Weird Fiction for August

August 20, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

When we were very young, there were small, devious goblins living in the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs which adorned our rickety farmhouse. And possibly in the old mahogany armoire as well, underneath the fusty blankets. Slugs the size of bananas crept nightly across the stone-flagged floor to investigate the dog bowl, and the kitchen smelled of pigeon innards. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

a goblin, speaking to one of our reporters yesterday

Anyway, where were we? Today we’re all about recent weird fiction and interesting books again, in an almost regular feature which we’re going to start calling “None of our Long Articles or Interviews Are Ready Yet”. But we do it because there’s so much good stuff coming out these days. Yes we do, cross someone’s else’s heart and look the other way.

An August Chiller

First up is the new book by a writer we’ve come to admire, having devoured his unusual novel The Surgeon’s Mate: A Dismemoir. We interviewed him not so long ago, and now his latest book A Brutal Chill in August is available for pre-order, to be published on 30^th August.

The world is full of stories concerning Jack the Ripper (not that they’re all bad, just that the sheer volume dilutes attention from the better ones). Alan M Clark brings new life to this area by writing what are essentially historical novels which explore the horror and darkness of the real lives of the women killed by the Whitechapel Murderer (alan m clark on greydogtales). It’s a valuable and deeply researched approach, and we doubt that A Brutal Chill in August will disappoint. Check here for UK purchase details.

a brutal chill in august on amazon uk

If this is your scene, either as a reader or as a writer interested in period detail and attitudes, Alan has also been blogging, section by section, about Jack London’s People of the Abyss. You can check out where he’s got to here:

http://wordhorde.com/the-people-of-the-abyss-liveblog-part-21/

The Graphic World

All greydogtales listeners will know that we have an inexplicable connection to Argentina – we can’t remember how it happened but we ended up enthralled by the sheer creativity of the comics and graphic novel people over there. One such chap is Luciano Vecchio, working with Totem Comics – he does some cool work, which can be seen on-line. Yes, it’s in Spanish, but the art is great in itself. This one’s Tribu Escondida – the Hidden or Unseen Tribe.

You can find more super Tribu Escondida art here:

the hidden tribe

We’re also told that HOUNDS, a graphic novel which we have mentioned before, should be available on-line in the next few weeks. An Argentinian masterpiece of classic supernatural/occult detective tales, newly interpreted by some of our favourite artists, including Sebastian Cabrol, we have some links which we’ll post when the graphic novel is up. Editorial Pictus tell us that there’s no English translation yet, but that they hope to look into this eventually.

Bleak, Bleak, Bleakity-Bleak

Rich Hawkins, that surprisingly non-Argentinian writer, has shocked the world of bleak and apocalyptic horror this year by turning into a novella engine. We say shocked in the full knowledge that there’s probably another verb but that one will do for now. ‘Mildly intrigued’ has no headline value. Rich is a fine writer, though he doesn’t half kill a lot of people, and there are usually many tears before bedtime. Rich has recently been putting out glimpses of horror direct to Amazon, ranging from shorts such as Fallen Soldier to full novellas like Scavengers. Deathcrawl is his latest one:

“When the village of Beacon Fell is hit by an epidemic of violence, Jed Kittridge is one of the few people immune to the bloodlust that has turned his friends and neighbours into killers and rapists. Insanity fills the air. Friends become enemies. And in the aftermath of such death and destruction, all that matters is survival… because the world will never be the same again.”

Although most of our Friday nights are like this, we shall read with interest.

deathcrawl on amazon uk

At Swim-Two-Swans

No? Well, you have to like Flann O’Brien, we suppose. The title’s merely an excuse to celebrate more goodness from that stylish Irish publisher Swan River Press. Their main August release is You’ll Know When You Get There, by Lynda E Rucker, the award-winning American writer. Inside, you’ll find nine unsettling stories of loss and the unusual, with an introduction by Lisa Tuttle.

