The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories

The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories has an impressive amount of reading matter for the low low price of just 99 cents. I am currently reading story 7 of 26. Already I have forgotten some of them. So, I thought I'd build out my blog post from here with what I remember of what I've already read. What's in The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories? It is a mixture of classic and modern. At least thus far, the longer pieces are classic and in the public domain (for instance, the novella "The Whisperer in the Darkness" by H. P. Lovecraft) while the modern pieces, thus far, are short stories.

I will skip "Midnight at Valdosta's" and "The Case of the Peculiar Safe." I do remember a few things about "Midnight at Valdosta's." But I didn't really get the sense of a story out of it. It was more of an impression of something. Like it's a piece of a story or just the beginning of one.

The Acquisition of Mandrakes and Assistants, Jillian Venters

"The Acquisition of Mandrakes and Assistants" by Jillian Venters was the first remarkable story that I ran into.

The assistant is tired of the tiresome professor, and decides to try on a different occupation: taking care of a child. That child happens to belong to a twisted many who enjoys tormenting children. She rescues the boy, burns down the house with everyone locked inside, and goes back to work as an assistant. I really enjoyed this story.

The Whisperer in Darkness, H. P. Lovecraft

"The Whisperer in Darkness" is, as already mentioned, a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. H. P. Lovecraft is a writer whom I've always wanted to like ever since I heard his name mentioned by one of my favorite pulp fiction writers, Robert E. Howard, famous for his Conan stories. Even when I was younger, I found my eyes very nearly bleeding with effort to maintain attention to his books. I am no different now. I am perhaps more disciplined. But I really had to prop open my eyes to keep going. I have since discovered he was a horrible person as a racist. So, I'm not as motivated as before to like his work. What I like about his work is the mythology that he creates. The ideas about extra terrestrials and old dark magic and science from the cold planet, Pluto, are pretty great. There have been many who have brought to life his ideas through their artwork. But the writing itself is onerous.

Most of the story centers around a character, Albert N. Wilmarth, an assistant professor of English at a university. He's made a penpal of Henry Akeley, who lives in a house on the edge of an area haunted by creatures from this planet of advanced and sinister aliens. He has recordings, photographs, and anecdotes about the creatures sent to him. The sinister aliens repress knowledge of their presence through terror and alliances with humans who assist them. At last, Henry Akeley is compromised. He invites Wilmarth to his abode, but also to bring all of the material he had sent including the audio recording, the photos, and even the letters that had been sent. Clearly, at this point, there is a problem. But Wilmarth follows the instructions and all the materials are lost when he flees the house the first night of his visit. I guess it's not a bad story. But I just cannot get into H. P. Lovecraft's method of telling his tale. It is boring. He is entirely too much 'tell' and not enough 'show' when it comes to storytelling.

Wikipedia writes, "In addition to being a textbook example of Lovecraft's characteristically non-occult brand of horror, in an age when the genre consisted almost entirely of ghosts, vampires, goblins, and similar traditional tales, "Whisperer" is one of the earliest literary appearances of the now-cliché concept of an isolated brain (although the alien brain case is not transparent as with later cinematic examples of this trope).

"The story retains some seemingly supernatural elements, such as its claim that the alien fungi, although visible to the naked eye and physically tangible, do not register on photographic plates and instead produce an image of the background absent the creature (an impossibility by any known laws of optics, though a trait commonly attributed to vampires), although the story does mention that this is possibly due to the creatures' fungoid and alien structure which works differently from any known physical organism. It is stated that the electrons of these fungoid aliens possess a different vibrational frequency that would require the development of a novel technique by a chemist in order to record their image."

So, that's the issue with Lovecraft. His work is of a pioneering nature. So, it is important. The ideas are in fact very good. But as a storyteller, I just have a horrible time with the style of the stories. I ought to point out that the style does seem cliche with his period. But who sets the cliche? Was it really his fault? That story construction of, "Here's an unbelievable story. I'm very smart and educated. I didn't believe it at first. But then..." is so tired and uninteresting. And constantly, "on the verge of terror from ..." isn't much better.

The Brass Goggle Factory Worker, John Leavitt

"The Brass Goggle Factory Worker" by John Leavitt was quite interesting. It is flawed due to some poor editing and proofreading. There are many grammar, spelling, and wrong word errors to this tale throughout. At times it is distracting and outright annoying. But inside the story itself is quite interesting.

This story could have taken place somewhere inside the universe of George Orwell's legendary dystopian masterpiece, 1984. It doesn't have that depth. There isn't quite the cold chill horror or brilliance of Orwell's masterpiece. But it's just a short story.

The Tailed Men, Arthur O Friel

"The Tailed Men" is set in the Amazon Forest. A white man is tortured before being returned to his friends. His friends decide to go back into the forest to get revenge against the race. Quite beyond belief, they are able to find the very tribe responsible for his death and the enact their revenge by dressing up as a monster and slaughtering the men and women and setting the village to fire. In their murderous frenzy, they discover that the tribe possibly mates with the local monkeys, resulting in these crossbreeds of half men half monkeys from which the men with tails are concocted.

I have a hard time understanding the connection between steampunk and this particular story.

The Impossible Mister Lapin, Peter Wordworth

I have no idea who Peter Wordworth is. And, for at least the first few page results from Google, nor does Google. I enjoyed this story.

A man pursues mad science in an effort to learn how to turn himself into a rabbit. By doing his research, he is able to discover the secret. In so doing, learning the secret language of the magical universe, he becomes half rabbit and half man. Why not?

With his newfound expertise in the occult, he becomes a kind of investigator into weird happenings. For awhile, this means uncovering silly attempts or deceptions, until another less successful than himself accidentally transforms himself into a gold statue and brings to life a gold statue into a boar which terrorizes locals. He is able to solve the mystery and stop the boar using symbols.

It was a fun short story. I don't know anything else about Wordworth.

The War Effort, Austin H. Williams

Austin H. Williams gets results on Google. He has a number of stories in these types of anthologies and some kind of fiction magazine called Steampunk Tales. So, he's gotten his work around a bit.

A great warrior, Timo Malthusset, falls in love with a woman in a religious order. He dedicates himself to her and follows her, completely ignorant about the religious order, called the Messengers, to which he is devoting himself.

She leads him to an underground world where he is promptly knocked unconscious and turned into a half man half machine under the control of some kind of crystal embedded in his skull. He discovers that his beloved lady is a cannibal and that the religion is some kind of super advanced super sadistic culture which eats the bodies of the dead and has a small army of half men half machine slaves. He is able to wiggle himself into falling to the ground, smashing the crystals on his head on impact(I guess that no helmet or some kind of protective casing design never occurred to the designer). Now he is a super powerful half man half machine who goes about killing the engineer, Garum, and the woman whom he had dedicated himself before running away.

Ok, it wasn't so bad. But Williams could have done more with the story. Perhaps he is.

Herbert West: Reanimator, H. P. Lovecraft

For the first time, I have found a story by Lovecraft that I enjoyed. It was fairly well written. It's the story of a mad scientist and his sidekick who are on a mission to reanimate a corpse. It isn't terribly unlike Shelley's Frankenstein. Though, instead of reanimating the dead with electricity, a freshly made corpse without too much decay is chemically reanimated.

The mad scientist sub genre is one of endless amusement. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Jekyll, are all very interesting characters. Dr. West is nowhere near as famous as those others, but he is definitely within their ranks, albeit less infamous.

Dr. West succeeds in his quest. For the most part, he is able to destroy what he creates. But in the end, those whom he failed to destroy end up forming a small troop who literally tear him to pieces. There really isn't much to this story. But it is enjoyable. As I read the story late at night, I felt entertained from the first to the last page. Finally, a Lovecraft story I enjoyed.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain

Mark Twain is definitely among my favorite American writers of that century. I have read at least four of his novels as well as a collection of short stories.

I don't think I would have ever read this novel if not for the fact that it was in this compilation of so called 'steampunk' books. I keep having to go back to the definition of steampunk to see how it fits in. Well, it's a book about late 19th century technology and philosophy going back to around 6th century England. Fortunately, everyone speaks modern English in this story.

