New Reviews
Pierce, Cameron: The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island
Fantastic fiction fosters a certain kind of melancholic anti-hero, an amoral, luckless mess of a messiah destined to do more harm than good. Now, to the ranks of Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever comes Gaston Glew, a pickle, narrator of Cameron Pierce's The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island: A Tragedy for People Who Eat Food. Sixteen and hereditarily-depressed, Glew escapes the confines of the pickle planet, launching himself into space in a vehicle built and fueled—literally—via the deaths of his parents. Coming to Pancake Island, Glew proceeds to indulge his every sour whim, romancing princesslike pancake Fanny Fod even as he murders her fellow pancakes with impunity, poisons the environment, and destabilizes the sun, kicking off the titular apocalypse. Strangeness abounds in a world where the fauna includes bacon vultures and an imprisoned cuddlywumpus (the source of all happiness), and the plot wickedly spirals through an absurd—if doomed—landscape toward catharsis. Like a demented children's story for adults, The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island: A Tragedy for People Who Eat Food is inspired weirdness in the Bizarro tradition from the author of Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden and Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. [10/2010]
Dunsany, Lord: If I Were Dictator
Part of the "If I Were Dictator" series of "uniform volumes" published in the 1930s by Methuen & Co. Ltd. (London), If I Were Dictator: The Pronouncements of the Grand Macaroni finds the Irish fantasist Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett) solving the world's ills through droll humor, satirical logic, and biting wit. Here, Dunsany, naming himself the Grand Macaroni, attacks food additives (and food-as-product… presaging the likes of Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan), motorcars, ubiquitous advertising, animal cruelty (with the exception of fox hunting, which he supports), purse snatching, phone pranking, and taxes, and many of his solutions sound as radical, and dare I say it—progressive—as they must have in 1934. Particularly entertaining is the Grand Macaroni's solution to the Indian problem, which entails the gradual and systematic removal of Europeans (and their decedents) from India, Canada, and the Americas. It could work. Long out of print, Dunsany's If I Were Dictator: The Pronouncements of the Grand Macaroni is a mere footnote among the author's eighty-odd books and hundreds of short stories, but nonetheless provides an engaging and captivating glimpse at the inner-workings of the mind of this influential and timeless author. [5/2010]
Pierce, Cameron: Ass Goblins of Auschwitz
Absurdist, patently offensive, disturbingly scatological (which you probably already guessed given the title), and surprisingly action-packed, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz imagines a child-slave rebellion, led by a pair of conjoined twins, against anthropomorphic fascist tuckuses from another planet. Cannibalism, brutality, and body horror abound. At times affecting a sense of hopeless squalor reminiscent of the opening chapters of Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter (by way of South Park), Ass Goblins of Auschwitz is textbook Bizarro, rife with nightmare logic, grotesque transformations, and shockingly-inspired imagery. Not for the faint of heart, but fans of the Bizarro genre will find plenty to enjoy in Cameron Pierce's sophomore effort. [1/2010]
Kiernan, Caitlín R.: The Red Tree
With The Red Tree, a haunting, even ghostly, tale of loss, memory, and melancholy, Caitlín R. Kiernan carves fresh paths through an overgrown literary landscape evocative of Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter. There is a great deal of beauty here, as local legends and subjective personal history intermix and reflect one upon the other, often to chilling effect. Unfortunately, however, designer Spring Hoteling's decision to lay the book out in a riotous variety of fonts creates an unnecessary distraction, particularly since the core conceit of Kiernan's novel is that the documents written by its doomed narrator (including Kiernan's short story "Pony," here attributed to the narrator), along with the found manuscript that drives the engine of the plot forward, all were composed on the same typewriter. On some level, I can understand Hoteling's choices (but did she have to choose such an ugly and unreadable distressed typewriter font?); one could argue that presenting each of the novel's diverse voices with its own unique look provides a degree of clarity to less-experienced readers (I disagree, as the narrator's voice and comment is ever present, and the fact that her commentary on the found manuscript is presented in-line with the reproduced section of said ms. can be quite jarring to any reader). Perhaps it's just that every layout artist aspires to create his or her own House of Leaves, and this was Ms. Hoteling's opportunity to indulge that fancy. In any case, in spite of its typographer's broad and clumsy strokes, The Red Tree is lush, strange, erotic, and disturbing, and is an easy recommendation for not just those who are already fans of Kiernan's work, but to newcomers as well. [8/2009]