Lynda Rucker said of her work, in a 2013 interview:

“I think that (a sense of inevitability) is a feature of a certain type of horror, and it is often a feature of the horror that I write. In a way, I suppose, it sort of violates a central principle of storytelling in which the protagonist needs to keep making an effort to solve the problem—the active protagonist, if you will. My protagonists often, though not always, tend to be more doomed than active.

“This is actually a really interesting question, and I’m going to have to think about it some more; I have a sense that if the protagonist is really active, the story sometimes becomes something other than horror, but I’m not sure about that!”

Nightmare Magazine On-line

Lynda has a website of her own here:

lynda e rucker

And you can find out more about this Swan River release, and other beautifully produced books from them, here:

swan river press

It’s on the Top Shelf in a Brown Paper Cover, Madam

Something which probably deserves a whole article in itself is the sudden arrival of many new dark, weird and horror magazines, both in print and on-line. This year sees the launch of Skelos, Gamut, Ravenwood Quarterly, Vastarien, Turn to Ash – and Occult Detective Quarterly (surprisingly co-edited by the old greydog himself in one of those ‘oh, why not’ moments).

We have a detailed interview/feature with Jeffrey Shanks of Skelos coming to greydogtales soon, and we’ll cover Ravenwood Press’s plans later in the year. You can always find out more about Occult Detective Quarterly’s progress above right, where we stick regular updates, or you can join the Facebook group here:

odq on facebook

Gamut is on-line only, and dedicated to the noir side, whilst Vastarien is intended to cater for the needs of those Ligottian lovers of the literary and liminal (smart stuff). We shall investigate and report back in another post.

As for now, let’s give a quick nod to Turn to Ash. This is a print-only horror fiction zine, with its first issue due out at the end of this month and out to preorder on Amazon in the last week of August. Turn to Ash Volume 1 includes:

A Scent of Sage by Jason A. Wyckoff
The Monster I Became by Betty Rocksteady
Collectable by Tim Jeffreys
While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder
The Hunter by Terrence Hannum
Sod Webworms by Adrian Ludens
Hollow-Eyed Boys by Jordan Kurella
Chelsea Grin by Michael Kelly
What Makes a Shadow by J. Daniel Stone
The Recovered Journal of Marius Vladimirescu, Last of the Clown Hunters by Andrew Wilmot
So Dreamy Inside by C.C. Adams
The Mother Chase by Alana I. Capria
A Tooth for a Tooth by Matt Thompson

You can find out about the magazine at their website:

turn to ash website

Yes, there’s lot more out as well, but we only have two researchers and they’re both longdogs. So other gems will have to wait. We can admit that our current reading list includes:

Dinosaur Valley, by K H Koehler, which looks like pulpy fun;
Black Propaganda, which you might call challenging and transgressive (it’s not for the faint-hearted), by Paul St John Mackintosh;
Lost Girl, by Adam Nevill, which basically looks like it’s going to be a Damn Good Book.

And we just finished Cult of Chaos, by Shweta Taneja, a rollicking good psychic/supernatural adventure through tantrik territory with a cool female protagonist. We ought to try and talk to Ms Taneja some time.

Off to the North Sea for two or three days to run the longdogs while it’s still technically Summer and the ice floes are being held at bay. Back by the middle of next week, and thank you all for listening…

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Willy Howe and the Goblet of Fire, with Longdogs

August 18, 2016 greydogtales 1 Comment

A short diversion, dear listener. We’ve had a lot of weird books here recently, so we’re lurchering today. We’re going east, in fact, to the North Sea and the long sands of the Holderness coast. And you get longdog photos, as well as some pontificating about folklore in the Wolds. Huzzah! Puppies…

