Prudence MacGregor, TRILOGY--Three Peeks into the Unknown

MacGregor, Prudence. Trilogy: A Collection. Outskirts Press/The Cadence Group, 2013.

Prudence MacGregor’s Trilogy: A Collection is a short (108pp.) compilation of three tales loosely linked by theme and treatment. “Parallelograms,” “Random,” and “Up There” each begins firmly in reality, in which people behave as we expect them to, things remain largely static, and events appeal to have causal connections to each other. MacGregor goes out of her way to establish the believability of her characters, landscapes, and plots—the latter being more often sketched than fully developed.

 

In “Parallelogram,” a fiercely independent young woman sees her Doppelgänger, which completely alters her perceptions of herself and others. In “Random,” the simple act of setting a balloon adrift with a short note to the finder opens the main character up, not to the adventure she hoped for, but to something quite outside her imagination. And in “Up There,” a young man’s hobby—watching planes pass overhead and speculating about them and their passengers—leads him to unanticipated actions and a chance encounter that, as with the characters in the first two stories, changes his life. 

None of the stories are fully developed as paranormal fiction. They are instead outré, reminiscent of episodes from old television series like Night Gallery or The Outer Limits. They rely on a deftly surreal touch to evoke a cold chill, often in the final sentences or paragraphs of a story, in which a deflated balloon or a woman’s coat hanging over the back of a chair suggest rather than detail the horrors to come. They are almost ghost stories, almost supernatural or paranormal…in the best possible ways. 

If there is a single difficulty in the collection, it is that the writing level is uneven. Nicely detailed passages merge into passages that are wordy, that rely too much on previously used vocabulary (in “Parallelogram,” apparently occurs three times in two pages), that are in specific ways flawed. The misuse of shudder for shutter provides an inadvertent moment of near horror in the description of a decrepit house but ultimately comes across as an error and weakens the story. 

Readers enjoying a dip into the worlds of real-seeming characters whose lives abruptly touch the inexplicable and the potentially frightening will enjoy Trilogy.

 

Roseanne Montillo's THE LADY AND HER MONSTERS--A Start in a Fascinating Direction

Montillo, Roseanne. The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece. William Morrow, February 2013. 

A few weeks ago, I published Milton’s Century: A Timeline of the Literary, Political, Religious, and Social Context of John Milton's Life. Its purpose was to establish a context—a matrix—for the development of a great poet’s thinking by identifying events that occurred around him, everyday events that directly or indirectly might have influenced him. To do so, I constructed a chronology of the century over 650 pages, year by year, sometimes day by day, in an attempt to suggest the milieu that produced Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and scores of other masterworks.

Roseanne Montillo’s The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece attempts something similar by approaching its subject—Shelley’s Frankenstein—with a much wider-angled lens.  

Her study begins in 1786 by recounting an early experiment in Galvanism, the application of electric current to stimulate movement in the tissues of dead frogs…a precursor to the common image of the Frankenstein monster being re-animated through the power of lightning. The book moves back and forth in time and place to touch upon Renaissance alchemists; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grave robbers (“Resurrection men”); Mary Shelley’s husband, parents, siblings, and children; and a little bit of everything and everyone else related to the history of dissection and the philosophy of reanimation.  

It is at times a bit helter-skelter in the transitions from one topic to another, but at its core is the image of Mary Shelley and her creation, with Montillo suggesting avenue after avenue by which Shelley might have, could have, probably, most certainly did glean this idea or that. And as such, it provides a useful index to the complexities that resulted in a milestone novel, the first Science Fiction novel according to Brian W. Aldiss, and one of the touchstone works of the Modern Age. 

The book is illustrated by dozens of woodcuts and engravings from earlier centuries, including reproductions of portraits of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, all of which give it a certain visual interest, reminding readers of how stimulating many of the experiments, personalities, and peripheral undertakings were to their original audiences. 

