New Age ‘Force be with you’ claptrap that I, and admittedly possibly I alone, had been hoping for. I think it was a mistake for Disney to make it over the Christmas holidays. That meant there were plenty of special effects available on the new computer they got from Santa but the supermarkets were closed so they couldn’t order new plot supplies and had to make do with ones that already been used in the previous movies.

Basically the main thing they had to do was to find Luke Skywalker so he could train a new generation of Jedi Knights to take on UKIP, sorry I mean First Order, the evil force which had arisen from the ashes of Joy Division when their lead singer Darth Vader died (to be replaced in this new movie by Professor Snape from Hogwarts). This meant destroying the brand new iDeathStar 7S by disabling the capacitator and taking down the Maplin website so they couldn’t order a new one. This they managed to do fairly easily – save the ubiquitous Gandalf-style death plunge – which achieved everything they wanted to do except to find Luke Skywalker which was what they wanted to do.

Fortunately the day was saved by the spontaneous regeneration of Skippy The Bush Kanga-r2d2 who was able to report that Luke had fallen down a mineshaft and been sulking there all along. (“What’s that you say, Skippy?” Beep. “The map is on your hard drive?” Beeb beep.) So all’s well that ends well. I think more could have been made of the sub-plot about the awkwardness of making arrangements for Christmas lunch when so many close family members had gone over to the dark side but the movie’s main lesson (in homage to Basil Fawlty) came over clearly enough: when you’re battling an incipient Jedi Knight ‘don’t mention the Force.’

Thank you, Simon Ounsley. We’d certainly pay to see that. If we went to the cinema. If we had any money.

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But back to this New Year thing. We have some terrific content lined up for you, and some ambitious plans. So they’ll go wrong. But in case they don’t, here’s a taste of things which might be to come…

More Lurchers for Beginners – copious photographic and written insights into the world of longdogs, including shocking revelations of Chilli’s celebrity life-style and Django with no pants on yet again.
Weird art and features from the Folk-Horror Revival – and here are some pieces from the artists who we hope will be joining us.

christmas day empty norwich 06 — by david senior

Dream Figures sketch, Copyright Paul Watson 2014

10467737_833208770131254_1497302470_n — by bvrzerk

Deeper into the comics and graphics novels weirdness – more wondrous Argentinian illustrators, including added Quique Alcatena, and a feature with comics writer, fiction writer and editor Mike Chinn of Starblazer fame.
More exclusive interviews – including British artist/writer Andy Paciorek, and starting with a double-feature: authors Clarissa Johal and Anita Stewart talk about their paranormal and horror writing, and women in horror. Or horrible women – something clever like that.
Classic authors of the supernatural & strange – this year’s proto-list includes Fitz-James O’Brien, Ambrose Bierce, and the promised H Russell Wakefield piece which never quite seems to get finished.
More weird audio and audiovisual links – for those of you who, like us, get a headache from reading all the time and have trouble looking up complicated terms like “post-Ligotti reflective metafiction”.
Maybe a site crossover or three – for example, we’re now avid fans of the genial Jim McLeod‘s Ginger Nuts of Horror site, and obviously want to ingratiate ourselves there, like a wrinkled old remora who has found a big, popular shark and is wetting itself with excitement.

ginger nuts of horror

And themes – we love themes, because they’re extra work and never quite make sense. This year we fancy Nautical Horror, for one – from ghost stories on the high seas to monstrous abyssal creatures. A bit of William Hope Hodgson and H P Lovecraft might also creep into this one. Dagon, french-fries and a nice hot cup of tea – the Innsmouth pensioners’ deal.

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Well, 2016, what do you think of that fabulous line-up? No, don’t do that, it’s not nice and it’s not clever. I think maybe we’ll come back to you when you’re a bit older. Can someone wipe this microphone down and fetch the bucket, please…

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Parodies & Possibilities: End of the Year Part the Last

December 31, 2015 greydogtales Leave a comment

More curiosities arising from this year’s greydogtales articles, some stumbling reflections and a bit of writing news. Oh no, it’s our final End of the Year review. This isn’t a ‘best of’ or self-congratulatory creature. Ideas and connections spark ideas and connections. Something new arose after almost every post, often something more interesting than the original whimsy.

