FEAR THE ABYSS--Lingering Glimpses of the Unknown

Eric Beebe, ed. Fear the Abyss. Post Mortem Press. 

 

I know what it is to have touched the void, to have looked out into the vast, empty universe and know the truth—that more than any living being in the fourteen billion year history of our cosmos I am alone, surrounded by nothing but emptiness and the horrid finality of death.

So speaks a character in Andrew Nienaber’s “What We Found” on the final page of Fear the Abyss. His is in some ways a unique state, the sole survivor of a Plague that has destroyed the remainder of humanity, no matter how far scattered among the stars, encompassed not by an endless futurity but by the dead words of a past that has suddenly become meaningless.

Yet in another sense, the same words could almost serve as a leitmotif for nearly every character, for nearly every final scene in Fear the Abyss. In story after story, one by one, individuals are stripped of supports, their fellows removed by death or transformation, their most fundamental beliefs dissolved…and, alone, they must face the abyss, the unknown.

The stories in the collection range from the personal and interior to the public and exterior; the landscapes, from the unseen workings of a single mind, to plague-ridden streets where death is not an end but merely a transition, to planets far distant in time and space. Yet in each, the essence of humanity—variously defined and variously characterized—confronts darkness and must make a choice to embrace it…or to disappear.

This is not to say that there is no humor among the stories, albeit a rather peculiar species of dark humor. Nelson W. Pyles’ “A Box of Candy” adds one twist to the eponymous receptacle that both intensifies the revulsion and keeps it from overwhelming readers through a consistent undercurrent of near-farce. And there is a certain element of the comic in the abrupt transition from a subjective immersion in horror after horror graphically displayed to the matter-of-fact, objective tone in the final paragraphs of S. C. Hayden’s “The American.”

Paul Anderson’s “A Nice Town with Very Clean Streets” suggests a kind of Bradburyian longing for the past in its title, creating a tone rather like that of several stories in The Martian Chronicles, then juxtaposes a Lovecraftian monstrosity that makes the initial image even more appalling. Jeyn Robert’s “Life after Dead” rings a variation on another familiar trope—life after death—and in doing so asserts that the only way to survive a glimpse into the abyss is to hold to its opposite…love. Lawrence C. Connolly’s “Human Caverns” reveals the unwelcome truth that sometimes we must run toward the unknown in order to avoid the greater horrors of that which we know but do not comprehend.

Time and again, Fear the Abyss presents possibilities—and occasionally impossibilities—that strain the definitions of what it is to be human, what constitutes live and death and love, what we can hope for in an increasingly technologically oriented world, one that grants less and less grace to individuals struggling to maintain a tenuous hold on their humanity.

For multiple glimpses into a full range of visions, all centering on what lies beyond the limits of knowledge, check out Fear the Abyss. It will disturb, but it won’t disappoint.

Jason V. Brock's "Milton's Children"--Paradise Redivivus

Jason V. Brock. “Milton’s Children.” Bad Moon Books, 2012.

I don’t know whether Jason Brock wears a hat or not. But if he does, he must have been kept busy tipping it while writing his singularly effective novella, “Milton’s Children.”

The story begins, perhaps a bit oddly, with a question: “Why are you a vegetarian, Carter?” This relatively non-horrific question introduces both a primary character, Adam Carter (the name is highly suggestive, given the novella’s title and the headnote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost), and a key issue…although for several pages the ensuing dialogue between Carter and his equally suggestively named antagonist, Chris Faust (c.f. Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, another Renaissance disquisition on pride, sin, forgiveness, and hell) seems more a one-sided rant than the introduction to a short story.

The two characters cover a number of issues, although Faust is more often than not limited to a few words or sputtered phrases while Carter is given full play for his arguments, which include the possibility of animal communication before broadening to incorporate pollution, global warming, overuse of antibiotics and chemicals, and a range of additional appalling side-effects of human arrogance. Finally, Carter asks his own question, “I mean, where does ‘evil’ begin to enter into the picture, Faust?”

After a brief hiatus for some necessary backstory, the tale reaches a transition point and moderates into what is essentially a finely crafted throwback to the Golden Age of Creature Features. One of the crew has discovered a mysterious, unknown island, revealed only when global warming causes the Antarctic floes to recede. Perhaps never trodden on by humans, the island offers a temptation none can resist. They must explore it.