Mark Twain's description of the time is a bit of a mix between the impossible and reality. Magic does not exist, though people believe in it. Superstition is ever more powerful in his rendition of the 6th century. People believe in absurd stories quite easily.

The main character, Hank, mysteriously gets whisked to King Arthur's period and is quickly captured by a knight. His knowledge of an imminent total eclipse is enough so that he makes people believe that he has caused the eclipse, and that it is not just a natural phenomenon.

He is also fairly rational, which gives him advantages over the local population. When he has to face off with the magical Merlin, it becomes apparent that Merlin is a fraud. He has no power at all. He only pretends about magic. So, it is easy for Hank, a man of some science and engineering, to make people believe that he is powerful in a magical sense. What is magic but an appearance of the impossible?

Eventually, he manages to manufacture a number of technologies. Everything from gunpowder to laying down some telecommunications. He is able to set up quite a bit. Much of his criticism of Arthur's day I find is relevant today. He talks about how classes are treated differently. While the punitive punishments are certainly not the same today as they were in his America, let alone 6th Century 'England'. For instance, he talks about how a rich or titled lord can basically kill a man or woman without any issue, a poor person so much as scratching a rich man is risking a quick death or a slow lingering death in a horrible prison. These extremes don't exist today, but there are similarities. For instance, scratch a Ferrari on the road, and the cost of the repair will be greater than a  poor person's car. If the man in the Ferrari kills someone and it's their fault, the insurance will pay for it and life will go on for the most part.

There is an interesting tug of war between reason and superstition. Eventually, superstition wins. While Hank is away in France, the whole of England falls apart due to war, and the Dark Ages church takes over. There is a war where many knights die, but it is a war between tens of thousands of knights vs a small band of boys. The battle is largely won, but when Hank goes out to see if he can help some of the dead, he is injured. Further, the sickness which comes with war, of all the decomposing bodies, eventually overwhelms his resistance. The Dark Ages take over the Age of Enlightenment which he tries to ushur in. Surely, there is some similarity between my contemporary society. In these days, there is a huge growth in strength among those who don't believe in science and those who do. Hank believes that once people are educated, it will overwhelm those who cling to ignorance. At some point in our current, recent history, surely we have felt the same way. But the tide is shifting to that of ignorance once again: people don't believe in 5+/- earth, or the round earth, or climate change, or any of these things which are well established by experts. They would rather believe an old book.Will we ever change? Or will this tug of war between reason and superstition always exist?

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal, by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Raven" and a few other of Poe's poems are some of my favorite pieces of writing. While I like some of his short stories, there's nothing to equal "The Raven" in my opinion. Of the stories of his that I've read, this was among my least favorite. I am not even sure if he wrote it. In fact, it seems like someone else wrote it and he's commenting on it. However, it's possible that he wrote it to be a hoax and then treated it as a hoax itself. It's something of an ironic approach.

This isn't the first story of its kind that I've read, nor is it the best. I much preferred Cyrano de Bergerac's story, "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon," which is similar in many ways.

The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It's funny, to look at the cover of this book because in the story, the only white woman is the girlfriend of the narrator, Edward Malone, before he goes off on his adventure to the lost world. Also, there is no T-Rex. The worst creatures they run into are giant toads which hop on their victims with their larger than elephant sized asses, squishing them to death. Way to go book cover illustrator with your horribly inaccurate portrayal!

Edward Malone is in love with a woman who wants a hero for a husband. So, he goes off on this adventure with some professors and an adventurer to see if Professor Challenger's description of this lost world was true and accurate.

The geography is a bit of a puzzle to me. There seems to be a rather significant land barrier between this lost world and the rest of the world. First, they manage to get across due to a tree being close to a rift. Once that tree is gone, they don't know how to build a tree to get back across. Of course, that's quite amazing considering that there are supposed to be two very intelligent academics, one adventurer, and the reporter/narrator. I suppose that they have no engineering ideas among them to help them escape.

Over a period of time, they discover the pterodactyls, a stegosaurus, a gigantic toad, Iguanodon, Allosaurus, and Megalosaurus, and some other prehistoric animals. They get attacked by a tribe of missing link human-like apes, but manage to escape with some red skinned Indians (Native Americans).

Racism: as is often the case, this book has a few moments. The one black character is a 'black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent.' I do believe that he's paying the character compliments in his mind. But it's certainly not at all a compliment.

There are two 'half breeds' which are described. One of whom is said to have 'the vice of curiosity.' However, later on, that same vice is described as 'the bravery of the scientific mind... It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.' That is to say, the curiosity of the 'half breed' is a vice, but in the white men, it's celebrated and makes them brave. Oddly enough, there are not many pages to separate the seemingly obvious contradiction. Later on, the 'red Indians' are also poorly described. Fortunately, the racism in these  descriptions is limited to a few pages only.

I did enjoy the book, despite the silliness and racism.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton

I had wanted to enjoy this story. Surely it is meant to be a comedy. It is about a bunch of policemen who are recruited to infiltrate an anarchists' group. Ironically, the man who recruits all of them is the leader of the group, and all of the members of the anarchists' group are policemen.

I think that the story is meant to be a comedy. Perhaps I did laugh. But I'm not really sure. I was disappointed with the story. 

Dark Carnival, Ray Bradbury

   I can't recall where I picked up a copy of Ray Bradbury's collection of short weird fiction, Dark Carnival. In any case, I must say that I don't recall ever having read any of his fiction. This, despite his name being legendary in the golden age of science fiction. Despite my associating him with science fiction, here are a few lines from Wikipedia that describe his fiction:

Bradbury was once described as a "Midwest surrealist" and is often labeled a science-fiction writer, which he described as "the art of the possible." Bradbury resisted that categorization, however:

First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time -- because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.^[35]

Certainly, there is nothing of science fiction in this collection of short stories. I would classify it as weird fiction. I am not an authority on anything except my opinion, of course.

   I'm not going to go over each of the short stories. I'm only going to mention the few that stood out for me.
   Death and the undead often come up as subjects or characters throughout many of the stories. There is a vampire who doesn't like to be a monster like the rest of his relatives. There is a story, "Uncle Einar", about psychic possession where a girl, to prove how awful she is, possesses a relative hated by the family until he kills himself. All the time he is looking for her to help him, completely unaware that it is she who has haunted him, leading him to his own extinction. There's another story, "There Was an Old Woman", of a woman who refuses to die. When death comes to her and separates her from her body, she manages to retake it from the funeral home which has already gutted and embalmed her. She has her blood replaced in her veins. She then goes home and from then on refuses to answer the door (perhaps to make sure that Death does not trick her again).
   The final story which stood out for me is "The Next in Line", which is about a couple who go to Mexico for a holiday. The woman is haunted by the tour of the unburied: the poor rent plots for a year but cannot afford a second year. So, the bodies are exhumed and left in a kind of cavern, standing. There is a series of macabre descriptions of the dead: one woman who is buried alive. Another who dies giving birth along with the baby. All of them held together and stiff with wire. She begs her husband to not leave her there. But, he refuses. On his way back to Texas, he seems quite happy that she is no longer beside her.
   If you're looking for a series of good horror tales, this is not a bad choice at all.

Cruelty, Roald Dahl

For modern readers of English literature, Roald Dahl has probably been at one point a favorite author. Adolescent boys and girls almost universally love his stories. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, are just two stories I read as a very young person, and still remember the stories to this day. How many books stick to the brain that effectively? Very, very few I would wager. In any case, so, I saw this title and it piqued my curiosity. Cruelty.

Cruelty was copyrighted in 1986, but it appears that it was only released in 2016. Spoilers abound. So, there's no point in complaining since you've been warned.

Cruelty consists of 10 short stories:

"The Butler"

 Some 'nouveau riche' types have just come into a fortune. They want to buy their way into the good graces of the bourgeois. But of course, it takes a lifetime, I'm sure, to learn how to behave as the bourgeois do. Without much concern for money, they purchase all sorts of expensive things. They invite everyone to dinners. They buy the most expensive wines under the advisement of the expensive butler.

But, the joke is on them! The butler had replaced all the expensive wine with cheap wine. But that does not stop them from bragging to their 'friends' about how expensive this and that wine was, and the vintage, despite it being all the same.