My major concern with the book, however, is its tone. At times, it struggles for academic respectability; at other times—as with the frequent meteorological references…”It was a hot day when…”—it seems more interested in popularization, often dropping to colloquial levels. Throughout, points are supported with quotations…but the quotations lack any of the apparatus that would allow intrigued readers to follow through with additional investigation. There are no in-text references, no foot-notes leading to further information. There are “Notes” at the end of the study, but they are uniquely unhelpful in identifying sources for comparison or additional reading. There are no identifying numbers or page references to tell where the quotations or data occur in the text; and sources are cited by author and title only—no publication information, no pagination. This seriously cripples the book as far as stimulating further research. Bits and pieces of the necessary information are included in the “Bibliography,” which basically means that in order to follow a train of thought, readers must check all three parts of the book—the text, the “Notes,” and then the “Bibliography”—an unnecessarily onerous chore. 

I wanted the book to succeed. The subject itself is fascination, considering Shelley’s age when she wrote Frankenstein. And the historical period is certainly intriguing, wavering as it did between the ancients and the moderns. But ultimately The Lady and Her Monsters left me with the feeling that there was much more to be said, that the story might have been more compactly organized, that it might have given readers more help in following various strands.  

 

 

LIMBUS, INC.--Worlds within Worlds

Limbus, Inc. JournalStone Publications, 2013

Toward the end of Limbus, Inc., Brett Tally’s “Epilogue” describes a manuscript the character has read as “tales of sacrifices, of ancient gods, of unimaginable futures and beings that span time and space.” The stories are, of course, the five novellas of Limbus, Inc., but the epilogue reminds readers that, as with everything in life, nothing is unconnected.

Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s “The Slaughter Man” demonstrates how precisely Limbus, Inc. matches candidates’ abilities to their destinations. The protagonist in the story is the “Sticker,” the member of a slaughterhouse team responsible for cutting the throats of doomed cattle, the final stage before processing. Out of a job and wanted by the authorities, he accepts an offer from Limbus…to travel untold distances over decades and perform precisely the same function, only this time in service of the Princess of Ganymede. At first his victims are aliens, often as well-armed as himself, then, as always in life, things change. And the Sticker becomes…well, read the story to find out.

Ethridge’s contribution to Limbus, Inc., is not for the faint-hearted. The Sticker wallows in blood from the first paragraphs, and the insistence upon graphic depictions of violence and pain continues through to the end. Yet it never feels gratuitous. His is a necessary service; he performs it well and as painlessly as possible. Even when his victims are….

It might be expected that the author of the remarkable That Which Should Not Be would bring a distinctively Lovecraftian darkness to the annals of Limbus, Inc. And Brett Talley does not disappoint with “The Sacrifice,” a tale that explored multiple meanings implicit in the title. Instead of transporting readers to other worlds and alien dimension, Talley moves adroitly through the shadowed landscape of backwoods Massachusetts—with a nod to another literary influence, Nathaniel Hawthorne—to explore labyrinthine structures, remnants of inhabitants before time and memory. Yet, as with the other stories in the anthology, Talley remains true to the fundamental premise: Limbus, Inc. hires the right person for the job. Though he may not recognize it in himself, Ryan Dixson is a hero; and heroes do whatever is needed…in this case, whatever is needed to save a world.

Not every company is free from corruption, and Limbus, Inc. is not the exception that proves the rule. In Joseph Nassise’s tale, Recruiter 46795 is highly ambitious, willing to do anything to move up to the Executive Level…but he makes a cardinal error. He chooses a former soldier, one of the despised veterans of the disastrous Faith Wars, as a tool in his climb to power. When the recently fired Nate arrives for his appointment at Limbus, Inc., it seems as if both men have found what they need. Nate is willing to do whatever is asked (although with certain mental reservations), and, as the recruiter puts it, his primary task will be to “solve problems.” Unfortunately, Nate is smarter and more alert than the recruiter anticipates, and he begins to suspect that the jobs are more than they appear on the surface. Someone is orchestrating the past…and he is part of it. Then he is sent on a final mission that turn out to be, as the title so neatly puts it, “One Job Too Many.”