The first impression the landing crew receives is of an Antarctic Garden of Eden…but as with all great Creature Features, first impressions prove woefully, disastrously, horrifically and bloodily wrong.

And thus the deaths begin. 

In addition to those already mentioned, Brock incorporates layer upon layer of allusion to strengthen his modest tale. Several are referred to by name: Jonathan Swift and A Modest Proposal; Mary Shelley and Frankenstein (with its insistence on Paradise Lost as a proof text for the creature’s moral inquiries); H.P. Lovecraft and At the Mountains of Madness; Skull Island and the various film versions of King Kong. Others seem more incidental, although still powerful: E.R. Burroughs’ Pellucidar series (one of Brock’s characters is Darrell Mahar). The captain of the rescue ship in the final chapters is Commander Merritt (c.f. A. Merritt?) and the Communications Officer is surnamed ‘Adams,’ underscoring at least two major themes in “Milton’s Children.”

(And one intriguing echo—which I can’t lay this on Brock, of course, since I don’t know what films he has watched—by the end of his story there are a number of key resemblances in “Milton’s Children” to one of my favorite ’50s pieces, Roger Corman’s The Attack of the Crab Monsters.)

Tying all of these disparate threads together is the introductory note, Satan’s speech as he surveys the newly created Earth (Paradise Lost, Book IX, ll. 135-139) and brags of the destruction is he about to wreak on it and on unsuspecting humanity. Although it is clear from the poem as a whole that Satan is here being self-delusive and that the Father has in fact planned all that occurs, his words remain powerful. Like others alluded to in “Milton’s Children”—Milton’s Adam, Marlowe’s Faust, Frankenstein, Lovecraft’s multifold meddlers in Cosmic affairs, generations of  fictional explorers invading unknown landscapes where they have no right to be—Satan is about to assert dominion over that which is not his…and pay the ultimate consequences.

In total, “Milton’s Children” is fascinating. It blends elements that seem on the surface antithetical. It encourages reminiscence even as it suggests far-reaching, futuristic possibilities. It combines an elegant command of language with a relatively fundamental but thoroughly enjoyable plot. It incorporates clichéd characters and situations in ways that bring them new life. It manages to tip its hat to perhaps a score of equally intriguing sources while maintaining its own integrity as a narrative. And all within the confines of fewer than seventy pages.

Recommended.

Rick Hautala's THE WILDMAN--Return to Summer Camp and Much, Much More

Rick Hautala. The Wildman. 2008. Los Angeles: Omnium Gatherum, 2012. 268 pp., trade paperback.

It all begins with the death of a twelve-year-old boy at a summer camp.

Or perhaps not. The Wildman opens with a warning against facile preconceptions about beginnings and closes with an equivalent caution about conclusions:

     Pre-conditions can be set, and there are always unseen forces in motion long before we become aware of them. It’s rather egocentric or, we might say, “human-centric” to declare that anything starts at any particular point in time simply because that’s when we first notice it.

      And we should never forget that there are always things we don’t know, buried secrets that might eventually come to light with or without our help. Like it or not, there are things that will knock us down before we see them coming. (7)

In a sense, that is the key—the core—to The Wildman. On the surface, the story is straightforward. Five friends from thirty-five years earlier agree to an October reunion at the derelict Camp Tapiola on Sheep’s Head Island in Lake Onwego. They are the survivors of a small group that had shared a tent during summer camp; the sixth boy, Jimmy Foster, had drowned that fateful year.

Or had he been murdered?

When Jeff Cameron and the others arrive at what remains of Camp Tapiola, their weekend begins with apparent congeniality that barely disguises underlying tensions and stress. As the hours pass—accompanied by storms and biting cold—tensions become anxiety and finally terror as Jeff realizes that something is definitely wrong on Sheep’s Head Island.

Then the murders begin.

Stranded at night in the bitter cold, Jeff must confront an armed enemy intent upon revenge. He must plumb secrets long-hidden in the past…and in the silence of his friends. He must bear up under the increasing burdens of fear, terror, and isolation. He must seek desperately to understand the realities behind the legendary Hobomonk, said to roam the island seeking prey. And ultimately he must summon his only hope…the Wildman. 

There are many excellences in The Wildman. Action, suspense, threat, hints of the supernatural, a character who is quite literally not given a chance to take a long, restful breath. And they all work together to create a solid, tight story.