Though it’s not exactly puppies, only Django and Chilli charging around (all pics are clickable for a larger size, by the way). Every summer we let them loose on the shores and in the rolling fields of the Wolds, where we rarely see another dog and they don’t need their muzzles. Nidderdale, where we normally like to go, is sheep country. The longdogs are fine with stationary or ambling sheep, but start to look over-excited if a sheep runs, and we don’t risk things like that. The car-boot isn’t big enough to smuggle large quantities of mutton.

djangowater — django remembers that he can’t drink seawater

Much of the coastal Wolds is straightforward agricultural land – wheat, barley and potatoes, and there are so many sandy stretches and coves that there’s always somewhere free. We also go there for the hundreds of caves and strange rocky formations. This is partly for the editor-in-chief to take photos, partly because we assume that one day we’ll find a bearded thug dragging a case of old rifles out of a cave. Then we’ll be in the newspapers, with a quote saying that he’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling dogs.

Chilli has some sort of internal switch – as soon as her paws hit sand, she goes wild and charges around, trying to get Django to run and play immediately. And Django is a doofus. He sniffes bushes, clumps of grass, potters around and only later realises that he could be playing cavalry.

But he does like the sea, even though he still can’t work out why it tastes funny. He’s a happy splasher, not an Olympic swimmer, running after bits of seaweed, throwing water up in the air with his long muzzle and generally being Djangoid.

Cliffs are the editor-in-chief’s other delight. This is handy, as greydog himself is severely acrophobic and has fits just watching other people teeter on the edge of 300 foot sheer drops. So dogs and old man hide in the long grass whilst Eagle Scout One careens around near edges.

tired twosome (and potato field) — two fine detectives, trying to spot a potato field

“Oooh, look, I can see seals! Is that a seal right under this crumbling cliff edge with huge warning notices on it?”

“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know. Aaargh.” the bold writer replies, cowering on his knees.

As Chilli also likes climbing cliffs, and does so every time we look in another direction, it is clear that only two of the four of us have any real sense. Or, looking at Django upside down in his chair, perhaps one and a half of us.

chilli also remembers things. in this case, that she doesn't do fetch. — chilli also remembers things. in this case, that she doesn’t do fetch.

We went to view the Gypsey Race as well, the river which spells doom or great events to come when it rises in full flood. Often a lot of it is underground, but then it rises suddenly and covers its whole run for a while. JLG himself mingled blood with the ‘Woe Water’ when he was a child, impaling his foot on a spike on its bed, and is thus destined to sink down every so often and almost disappear – although this may be something to do with his slipped disc.

“(The Gypsey Race) ran as a flood before the Black Death, before the Civil War, at the execution of Charles the First, in 1861 the year of the bad harvest, the two World Wars and also the bad winters of 1947 and 1962.

“But in 1530 it was lucky for Prior Willy from Bridlington when he was chased by wicked fairy types at Willy Howe because he managed to jump his horse over the stream and escape his pursuers (fairy folk can’t cross over fast-flowing water!) The stream also gave a good fortune to Queen Henrietta Maria when she sheltered in its banks at Beck Hill from cannon balls whilst in Bridlington in 1632.”

Bridlington Free Press

The Prior above would presumably have been William Browneflete, who was confirmed in his office in 1521. Willy Howe is a fairly well-known tumulus/barrow mound in the area, though no conclusive remains have ever been found in it, and some suggest that it might have been used as a ceremonial spot or meeting place rather than for a specific burial. There are many tales about it – this one’s from William of Newburgh’s 12^th Century History of English Affairs (a good source for all sorts of weird lore)

“A certain rustic… going to see his friend, who resided in the neighbouring hamlet, was returning, a little intoxicated, late at night; when, behold, he heard, as it were, the voice of singing and revelling on an adjacent hillock, which I have often seen, and which is distant from the village only a few furlongs. Wondering who could be thus disturbing the silence of midnight with noisy mirth, he was anxious to investigate the matter more closely; and perceiving in the side of the hill an open door, he approached, and, looking in, he beheld a house, spacious and lighted up, filled with men and women, who were seated, as it were, at a solemn banquet.