 Anne C. Petty’s “We Employ” begins with Dallas Hamilton at the nadir of his fortunes, unable even to sell himself in the restroom stall of a grubby bar. A college dropout, spurned by his parents for wasting thousands of their dollars, he is on his own, on the streets, until he finds a business card for Limbus, Inc., stuck like toilet paper to the bottom of his shoe. At his appointment with the company, he is met by Recruiter Rigel and offered a job…dog walking. For two weeks only. Although the job description includes a requirement that he must be “dependable and resourceful in life-threatening situations”—surely some kind of joke—he accepts it, starting immediately. After several false leads, he finally meets up with Charlotte and her Jack Russell terrier and discovers that…well, that things are not at all what they seem, and that the life-threatening situation” was not at all a joke, and that much more is at stake here than the continuing good health of a dog. Charlotte’s life is in the balance…and so is his.

Jonathan Maberry’s “Strip Search” is in some ways the most enjoyable—although arguably the most horrific—of the five. It begins in the first-person narrative style of noir detective novels. Sam Hunter, a jaded, down-on-his-luck PI with three ex-wives is in his office, sipping beer, when she walks in. The Dame. The perfect woman. With a job-offer he can’t refuse. A girl is missing, and Hunter must find her within two days or she will join sixteen other young women…dead, skin removed with coldly calculating, surgical thoroughness. When he sees the pictures of the victims, he has no choice but to accept Limbus’s offer. There is one thing he hasn’t mentioned to the woman, however, one thing about himself that makes him uniquely capable of tracking the girl, one thing that he has told almost no one—and the revelation of that tiny detail creates one of the most entertaining, and bloody, moments in the story.

Five stories, no two alike in any specific way other than that each posits the existence of a shadowy corporation, Limbus, Inc., that knows more than it should about its job applicants, that places each person in precisely the right job for his talents, and that somehow seems beyond the usual constraints of time and space.

Yet there is a sixth story, woven through the other five and tying them together into a frame narrative. Brett Tally introduces readers to the owner of a used bookstore who receives a hand-bound manuscript from a mysterious stranger and begins to read…the stories in the anthology. Interrupted several times, he discovers that just as the protagonists of the stories have been contacted by Limbus, Inc., at moments when their lives seemed to have struck bottom, so has he! He is given the opportunity to work with Limbus, to publish the stories, and to be able to keep his lifelong dream alive, his store. “Are the stories true?” he asks; he is told, “To a measure. They are visions, you see. Visions of things that have been, things that are, and things that are yet to be. They are truth, to the extent that truth exists in this world.”

Stories within stories, truth within truth…even truth within lies. Everything from aliens to ancient gods, time-travel to space-travel. All fascinating tales and, within the purview of art, true.

Highly recommended.

MILTON'S CENTURY--A Preview

 

Milton’s Century is now at-press with Wildside Publications. It is a massive book, some 700 pages, that attempts a timeline of the literary, political, religious, and social context of John Milton’s life. Entries for some of the years extend over as many as a dozen pages, including explanatory notes and annotations.

 

As a kind of preview to the book, I am posting the entry for one of the more fascinating years, 1674, the year of Milton’s death.

 

I chose this year in part because it gives clear examples of how Milton’s Century is arranged: general events germane to Milton’s life (in boldface); significant publications for which I could find no specific dates; general biographical and historical information; then a timeline of specific events during the year. I’ve deleted the notes because they proved too difficult to format for Collings Notes.

 

I also chose it because is a highly significant year in terms of literary history. Four key writers died in 1674. The first, on October 10, was Thomas Traherne. Traherne was essentially the last of the 17^th Century Metaphysical poets, following the trail blazed by John Donne, George Herbert, John Cleveland, and others. He was a priest, at times secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Seal. At his death, he has published almost nothing, and as a poet he was unknown until the 20^th century, when manuscripts of his works as transcribed by his brother were discovered. With their publication, it became apparent that the Metaphysical movement had more immediate consequences during the century than previously anticipated. Beyond that, he is simply an intriguing poet with an Escher-like imagination that invited readers to view their world from unexpected perspectives.

