Category: Fiction

What I’m Reading: “Soon”

I have a theory about horror novels. The secret to a good horror novel, I think, is not gore, or violence, or even suspense. The secret is empathy. The empathy we, as readers, form for the main characters, and the empathy the main characters feel for each other.

This should be obvious, but it’s not. I have read (well, started) many celebrated horror novels, some of them very well written, only to set them aside after a chapter two because I didn’t care about any of the characters. Contrast this with the very best horror fiction from masters like Stephen King. King is famous for creating main characters who are kind, decent, spirited people with whom the reader instantly connects (and worries about). King’s characters also tend to be underdogs and outcasts. Nerds. Geeks. Handicapped kids. Fat kids. Gay kids. Such types are the most vulnerable in our society, and therefore most vulnerable to whatever monster Kings pits them against. Their underdog status makes them even more sypathetic to readers, and makes their courage even more admirable.

This is not to say that protagonists of horror novels should be all good. Far from it. In fact, King often presents the reader with deeply flawed, erratic main characters who must discover their own inner resilience and courage to face the evil that confronts them. 

Recently, I found myself thinking about such matters as I read Lois Murphy’s excellent novel Soon from 2019. Like many great horror books (or many great books of any kind), Soon stays with you long after you finish the last page. It’s got some genuinely creepy stuff in it. Most of all, though, it has a likable, sympathetic, and funny main character named Pete.

Pete is a retired cop who lives in the tiny town of Nebulah in rural Australia. Nebulah is a new twist on the concept of a “ghost town” in that its inhabitants are literally tormented by ghosts. Rather, by a strange, evil entity called The Mist that descends upon the town every evening. From this vapor, a hellish gallery of semi-corporeal spirits attacks any person foolish or unlucky enough to be caught outside after sundown. The victims suffer grisly, violent deaths,  but their bodies are never found. (Their remains dissolve mysteriously in the mist soon after being discovered.)

Not surprisingly, the town’s population rapidly dwindles from a few hundred to a few dozen, and then down to just eleven. Most people leave. The rest are picked off one by one. Pete is one of the de facto leaders of this tiny remnant of hard-core town folk, most of whom are too poor or feckless or otherwise attached to the place to ever leave. Pete is neither poor, nor attached, nor feckless, but he stays anyway, mainly to protect his friends. These survivors meet each night at one of their homes and spend the night together, trying to hear the demonic wailings and thrashings coming from outside the windows and doors. (The Mist, rather like vampires, can’t cross the solid threshold of a home unless there is some gap that would let it in.) 

I find myself admiring much of Ms. Murphy’s writing, especially in the way she renders the character of Pete. The plot also has some genuinely surprising twists and interludes, such as when Pete goes to visit his estranged daughter in a distant city.

Most of all, I liked the psychological realism of the book. Everyone left in Nebulah has some damned good, practical reasons for not leaving (just ask them), but none of these seems greater than what we suspect is a fundamental weakness in their character. Some are afraid of being poor in a new place. Others are reluctant to give up the homesteads they have labored to improve over the years. Some are just too tired.

Others, like Pete himself, have some secret sin to atone for, and a guilt that keeps them from leaving. 

Soon is a cool book. Check it out…

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Martian Chronicles” – Michael Whelan

When I was a public school kid back in the 1980s, I used to spend hours at the bookstore, mostly looking at science fiction books. It wasn’t just the stories themselves that interested me, but the cover art. Back then, before the internet gave one an endless supply of great sci-fi concept art of any kind, the only way to get one’s imagination going was to head to the bookstore.

So, it’s probably inevitable that I would regard that time as a golden age of sci-fi cover art. And I do. When I look at sci-fi books today, there is usually no cover art to speak of, but just an exercise in graphic design. The title goes in this font 38 point; the author’s name goes in this font at 28 point; etc.; with some blurry, abstract notion of an alien planet or a futuristic city. Back in the pre-digital days, sci-fi cover art consisted mainly of actual paintings, made by actual painters.

One of the best actual painters was (and is) Michael Whelan. His work has that perfect blend of realism, action, and whimsy that I always looked for in a good sci-fi cover. For five decades, he created some of the best covers ever made, and they earned him a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

One of my favorites is the one above, his cover for the 1990 Bantam/Spectra edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. If you haven’t read it (and you should), it’s an allegory about the loss of ancient wisdom, the horrors of capitalism, and even the conquest of the American West. Haunting the work are the ghosts of the Martians themselves, who once-great civilization is helpless in the face of the invading Earth-men, with their guns and disease and endless greed. I love this cover because it gives you a sense of that lost majesty, but it also makes you curious about the story.

In other words, it kindles the imagination.

Shameless Plug: Free Sample of “Twice the Trouble” Audio Book now on Youtube

Anyone who is all interested in mystery fiction might avail themselves of this long (three chapters!) sample of the audiobook version of Twice the Trouble. It’s free on Youtube from Google Play. Check it out…!

Book Reading at DeKalb Library

For those of you who might be in the Atlanta area on October 7, please stop by the Flat Shoals library for my book talk. The event is at 6:00 p.m., and I’ll be reading from my mystery novel, Twice the Trouble.

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Left Hand of Darkness”

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of our finest science fiction writers, and The Left Hand of Darkness is probably her best book. Not only did it anticipate by half-a-century the seismic cultural shifts that are currently roiling Western society regarding issues of gender-identity and sexual orientation, it’s also just a damned good sci-fi story.