“One of the attendants, perceiving him standing at the door, offered him a cup: accepting it, he wisely forbore to drink; but, pouring out the contents, and retaining the vessel, he quickly departed. A tumult arose among the company, on account of the stolen cup, and the guests pursued him; but he escaped by the fleetness of his steed, and reached the village with his extraordinary prize. It was a vessel of an unknown material, unusual colour, and strange form: it was offered as a great present to Henry the elder, king of England and then handed over to the queen’s brother, David, king of Scotland, and deposited for many years among the treasures of his kingdom; and, a few years since, as we have learnt from authentic relation, it was given up by William, king of the Scots, to Henry II, on his desiring to see it.”

Sadly the Race was low, and somewhat odiferous around Beck Hill where Henrietta Maria sheltered, so we let it sink again and went off with the longdogs to find more sand, most of which came back in the car.

the author and his research team in retreat

We have urgent reading and writing to do, so must stagger off. See you in a couple of days with curios and curiosities, but no cats…

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Shades of Sherlock Holmes: Pastiche, Paranormal or Piffle?

August 17, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

In which we consider the Holmes pastiche, for better or for worse…

Holmes forced more of the vile Turkish tobacco into his pipe, wincing as he realised that yet again he was smoking the damnable stuff in order to keep up appearances.

“Despite the fact that you are secretly my half-brother, Watson, and that you were never in the Army, I have tolerated our acquaintance. However, your medical certificate (Failed) from Goa Community College is fooling no-one, and your relationship with ‘Mary’ is an embarrassment.”

I nodded, perhaps relieved that all was being exposed at last.

“And as for you, Lestrade,” the great man continued, “It is clear that you are a Nigerian prince only working within the British police force in order to transfer surprising amounts of money from bank accounts in your homeland. The talcum powder and gum arabic disguise is obvious to even the butcher’s boy – who is, by the way, a midget in the employ of some Oriental genius.”

Lestrade looked at me and sighed, wiping a sweaty hand across his face to reveal a swathe of his true colouration.

Holmes smiled.

“I am, however, a man who relies on empathy and wild hunches, as you know, so tedious deductive reasoning has no place here. I welcome you both as comrades, and am eager to continue our investigations into the supernatural. Carnacki and Silence be damned – let us surge forth and grapple with ectoplasm in our own right.”

He threw his pipe out of the window.

“Mrs Hudson – prepare the submersible. We are bound for Arkham and colonial madness!”

Hello there. Today we’re having an introductory look at the world of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and considering what that term actually means. There are two reasons for doing this, apart from idle entertainment. The first is that I write Holmes stories, and often mull over the whys and wherefores of doing such a thing, so why not do it here? The second is that I do like weird stories as well, and Holmes is increasingly being used as a character in weird and supernatural fiction.

Holmes pastiches (artistic works in a style that imitate that of another work, artist, or period) aren’t at all new. For example, J M Barrie of Peter Pan fame wrote a pastiche in 1893, The Late Sherlock Holmes, and in 1913 an anonymous author wrote a Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes saving Mr. Venizelos, concerning a Greek politician threatened with assassination at a 1912 conference in London.

But we’re here to look at the nature of pastiches , not to repeat lists which others have more ably researched and compiled. Personally, I’m a great enthusiast of accurate, canonical Holmes stories. To some extent those tales fit comfortably with my non-supernatural Edwardian tales of mystery and murder, such as A Loss of Angels.

The canon, the authentic body of work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is important, because it offers an unprecedented single time-line for a major fictional character and his associates (we’re talking novels and short stories here, by the way. The world of comics, TV and film adaptations is too large to dare contemplating today).