But perhaps the most interesting of them is the landscape…a character in and of itself. An isolated, essentially deserted island in a bitter northeastern storm, its present abandoned state is skillfully superimposed over powerful memories of it as a vibrant, joy-filled summer camp, until sudden death put an end to all of that.

I never attended a summer camp as a pre-teen, but I worked for several summers as a counselor at a scout camp in the Sierras. We weren’t on an island, but there was no easy overland way to get to the main camp, so all back-and-forth traffic was by boat across a frequently ice-cold lake. In some senses, we were as isolated as if we had been on an island.

Several years later, I visited the place. Storms had destroyed the dining hall; several landmarks were missing or dismantled; even the trails were different.

But…setting foot on the landing for the first time in years, I breathed the smells of the forest, heard the subtle sounds of life (back when I could hear). And that was the feeling—the sense of return, however much the place had changed—that Hautala captures almost perfectly when Jeff finally arrives at the remains of Camp Tapiola.

From that point on, Hautala convinces me that the place is real, that key events occurred there thirty-five years before, and that unraveling its secrets would lie at the center of the story. Everything—from the battered infirmary; to the oddly shaped but aptly named rock formation, “The Pulpit,” where perhaps much more than fishing took place; to the bit of beach that still harbors the lingering image of a boy’s body; to the false comfort of flames in a stone fireplace—everything lends its magic to the narrative, supporting the characters in each detail.

The Wildman is a quick read and a good one. It is solid storytelling by a master of atmosphere and setting.

Recommended.

 

    

Kim Harrison's INTO THE WOODS--A Second Chance

Harrison, Kim. Into the Woods: Tales from the Hallows and Beyond. Harper Voyager, 2012

I requested the opportunity to review New York Times Bestseller Kim Harrison’s recent collection of short stories and novellas. The advance information I received indicated that most of the stories were based in the same world—the magical Hallows—as that of Ever After, which I had recently read and reviewed (see: http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2012/12/kim-harrison-everafter.html). While Ever After disappointed in several ways, particularly on the level of fundamental writing skills, I hoped that the short stories might prove otherwise. After all, novels are by their nature diffuse, often harboring minor gaffes in grammar or syntax that, given the expansive canvas of the story telling, might not be noticed.

Short stories are tighter, tauter…in a word, shorter. They provide writers with the chance—and the challenge—to focus on each word and phrase. Rather like a poem, a story that falters too often in word choice or sentence structure doesn’t really have the scope to repair the damage.

 Unfortunately, most of the difficulties noted in my review of Ever After recur repeatedly in the pages of Into the Woods. On the level of basic writing, within one story there were multiple examples of noun/pronoun agreement problems; general wordiness; missing or inappropriate punctuation (usually commas); repetition of key words and phrases, often within a line or two of each other; dangling modifiers; misplaced adverbs; run-together sentences; then instead of than; vaguely used pronouns; verb tense agreement; grammatical wobbles; statement errors, in which the sentence verbs cannot logically link the subject and the predicate (“Ceri hesitated her struggles); and sudden and jarring shifts in tone. All compressed into fourteen pages.

Dialogue—most of the story—was stiff and hackneyed, in part perhaps because the speakers were a demon and an elf; descriptions frequently incorporated clichés. Throughout, far too many spoken lines were accompanied by extended stage directions that concentrated on minor—and probably unnecessary—actions. Action, when it finally occurred, was deflated by the wordiness describing it.

And that in just one story.

To her credit, Harrison demonstrates extraordinary creativity in her characters and her world. Some stories work better than others, capturing the allure of magic and the price it demands, but the difficulties in reading them too often outweigh the narrative force.

Readers interested only in gaining additional insight into the Hallows and their environs, or who are wholly committed to the continuing saga of Rachel Morgan, will find much new information here. But for me, the intellectual strain of getting through the stories spoiled them.

Rick Hautala's INDIAN SUMMER--A Sense of an Ending

Rick Hautala. Indian Summer. Cemetery Dance Publications, 2012.

I remember reading Little Brothers a number of years ago and being impressed with it, so much so that when I had the opportunity to purchase it for my Kindle recently, I was delighted. Untcigahunk included not only the 1988 novel but short-story prequels to it and a sequence of tales providing a mythic basis for the eponymous creatures. (For further information on the collection, please see my review at http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2012/09/before-little-brothers.html.)

International Bestseller, New York Times Bestseller, and Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achiecement recipient Rick Hautala has published over thirty books, but Little Brothers remains a perennial favorite. It has in a sense now been recognized as a classic by the recent release by Cemetery Dance of a prequel, Indian Summer, in a signed, limited hardcover edition.