The butler, no longer able to tolerate his employer, confesses that he had replaced the expensive wine with the cheap, and drank it himself.


"The Great Automatic Grammatizator"

This story is a bit of interesting science fiction. A man invents a story and book writing machine. Just pull on a set of levers, and the machine will write a mediocre short story. With an upgrade, it produces novels. Within a short while, it is used to take over the creative industry. How far away from just such a reality in the form of an AI powered writer? 

"Royal Jelly"

 "Royal Jelly" is a bit funny. It's about a man who is born with a natural connection to bees. Later on, he has a baby. The baby is dying. So, he feeds it some royal jelly. At the end, the wife discovers that both her baby and her husband look part bee-part human. It's like a B-grade horror story. 

"Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat"

This is a comedy. A woman gets a parting gift of an expensive mink coat. But she wants to make up a silly story as to how she gets it. She takes it to a pawn shop and gets $50 for it. Then, the husband goes to get it. When he brings it home, it's a cheap mink wrap while his secretary gets the original. I didn't see that coming. I knew something was coming, and I guess that was the most obvious in hind sight.

"The Swan"

Some very bad boys do some bad things to a poor boy.

"Poison"

A funny story about someone who believes he has a venomous snake on his stomach. Eventually, it's discovered that there is no snake. 

"Skin"

I enjoyed this one. A man gets a young boy, destined for greatness, to give him a large tattoo on his back of his wife. The young boy is in love with the wife. Later on, the young boy becomes a famous artist. The man shows off his tattoo at a gallery. A multimillion dollar canvas stuck to his back. One of the men offers to take care of the old man in exchange for his customers to see the great artwork on his back on the beach. Not too long after, the artwork reappears, minus the old man. Pretty cruel.

"The Princess and the Poacher"

This one was a cute story, a fairy tale really. A very ugly boy, but talented and powerful, is shunned by all. He's a great hunter, however, and manages to poach birds and other animals for his family's dinner table.

One day, he decides to take a chance and try to poach around the castle. While he's there, he sees the princess in danger of a boar heading straight for her. Already in love with her, he takes on the giant boar head on, and breaks its neck.

As a reward, the king proclaims that the poacher can rape and ravish any woman he chooses. The poacher chooses not to. Eventually, the princess falls in love with him because he chooses not to ravish the maidens. He is the only one not to chase her and has respect for her.

Certainly, not a story for children. Perhaps a good story for all the incels idiots out there in the world today.

"Genesis and Catastrophe"

A young woman has lost three children. She's afraid to lose the fourth. The reader is invited to worry about her, and hope that she doesn't lose her fourth child. That is, until you realize that her newborn son is Adolph Hitler.

"Claud's Dog"

A big con: a man finds an identical dog. One dog is fast, the other slow. They're both greyhounds. He tries to conjure a great con by running first one, against whom the odds are calculated he cannot win, and then running the much faster dog with the big odds. The con works. Except all the bookies refuse to honour the bets that they made. In the end, they lose out.

-------------------

In the end, it was an enjoyable book. "The Princess and the Poacher" tickles the romantic side of me and would have to be my favorite of the lot.

The King of the City, Keith Laumer

   When I was much younger, Keith Laumer was a favorite of mine. His tales move fast, there's plenty of action, and it's science fiction. An excellent cocktail to hold my interest in those days. I was curious to see how I would like his work at this point in my life. "The King of the City" is a short fiction. I have read it before. You can find it for free at www.gutenberg.org.
   In fact, I feel like I've read it several times before. It's the story set in a world where order has crumbled and a struggle for power in the vacuum is taking place. The main character is a driver who takes a man deep into the city. He has to fight through roadblocks and mafia like characters to get to the heart of the city wherein the city's kingpin exercises his power.
   It turns out that the fare was an admiral in the previous administration's military arm while the driver was also of the military. They are looking for fuel for their ships, and the kingpin has his stash.
   This is a fun little short story.

The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories, Yasunari Kawabata

  

When I found this book on my Kindle, I think I was looking for something out of the ordinary. Japanese are pretty good at 'out of the ordinary,' so I thought I would give it a try. How it got onto my Kindle is a bit of a mystery. I don't recall when or why I added it. I know I added a six or so Japanese stories at some point. But I don't know why this one or any of those got selected, as the addition was made some time ago. A little bit of Wiki trivia: Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel prize for literature. So, obviously, some important people like the writer enough to give him buckets filled with money.
   The book is rather short. "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is the only novella length story with the other stories being short.
   The settings are charming. The characters give a bit of a view into a foreign time and place. "The Dancing Girl of Tsu" is about a student who falls in love with a very young girl. She is a dancing girl. So, as the student and the entertainment group, containing the dancing girl he is interested in, are all going the same way, they decide to go together.
   Despite what I said about the girl being underage, the student isn't some kind of pedophile. He sees her, quite by accident, nude, and realizes that she is much younger than he had thought. While still secretly longing for her, he did not really pursue her any further. Though, he was quite shy and maybe his interest in her was obvious.
   There are a few funny quotes that show the Japanese attitude towards women. Women, at least from the perspective of the women themselves, are polluters. So, when they talk about bathing in a river, the women wait for the men to go first, or, as the woman says, "The water will get all cloudy if we put our hands in. You'd think it was too dirty after us women." I'm not completely sure why she says this. Another variation on this idea comes when they eat when the women invite the student to eat with them. The woman, I'm not sure which, says, "Won't you at least have a bite with us? It's not very appetizing now that we women have put in our chopsticks, but maybe this could be the makings of a funny story."
   The story ends when they part. I kind of regret that. I wish he had continued with the group, and the group was sad to see him go. It was a charming story.
   Most of the stories are semi-autobiographical. Partly fiction and partly true stories of Kawabata recalling his life. A few stories stand out in my memory. The first is the story about his grandfather's slow death. He has to help him in his last months of life. He cannot urinate. Eating is a problem for him. It must have been a very difficult time for a middle school boy. The other one is about a boy who is called on for many funerals. He goes through many personal funerals: his parents, his sister. And so he learns a certain behavior pattern at funerals, and for this reason, he is called upon by many families to attend the funerals of their relatives. Myself, I have been to just one.

Diary of a Madman, Nikolai Gogol

    I am always interested in strange or weird fiction. I'm not sure how I discovered this particular story or this particular author. There are numerous sources for this text. Gutenberg.org is often a favorite of mine, even though their output is more anemic than many other sources, the quality of their work is often adequate. Wikipedia writes, "...(it) is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories." In any case, on to the story.
   The diary is fictitious: the main character, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, is a kind of protagonist whose adversary is himself, or the illness which takes hold of him. He starts off like any one of us might: a normal, underachieving bureaucrat. He is pretty much fine. What instigates the descent into madness is unknown. But it does seem to stem from unrequited love. Though, to blame that would be to ignore the fact that similar descents into madness.
   The madness would be cliche today. Perhaps it was already cliché by the time Gogol got around to writing his story. He comes to believe that he is a Spanish emperor and assumes the mantle. It reminds me somewhat of Don Quixote who suffers from a similar delusion: that of becoming a knight. His irrationality, however, does not bring him to an asylum. Quixote, of course, believes himself to be someone or something much more common than that of an emperor. Another difference is that with Quixote everything was real: what was not was the interpretation of everything. So he saw a hotel and interpreted it as a castle. For Poprishchin, he hears the dogs' conversations and intercepts their letters. 
   What separates us from this madness of believing ourselves to be someone we are not. Surely we all start at that point and either become that person or fail to become that person. Even if we become that person we might be judged to be unworthy of that title. So, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson says he is a scientist. He has the degree. He talks about politics and science. Does he practice science or does he merely talk about it with his degree and name on a paper along with a parade of other scientists. How does he become a scientist. Is it his own perception of himself? Is it the recognition of the institution that he has graduated in a scientific field? For myself, I would say that a scientist is one who practices science, and that I have not seen any evidence that he does so. A child, who experiments, is a scientist. For, that is what a scientist is. That is my definition, which I appropriate from Picasso on his decree that everyone is born an artist, and that the challenge is how to remain an artist. Perhaps one might say the same of Poprishchin: the challenge is not to be the emperor of Spain, but rather how to remain the emperor of Spain despite the many people who would try to convince him otherwise. 
   In any event, I am sure I will be all too happy to read another of Gogol's short stories.