I do like reading and writing Holmes stories which could have happened within that time-line, and within the framework of historical circumstances, characteristics and abilities laid out by Conan Doyle. This allows for a number of enjoyable challenges, such as:

Exploring cases mentioned within the canon but never delineated by Conan Doyle;
Inserting cases within those periods of Holmes’ active investigative career where there is nothing currently documented (and Holmes seems to have investigated more than one case at a time on occasion);
Extending the time-line for the detective before and after Baker Street, even into the period during and after the Great War;
Re-interpreting cases and events to consider alternative explanations which are still fully plausible within the canon and historical reality;
Expanding secondary characters such as Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Moran etc. and depicting episodes which relate to their lives but again stay within the framework;
Spending more time on character qualities – flaws, addictions, attitudes, tics and curiosities – without directly challenging Conan Doyle’s basics (this one can drag you out of the canon, so beware).

David Marcum, an experienced writer, editor and scholar in this area, has devoted a lot of time to an extensive chronology of stories which fall within the canon.

He edits the very successful MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, and expressed some of his own views (and commented on the BBC TV version) in an interview on the website I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere last year:

the tangled skeins of sherlock holmes

Of course, if you disapprove of even canonical pastiches, there are still genuine period detectives and investigative mysteries a-plenty. Try The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ed. Nick Rennison, 2013), or Shadows of Sherlock Holmes (ed. David Stuart Davies, 1998).

But back to our ramble. Where does this leave the deliberately non-canonical writer? How heretical might he or she be? Discounting the irreverent nature of our opening passage, there are a number of approaches which occasionally yield a good yarn. The most important question is whether or not to keep Holmes (and/or Watson), fully within character and within their range of abilities as described by Conan Doyle.

If you’re not going to stay anywhere near the originals, then it begs the question as to why you’re doing it. One obvious answer is The Brand – the name sells. Stick ‘Sherlock Holmes’ on a story and you have a few people automatically interested. But that’s a bit cheap. I’m tempted to say that you should cut loose at that point and write your own, individual period consulting detective with a proper name, background and set of characteristics. Why half-Holmes it when you’ve gone that far? Be original.

And what might you bear in mind if you write tales which are non-canonical but still contain a distinct Holmes? I’ve nothing against complete spoofs, which can be amusing. However, if you want to retain the Holmesian connection with any dignity, then some thought is needed (for those who take Holmes very seriously, please don’t jump on the messenger. This already happens and there’s inevitably more to come, so the stable door is no longer relevant).

Broadly, you end up with a range of options which include:

Sherlock dislocated – keeping the canonical figures in Victorian/Edwardian settings with the same abilities and resources but written as steampunk, explicit horror, Lovecraftian horror or alternative history stories;
Sherlock transported – taking Holmes and other characters completely out of their natural setting and re-employing them in chronological or geographical settings which would be quite unfeasible within the original body of work;
Sherlock evolved – applying Holmes to fringe period scenarios, such as psychic, supernatural, political or technological mysteries which might eventually require Holmes to change some of his views and approaches;
Sherlock reconfigured – altering one major aspect of the character or abilities but retaining the bulk of the canon. A hard one, because it automatically makes serious Holmesians wince, and it takes us back to the question ‘Why not invent your own detective instead?’

If you want to look at different approaches, then you could peruse books like The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ed. John Joseph Adams, 2009), an anthology where notable authors explore mysterious and sometimes quite fantastical alternatives to the canon.

Combining a recognisable Holmes and the weird or supernatural is one of the most popular routes. An introduction to this area is the anthology Shadows over Baker Street (2003), edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan. It’s a mixed bag of stories from eighteen different authors which nevertheless has some very enjoyable moments. The Gaslight Arcanum (ed. Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, 2011) is another more recent collection of uncanny tales.

By the way, Holmes’ most quoted comment on the supernatural is not quite as definite as some think. In The Hound of the Baskervilles he merely refers to his belief that normal investigative techniques and logical deduction would be of no use in supernatural cases.

“If Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.”

Giving in to temptation last year, I ended up with a curious compromise, and wrote a novella, A Study in Grey, which was historically accurate and included a canonical Holmes (nothing changed at all), but also contained a separate plot strand concerning genuine psychic issues. The intent, and possibly the result, was to leave the Great Detective unchallenged but allow the reader to experience that little bit more.