Set in the far future, it takes place on Gethen, a wintery planet with a post-industrial civilization. Genly Ai is an Earth-man who is sent to Gethen on a diplomatic mission, hoping to convince the locals to join the Ekumen (basically, Le Guin’s version of the United Federation of Planets). Genly’s efforts are frustrated by long-standing, internecine conflicts between the Gethenians themselves, and also by his own difficulty in relating to the local people. People on Gethen are, it seems, are androgenous—serially androgenous, actually, existing as one sex for a part of the month and as females for the other. (As Le Guin beautifully describes, they subtly change their outer physiognomy, depending on which gender they are currently occupying, appearing to be “men” some of the time and “women” at others.)

Even now, it’s a pretty far-out concept, but it was totally mind-blowing in 1969 when the novel came out. Trust me, though—it’s a very exciting book. Genly soon finds himself caught between warring nations and is arrested as a potential spy. He is rescued by Estraven, the former prime minister of one of the countries, who helps Genly escape. They set off on a life-and-death adventure, sledding across the frozen wilderness of Gethen and trying to get to safety. In the process, Genly is forced to come to terms with his own deep-rooted conceptions of sexuality, while Estraven faces the prospect of Gethen being just one small planet in a vast, strange galaxy.

Le Guin is often described as a literary science fiction writer, and it’s true. Her prose and descriptive eye were top-notch, and she was able to weave Big Ideas (Feminism, Taoism, etc.) into her fiction without it feeling like a Humanities 101 lecture. The edition I read had this great cover by veteran illustrator Alex Ebel, which might seem a bit cheesy today but was striking and evocative at the time. I love the way it captures one of the major visual motifs of the novel, that of linked-opposites (light and dark, male and female, good and evil, progressive and reactionary). It’s a great, surreal representation of a great novel.

What I’m Watching: “Dune: Part Two”

Well, I finally watched Dune: Part Two (henceforth known as Dune 2) last night. I’m a big fan of the first film (part 1), and I was very eager to see this one (although not eager enough, apparently, to shell-out for theater tickets; oh, well). 

Dune 2 is, obviously, an amazing film, even when viewed on a TV screen. A lot of people have commented on how much the movie reminds them of Lawrence of Arabia, and it’s true. Why not? Frank Herbert was, himself, influenced by Lawrence when he wrote the book. But as I watched Dune 2, I kept thinking of another classic film, The Godfather. They’re practically the same movie, when you think about it. Duke Leto is the Godfather, the noble monarch of a great and honorable kingdom. Arrakis is New York City, full of violence, corruption, and sadistic evil. Paul is Michael, the exiled prince, who is at first reluctant to take up his old man’s role but later succumbs to the circumstances that surround him, and to his own desire for revenge. Chani is Kay. Gurney is Clemenza. And on and on.

I mean this comparison, of course, as a compliment. Dune 2 is an archetypal film, as is The Godfather. And, like The Godfather, it’s got some electrifying scenes of action, woven inside a theme of how good can survive in an evil universe without becoming evil itself. (Dune 2, like The Godfather, leaves the question unresolved.)

I did have some pretty major complaints about the movie, especially in the way it handles time. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the entire story takes place during Lady Jessica’s pregnancy with the unborn Alia. Right? So, unless babies in the Dune universe take a lot longer to gestate, that’s less than nine months—which makes no logical sense. (In the book, it’s more like four years.) Even more problematic, for me, is the film’s unrelenting depictions of sadism. The Harkonnens—the greatest lovers of BDSM fashion in the galaxy—are always stabbing or crushing or slicing somebody up, usually someone helpless and innocent. Yeah, I get it; evil is the major theme of the movie. But I couldn’t help but think that director Denis Villeneuve (who is, I believe, a genius) takes it just a little…bit…too…far. I mean, we get four or maybe five scenes that are essentially remakes of The Empire Strikes Back with Darth Vader killing some dim-witted subordinate.

Still, it’s a great movie, exciting and fluid and beautifully acted. I’ll watch it again. If you haven’t seen it (which I seriously doubt), check it out…

From The Mahabharata to the Marvel MCU: The Sub-Genre Taking Over Hollywood

Back in the early 1990s when I was a poor graduate student, I used to stay home on Saturday nights and watch my little black-and-white TV. I couldn’t afford cable, of course, but thankfully there was always PBS, so I watched a lot of documentaries and episodes of Great Performances. On one such night, I saw a filmed performance of Peter Brook’s stage play The Mahabharata. The play is, of course, a dramatic adaptation of the great Hindu epic, the tale of a feud between two groups of royal cousins, the Pāṇḍava princes and their arch-nemeses, the Kauravas. As epic tales are wont to do, the feud escalates into a civil war so catastrophic that even the gods are pulled into the conflict (in the same way that the Greek gods Mars, Apollo, and Venus involve themselves in the The Illiad).

Being a filmed staged play, Brook’s TV version is low on special effects (this was before CGI) but packed with minimalistic, highly-stylized interpretations of sweeping battles, multi-armed demons, and flying chariots. Somehow, it all works, and I found myself obsessed with both the film and the story. A few years later I would finally read a popular translation of The Bhagavad Gita, which is really just one portion of the much larger Mahabharata.

Continue reading “From The Mahabharata to the Marvel MCU: The Sub-Genre Taking Over Hollywood”

The Page 69 Test

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while (sorry, I’m a flake). Marshal Zeringue has (another) really cool web site called The Page 69 Test, where he invites writers to turn to page 69 of their latest book and write about it. It’s actually a lot of fun! Here is my entry (for which I am grateful to Mr. Zeringue for inviting me to write).