The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers

I think I found this author through an author reference: H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King. I can't be sure, but it was a recent search and find. There are several of his books for free on Amazon, which is where I got this edition. Despite the book being a small collection of short stories, the Amazon edition offers no tabbing between stories. Therefore, I suggest going to Gutenberg.org if you decide you want to read this book. Gutenberg does a better job of formatting books than this publisher did. They are both free.

There is some variety in the stories here. Four of them seem to have a link to the title. The rest do not. The references to the King in Yellow are sparse. I wonder if the references were added after the stories were written or if they were important. In any case, reading The King in Yellow (the fictional one in the first four stories) is a kind of curse that only ends in the ruin of whomsoever reads it. The first story nearly had me giving up on the text. I don't really recall why. Momentarily I thought I was reading something of poor quality. However, the quality does pick up considerably and it is well worth reading.

Ironically, when I first read them, I thought the stories toward the end were the best and the ones at the beginning not so great. Having reread them, however, I find the inverse true. The best stories are about the King in Yellow. The rest are entertaining, but romance is not the equal of horror.

Sadly, the author himself disappoints me as a person.

...this was an Anglo-=Saxon country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the country was diluted...

 From "What is Genius?" Robert W. Chambers

It just goes to show that a great writer doesn't have to be a great human being.

Dedication

Image from AZ Quotes

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

 

The Repairer of Reputations

It was this story I nearly ended my relationship with Robert W. Chambers. The language felt fake. Like it was written in a vernacular that wasn't really the writer's. This is probably an accurate assessment considering he is American. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that. After all, half of a writer is fiction: he lives in the books he (or she) reads and the characters and language of those writers and writers' characters becomes the vernacular of the author, does it not? In any event, I'm quite happy that I fought past this impression and read through. The story itself isn't bad, and there are several that follow it that are much better.

The first chapter of this story caught my attention: that of the lethal chamber. A government sanctioned method of ending one's life. But for all but the tail of this tale, there is little or nothing to do with the lethal chamber.

The character, Mr. Wilde, is a repairer of armour. This is his passion and hobby. But his bread winning comes from repairing reputations. If someone has a bad reputation, they merely go to him, offer a lot of money, and his network of social manipulators.

The story is told in first person. Most interestingly that person goes quite crazy at the end and dies in a footnote after killing Mr. Wilde's crazy cat and terrorizing a doctor.

I'm unsure whether I like or dislike the disconnects that go through this story. It only makes sense since the narration is from a mad-man. But then that puts in doubt the truth of the narrative. But what is truth? Truth is a perspective from the interpretation of the observer, and not necessarily truth in some scientific truth or fact.

Of the four stories related to the title, this is the only one where it makes much sense. A kind of mad reference, if you will. The other three which reference it look contrived: as if they were added later to make them somehow better connected to the title of the book.

The Mask

This story is the first of a series based on some art students or artists (both, sometimes). I really enjoyed these. It's nice being transported to these times and places. The perspective though is definitely American with its Puritanical aesthetic which, in my opinion, reduced its appeal. "Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod's Mass." But nonetheless, the story was highly entertaining.

At this point in my review, I have already read all of the stories. I am scanning the stories trying to remember what they are about. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? In any case, this story feels out of the timeline. These are artists, not students. Later stories include a war and students. Why Chambers chose to arrange them so (or his editor) I cannot guess.

This is the second of the four stories which have a relation to The King in Yellow. Two artists love a single woman. The narrator is the loser in the worst way: the woman, Geneviève, goes for his friend, Boris, but really loves the narrator. Perhaps she said that to make him feel better about his loss.

The couple, his friend and his unrequited love, fall into the fabled King in Yellow and thereby invite a curse upon them. The curse turns the living into marble: Boris, a white rabbit, and Geneviève. She, however, comes back to the realm of the living. She does not know. She is surprised and remarks, "the marble rabbit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house." She does not know that she herself had been one of the marble statues brought back.

IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON

"I was worn out by three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble: the last had been the worst, and it was an exhausted body, and a mind benumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favourite church for healing. For I had been reading The King in Yellow."

There is a certain poetry of doom in this story. The soul of the narrator is doomed because of his reading The King in Yellow. The narrator is trying to escape an awful death: not death itself. For the religious, death is a kind of release: a release into heaven or hell. It's the latter I believe the author is fearful for. He is trying to escape an already dead gatherer of souls through the church.

I don't know if the narrator is living, dying, or dead at the end:

Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"

Who is the living God that the King in Yellow refers to? Is it God and His sidekick, Jesus? Is it the God of the King in Yellow (presumably some Satanic figure, if not Satan himself--even if Satan is never mentioned by name).

The Yellow Sign

This is the last of the stories related to the title The King in Yellow stories in this book.

The narrator is again an artist. He is painting his canvas from a nude model posing. But his painting is overtaken by some kind of plague. Did he paint it that way and suddenly notice it, or was it somehow cursed? But it starts with his noticing a watchman.

Tessie, the model, dreams of the artist being dead. The dream terrifies her and resembles a scene: a kind of deja vu preceded by the dream. Their relationship of artist and favourite model transforms itself into a marital one. But in the end, not even the death of Death Himself saves the narrator:  "I think I am dying. I wish the priest would—"

The Demoiselle D'Ys

This is a romance of science fiction proportions. A man travels back in time to meet a beautiful falconer. He falls in love with her. But as he is bitten by a snake, he finds himself awake back in his own time. He has nothing to remember her except that his name is on her tombstone, somehow survived all those centuries for him to see.

The Prophet's Paradise

This is the title to a series of sketches. Beautiful and dark. 

On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whitening ashes: "Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street below.

Who cannot but love such a vivid image? The more I work on this blog entry, rereading bits and pieces to remind myself on each story, the more I fall in love with this author's work. It is no longer any marvel to me that H.P. Lovecraft should love these stories so much.

The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.
"If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"
"Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked of Death beside me.
"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."
"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.

 

The Street of the Four Winds

This story is almost as magical as something that Oscar Wilde would have written--but with a macabre twist.

A lonely artist, Severn, speaks with the animals, and they speak with him. A cat comes to him in a terrible state. Her fur is in nasty shape and she is hungry. He feeds and takes care of her. Then they have a kind of conversation. Severn wanders around but eventually discovers that the owner of the cat is dead.

The kiss at the end of the tale is disturbing. But it is written so eloquently that it is almost forgivable that she is a corpse of indeterminate age.

She was pale, but not as white as he; her eyes were untroubled as a child's; but he stared, trembling from head to foot, while the candle flickered in his hand.
At last he whispered: "Sylvia, it is I."
Again he said, "It is I."
Then, knowing that she was dead, he kissed her on the mouth. And through the long watches of the night the cat purred on his knee, tightening and relaxing her padded claws, until the sky paled above the Street of the Four Winds.

The Street of the First Shell

What do artists do in Paris as the city lay in a siege? The Prussians are shelling Paris and starving her citizens. Even wealthy people are paying expensive sums for sewer rat meat. Regardless, the sculptor sculpts and the painters paint, as much as they can even as shells explode. They have relationships.

One couple finds extreme happiness in each other's affection. Surely love seems stronger at such a time: like how a star twinkles in the night sky. The story follows a rather exciting push back against an invisible enemy. The enemy is never really described. The narrator describes the grisly deaths of French fighters. I don't know if the resistance in this instance proves successful. But it is better to fight and die than die from hunger I think.

This was really an enjoyable story. It's definitely out of my usual reading genres. But it was exciting and provocative.

The Street of the Lady of Our Fields

Another story about artists. This time it follows a character who is American and Puritanical. For being Puritanical, he is praised up and down and wins the respect of fellow artists immediately rather than having to earn it in the usual fashion (over time).

It is charming, romantic. But there is nothing of the King in Yellow here.

Rue Barrée

This story is a romance. A poor but beautiful woman enchants all the artists. One of the wealthy ones even offers marriage to her, but is refused and is later very grateful. She never has a name and is referred to as Rue Barrée. It's a cute story, but there is no macabre delight here.

