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