Set in October, 1961, Indian Summer is the story of twelve-year-old Billy Crowell and his horrifying encounter with the Little Brothers. Along the way, he confronts the dangers of a forest fire, meets a mysterious woman on an isolated farm, feels the first confusing stirrings of adolescent sexuality when he thinks of her, is persuaded to help her in her attempt to avenge the death of her mother two decades earlier, and is burdened with secrets far too heavy for someone his age to have to bear. The 126-page tale is told crisply, with intriguing characters (although the relationship between Billy and his brother Mike may be a bit too similar to the antagonism between Kip and Marty Howard in Little Brothers) and highly effective landscapes that function both literally and symbolically. In addition, the limited edition showcases a haunting dust jacket painting and a number of black-and-white illustrations by Glen Chadbourne that evoke key scenes in the novel. On the whole it is an excellent combination of accomplished storytelling and fine book-making.

As a story, Indian Summer both met my expectations and exceeded them. As part of the Untcigahunk mythos, it provides the same senses of danger, anticipation, and suspense as Little Brothers and the other published stories. It takes a character and, through entirely believable circumstances, introduces him to the unbelievable, the impossible, the deadly. As he struggles to accept what he has seen—and what he intuits—he is forced to make difficult decisions that, inexorably, lead to a direct encounter with the Little Brothers.

And that is where Indian Summer does something unexpected and remarkable. The creatures are defeated…at least, they retreat for a time (we know they will be back in about five years), but in taking the offensive against them, Billy Crowell opens himself up in ways that characters in the other prequel stories did not.

In a moment of crisis, when not only his life but the lives of others are at stake, he must decide on a course of action. He does so, and innocents die. His choice is entirely understandable; after all, he is only twelve and no one, not even his parents or the police, would believe what he has encountered. But the fact remains that, even though he would most likely have also died, horribly mutilated, had he chosen differently, he holds himself secretly accountable for the deaths.

Then, when asked to lead the police to the place where he had seen and fought against the Little Brothers, knowing how deadly they are and how dangerous it is merely to come near them…he does not hesitate. Instead of acting like a child and refusing, he acts like an adult for the first time.

When he does so, the underlying mythic and symbolic threads of Indian Summer come together. “Indian Summer” not only refers to that tail-end bit of summer, when temperatures remind of July and August even though winter is just around the corner, but in this story it also refers to the last lingering days of childhood. Billy himself consciously recognizes that through his experiences he has become different; his life will never be the same: “Billy raised his head and nodded, deciding at that moment to stop acting like a little kid and face the consequences. Even if he couldn’t be a hero like Turok or Tarzan, he could admit what he … had done” (120).

Indian Summer, then, is a coming-of-age story in ways that the other installments in the mythos have not been. That is partially because, I think, more than Billy Crowell has changed.

I was thirteen in 1961, just a year older than Billy. I felt entirely at home in the world Hautala created for the boy, even though I grew up on the west coast rather than on the east and never had any encounters with strange creatures (although there was that time when I am convinced I saw a cougar in the forest…). His parents, his friends, his town—all seemed familiar to me. And like me, Billy had no idea that the 1960s were going to be any different than the 1950s had been.

But Rick Hautala knows what happened shortly after his story concludes, how an entire generation of boys and girls was forever altered by assassinations and wars, nuclear tests and civil unrest, missile crises and Russian threats. Billy Crowell could not know—but Rick Hautala does—that October 1961 was in some real senses an “Indian Summer,” that a certain innocence and naïveté were about to disappear. That is why, I think, this story ends as darkly as it does. The immediate threat is over…but although the adults pretend that everything is all right, that the strange marks they found were just those of an overly large bear, even they sense that whatever happened to Billy is not over. And the story ends, not in a re-entry into light and family, but in a descent into darkness…the “deepest shadows of the woods.”

Probably not every reader will respond to Indian Summer as deeply and as strongly as I did; perhaps my age and an undeniable nostalgia for long-past years had as much to do with my reaction as the words and illustrations themselves. Even so, it strikes me as a powerful story on multiple levels, one that generates introspection as it progresses through what is on the surface an action-adventure monster tale. Billy is memorable and his actions are significant to himself and to his readers; indeed, his exploits will lead readers directly into “Chrysalis,” set ten years later.  

Highly recommended.