Robert Sheckley Short Stories on Gutenberg, Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley, image from NY Review of SF

There are many Robert Sheckley story books out there. This one is just in my own imagination and is not real. It just contains the public domain short stories by Robert Sheckley available at Gutenberg.org. Gutenberg now has 16 stories plus one in audio format.

The Leech

There is a style from the era in which this story is taken. A lot of liberty in the ability of our founding astronaut fathers and their commanders that they were able to do things more fantastic than in fact they could.

A leech or alien being capable of consuming all forms of energy and matter to become larger hits the earth. Unfortunately, all forms of brute strength are not enough. A shovel used to try to remove it is consumed. A jeep used to drive over it gets eaten by it, tires and all. Bombs, including an atom bomb, are used to try to destroy it. All to no avail.

Finally, they get the idea that they can get a lot of radioactive material to use as a kind of carrot for the ass. They at first decide to take the carrot to the sun, but then realize that the entity might consume the sun. So they then lead it away from the sun and then detonate the nuclear warhead. The warhead destroys the leech, but the body of the leech is converted into billions of baby leeches.

The Hour of Battle

 There's this idea that one day our curiosity might end us. We might find ourselves going somewhere that results in us making contact with an alien species which has a technology or ability for which we have no adequate defense. In this case, contact is made with beings that have the ability to take over our ability to control ourselves. The telepathic ability is possible to detect, but once detected it's already too late. And then, even if it is detected, then what?

A few things that made me laugh a bit: playing gin. The technological world that makes the setting in this story is so advanced that there are ships that can travel to other systems and ships capable of defending mankind from other ships. However, they haven't yet discovered basic forms of entertainment we enjoy today. They don't have any kind of Internet or TV to watch. As a result, the soldiers are experiencing cabin fever. They've been stuck for awhile and are getting antsy with each other.

I can't help but wonder: what is the hardest thing about being stuck out in space? How would I feel?

Forever

Imagine what good might one day come of an immortality drug. Take it, and you can live forever. Then imagine what bad might one day come of an immortality drug. Who would have the right to use it? Who would not? If it comes, will it be a good government in place or a bad one? Would the world be a better place, or a worse one? The author suggests a dystopia.

Beside Still Waters

A hermit lives on an asteroid. He has a little farm. Once upon a time, he imagined having the company of a wonderful woman, but she never materialized. He never really looked for her. He sounds very anti-social anyhow.

So, the hermit buys a robot which can only say a few things. But it's enough for the man who grows old on his asteroid farm. But the equipment degrades and fails, and he suffocates (but doesn't explode due to air pressure loss, I guess). In any case, the robot stays by his side and then says an unscripted prayer for him (or is it scripted? The author never indicates).

Death Wish

A mechanical problem causes a spaceship to overshoot its destination (Mars), and as a result, the crew members are doomed. They turn on a super computer designed for Mars to see if it can't come up with a solution to their problem. Unfortunately, its solution is much the same as the others, but it has a sense of humour.

Warrior Race

This is actually one of the better stories. A ship without enough fuel to make it to wherever they need to go has to stop by a planet for refueling. The alien race that inhabits the planet is a warrior race. But rather than being the kind of warrior who is a great killer, these warriors kill themselves until the others give up.

This makes it difficult for the human visitors as they don't want them to kill themselves and they also need the fuel. They are not under any real threat from the warriors. They wear space suits which are impervious to such primitive weapons. But their conscience refuses to allow them to sacrifice themselves in such a way.

They take the chief hostage and threaten to kill them, thereby stealing from them the honourable way to die (suicide). This works, they get their fuel, and they're on their way.

Bad Medicine

This is actually a good short fiction. I really enjoyed this and had a good laugh at the conclusion. Clearly Sheckley had a good sense of humour. A man wants to kill his friend. But, at the same time, he doesn't. So, he goes to a place where there are machines for sale. He knows he's crazy. He is looking for a cure. So he buys the machine and takes it home.
For whatever reason, the store had on display a model actually meant for Martians. Martians are completely different from humans. I'm not entirely clear on all of these differences, but they seem substantial: how they are raised as young as well as their problems. I am not sure if they are human or something else. In any case, so he gets the wrong treatment.

Police try to track him down, and they do so successfully. However, the psychotic claims that he has been cured despite having the wrong machine. But he hasn't been cured. He still wants to kill his best friend, but not with a gun and not for the same reasons (which were not reasonable in the first place).

Cost of Living

This story has an uncanny relationship with current day problems: everyone is in debt. In this sci-fi setting, parents sign their children up for debts. The items they buy do everything for them: cooking, driving, cleaning. To get them all, they must go into tremendous credit. The credit is so great that they cannot pay for everything in their lifetimes, even though their lives have been extended into the 150s. Furthermore, work is little more than pushing a button for everyone. The author makes it seem quite dystopic. There is nothing to really do. Just relax and push buttons.

Keep Your Shape

After "Bad Medicine", I'd have to say that thus far this is my favorite story of Sheckley's. Aliens who can shift into any shape or any animal they want are sent to Earth to open a portal to their own world for domination. However, when they get to Earth, they find that they are free. In their own world, they are in rigid castes, not unlike what I have heard of India. They may only take the shapes that are passed down to them from generation to generation. So, if your father was a pilot, then you must also be a pilot.

When they come to Earth, they do not want to bring his Grom brothers to colonize it because they want to be free to assume whatever shape they wish. It's an interesting take on immigration and freedom of choice.

 Ask a Foolish Question

A machine is programmed to answer questions. It's located on a special planet in orbit around a special star. But no one can ask it the right questions. All the questions are foolish, I suppose. In the end they give up.

"In order to ask a question you must already know most of the answer."

I don't always get the reason for a story. This is one of those stories I don't understand the ending to or the point to.

Diplomatic Immunity

This story is about an alien who is making an attempt to prepare people for the coming of his people.

Some parts of this story make no sense. The takeover is somewhat hostile. That is to say, it is not just a 'hello, nice to meet you. Let's be friends.' It's a, 'We're coming, nothing you can do about it. So just accept it peacefully.' Well, by being diplomatic at all, the alien race is doing itself a disservice. It would have been better if the diplomat had simply found Earth and sat in the park to wait for his people to settle the planet. Instead, he gives the humans all the time in the world to figure out how to destroy him, which they ultimately succeed at.
 

A House of Pomegranates, Oscar Wilde

I have a particular love for Oscar Wilde. His fiction is most often poetic and romantic. I have read A House of Pomegranates. It is a real shame that his life was cut short by stints in prison for having sex with men.
most, if not all, of his short fiction. In fact, this is the second time I am reading

A House of Pomegranates follows in the footsteps of The Happy Prince and Other Tales, which was a r
emarkable piece of romantic fiction. Although not nearly as famous for fairy tales, nor as prolific, as say Hans Christian Andersen, he nonetheless had a great talent for it. Perhaps if he had not been persecuted for his sexual preferences, we might have a great deal more of his work to appreciate today.

The Young King

"The Young King" is the first story in this short collection of fairy tales. A young man goes from rags to riches. Once a poor sheepherder, he is recognized as the king's heir to the throne. He is morphed into a new kind of man: no longer the ragged caretaker of sheep, he comes to love the finery which goes with his new found wealth.

This goes well for him until he has a dream. In his dream, he becomes a witness to the human cost of his gains. For his robe, he has this dream: a sweat shop filled with 'Pale, sickly-looking children... faces pinched with famine... a horrible odour filled the place... the walls dripped and streamed with damp...' When the heir to the throne asks why the man doesn't just leave his job, he replies,

...the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time... We tread out the grapes, and another drinks the wine. We so the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free...

His next dream takes him to a ship sent out to find pearls. Malnourished men row the ship, and when come to a stop, collapse into sleep still manacled. A diver is sent to find pearls. He dives and rises, each time with a pearl, until at last he comes up with one which is 'fairer than all the pearls of Ormuz.' But the cost of this pearl is his life. His death resulted in no ceremony: simply kicked back into the water while the ship returns with the prize pearl.

Finally, he is confronted by a scene between Avarice (greed) and Death: Death demands a grain of corn, but Avarice always refuses. The result is the deaths of all the subjects of Avarice.

