William Hall
I just finished Gateways to Abomination: Collected Short Fiction by Matthew M. Bartlett. This was a very quick read with very short chapters telling stories that seem to be interconnected. It is one of the weirdest books of horror I've come across, like riding a wave into insanity, but I found it refreshingly different. It's probably a book that individual readers will either love or hate. Just remember, if you ever find yourself tuning the radio dial in Southwestern Massachusetts and radio station WXXT pops up, you're most likely doomed.
While there was a lot of research went into this story covering both 14th century medieval Europe and theoretical quantum physics, there were too many quotes and references to these subjects that went far beyond the everyday reader's comprehension (at least this reader's comprehension). Dialogue in various languages, including German, French and Latin without translation is very frustrating. Also, this reader found the overwhelming number of characters hard to keep up with and often became lost trying to remember who in the story was who, especially after the aliens were given human names. On the positive side, the story of a damaged craft from another world and the interaction between the alien passengers and the human population of a small 14th century village steeped in ancient Catholic religious beliefs was interesting. The smaller interspersed parts of the story dealing with the interactions between the husband-and-wife scientific partners, one looking into the mystery behind the history of the village decimated by the black plague and never resettled and the other researching new theories within quantum physics was less interesting (less comprehendible).
Like a B horror movie that blows its special effects budget on the opening action scene and then proceeds to go downhill with a mediocre plot and bad acting, that is my opinion of this story. I thought I was in for a possible Lovecraftian tale when a high security industrial base in the Nevada desert blows open an entrance to something that's been buried beneath tons of earth for millennia and releases what has been trapped there. But then the story devolves into a cross country trip between an estranged brother and sister as they travel between San Francisco and their father's home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These are two very unlikable characters whose whole existence seems to revolve around getting into fights with each other and various dangerous strangers. After the two cause mayhem and death in a biker bar and flee the scene, the sister manages to get possessed by whatever evil came out of the Nevada desert pit. The rest of the story mainly becomes a chase as bikers pursue the pair looking for revenge and a lady exorcist of sorts (who releases the possessed victims by murdering them and then taking on the released evil) also chases after them in order to relieve the sister of her evil burden. Many bloody encounters occur along the way as all unlikable parties are beaten, sliced, diced, punctured and shot, but yet manage to continue on, with the sister's venom-like intruder occasionally making an appearance.
Like the first two Black Wings anthologies the stories within are a mixed bag, however there are enough really weird tales to make the book worth reading. Some of the short stories I found most to my liking were: Richard Gavin's The Hag Stone, Donald Tyson's Waller, Jason V. Brock's The Man With The Horn and Brian Stableford's Further Beyond. I'm not too keen on the stories that have deviant sexual ideas or themes. It's not that I am a prude but I don't think of such stories as very Lovecraftian.
The Innswich Horror is a somewhat farcical homage to H. P. Lovecraft's horror fiction. Obviously the title is a combination of the Lovecraft titles The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Set in the 1930s, a very rich young bachelor with a devotion to Lovecraft's fiction takes a side jaunt from his Lovecraft pilgrimage by bus into the unlisted picturesque seaside town of Innswich Point. His excitement grows as he learns that Lovecraft had actually visited Innswich Point before the town had been given a facelift and had based his story The Shadow Over Innsmouth on the town. One of the very noticeable peculiarities of the town is the number of friendly, beautiful, pregnant female residents. Strangeness leads to growing horror as the plucky traveler begins to uncover the many dark secrets behind the town's happy façade. The author weaves together subject matter from many of Lovecraft's better known stories, especially The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Herbert West - Reanimator and Colour Out of Space, with some Cthulhu mythos thrown in for good measure. It's a grisly romp but without the brilliance of the master of horror himself, Lovecraft.