Others too numerous to name have gone further, some of them excellent authors in their own right. William Meikle, a master of the supernatural adventure tale who also contributed to The Gaslight Arcanum, has had the confidence to take a strong, recognisable Holmes and place him in weirder situations than Conan Doyle envisaged (as in Sherlock Holmes: Revenant, 2013), with more to come. Neil Gaiman himself produced one of the best known ‘weird Holmes pastiches’ in his story A Study in Emerald, which is in Shadows over Baker Street, also mentioned above.

Last Minute Addendum: We should also point out that Willie Meikle is ambidextrous in his Holmesian fiction – he has also written several canonical tales, in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ABROAD, THE ASSOCIATES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and the forthcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SCHOOL FOR DETECTION.

I make no value judgements. As writers and readers we can choose pastiches which are canon or non-canon. We can even have both, if we’re wild enough.

If you prefer your Holmes straight, but still like detectives who investigate strange and supernatural mysteries, then the brand new Occult Detective Quarterly is launching this Autumn. See top right for more details.

And we’re done for today. Back in two or three days with something which will be entirely different, and don’t forget that you can sign up for free (top left) to be kept in the greydogtales loop…

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Five Weird Fantasy Books Not on Fantasy Lists

August 14, 2016 greydogtales 4 Comments

With the current and welcome resurgence of weird fiction, sometimes it’s nice to know that your mama and your grandmama had cool stuff to read as well. So we thought that we’d revive interest in five wonderful weird fantasy books which still hold their own. From a book which influenced Stephen King, L Sprague de Camp and Italo Calvino, through C S Lewis and Alan Moore and finally to a novel by an Irish genius which should influence more people, we surge through the years with our fur flying…

None of these are most people’s idea of fantasy nowadays, but they all contain elements of fantasy – and some are particularly weird. Our point, if we have one, is these five books are important pieces of writing in one way or another. We read all these when we were pups, and know that they still lurk there at the back of our collective mind.

And if you have already read them all lots of times, then what do you want? A medal? Honestly, clever people, coming into our house, eating our chicken carcasses – go back to your Ligotti and stop leaving mud on our carpets. See if we care.

Print-wise, we notice that three of these were published in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series edited by Lin Carter, and one had been published by Ballantine before Carter took the reins of the endeavour. Our own copies of the Bramah, the O’Brien and the Chesterton are random early editions, but we do have the Ariosto and Lindsay in the Ballantine versions, with very nice covers.

Their presence here, though, is based on their influential nature and the fact that we love them, each for a different reason. We’ll do this thing in chronological order, for no especial reason…

Orlando Furioso (1532)

Written by Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533)

OK, we’ll be honest. This one is an epic poem, one of the longest in European literature, but it’s also a series of wild adventures with hippogriffs and intertwining themes of love, war and sacrifice.

T.p; with architectural border and portrait of author; engraved by Giacomo Franco. — early cover with architectural border and portrait of author; engraved by Giacomo Franco.

The whole thing is a chivalric romance, being based on the story of Roland (Orlando), the hero from the times of Charlemagne when war between Christian and Saracen warriors surged across Europe. That’s Roland as in “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”, the 1855 poem by Robert Browning, an influence on so many books (including Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) that we can’t list them here. And as in the poem The Song of Roland, based on the Battle of Ronceveaux in 778. Now that we write this, we realise that the whole Roland thing deserves a post of its own, really.

Trivia: For pure fantasy buffs, the paladin characters beloved of Role-playing Games and medieval fantasy novels come from the twelve mostly fictitious companions of Roland.

We fell in love with the idea of the female knight Bradamante, possibly because we’d never come across the idea of a female knight before, and her Saracen lover Ruggiero, with the sorcerer Atlantes and many more. Mentioning Atlantes, who had a castle of iron in the Pyrenees, you might know that The Castle of Iron by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the third story in their Harold Shea series, takes place in the same setting as Orlando Furioso.