Up to the point of his dream, he had no clue as to the sacrifice required by so many to acquire the materials required for his lavish raiment. Being recently a common person, he could no longer live with the inhuman treatment of those who were sacrificed on the behalf of raiment. He therefore refuses to wear them. Refusing them leads to mockery by all: both those who sacrificed their lives, to the soldiers, to the courtiers and lords.

He makes his way to the church where he is to receive his crown. While there, the soldiers are ready to arrest and perhaps kill him, when god intervenes and gives him heavenly robes. It's a fairly shallow ending, to be honest. Or, at least religiously romantic: something I have no taste for.

The Birthday of the Infanta

There are some curiosities about this short fiction. One being that the mother of the Infanta had died before. The King of Spain loved her so much that he had her preserved. He would 'kiss her painted face' in hopes of bringing her back to life. 

The infanta (or daughter of the king) of Spain has a birthday. A part of her entertainment is a an ugly little dwarf. The dwarf does not know that he is ugly. All the children love his entertainment and everyone laughs at him. Everyone mocks him except the birds, who remember his kindness to them.

He comes across a mirror and discovers how ugly he is. He then understands that all the children were laughing at him. The shock is so great that it kills him.But as the dwarf lies on the floor dying in agony, the infanta and her friends come upon him and are moved to even greater amusement:

...when they saw the ugly little dwarf lying on the ground and beating the floor with his clenched hands, in the most fantastic and exaggerated manner, they went off into shouts of happy laughter...

The ending is particularly catching when the Infanta declares, "For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts."

Of course, why wouldn't the dwarf have seen his image in some still pond or pool of water?

The Fisherman and His Soul

 Of the stories in this collection,  this one is the most romantic fairy tale.

A fisherman goes out and finds a mermaid of great beauty. Upon seizing her, she promises to sing for him that he might catch many fish. But, as she does so, he falls in love with her so hard that he willingly gives up his soul that he might be with her.

The soul never wanted to leave the body, and demanded a heart before it went away. Being denied this, it knew not of love or compassion. It therefore wanted to tempt the fisherman to take back his soul.

The soul found riches and wisdom, but the fisherman cared for neither of these things, but only the love he had for his mermaid. At last, however, the soul tempts him by telling him of dancing girls. This offer is a ruse, however. The soul bids him to do evil acts which the man regrets. At last he is ready to abandon his quest to see the dancers and goes back to the sea. He wants to rid himself of his soul once more, but it is too late and the reattachment is irreversible. He therefore contents the rest of his days singing for his lost mermaid. The mermaid herself dies and washes on the shore. He goes to her only to be swallowed up by the sea and killed. 

The story is filled with lovely poetic language and imagery.

The Star Child 

This is the last short story of this collection.

A child is delivered by a shooting star. This is a disappointment to two poor men who had been seeking a pot of gold. His wife reluctantly welcomes him into the family and the poor couple take care of him as if he was their own. But, he is cruel to everyone and everything around him. Eventually his own mother comes upon him, but he refuses her on the basis of her ugliness. As a consequence, he has his gift of beauty replaced by repulsiveness.

He is cast out and spends years searching for his mother and forgiveness. On coming to one castle or kingdom, he is tormented and sold to a wizard who would have him as a slave. He redeems himself while under the evil wizard's control by giving to the poor what he needs to avoid severe punishment and even win his freedom.

He is then returned to his former glory. Immediately, the people revel in his beauty and declare him their new monarch. He then finds his mother and cries at her feet for forgiveness, whereupon her beauty is restored. He then discovers his father who was in fact the beggar upon whom he had sacrificed himself for, and his beauty is restored.

He lives a short life, just three years. It is remarked that those who came after him ruled evilly.

I don't think that it's Wilde being superficial, but rather showing how superficial people are: that how we treat one another depends on how we look. The only reason that the main character is good is because he had an opportunity to live in the shoes of the poor and ugly.

How unfortunate it is that we are still mired in such a superficial mind-set. We still mock and bully those who are ugly and elevate those who are beautiful. It's hard to estimate whether or not we will change.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short fiction by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is available for free at Gutenberg.org. Wikipedia says of her that she is a feminist. This story is somewhat confounding and not for a gentle reader looking for a simple escape. The meaning is complex and offers much food for thought.

A woman is a prisoner in her own home. Her jailer is her husband, who is also a doctor, and a servant. She is stuck in a room on the second floor. There are bars on her window. She cannot leave her room voluntarily. She is not allowed to write. She has no entertainment, and her instructions are basically that she is to get as much rest as she can.

Her attention is drawn to the yellow wall paper. In the yellow wallpaper is a woman who is struggling to be free. But, it is no haunted house. It is a reflection of herself. It is her that needs to escape from her room. The end result is that she is crazy.

I must say, I am struggling with this story to identify whether these are metaphors or if the images of bars, wall paper, creeping women, etc., are to be taken figuratively. The paper, I suspect, is her own skin. She has peeled her own skin off of herself; torn it off. That would be the only reasonable explanation for what caused her husband to faint (a doctor being someone who is resistant to such effects).

Wikipedia writes that she suffers from understimulation. While this is quite evidently so, we are only
given a very narrow view into the last months of her transformation into deep psychosis. To be perfectly honest, there is more than a passing resemblance to Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" (published in 1915) which describes the life of a supernatural transformation from a man into a kind of caterpillar.

In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Gilman portrays the narrator's insanity as a way to protest the medical and professional oppression against women at the time. While under the impression that husbands and male doctors were acting with their best interests in mind, women were depicted as mentally weak and fragile. At the time women’s rights advocates believed that the outbreak of women being diagnosed as mentally ill was the manifestation of their setbacks regarding the roles they were allowed to play in a male-dominated society. Women were even discouraged from writing, because their writing would ultimately create an identity and become a form of defiance for them. - Wikipedia.org.

The article on Wikipedia suggests that everything in this story is literal, and that we are simply viewing the world from the eyes of someone who has gone mad. However, I cannot account for that theory in the idea that John, her husband, faints. It seems to be something deeper, more deeply disturbing perhaps, that is hinted at. However, throughout the various criticisms of the story, I did not find any support for my thought on this.

But, Lovecraft is quoted,

"The Yellow Wall Paper rises to a classic level in subtly delineating the madness which crawls over a woman dwelling in the hideously papered room where a madwoman was once confined."

Does he refer to the inner insane mind of a woman who was outwardly sane? Or does he mean that there was some kind of ghost which was eventually released by the narrator?

Certainly, this is one of those kinds of stories which would do well in a literary class. There is much debate available for a contentious literary group!

Lyrotica

Lyrotica is a compilation of several short pieces of fiction put into a short book. It comes from a publishing company called Vagabondage Press. Now, the reason I bring this up is because I have also downloaded many short fiction volumes that have gone through them called The Battered Suitcase. In both that magazine and Lyrotica, I have run into the same issue: there is no formatting. There's no way to tab between stories. There is no table of contents to go to and click a link to take you to a story. The only way to go through it is a single page at a time. This is not fun. Normally, it would be enough to get me to throw it out altogether. Another thing I'll point out is that I rarely like erotic literature. Too often it's a boring affair which fails to trigger any kind of response. A few notable exceptions to this would be The Memoirs of Cora Pearl and the erotic works of Anaïs Nin (thinking in particular of Les Petit Oiseux, whose equal I still have yet to find). That book and the author I just mentioned take erotica to a special place which few authors dare. While, thus far (I have read just a few tales), I haven't really found the tales all that erotic. They haven't turned me on. But, they are intriguing while being sexual. This is something that has managed to drag me past the irritation of poor formatting and made me want to read on regardless. But it also means that tabbing through one story to another and back again as I consider the words I use to analyze to consider my feelings, interpretations, and/or gripes about the stories. Because, going back to one story or another might require seventy clicks to get to.

I didn't read them all. But for those of you looking for something more interesting than the regular bland garbage that is the bread and butter of so many Penthouse and other story bearing porn rags, this isn't a bad read. The stories are written by amateurs, but they're not shallow or repetitive.

- Update: some or all of the writers are not amateurs. One of them apparently was nominated for an award which I assume wasn't won. But in any case, thanks for the correction Jeremy Edwards.