If you've read John Scalzi's “The Last Colony” then this will be a rehash of that tale. However, now we live that story through the eyes of John and Jane's adopted teenage daughter Zoe. Even though I knew the outcome of the tale I found Zoe's teenage perspective interesting and the banter between her and her other teenage friends often amusing. This story has many emotionally uplifting and sad parts as well. And, Scalzi filled in some gaps that were missing from the original story. Now we learn more about the “werewolf” species that killed some members of the Roanoke colony. Now we know what happened when Zoe was sent away from the Roanoke colony on a mission to meet with the Conclave leader General Gau. My only slight criticism is that Zoe comes across a bit OP at times. I had put this book aside for a bit while I delved into some horror novels, but when I returned to the book, I ripped right through it. So, I recommend it for anyone following the “Old Man's War” series.
This was a quick read of creepy short stories for a gloomy October day, or night. They are typical of the genre but all were worth a read. They'd make great fare for a graphic novel or one of the old pulp horror comics.
I can see why Arthur Conan Doyle's characters of Sherlock Holmes and his friend and sidekick Dr. Watson have been favorites for readers over the years. I finally broke down and began reading these stories and found them very well written and enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised to see in many cases, while the mystery takes place in England, there was often a connection to America. Story connections included the early Mormons, the early KKK and mention of the American gold fields and coal mining communities. And, I was surprised to learn of Sherlock's brother Mycroft, who was a genius in his own right.
A quick read and a fairly standard creepy story similar to something from Dean Koontz. A curse from the past takes over when the decision for a school to become a charter school is rammed through by the principal. As new strict and strange charter “rules” are put into place, many teacher and student personalities begin to change for the worse and those unaffected among the students, staff and student parents may soon become the school's victims.
This is a tale both beautiful and terrifying as related by one of the main protagonists and narrator, Michael Simmons. Set mainly near the townland of Allihies, located at the western tip of Ireland's Beara Peninsula, the story, told in three parts and a final epilogue, centers around Mike and three women, Maggie, Alison and Liz, and the one dangerously fateful decision they make at Maggie's weekend housewarming get together. All four come from the Art world. Mike and Alison have successful careers as art dealers, he in London and she in Dublin. Liz, is a poet and personal friend of Maggie. Maggie, like a younger sister to Mike, is a talented artist who was Mike's discovery and has proved her talent over the years Mike has known her. However, Maggie has poor taste in men and her last abusive boyfriend beat her so badly that she had to be hospitalized. With her art career in a slump and making the final recovery from her beating, Maggie decides to take time for herself and wander the Irish countryside. It is during this time that she spies an isolated run down oceanside stone cottage sitting below a slope near Allihies. She immediately falls in love with the cottage and surrounding costal vistas and contacts a real estate agent in order to purchase and and repair the cottage. A word of warning from the agent is the first note of unease in this tale of haunting terror - “This place has been empty a long time. Too long to be natural, really. And people talk. It's lonely out here, the kind of place where it'd be too easy to glimpse things.” But Maggie seeing artistic inspiration in the area and a chance to be alone to make a recovery from her recent bout with violence, borrows money from Mike to buy and refurbish the cottage. With the repairs complete and during a warm summer weekend, Maggie invites Mike, Alison and Liz to come for a housewarming party. She also has plans as matchmaker to bring Alison and Mike together; a plan that is actually successful in that romance does bloom and Mike and Alison will eventually marry and have a little girl years later. After a wonderful weekend together traveling the countryside, it is on the last candlelit evening, with liquid spirits flowing, that the four, with Liz's urging, take part in something that will open them all up to things best left alone. Though never boring, O'Callaghan takes his time, using beautiful, descriptive prose to unwind this unsettling ghostly tale that also manages to include a love story.
People of the Earth are vanishing without a trace. At first only a few people disappear, but then the vanishings begin to accelerate leading to huge motorcar pileups, planes falling out of the sky and many other tragedies. Many evangelical Christians believe it is the tribulation that is thought to be referenced in the Holy Bible. Others think there is a more logical scientific explanation. Several people who have been tragically touched by the vanishings join together to help the emergency U.S. government try and find the cause of the phenomenon before a point of no return for the human race is reached.