And it is the end of the year as we know it. Except to the many people who have a different one. Some Orthodox Christians celebrate the New Year on 16th January, going by the old Julian character. Our circle of friends in Yorkshire always celebrates the Chinese New Year, which moves about around the end of January and early February. And if you feel daring, the Aztec version starts on 12th March.

acalend001p1 — an aztec calendar for easy use

We’ll be conventional today and go for the regular one, with a last look at what emerged from greydogtales broadcasts in 2015. We gave the lurchers a good run on here a couple of days ago, so now we go hard-core (ish).

Weird Art was one of our most productive themes in this regard, and it hasn’t finished yet. Every post led to more artists being mentioned, and in some cases suggestions for (or even offers of) further illustrated features. Much to our surprise, we ended up skittering around the UK, the United States, Denmark and Argentina.

John Coulthart raised the name of Santiago Caruso, who produces strange and surreal imagery, some of which has adorned the covers of weird fiction. Caruso has described himself as “a Symbolist, who recreates the deformation of reality that the human being perceives”.

34eeed414049bb674ce8bba03c7013b7-d3dkast — santiago caruso

The Weird Fiction Review website has an interview with Caruso, if you want to know more:

weird fiction review

And you might guess that Caruso is Argentinian. It has been a genuine pleasure to conspire with fellow Argentinians and creative friends Sebastian Cabrol and Diego Arandojo during the year, digging deeper into South American weird art.

Following frequent mentions of Quique Alcatena, Diego recently brought another of Alcatena’s works to our attention – Empire of Blood, concerning an alternate British-ruled India. More about this in later posts.

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The imagery of folk-horror came to the fore as the year started to close, mostly thanks to the work of Andy Paciorek and other enthusiasts, who are reviving and re-interpreting this area with great vigour.

Andrew Paciorek Fir Darring — fir darring, andy paciorek

We don’t usually think that the world needs more genres or sub-genres, but there is something in this one which hangs together, as exemplified in the recent Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies book mentioned here before. If you’re not interested in British countryside weirdness, think Appalachian folk studies or the film “Winter’s Bone” – the brooding darkness of small communities and their secrets.

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And what of John Linwood Grant and his misunderstood relative, J Linseed Grant? Well, we have more Good News from the Spiritualist Telegraph to slide in before year’s end. With luck and a following wind, Spring will see the publication of the Tales of the Last Edwardian novella, “A Study in Grey”, as part of 18th Wall’s Science of Detection series.

Put briefly, early on in their new career, Henry Dodgson and Abigail Jessop assist one Captain Redvers Blake in uncovering Edwardian treachery. Oh, and Sherlock Holmes plays his part. It’s been an enjoyable challenge to write a novella which is canonical to both Tales of the Last Edwardian and Conan Doyle’s creation, without compromising or screwing up either. Possibly.

We’re also pleased to confirm that more jlg weird stories will definitely be published on the open market next year, thanks to frenetic anthology and magazine submissions between blog posts. And Sandra’s First Pony, the Enid Blyton/H P Lovecraft crossover by J Linseed Grant, continues unabated, whether people want it or not. Harrumble!

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Oh, and on the subject of harrumble, we discovered a new profanity this year – cockwomble. We can see many uses for this in 2016.

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Exploring William Hope Hodgson and Carnacki during our Octoberfest, you may remember that we raised the subject of pastiches and parodies, which led to David Langford‘s excellent collection He Do the Time Police in Different Voices. The connection is Dave’s Dagon Smythe stories based loosely on Carnacki. These parodies are witty, intelligent and often quite hilarious, whilst his pastiches can be quite loving, and we recommend them all.

timepol he do the time police in different voices

But – the sequel to this is that as a result we went into the Magic Loft and unearthed a treasured copy of John Sladek‘s The Steam-Driven Boy and Other Strangers (1973).

The connection is that Sladek includes ten great parodies of classic SFF authors. Thus you can find, between the two volumes, such pleasures as:

Three Isaac Asimov parodies – Broot Force by Iclick as-i-move (Sladek), Tales of the Black Scriveners and The Last Robot Story by Is**c As*m*v (Langford).
Classics such as The Purloined Butter, purportedly by Poe, H G W*lls story, Pemberly’s Start-Afresh Calliope (both Sladek) and a wonderful G K Chesterton Father Brown parody The Spear of the Sun, by G K Ch*st*rt*n (Langford).