 

On October 15, Robert Herrick died at the remarkable age of 83. Nearly thirty years before, during the English Civil War, he had published a single book of verse, Hesperides. The volume contained literally hundreds of short verse lyrics in the Cavalier mode, including the classic carpe diem poem that begins “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” His death was essentially the last breath of a literary movement that included Sir Richard Lovelace and Edmund Waller and that gave voice to the Royalist worldview.

 

On December 19, Edward Hyde, the 1^st Earl of Clarendon, died. The father-in-law of King James II and grandfather of Queens Mary and Anne, he was one of the pioneers of what might be called modern historical writing. His History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England looks forward to the great histories of the next century,  including  Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

And on November 8 (a month shy of his 66^th birthday), John Milton, called by many the last true Renaissance poet. With  him died an epoch and a world view that had served writers for nearly half a millennium. I could say much more about him, but that would take up far too much time and space. Suffice it to say that he was arguably one of the four greatest poets in Western culture (the others being Homer, Virgil, and Dante), the greatest poet in the English language, and one of the most influential writers on the formation and direction of the modern world.

 

All four of these 17^th century writers either ended or began a mode of seeing the world and exploring it through words…and they died within three months of each other, most likely each unaware of the others’ deaths and, in Traherne’s case at least, of their writings.

 

Enough background. For anyone who has persisted reading this essay to this point, here is the truly important part—a hint of what students of the period will find in Milton’s Century:

 

1674

 

Milton referred to as a “great agent of libertinism”

Christopher Milton serves as a M.P. (also 1676 and 1679)

Robert Barclay, The Anarchy of the Ranters, Quaker treatise

Nicholas Boileau, Le Lutrin; Art Poétique

Robert Boyle, Suspicions about some hidden Qualities in the Air

Thomas Flatman, Poems, published (4 augmented editions by 1688)

Elkanah Settle, Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco Revised, response to John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, and John Crowne

Samuel Vincent, The Young Gallants’ Academy

William Wycherley, The Plain Dealer, stages at Lincoln’s Inn

Nicholas Rowe b. (d. 1718), Poet-Laureate and first biographer of William Shakespeare

Elizabeth Singer b.

Isaac Watts b. (d. 1748), hymnist

Marriage proposed between William of Orange and Princess Mary, first cousins and grandchildren of King James I

 

Jan 7 — Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duch­ess of Newcastle, buried

Jan 29 — Sir William Temple, Upon the Excesses of Grief, written to the Countess of Essex

Feb 9/19 — Peace of Westminster signed, concluding the Anglo-Dutch War, Parliament having refused to vote Charles II further monies to continue hostilities

Feb 28 — Elkanah Settle m. Mary Warner

Mar 25 — The King’s Company opens new theater in Drury Lane

— Mary Lee m. George Chudleigh (later 3^rd Baron Chudleigh)

Spring — Mary Beatrice of Modena suffers her first of eight miscarriages

Apr — Thomas Shadwell, The Tempest, performed (published 1674)

Apr 17 — John Dryden’s dramatization in rhymed cou­plets of Paradise Lost, The State of Inno­cence and the Fall of Man, registered  

Apr 23 — John Dryden, revival of Marriage a la Mode

May — Nathaniel Lee, The Tragedy of Nero, produced

May 26 (?)— John Milton, Joannis Miltoni Angli Epistolarum Famil­iarium liber unus: quibus accesserunt ejusdem jam olim in collegio adolescentis prolusiones quaedam oratoriæ (Familiar Letters), identified as being by Joannes Miltonus, Anglus, echoing his quarter-century old controversy with Salma­sius and reminding his readership of his identity; pub­lished by Brabazon Aylmer

— John Milton, Prolusions (College exercises—see issue above)

Jul (?)— John Milton, A Declaration, or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King of Poland, John the Third (John Sobieski, King of Poland), Elected on the 22^d of May last past, Anno Dom. 1674…., trans­lated by Milton, published anony­mously by Bra­bazon Aylmer; Milton’s last publication during his lifetime

Jun 25 — Sir Orlando Bridgeman, former lord Keeper of the Seal, d., in retire­ment in Teddington

Jul 3 — Sir Orlando Bridgeman buried, in Teddington

Jul 6 (?)— John Milton, Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. The Author John Milton. The Second Edition Revised and Augmented by the Same Author, with dedicatory poem by Andrew Marvell

Jul 14 — James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, appointed Chancellor of Cambridge University

Jul 20 (?)— Milton makes oral will; his health declining seriously

Jul 27 — Anthony à Wood, Historia et Antiquitates Uni­versitatis Oxoniensis (History and Antiq­uities of Oxford University), published, Latin rendition of Wood’s history of the university: “My book published at Oxon. Full of base things put in by Dr. John Fell to please his partial humor and undo the author....”