The story is fast paced with an interesting premise that draws in the reader. An exciting culmination to the story leads to an opening into the second book in the Gone series.
This anthology of Cthulhu Mythos short stories is ghoulishly entertaining and a grand homage to Lovecraft, who was a friend (and in some cases collaborator) to the youngest member at the time of the Lovecraftian Circle of authors, Robert Bloch. A short foreword to each story gives more insight into Bloch's treatment of Lovecraft's Mythos.
It's hard to describe the plot of this book. It has elements of a murder mystery mixed with starship travel in both space and time. There is also the coming destruction of Earth as what is called the Terminus is working its way back from the future ever closer to the present set in 1997. As the main character, a one-legged female member of a special branch of the space faring navy, looks into the brutal slaying of a family and a missing teenage daughter of the family, it is slowly revealed how this case has ripples through space and time that connect the case to the origins of the Terminus. The plot becomes quite complicated as the main character slips between 1997 and decades into the future looking for answers. She meets many of the same people at different ages but with different storylines. Can she trust the version of the future she travels to for answers? What is sure is that everywhere she goes a bloody trail of bodies is left in her wake. An interesting but brutal Sci-fi story.
While there are some unique differences in this book, if you've seen John Carpenter's movie The Thing you'll understand the general direction of the story. It's a fast-paced quick read to enjoy between more serious reads.
This example of weird horror fiction was satisfyingly creep at its opening through the majority of the story, but then for this reader fizzled out in a cacophony of words trying to describe the indescribable toward the story's resolution. The substance of the tale contains a bit of Stephen King's The Mist mixed with a pinch of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and some of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy strangeness. The story mainly centers around the Bradley family within the small town of Millwood, New Hampshire. Young Stuart Bradley discovers a mysterious door that has appeared within the local woods where he plays with his imaginary friends. After he opens the door and tosses a rock into the black abyss found behind the door, it triggers a cascade of events that leads to his death and subsequent possession of his corpse by the “Visitor” escaping the abyss. Unfortunately, the frigid blackness begins to escape the open door as a cloud subsuming life and horribly mutating everything in its path as it grows. While other characters within Millwood are horribly destroyed by the cloud or another otherworldly stranger seeking to find the “Visitor,” Stuart's mother Heather, his little brother Mica and to a lesser extent his father Will are the main protagonists. What happens to them and how they are touched by and respond to the growing horror shapes the somewhat unsatisfying outcome to the story.
Ray Bradbury's writing style is truly unique among writers of Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror/Dramatic Fiction. I think of him as the Norman Rockwell of story writing. Even when writing about adventures in space, life on other planets or the diabolical deeds of aliens and humans, there is a kind of Americana homespun feeling to the stories. While keeping the reader riveted with a story's subject matter, at the end a story often leaves the reader with a melancholy ache for times and places lost and pondering one's own brief existence in this thing called a human lifetime.
We learned in the first Alex Hunter book that Hunter's physical abilities and senses were mysteriously enhanced when he survived a Russian agent's bullet to the brain, the bullet's location making it too dangerous to be removed. Hunter then became part of the Arcadian project in which his abilities were studied and scientifically enhanced even further. He is a type of super-hero berserker soldier, like a cross between Captain America, The Hulk and Dr. Strange. He and his HAWC team are reserved for the most dangerous covert American military missions, and so far their missions have brought them up against Lovecraftian monstrous entities as well as human enemies.
In this story, an Iranian scientist has stumbled upon a way to open a black hole in a covert underground facility. The first time this happens, in a nanosecond the laboratory is destroyed, personnel disappear and a huge burst of gamma radiation is released. Horribly mutilated bodies of some of the irradiated personnel appear in various parts of the world and the burst of gamma radiation has alerted detectors in the United States and Israel.