Our favourite from the Sladek volume is the piss-take of Cordwainer Smith, One Damned Thing After Another, but you’d probably have to know Cordwainer Smith’s odd and marvellously different creation, The Instrumentality, to get it. Which comment should lead us on to a celebration of The Instrumentality, but maybe some other time. You can get the Sladek here:

the steam-driven boy and other strangers

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We still have deep love for classic authors, of course, especially the weird or supernatural ones, and so we introduced E G Swain, Sir Andrew Caldecott, William Hope Hodgson (of course), E & H Heron, and Henry S Whitehead, with a smattering of H P Lovecraft and M R James mentions along the way. As this theme continues in 2016, it will be scientifically based on things I find in the loft and stories I can half-remember. From thirty years ago.

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There you have it, dearest listeners. Broadcasting out of a derelict shepherd’s hut on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, and living off what the longdogs don’t get first, this has been greydogtales 2015. Thank you for tuning in, and special thanks to those creative human beans who have made greydogtales so collaborative and given up their time, artwork or ideas. We hope that somewhere along the way you have all found something to interest or amuse you,

Literature, lurchers and life, the weirdest things you’ll ever meet.

Next time: Our imagined calendar of what we hope to cover, and the beginning of 2016 weird…

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Days of Whine and Lurchers: End of the Year Review Part 2

December 29, 2015 greydogtales Leave a comment

A mostly canine review today, to do justice to the longdogs. Some unseen photos of our pack, some new photos from Katy of her longdog Eva, and the curious monastic regime of Django, one of our own little monsters. We do spoil it towards the end, though, by mentioning book stuff again…

twigmud1 — our only short-dog, doing something disgusting as usual

As we said last episode, the popularity of the Lurchers for Beginners series took us by surprise. It wasn’t even meant to be a series, for starters. During the year we covered What is a Lurcher, Lurchers and Your (ex) Garden, Common Questions about Lurchers, Lurcher Equipment and sundry other related topics.

packplans — chilli explains to django exactly how the garden will be destroyed (it doesn’t look like this any more)

And although we use lurcher as a general cover-all term, people still ask us what we mean by longdogs, so we’ll slam it up one last time. Typically, a longdog is a cross between two sighthounds. Greyhound or whippet is often one half of the blend; the other can be saluki, deerhound or any other sighthound. Mix and match to your heart’s content. But don’t expect to be able to catch them…

To illustrate longdog types, we posted photos every so often of Django, Chilli, Ann’s Roxy (beautiful deerhound x) and Michaela’s Nicky (the amazing tripod). As we’re nearly out of year, we just have time to add Katy’s Eva, who is, by general reckoning, a greyhound x saluki. These are particularly nice because a couple of the shots really do show the “long” part of the name. Katy kindly sent us these after contact through Lurcher Link (photo credits – Katy herself and Peter Austin).

eva6 — eva demonstrates that lurcher/longdog smile

eva1 — now you see why they’re called *long* dogs

Many thanks to Katy, and to others who have sent longdog photos throughout 2015.

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djangonose — it’s dinner time – do something, now!

Speaking of heart’s content, we have now pinned down the strange connection between Brother Cadfael and Django. Dogs vary (surprisingly) in how they tell you they want something.

Thinking about some of our earlier dogs, Radar used to use a peremptory single bark: I want it, now. Jade merely looked aggrieved and waited patiently. Twiglet, still astonishingly with us at 16, is given to both the Radar-bark and a hefty shove or bat with a large paw: I want it now and I’m going to hit you until I get it. Chilli signals her requirements by pushing a very cold nose in your face and knocking your glasses off.

jadegrin — our late jade in a cheery mood

But Django… well, he whines. Boy, does he whine.

This might be fine on occasion, except that he adheres to a form of traditional monastic timetable which links every part of the day to a particular service. You know, where the monks have to traipse into the chapel at set hours, regardless of what else is happening. I recently managed to pin down Django’s exact schedule of service, which goes as follows:

0700 hrs Breakfast – large bowl of yummy raw mince and bits.
1000 hrs First Walkies – rain, sunshine, tempest, doesn’t matter. Poo forecast – light to middling.
1300 hrs Lunch – scraps, chicken bits, anything that falls out of our sandwiches.
1500 hrs Formal Nap – everyone should go upstairs and doze in a heap together, possibly with jumping on and off bed if First Walkies was boring.
1700 hrs Second Walkies – especially in pouring rain, tempest etc. Poo forecast – heavy, may need multiple poo-bags.
1800 hrs Dinner – large bowl of yummy raw mince and bits, preferably with fish or yucky bits extra (liver, kidneys, heart, last night’s uneaten peas and sprouts). Everyone else’s bowl if they’re not fast enough.
2000 hrs Bone Time – forgotten at everyone’s peril.
1200 hrs Supper – the sundry bits we’d been saving for a special treat (for us).
0200 hrs Traffic direction – Chilli always takes the best dog-bed and guards it, Twiglet’s too obstinate to move, so Django has to be guided to a safe landing position.

djangotongue — you appear to be eating my sandwich

The above schedule wasn’t our idea. He decided that this was how he liked things, and set up vocal signals to train us acordingly. Any deviation is met with plaintive, highly annoying whines and general restlessness of the masses. As his regime leaves only five hours of potential human sleep, we are fortunate to have at least one of us semi-awake throughout that long day.

He is a joy, but a very whiny one when all’s said and done.

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On the non-dog, rather than the long-dog side, we explored the joys of audio. This included an article on the outstanding radio series McLevy, based on the exploits of a real life Victorian detective in the Edinburgh police. See At Last: CSI Edinburgh

So we were delighted to receive a subsequent e-mail from the talented David Ashton, the Scottish author and actor who writes McLevy (and star in it as Lieutenant Roach, McLevy’s boss). Amongst some kind remarks, he passed on the following:

The subsequent (BBC Audio) releases are scheduled for 1 October (Series 3 & 4) and 7 January 2016 (Series 5 & 6). We’ll all be in our Zimmer frames by the time it eventually comes out.

Sadly also the BBC in its wisdom have decreed that series 12 is to be the last. Series 11 is to be broadcast from Dec 14th (I think) 2015. Series 12 we haven’t recorded yet.

If you haven’t heard McLevy, buy, borrow it or download it. Episodes vary in their seriousness and topics. Some have a wry sense of humour and contain many wonderful observations on Victorian society and justice. At times, though, there are episodes which are haunting and quite horrifying, proving that you don’t need an actual monster to scare you – it just takes human nature.

I can’t judge other people’s tastes, but if you would prefer reading some McLevy as opposed to listening, you might try out one of David Ashton’s books. Fall from Grace is a good one, bringing in the infamous Tay bridge disaster. Enthusiasts of Victorian fiction might also like Nor Will He Sleep, in which Inspector McLevy meets up with one Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Jekyll and Hyde, in the city to bury his recently deceased father (link on right sidebar – to the book, not the deceased father).

Towards the end of the week, a quick update to our 2015 weird and horror-related posts, and then it’s time for 2016…

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Naked Lurchers & Quique Alcatena: End of the Year Part 1

December 27, 2015 greydogtales Leave a comment

Quite amazingly, greydogtales is FIVE. Months, of course, not years. Who would have thought that a penniless match-girl from the cholera-stricken slums of Yorkshire could rise to command such an empire of weird pleasure? No-one, of course. Instead, dear listeners, we married her…

Gosh, those tablets were hard to swallow. Much like greydogtales. But we feel better now, so for the last few posts of 2015, we’re going to wrap up our first calendar year of lurchers, literature and life by providing a miscellany of updates and oddities.

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pups2 — ‘christmas nude lurcher scandal’, the batley herald and gazette

The great controversy of the year, of course, has been the cutting-edge debate on whether or not Django should be wearing pants, given his shameless habit of lying upside down with his legs apart. So far the consensus is that as he doesn’t have his family jewels, he should get away with it.

pups1 — django’s teddy removes his pants in protest

We had two unexpected successes during 2015, both of which started as mere whimsies. The Lurcher for Beginners series, which began in early September, took off rather dramatically. We can still tell when we’ve published one of these by looking at the huge spike in readership for days afterwards. And if we don’t write about longdogs and lurchers often enough, we get sent huge spikes. So that series may have to continue in the New Year.

The other series which went down surprisingly well was our extended tribute to William Hope Hodgson, The Writer on the Borderland, throughout October. We didn’t think we could get more niche and limited, but enthusiasts of the ‘grandfather of weird fiction’ emerged in great numbers from their protective pentacles to take part. We shall have to celebrate someone far more obscure and less popular next time.