The character of Bradamante has been used many times since, and she was even in the film Heart and Armour 1983, portrayed by Barbara di Rossi. Unfortunately the film is variable in its quality, and the plot wanders all over the place.

Orlando Furioso is sometimes cited as a major precursor of later fantasy writing. The on-line Encyclopedia of Fantasy considers it what they call a Taproot Text for Adventure Fantasy, where the protagonists wander strange lands generally trying to thrive or survive.

Italo Calvino was a great fan, and took elements of it for his book The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a Tarot-linked book which is well worth reading in its own right (although we suspect that it has something to do with semiotics, which hurts our brain). Jorges Luis Borges was also an enthusiast.

The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

Written by G K Chesterton (1874-1936)

Utterly free of hippogriffs, this marvellous book is difficult to describe without wrecking it for new readers. The adventures of Gabriel Syme take place in an imagined Edwardian London, a period which is much beloved here. Consider police detectives seeking out anarchist plots, undercover officers who aren’t what they seem, anarchists who aren’t anarchists and blend them together in a highly original novel of deception and delusion. We can give away the fact that Syme joins a council of anarchists (or are they?) who are each named after a day of the week, hence the title.

Over (or under) everything lies the question of what we believe and what role we really play in existence – it is part a detective farce and part a philosophical examination of identity. Rebels who are conformists rebel against conformist ideas of rebellion, and true anarchists get rather lost trying to question it all. Or something like that. Chesterton said of his work:

“The book… was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was… It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimists were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fitful fashion”

Orson Welles called it “shamelessly beautiful prose” and made a radio dramatization of it with his Mercury Radio Theater of the Air. You might also have a look at Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), which is a future alternate-reality novel set in 1984 (yes, it may have been the inspiration for Orwell’s date as well).

A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

Written by David Lindsay (1876–1945)

We read this when rather young, and got completely lost in its allegorical passages. If we say that it’s the story of a man who goes to a seance and later gets transported to wander around another planet, then we’re probably not helping. It is just that, but in the process it explores the nature of communication, the role of God and what humans do to each other. It’s Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress on acid, a science fantasy adventure with weird new organs growing on people, and lots more.

It’s a fascinating book, though you need a philosophical bent to pick up everything at which Lindsay was driving. Maskull, the protagonist, travels to Tormance, an imaginary planet orbiting Arcturus’ imaginary binary system. There he meets characters from the various lands of Tormance, often with dire results. Adventure Fantasy again, in some degree.

It’s almost worth reading for the names themselves – Maskull, Joiwind, Crimtyphon, Haunte, Oceaxe and so on – and includes the character Nightspore. Eagle-eared listeners will note that last week we talked about The King of Nightspore’s Crown, a new novel by Raphael Ordonez (see nightspore’s crown). As Raphael mentioned being a great enthusiast of the Ballantine series, we suspect a touch of homage there. Lindsay had in fact originally intended his book to be called Nightspore in Tormance.

Sadly for Lindsay, it didn’t sell well. It does still stand out as a unique vision, and it had considerable influence on C S Lewis’s ‘Space Trilogy’ – Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Lewis said:

“The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Wells’s stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal.”

Extra trivia: There is a disputed manuscript published as The Dark Tower, which is supposed to have been written by Lewis around the time of the Space Trilogy.

Alan Moore said of A Voyage to Arcturus:

“A Voyage to Arcturus demands that David Lindsay be considered not as a mere fascinating one-off, as a brilliant maverick, but as one worthy and deserving of that shamanistic mantle; of the British visionary and apocalyptic legacy.”

Because we like oddities, you might be interested that in the seventies, an Ohio student called William J. Holloway made an independent 35mm feature film of the book. Distributed by Brandon Films on 16mm as part of their underground film series, the film is now available again to watch. It’s odd, and quite seventies – possibly best watched if you’ve already read the book.

Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928)

Written by Ernest Bramah (1868–1942)

The concept of the Chinese sage wasn’t exactly new when Ernest Bramah (Ernest Brammah Smith) decided to write a series of books containing wise sayings and fantastical tales, all set within a pseudo-China of many years ago. Kai Lung himself is a wandering storyteller, who ends up in both mundane and perilous situations as he travels the land. When facing local conundrums or serious danger, he relies on his wits and collection of stories to survive.

The sage unrolls his mat, preferably under a mulberry tree, and recounts fantastical tales, many of which draw on real or embroidered Chinese mythology – bushes which spring from eyelids; a boy whose soul enters the body of a mighty warrior; a suitor who pares off part of the moon to win his love.

There are half a dozen collections featuring Kai Lung. Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, for example, uses the Arabian Nights trope of telling so many stories that you avoid your own execution.

Such was Bramah’s influence on people’s views of Chinese history that sayings such as “May you live in interesting times” may, rather than being traditional, have been invented by Bramah himself. His romantic view of China might be called a pastiche, in that it is accurate in many ways and yet an exaggerated, English version at the same time.

Critic and writer David Langford puts it perfectly when he says:

“The peculiarly addictive quality of this chinoiserie lies not so much in plot as in the unwaveringly artificial prose style. Formal politeness and elaborate diction are maintained in the most extreme circumstances, to hilarious effect. Bramah had impressive resources of vocabulary, circumlocution and euphemism, and could always find another and more ludicrous way of putting a commonplace sentiment: parodists have pulled their own heads off rather than sustain his remorseless flow for more than a few paragraphs.”

Million Magazine (1991)

You can find the whole excellent Bramah piece by David Langford on-line here:

ansible – crime and chinoiserie

One of the writers influenced by Bramah was Barry Hughart, whose three-book series The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox follows in much the same witty vein – but in a slightly less outrageous way in terms of style.

Bramah was a creative dude, as we don’t say in Yorkshire, and will also be known to some listeners as the creator of Max Carrados, the blind detective. He also wrote supernatural stories, but we haven’t read them so we’ll keep our mouths shut.

The Third Policeman (1967)

Written by Flann O’Brien (1911–1966)

Two notes on the above – the first is that Flann O’Brien was one of the pseudonyms of Irish writer Brian O’Nolan; the other is that although The Third Policeman wasn’t published until 1967, it was written in 1939-40.

This is possibly our favourite of the five books, and the most difficult to describe not just because of plot spoilers, but because of the sheer inventiveness and language of the work. The story is narrated by a man who is never named, one who follows the work of the weird scientist and inventor de Selby, an eminent “physicist, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist”.

De Selby may be a philosophical genius or an esoteric idiot – one of de Selby’s biographers is quoted as saying “The beauty of reading a page of de Selby is that it leads one inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the greatest.”

What else can we say? A number of the characters are dead, or probably dead, and it it is a fantastical tale in an Ireland rooted in the real, the pagan and the mythic land, which may also be some sort of allegory. It has policemen who are obsessed with bicycles, and questions as to what is and is not fiction. Marvellously, it includes a kind of physical and spiritual osmosis, where constant contact means the policemen may be becoming more bicyclish, and the bicycles more policemanish. As with A Voyage to Arcturus, you had to be there.

De Selby, by the way, also turns up in The Dalkey Archive, with more ideas which are quite mad. Or are they?

More trivia: The Third Policeman is referenced in the TV series Lost, presumably as a way of confusing people even more.

There’s a lot more to be said about the above by better folk than us, but it’s time to go. See you soon, we hope, and if you want to be kept up to date on new features and changes at greydogtales.com, please just pop your e-mail in top left and we’ll oblige you, absolutely free. No spam, no selling-on, and no dogs will call…

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Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928)

The Third Policeman (1967)

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