Hunter, men from his HAWC team, members of Mossad, led by a tough and beautiful female Mossad officer, and a nerdy Israeli scientist are tasked with the mission to either capture or destroy the technology that created the strange gamma burst in Iran. Unbeknownst to both sides is that the black hole, while open, has sucked into the Iranian desert a monstrous creature from some other place and this creature finds humans very appetizing.
The story is action packed and bloody. My biggest complaint about such stories comes from my personal standing on current world geopolitics. The Iranian leaders have to be portrayed as radical religious fanatics. The United States and Israel must be the good guys stopping the Iranian fanatics from destroying the world, and so it is just okay to drop into a sovereign country and create havoc. In such two dimensional writing the story must be written in a way to present the current propaganda narrative without any nuance. I can only give this three stars for the action, especially with the creature.
John Wyndham's writing, though somewhat dated, is every bit as important and unique as that produced by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and other great Science Fiction writers of his time. I know of two of his classic novels that were reproduced in film, The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos (Village of the Damned), but the original written material is definitely superior. The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos are alien invasion tales that each take on this theme in as an unique, inventive a way as H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The Chrysalids is a post apocalyptic tale with themes every bit as compelling as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and a couple of Wyndham's short stories could be additions to Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. In Trouble with Lichen Wyndham poses the questions and problems that would arise if a relatively rare natural substance was found that could radically increase life expectancy (years before Frank Herbert created the spice melange in Dune). John Wyndham's writings should be on every Science Fiction reader's reading list.
In this third book in the Old Man's War series we now find John Perry and Jane Sagan following their time in military service and, along with their adopted daughter Zoë, now living as colonists on an established Colonial Union colony planet. They are living a peaceful farming life but that will soon end when they are contacted by a military officer from the Colonial Union and tagged to become the leaders setting up a new human colony on the planet named Roanoke. What will be different about the new colony is that its 2500 colonists will be made up of members from other established rival CU colony worlds and not from Earth. To make things even more interesting, 400 alien races have joined together to form the Conclave of planets and have made it clear that they will not allow any other race that is not part of the Conclave to form any new colonies. When John and Jane decide to accept the challenge of starting the new colony they will find that the CU has not been completely honest with them about the world they are being sent to or about the Conclave and its activities. They will soon find themselves caught in the middle of an interstellar conflict and with their colony on Roanoke at the center of that conflict. Like the previous two novels in the series there are many twists and turns with lots of action, making this another page-turner.
Secret military group fights monsters in the Arizona desert with neat military toys. And there are aliens too dating back to the 1947 Roswell, NM incident.
I have no qualms about giving a rating of five stars to “The Passage.” Justin Cronin's writing is on par with Stephen King. In fact, “The Passage” in some sense can be compared to King's “The Stand.” But some of the plotline also reminds me of Max Brooks' “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,” since parts of the book take place in a far future time looking back to events as referenced in one of the main character's diaries. This is not a quick read and will take a commitment of time to complete the book; however it is well worth it. Cronin unwinds the story slowly, making sure to cover every detail completely. The reader gets to know and comes to care about the characters and their struggle for survival. Similar in theme to many modern day horror fiction tales, a viral apocalypse is mistakenly unleashed upon the world by a covert military lab in the western United States. When the infected escape the lab, a growing carnivorous horde of monstrous vampire-like mutated humans is set free that will bring modern civilization to an end, leaving the dwindling number of the human race to seek survival in any way possible. The story picks up around a century later and the reader is introduced to the core group of protagonists living in a California sanctuary; a sanctuary harassed by virals by night and whose days are numbered, as the supply of electricity to maintain the warding nighttime perimeter searchlights will eventually fail. As tensions rise within the sanctuary the small core group leaves on a dangerous quest to find the source of a mysterious radio signal in the Colorado mountains. With them will travel a strange ageless girl, Amy, who after approaching the sanctuary had been mistakenly wounded by one of the guards. With her recuperation it is discovered that she has the ability of telepathic communication and seems to have some mental connection with the virals as well. The reader follows the small group through their trials and tribulations as they fight to reach their goal and possible answers to the survival of the human race; some will not survive the ordeal. This is the first book in “The Passage” trilogy but can be read as a stand-alone story if the reader so chooses.