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Later in the year we discovered South America, which must have been a surprise to the South Americans, who thought they already knew who and where they were. So our first end-of-year link is to a documentary by our friend Diego Arandojo, who came on greydogtales along with the illustrator Sebastian Cabrol in November. Diego has just produced Alcatena, which looks at the life and work of the famous Argentinan cartoonist Enrique ‘Quique’ Alcatena, the creator of worlds and fantastic creatures, with contributions from colleagues, friends and family.

Batman alas - Quique — batman, quique alcatena

The documentary is predominantly in Spanish, but well worth a view even if you don’t speak the language. For one thing, Diego has captured numerous pieces of Quique’s artwork, from space opera to the Metal Men comic, and these are a joy to behold. Additionally, if you hover around after 1hr10m, you will see and hear US comics writer Chuck Dixon talking (in English) about his projects with Quique. Dixon is known for his work on Marvel’s Alien Legion, The Punisher and DC’s Batman (amongst many other things), and here he discusses the Leatherwing comic featuring ‘Pirate Batman’, and other projects he has done with Quique.

Alcatena (2015, Diego Arandojo)

Vida y obra del historietista argentino Enrique “Quique Alcatena”. Una mirada profunda sobre este creador de mundos y seres fantásticos, con el aporte testimonial de compañeros de trabajo, amigos y familia.

As we’re on Diego anyway, we might as well mention that his site lafarium now includes a new piece, available in English or in Spanish, dedicated to an interview with Edward Packard. In 1969, Packard came up with the idea of writing multi-path second-person adventures, in which the reader makes choices that affects how a story unfolds and thus how it ends. “The Adventures of You” were eventually picked up by Bantam Books and published as a popular series of children’s books. The English version should be found here:

lafarium – edward packard interview

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Towards the end of the year we chose a weird art theme, and as part of this we interviewed the creative Richard Mansfield of Mansfield Dark, looking at their work on bizarro fun films, cunning cut-outs and shadow puppetry.

Their adaptation of E F Benson‘s famous horror story The Room on the Tower, which we mentioned as forthcoming in that article, is now available on Vimeo. Follow the link below to watch it:

the room in the tower

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In August (we don’t like to be too linear), we introduced the stories of Henry S Whitehead, set for the most part in the Caribbean. Tales of jumbees and strange spirits, curses and hauntings, these stories are well worth a read. This next bit gets complicated, so do keep up.

In that article we mentioned that Whitehead was a friend of H P Lovecraft. Recently, whilst putting together an introduction to the writer H Russell Wakefield we asked the scholarly Bobby Derie about Lovecraft’s opinion of Wakefield’s work. He kindly opened up his library on this matter, and we got talking. Whitehead’s name came up, and Mr Derie pointed us to facsimiles of some of Whitehead’s few surviving letters. There are many interesting little tid-bits therein, but we particularly liked this passage:

Obeah and voodoo should be carefully distinguished. Obeah is the “White” magic; Voodoo “Black”. “Obi” (or some similar, local rendition of the first word,) is the current term for BOTH throughout the Islands. This has deluded many writers into supposing that the term PROPERLY covers all kinds of West Indian and even African magic. Such is, emphatically, not the case. Obeah is concerned with safeguarding people from natural and supernatural bad influences. Voodoo invokes such influences. To the former belong: A. Herbal medicaments. B. Fortune-telling. C. “Song-making”. To the latter belong the Worship of the Snake; “Le Chevre sans Cornes” (The Goat Without Horns) i.e child sacrifice; and “Long-Pig” i.e. , cannibalism.

November 18, 1925, to Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales.

This letter’s especial relevance is that it was written from St Croix in the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands, formerly the Danish West Indies, are the setting for some of Whitehead’s best supernatural tales.

NB. Some quotes from Lovecraft’s letters, again courtesy of the helpful Mr Derie, will feature in the H R Wakefield article in January.

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Finally for today, there have been many ghostly stories bandied about over Christmas, it being something of a tradition at this time of year. As an antidote to the troubling supernatural reverberations of those stories, we suggest the following, by the rather talented writer, broadcaster and performer John Finnemore:

Terrifying stuff, eh?

Next time, End of the Year Part Two – more updates on those sundry weirdnesses we covered during the year, and perhaos some utterly misguided plans for 2016…

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