Sep 27 — Thomas Traherne makes his will

Oct 10 — Thomas Traherne buried beneath the reading desk, Teddington Church

Oct 15 — Robert Herrick buried (b. 1591), at Dean Prior

Nov — Elkanah Settle, Love and Revenge, drama, performed (published 1675)

Nov 8 — John Milton, poet, d., in Bunhill, London

Nov 12 — Milton buried near his father at St. Giles, Cripplegate, Lon­don

Dec — Calysto, masque, performed at Court by ladies only, with Princess Mary taking the title role

Dec 19 — Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, former Lord Chancellor of Eng­land, d. in Rouen, still an exile from Eng­land

 

A.J. Colucci's THE COLONY--Ants, Not Giant, But Deadly

A.J. Colucci. The Colony. Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, 2012.

A.J. Colucci’s debut novel reads like a classic 1950s creature-feature.

For me, that is not only something good, it is something downright great.

The Colony has all of the elements of enduring films such as Them.  There is a threat to all of humanity; in this case, a supercolony of genetically transformed ants infecting Manhattan. They are overly large (although not exactly ‘giant’); they are apparently impervious to all pesticides and other known means of extermination; they are secretive and almost impossible to track down unless they are in attack mode; and, from all evidence, they live only to kill…specifically rats and humans.

There is a complicated love-triangle. A brilliant scientist, Paul O’Keefe, dedicated to understanding ants and their ways but stymied by everything he learns about this new species; his ex-wife, Kendra Hart, brilliant in her own right, fiercely independent, and equally dedicated to research, almost exclusively among colonies of fire-ants; and her one-time lover, once Paul’s close friend and academic rival, who may hold the key to discovering the most elusive secret of all…a queen ant.

And there are the multiple external complications. Who engineered the new species and why? What role can the major pesticide company play in resolving the crisis? Why is the FBI agent assigned to protect/accompany Kendra Hart so secretive, enigmatic? What does he know about the ants? And, above all, what is the role of the U.S. military in the sudden crisis?

Like the films of the 1950s, The Colony is fast-paced, scene after scene moving readers closer to a final confrontation between human and interloper. It pits human technology (in the 50s it was atomic power; here it is genetic research and chemical-based solutions to problems of food and agriculture) against something uniquely outside of nature…and in the end, nature itself must be harnessed to combat and destroy the threat.

There are key differences, also, of course. The relevant sciences have been upgraded to cutting-edge—genetic manipulation, computers, super-sophisticated radar among others. The characters, in particular Dr. Kendra Hart, are nowhere as stereotypic as their predecessors; the two male scientists are still movie-star handsome and fully capable of setting Kendra’s heart a-flutter, but they are also deeply flawed in key ways, while Kendra is in many senses the strongest of the three. She gets a mandatory chance to be a 50s ‘screamer,’ she is subject to panic attacks stemming from claustrophobia (and there are plenty of tunnels in The Colony), she is allergic to any number of things, including the venom of fire ants—but in spite of all of these drawbacks, she plays a starring role in almost every event. The villains are almost as concerned about the future of the human race as they are about power and money; and, in good 50s fashion, they get their just deserts in highly appropriate ways.

All in all, The Colony is a fun read, a page-turner in the best sense of the term. It does not hesitate to pay tribute to its roots, and in doing so, it transforms those roots into something both comfortingly familiar and strikingly contemporary. It is, in sum, a virtual compendium of SF/F visual clichés made verbal and, not incidentally, handled magnificently.

Highly recommended.