This was a very strange but interesting book that ended abruptly with the big question unanswered. I will have to read the next book in the series to see if answers are forthcoming.
This story has all the makings of a big special effects Sci-Fi/Horror movie. Alex Hunter is more than just another special forces soldier after surviving being shot in the head by a Russian enemy. The inoperable bullet still lodged in his brain inexplicably has awakened formerly unused parts of his brain, heightening his strength, his senses and his recuperating abilities, but also leading to bouts of rage that he must learn to control. He's like Doc Savage on steroids (yes, he even ends up bare chested by the end).
When a small private jet crashes and punches a hole in the Antarctic ice a team of scientists and military is sent in to look for survivors and explore the opening, but soon disappears without a trace. Alex, along with a few of his hand picked men and another scientific team, equipped with specialized gear and weaponry, is sent in to see what has happened to the first team and as a side mission to look for oil under the Antarctic ice.
What they discover in labyrinthine caves under the ice is an ancient world of deadly creatures that may have wiped out one of the first post Atlantis civilizations. To make matters worse, a covert team of Russians has been sent in after them, led by the vicious assassin who put the bullet in Alex's brain. They are there to steal any uncovered oil secrets and murder all in Alex's group.
What follows is a race for survival in the deep caves under the Antarctic ice with assassins pursuing from behind and a large, intelligent, very hungry, Lovecraftian creature stalking everyone who entered the cave system. It's touch and go as members of Alex's team are picked off one by one in the frantic race to try and reach the surface and safety.
While typical of the genre, the story kept me turning pages to reach the big finish ending. With the creature, or one like it, now appearing to have been released from its Antarctic tomb, I'll have to check out the next adventure of super soldier Alex Hunter, and I'm sure his Russian nemesis will be dogging him along the way.
This is a continuance of the story that began with Hyperion. That storyline was made up of separate experience narratives told by the small group of pilgrims allowed by the Hegemony Web of planets to venture to the mysterious time tombs on the planet Hyperion, prior to Hyperion being annexed into the Web. These narratives interlock to provide the reader the background for the main storyline dealing with the mysterious Hyperion and the time tombs. The valley of the time tombs is unique in all the known explored galaxy where time flows backward within an entropy field and where a mysterious and monstrous metal entity, known as the Shrike, exists. The four armed Shrike, with its body made up of razor sharp blades, is known to slice and dice those who enter its realm and skewer the living bodies of its victims on a boundless, interdimensional thorn tree, that leaves the victims in an unending eternity of living pain. While the pilgrims take their long and treacherous journey across Hyperion to the time tombs a space war between the Hegemony Web and the mysterious Ouster Swarms is about to take place and is centered on the control of Hyperion. Hyperion ends suddenly just as the pilgrims reach the time tombs with many questions left unanswered, and so The Fall of Hyperion continues where Hyperion left off.
It is hard to give a brief overview of The Fall of Hyperion, it is so densely packed with several ongoing narratives, characters and locations. These narratives cover politics, religion, spirituality, personal relationships, interstellar warfare and weaponry, planetary genocide, interplanetary ecology, anthropology, philosophy, time displacement, Artificial Intelligence, cyborgs, interplanetary travel portals and spaceships, interplanetary communication technology...and of course the homage to the life of Keats and his poetry. Still interwoven within the grand and complicated tapestry of the story is the ongoing narrative of the trials and tribulations of the original group of pilgrims and their individual quests to the time tombs of Hyperion, guarded by the dangerous Shrike. If the reader is able to stick it through to the end of this often confusing but action packed tale, almost all will be revealed in the end, sort of. This is a book that probably requires more that one reading to try and grasp all its intricacies, but with so many books of interest awaiting....?