Lundwall, Sam J.: 2018 A.D. or the King Kong Blues
In 2018 A.D. or the King Kong Blues, Sam J. Lundwall's dystopian future forecasting is, for the most part, dead on. Overpopulation, peak oil, and a society obsessed with tawdry reality television (and bombarded with constant advertising) make the novel's setting eerily resonant, and resemblances between this 1975 novel and the present day abound. Then again, the technology of Lundwall's future remain mired in the 70s, with centralized magnetic tape and punchcard-controlled computers, and recorded music played (in six-channel sound) from LP records. At times hilarious, 2018 A.D. or the King Kong Blues hasn't aged well; too many of the novel's characters are two-dimensional stereotypes and infodumps abound, making this a book tentatively recommended to students of yesterday's tomorrows and those intent on exploring pull-dated dystopian visions. Casual SF readers need not apply. [8/2009]
Datlow, Ellen, ed: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 1
Read in manuscript. A solid collection of terrifying tales, collecting the best short stories and fiction published in 2008. High points include E. Michael Lewis's "Cargo," William Browning Spencer's "Penguins of the Apocalypse," Laird Barron's "The Lagerstatte," Adam Golaski's "The Man From the Peak," and Simon Bestwick's "The Narrows. [7/2009]
Burk, Jeff: Shatnerquake
A good Bizarro book is like a good punk rock record: fast paced, aggressive, and passionate enough that you're compelled to look past rough edges and the occasional sour note. Jeff Burk's Shatnerquake is not a good Bizarro book; it's a great Bizarro book. From it's geek-tastic premise (William Shatner is trapped at a convention, besieged by the many characters he's played) to its other-side-of-strange setting (Burk knows his SF conventions… not to mention his Shatners) to its gleeful sense of violence, Shatnerquake delivers everything it promises (including Captain Kirk with a lightsaber). Throw in fiction bombs (television networks' competition has escalated to all-out warfare, creating these brilliant plot devices), Bruce Campbell-venerating terrorists (Hail to the King, baby), and an ending that begs for a sequel (never fear, Shatnerquest and Shatnerpocalypse are on their way), and you've got one "action novel" that's well worth your lunch money. It's Shatner-tastic! [5/2009]
Chabon, Michael: Maps & Legends
Michael Chabon's Maps & Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands collects sixteen essays with one idea in common: that entertainment, above all, is at the heart of the literary art. From Sherlock Holmes to comic books; from Yiddish phrasebooks to gruesome golems to great ghost stories, Chabon's analyses are multifaceted, lighthearted, and always entertaining. [5/2009]
Mellick III, Carlton: Apeshit
Friday the 13th meets Visitor Q
promises the back cover copy of Carlton Mellick III's Apeshit, and that's exactly what the book delivers; this is the literary equivalent of a Takashi Miike slasher flick, reveling in the conventions of B-movie horror, yet layering on enough gore, gristle, and grotesquerie to make even Kane Hodder squeamish. At the heart of the novel's plot is the requisite group of horny teenagers, heading out to the requisite isolated cabin in the woods for the requisite weekend of partying and debauchery. But this is Bizarro territory, so this cast of teens includes a Mohawked cheerleader covered in full-body butterfly tattoos, an obsessive tooth-brusher with a vagina dentata, and an abortion porn aficionado. Yeah, it's that kind of book. Characterization is a bit uneven*, and many of the protagonists become downright unlikable over the novel's course, but then again, the fact that the aforementioned horny teens are monsters themselves is kind of the point. Apeshit is, at turns, strange, disgusting, surprising, disturbing, and riotously funny. ---*Particularly with regards to Buddy the Lobster Boy, Apeshit's killer mutant. While Buddy does appear to share some literary DNA with John Gardner's Grendel (It sees lights in the distance. Lights in a place that is usually dark. There is something bad about these lights. Something evil. It has to make the lights go away. It has to make the evil, all evil, go away.
), ultimately, Buddy is underdeveloped and underutilized as a character, making his transition from villain to victim far less satisfying than it might otherwise be. [5/2009]
Miéville, China: The City & The City
There's a bumper sticker that became popular in the earliest days of the Iraq debacle that says I love my country but I think we should start seeing other people.
China Miéville's The City & The City has a lot in common with that bumper sticker. The core conceit of The City & The City is that two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, exist simultaneously in the same space. The inhabitants of each city go about their days "unseeing" the other city, ignoring its residents, buildings, cars, and culture as if they didn't exist. But when a Beszel police detective begins investigating a murder that crosses the boundary between his city and the other, the novel becomes a literary exercise that is simply astonishing. It is a testament to Miéville's skill as a writer that he is able to take such an impossible idea and make it seem wholly plausible. This is a novel that should re-define Urban Fantasy. [5/2009]