Blowing Off Steam, Shanya Wright

Once upon a time, and in certain modern cultures, a woman's sexuality is something to be ashamed of. After all, it was Eve and Pandora who had brought misery to all men. At least, that's an interpretation that's been followed for thousands of years. In any case, the character in this story makes me think of a Victorian who is taught not to touch herself and hasn't been touched by a man (or woman for that matter), married or not. In other words, she's got a libido that no one is interested in satisfying.

So, when she sits down on the bench on the train, the vibrations give her pleasure. Her name is Victoria, but she has an ereader in her bag. Thus, I believe that the link between Victorian principles of anti-female sexuality are supposed to be read into the story. However, at the end, the conductor who'd seen her pleasuring herself like a horny kitten and been invited to give her itch a scratch, knows she'll be heading back the other way on the train and that he had made plans to nail her then.

Now, there's not really much substance to this story, but I still find it to be a well told tale with a sliver of erotica. It beats the type of crap that mostly rains down the channels. 

"Fertility Goddess", William J. Jackson

 This story makes me think of drugs or alcohol. This story's vixen is plus sized. That's cool. Sexuality is about more than wafer girls and supersexed models, right? Enjoy the moment.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and appeal varies in time and space, not to mention individuals.


"Gilded Cage Smacks of Sanctuary", Dennis Mahagin

This book has more than just short stories. There are also poems.

This poem is a bit of bondage in verse. The author is in a bind. The girl has tied him up and gagged him with, I assume, her panties. She tells him he can't leave her, and he replies that he'd never want to.

 "Possibility", Jeremy Edwards

This story thus far is the most boring. Boring boy meets boring girl and they have boring sex.

  "Letting Go", Imari Shi

OK, this one is a bit more interesting. Young man meets almost middle aged real estate agent. Slowly, he romances her until she's horny as hell. He dances with her. Massages her. Then seduces her into letting him choke her until she's nearly unconscious. Isn't that romantic?

Fantasy & Science Fiction, May

Well, I guess I have finally come to the conclusion that I don't really want too much contemporary fiction. I wonder if dinosaurs died off the planet because monkeys threw toxic feces at them. That's what I feel like: a dinosaur walking through the jungle with these monkeys throwing their tripe at me. In any case, Fantasy & Science Fiction is the one I'm keeping, and Asimov's is out. The dinosaur only has a low threshold for monkey feces.

This edition I finished reading about two or so weeks ago. However, my rigorous schedule, these past few weeks, has inhibited my blogging. I have been reading in the wee hours before work, but haven't managed to instigate a writing session at that time yet.

In any case, this edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction consists of one novella, four novellets, and four short stories. All told, it's around 79k words. I thought May's edition was much better than the one before it. There were still a few poor pieces, but this time they were in the short stories section rather than infecting all sections.

Maze of Shadows, Fred Chappell

This was a fun piece of fantasy. The style that Chappell employed was playful and consistent. The prose was often mixed with colourful metaphors and similes. By way of example, Chappell writes of an inconsequential character, "She ... was pale as the winter moon."

Shadows play a larger than real life role in this story. They may be stolen or sold. They play a role with its caster. If someone loses their shadow, then it can cause some meddlesome problems. In fact, one of the main roles that shadows play in this fiction is that of deceiving the eye. The story is told in first person with the narrator being a shadow placer. He takes shadows from other things to make the evening appear differently than they really are. So, one sees stairs where there are none, or a pathway when in fact it's a precipice that eventually leads to his client's demise. The idea is that potential thieves will harm themselves and never find the treasure that they're after. This would normally work, but in this instance, a blind man who can see no shadow at all foils the false shadows that the narrator and his partner lay about the home.

Cats also play an interesting role in the story. The narrator's side-kick (Mutano), for instance, had his voice taken from him by the cat which patrols the night, a guard in its own right. Sunbolt, the owner of the stolen voice, makes limited use of this command over a human language, saving it for the end in a fight for his life. Mutano's effort to recapture his voice is an interesting subplot, in fact. Cats are given human-like intelligence and highly valued for it, but remain slaves to the human race to be bought and sold according to its value. Mutano, on the other hand, can speak and comprehend the language of the cats. It is only after a particularly valuable and, to Sunbolt, an extremely attractive cat, is offered in exchange for the voice that it gives back to Mutano his voice.

I think that this story has a lot of unique characteristics, an interesting voice, and a pair of plots, which were highly enjoyable to read. Of the stories in this edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I thought it was the best.

Liberty's Daughter, Naomi Kritzer

This is another story told in first person. It is a light piece, resembling detective fiction. The main character is a young girl, perhaps adolescent or a young teen, who makes extra money by finding things for people.

The setting is a big part of the plot. It is on a floating man-made island which is governed by several different styles of governments. They range between anarchy and semi-anarchy. They wanted to be free, and so they are free. However, in these states has evolved several classes of people. It is when the narrator is asked to locate a person who has gone missing that the plot to the story is revealed.

The detective is an untouchable due to her father's status. She is therefore able to go about her mission with little to no restraint. She discovers that there are some people selling their organs in exchange for expensive treatments by bonding themselves to jobs that no one will do. She even manages to rescue Lynn Miller from the owner of the company, only to watch her willingly go back into a new contract.

There is one thing that is a little hard to buy in this story. The technology to put such an island together is still quite possibly decades away. We simply haven't created a ship or platform or anything that can withstand the worst that Earth's mother nature can throw at it. To complicate it further, making enormous floating cities would pose problems since there are physical limitations that we face today which may or may not be overcome in the next century. And yet the culture has a hard time acquiring physical goods, like shoe laces, shoes, types of food, etc. The reason I find such a thing funny is because we are on the verge of replicator like technology where a 3D printer ought to be able to make a pair of plastic shoelaces and the many other widgets that people living on the island need or want. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next 10 years, 3D printers become somewhat ubiquitous either at home or professional shops.

But, a part of enjoying fiction has to be the ability to suspend disbelief.

Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2012

This edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a little longer than normal at around 78k words. Before starting this commentary, I have already read this edition. To be honest, I was not all that pleased with this edition. I found it to be quite average. There was too much sub-par science fiction that went no where. It's made up of five novelettes and seven short stories.

Electrica, Sean McMullen

This story is set several centuries back. However, it's kind of a science fiction story wrapped up in a distant past. Think back to the conflict between Europe and Napoleon's France. The story is told in first person. The character is an ingenious code breaker.

He is on a mission to investigate a potential technology which would allow England to send messages to the battlefield without having the enemy be able to see what it is that England is communicating. The method of flashing from a light source a message encrypted in a code meant that both the intended recipient and the enemy could receive the message. If the enemy could then break the encryption, it then knew what the enemy was up to.

There is a machine which a scientist is trying to use to send invisible signals to devices so that the enemy cannot read the messages. While the experiment is something of a success, it comes with a rather heavy price.

A long time ago there roamed a predatory species which was on the brink of extinction. In an effort to preserve itself, it embedded its intelligence within amber. The scientist, when using the amber, was able to connect to this intelligence. That intelligence malignantly wanted to live again and escape the confines of this amber world.

This mad scientist is stopped by the protagonist. But not before the malignant entity manages to insert its intelligence into a raven and escape.

I didn't particularly enjoy this story. Maybe a part of it is that most stories told about super smart, dashing, and physically strong characters, are told in first person. Just like when I read the Barsoom series and the super hero traits of John Carter sort of drive me crazy, so too do these types of stories. I think stories told from perfect individuals are just a cheap thrill for the author to live a fantasy life. Perhaps that is because they themselves are rather dull, boring, and unintelligent. Sort of the hot car=small Mr. Happy. First person perspective would be far more interesting from characters built from less heroic/superhuman models.

Twenty-Two and You from The Doctor Diaries, Michael Blumlein

Actually, I should say that this was a good bit of science fiction. Of the stories in this volume, this was probably one of the more interesting. A part of my moaning and groaning is that I didn't get my Fantasy fix from this edition. This edition should have been plainly labelled 'Science Fiction Magazine' to avoid the confusion that the 'fantasy' part might cause.

In any case, this story is set in a future where doctors can manipulate DNA in living people. This is particularly useful if you've got a hereditary disease. In the case of the protagonist, Ellen, will almost certainly become sick with cancer and die if she ever has kids. Her husband and her want kids very badly. So, she goes to one of the clinics which can change her genes just enough to allow for her to have children without triggering the diseases.

It works. She no longer has the bad genes. However, those genes have changed her slightly: she no longer wants kids. She's no longer really the same person.

I think this has an intriguing thing to say: that our personalities, our preferences, and what we are, is programmed within us rather than formulae of personality, history, and spirit. How similar can twins be? Those who are nearly identical in their genes might also be nearly identical in their looks and personality. However, monozygotic twins (twins of the same DNA), are known to have individual personalities and exhibit differences. Some cursory research suggests that a person's genetic makeup can actually change as time goes on, which can cause differentiation between twins.

 Greed, Albert E. Cowdrey

Greed and the Green Goblin share a few similarities. In Spiderman's Green Goblin stories, the Green Goblin gets his start because he is sick with something that lizards have no problem with. He therefore tries to make himself more like a lizard to overcome that sickness. However, it also perverts his personality and imbues him with super powers so that he becomes a super villain. Cowdrey's lizard man is extremely rich. He doesn't want to die, so he has himself turned into a lizard. Unlike the Green Goblin, though, he does not really retain his human intellect. But he does gain the animal instinct.

The story is told from the perspective of Vern. Vern is your typical southern idiot. He has been left nominally in charge of a castle after his uncle passed. Well, he hasn't died. He's just been converted into the lizard. He is legally dead. The nephew had hoped that the estate would have been left to him. Instead, it was left to a company which was responsible for letting tourists in to tour the castle.

A friend of his seeks asylum, as he has committed a crime. He has embezzled, and he's looking to escape authorities. He goes to his friend to escape authorities. His friend, the caretaker of the castle, demands $2,000/day for that right. He also hacks and installs a keylogger onto his computer so that he can spy on his friend. He does that successfully. He discovers where Mojo, the criminal, had kept his embezzled funds and manages to steal it. However, the guy who helped him spy and get that information had been able to spy on Vern, and steal those funds from him.

I guess it was kind of funny. There was a touch of science fiction to it, right? Because of the giant lizard, right? This story was pretty lame, in my humble opinion. I don't really like fiction that pretends to be something that it's not, which is what this is.

Gnarly Times at Nana'ite Beach, KJ Kabza

 Punk fiction meets the beach. Hence we have 'beach punk.' Sand becomes nanites. Ads are everywhere. The thoughts of all the folks in this cyberworld affects everything around them. At times it's hard to know if this is the real world blended in with a cyberworld, or if it's a cyberworld altogether.

A geek and his geeky friend are keen to become popular. They manage to score a great surf board from a legend who wants to test his latest invention. It ends badly, though, as the geeks screw it up and get caught with a sort-of illegal board and humiliate themselves. Well, really it's just the one character who does all that. His friend just sort of watches all of that nastiness happen.

It was a kind of sci fi, I guess. At least the author wrote this for that sake and tried to be original.

Olfert Dapper's Day, Peter S. Beagle

Dr. Dapper is a con artist. He's not really a doctor. When he's caught in his nefarious endeavour, he high tails it to the high seas. He goes to an island and begins a life as a real doctor. He learns the trade of medicine, and is actually helpful to the settlers and indigenous.

While there, he sees a unicorn with one of the indigenous people. He's overwhelmed, wants to see it again, and manages to bring someone out who is a virgin. It works. He sees it again. The virgin and himself have sex.

Soon he has to leave the island, however. The girl hates her life and her husband and leaves her husband the priest. The Dr isn't blamed for it, but he's chased off the island nonetheless.

Is Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine really having such a hard time finding good stories?

Repairmen, Tim Sullivan

This is another piece of science fiction. A man kills himself. Except that he's no regular man, he's a time shifter repair man! He fell in love with the girl, and the girl's sad. His coworker tries to explain everything to her.

Lame story...

One Year of Fame, Robert Reed

Actually, this short story was OK.

The setting is in a small town during the evolution and revolution of artificial intelligence. Robots are everywhere. They come to have a will of their own, and are emancipated from slavery. They really like one particular author. All of them like him, and he becomes a celebrity. He even begins to write a new book as his fame grows.

Then, they get an upgrade, and find his work to be childish. They grow bored of his works, man, and earth, then leave the world to men and disappear.

Funny story.

The Tortoise Grows Elate, Steven Utley

Once upon a time, there were these animals called eurypterids. They were the predecessor to the spider. They were quite large, capable of reaching lengths of 2.5 meters. These are the creatures that begin the tale. They are extinct, so I'm not certain why he chose those animals in particular. Perhaps that's the part that makes it sci fi...?

The rest of the story is a sort of romantic blah blah blah.

One of these days I'll have to dig into an old 'golden age' rag to see if they were all this bad and that's the real reason the golden age tarnished and vanished, or if they were better and that's why they excited more readers.

The Queen and the Cambion, Richard Bowes

I actually enjoyed this story. However, it was following on the heels of some sub par fiction. So, maybe the stark contrast between blah and not bad makes it look better than it really was.

In any case, this is another pseudo history story set in Queen Victoria's day, with Queen Victoria and her relationship with Merlin. She calls him on a few occasions when she needs guidance. In the end, she even rescues him from his prison. Then he kills himself. Pretty grim end to the story.

Considering how all over the place Merlin is throughout this story along the time line, it's a little odd to think in terms of aging, beginnings, and ends. In my opinion, beginnings and ends are constructs of time that ought not apply to someone who lives in reverse to the rest of humanity and spans several centuries.

Meh, whatever. It was an entertaining story, a bit o'magic and fun. A little tiny bit of fantasy in an otherwise anemic edition.

Demiurge, Geoffrey A. Landis

One of the great things about writing a story is that it's your own world. You are like a god: with the ability to create and annihilate; to give one character love and another hate; to make love, or to make war. The power is in your hand. When folks read it, they get to experience the same world that you created. If it's really popular, there's a chance it might be picked up and made into a movie with actors and eye candy. Or, maybe it'll inspire a voyage to the moon, under the sea, or an invention. Fiction is really great like that.

That's what happens here, but the world that Erdemacher created, called Werldwright. Werldwright becomes real to the author, who disappears. Some of his fans disappear allegedly into his own world. The author makes a point to show that sometimes he takes in kids and can talk the pants off of a statue.

This is another story that I feel wasn't really worth reading.

The Man Who Murdered Mozart, Robert Walton and Barry N. Malzberg

This story is set both in the not too distant future and the somewhat distant past: a rich man with access to a time machine in the distant future wants to grab Mozart from the past so that Mozart can finish his Requiem for the rich man's board meeting.

But, doing so broke some rules, and his mind gets scrambled.

I must be in a fussy/bad mood these days. I didn't get a kick out of this story, either. *yawn*

Perfect Day, C.S. Friedman

Actually, this story wasn't so bad. It's a dystopian world where computer AI dictate to us our choices and consequences. For instance, if you do something that's bad for your health, you have to pay extra for insurance. Cars drive themselves, but offer a choice of taking one route that costs more than the other.

In terms of this world, the main character is poor. He lives in a crowded house where he tries to avoid contact with his family. Everyone tries to avoid everyone. So, they take turns in different rooms and have programs to tell them where they can go to achieve that end. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why he goes into a small storage room rather than his bedroom. The author might have done better to explain the reason for that. Another interesting thing is how he's hounded by ads everywhere he turns. Watching ads reduces the cost of many things. Being poor, he often has to make the ad choices. Back to the route to work, the cheapest route is the one with big ads that try to sell him things.

For sci-fi, this was one of the better stories. He could certainly play a lot more in this setting for some interesting results.

Conclusion

I thought this magazine overall lacked the quality it normally has. The longer works weren't all that good. The best stories were the short stories. So, I don't feel I got a lot of value. In other words, this volume had plenty of quantitative value going for it, but not so much qualitative. I really hate fiction that sinks into a genre because of some weak link that is manufactured. For example, the story "Greed."

The last edition was really, really good with some great stories. So, I was a bit surprised to find this one under the table. Hopefully they'll pick it up again in the next edition. Coincidentally, I got it today.