Weird Murmur

Nathan Ballingrud, The Strange (Saga Press: 2023). This is weird science fiction that leaves you with a sense of cosmic awe!  I am fascinated by the take on alien otherness here. It reminds me of the manner in which Adrian Tchaikovsky approaches the other, but then Ballingrud takes it a step further; he picks at a Ligotti-like paradox within our own natures: an unfathomable alien mind, but at the same time, a reflection of our own bifurcated and contradictory selves. We are alien to ourselves. With a child protagonist, Ballingrud exposes the vulnerability of human survival, the lies we tell about our concept of justice and what is fair, and the naïve notion that we have any idea what is really going on. Maybe we are nothing more than a disease.

  Linda Niehoff, "Fever Girls" in Weird Horror, Issue 4, Spring 2022, Undertow Publications. Read the story here on Weird Horror Magazine's website Having recently come under the influence of Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” (2022) and Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder” (2022), I couldn’t help but see this weird story as a reflection on another perverse, deep-seated, paradoxical aspect of human beings (see Ligotti): we so much want something more out of our lives that we will kill ourselves to get it. To seek out sickness to feel better, to die in order to live. And the horrific cherry-on-top that Niehoff delivers here: in the end, it is even worse than all that and nothing at all what we expected. This one is worth digging into!  

  Clark Ashton Smith, "The Seven Geases" in  Weird Tales , Vol. 24 No. 4, October 1934. Read the story here on the Internet Archive The themes of this myth are at one with Ligotti’s philosophical pessimism. Humankind, distilled into the character of Ralibar Vooz, begins a senseless quest to kill for sport (to hunt the Voormis). He is soon made a diplomatic pawn (a useless one as it turns out), an offered sacrifice, beginning a repetitious cycle of the human being used as a mere means. Paradoxically, it is humanity that uses itself as a mere means and brings about the vicious cycle that results in its own doom, for it is actually a human who sets Ralibar off under the control of the first geas. Under the geases, the paradox of freedom without freedom is borne out as humans are exposed as living puppets. As it turns out Ralibar, in virtue of his humanity, is an outsider, always out of place, an abomination to all he meets, useless and ultimately a kind of failure destined to fa...

  Ken Greenhall, Hell Hound (Zebra: 1977). The emotionally dark characters and the exploration of courage, trust, and strength make this story much more sophisticated than one might expect based on the cover! I’m still trying to formulate what this strange and violent coming-of-age story is all about. The interesting and complicated relationship between the humans and the dog Baxter allows for focus on the differences, if any, between human nature and beastly nature. Have you read this haunting book?

John Langan, The Fisherman: A Novel (Word Horde: 2016). Langan's prose, his incredible descriptions of the awful, and his deft handling of emotionally complicated themes all in the context of a story of cosmic horror is impressive. I'm always interested in that strand of Mythos stories that explore different psychological reactions to the weird, and I appreciated the contrast between the reactions of Abe, Dan, Rainer, and Jacob to the unbelievable. If you haven't yet read this novel, you won't want to continue reading this post. Below contains a HUGE SPOILER: There is an interesting hint of something new here: While Leviathan is certainly awe-inspiring and affects cosmic dread in us, left to its own devices, it is unlikely to harm. The existential threat emerges from the actions of Der Fischer and his attempts to capture. With that said, even just the existence of the black ocean and a creature of that scale veiled just beyond our experience is horrifying.

Michael Shea, Fat Face (Axolotl Press: 1987). The story is a fun one to unpack, and this murmur points to a thematic layer that is particularly striking.    Like Dyer's discovery at the Mountains of Madness, this too is a story of times changing—a story of the degeneration of a culture that has come to merely mimic the accomplishments of the past in a cheap and unskillful way. Look at what the Parnassus has become! As the Hollywood office buildings flaunt gaudy pseudo-Mesopotamian architectural excrescences that are even now past their so-called swanky age, another power shift looms. The streets are being abandoned, and Patti clings to a community that no longer exists. The time of Shoggoths, who can't even be bothered to form their bodies into passable human form, is upon us.     Does Arnold, the newspaper vendor, offer hope?

 Clark Ashton Smith, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" in Weird Tales , May 1932 Read the restored version here for free If you are wanting to jump into some Clark Ashton Smith short fiction for the first time, you won't go wrong starting here. Smith delivers a tale reminiscent of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" without the extra 30,000 words, and leaves the reader drawing a more horrifying conclusion than one draws from Lovecraft's classic. As is typical of Smith, the prose here is a delight, and the story manages to spark the imagination and draw the reader into a doomed exploration of ancient ruins on the Mars landscape. With some great horror that will remind many of the film Alien , this one might actually manage to scare you!

Fiona Macleod, "The Sin-Eater" in The Sin-Eater and Other Tales  (1895). Read the story here on Gutenberg The notion of a sin-eater, a person that through funerary ritual can take on the sins of the deceased, is ripe for a weird tale, and Fiona Macleod certainly delivers one here. From the melancholy setting, to the down trodden characters, to the unsettling superstitions that folks believe in (sort of), this story drips with sadness and frightful gloom. These eerie elements working together result in a haunting story of madness and the supernatural (maybe).  The characters have their doubts that the sin-eating practice has merit. Nonetheless, they partake in the ritual, and Neil Ross even tries to manipulate it for his own revengeful ends. Well, things don't work out quite as expected. Curses are nasty things!  

Nathan Ballingrud, "The Monsters of Heaven" in North American Lake Monsters  (Small Beer Press: 2013). Even in heaven there are monsters of a particularly insidious type, helpful in cruel and terrible ways. But it's the best we can hope for.  This is one of my favorite stories from the book. It leaves my imagination stuck with disturbing, sick, and wet images of creatures not understood. The grief, sorrow, and confusion of Brian’s and Amy's lives are set against a backdrop of the supernatural, and the weird aspects of the story are somehow simultaneously subtle and striking. The horror hits home when you realize the mundane aspects of the story are just as confounding and scary as the supernatural one.  The narrative brings to focus aspects of our humanity that are unique to us, but, at the same time, horrifying and pitiful: the power to imagine, to fantasize, to sublimate, to pull the wool over our own eyes just to have it continually ripped off to see the ugly trut...

Mary Berman, "Things Found in Richard Pickman's Basement and Things Left There" in Weird Horror, Issue 2, Spring 2021, Undertow Publications. In H.P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model," little did we know that while Thurber told his frightening story to Eliot, someone else, Mrs. Eliot, stood in the darkened doorway as secret witness to Thurber's terrifying tale of his discoveries at Pickman's house in North End. In "Things Found in Richard Pickman's Basement and Things Left There," we find out how Mrs. Eliot uses that information to horrifying ends and that she is, in fact, to be feared more than Richard Upton Pickman.  Like Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model," Mary Berman's tale is told from the perspective of hearing one side of a conversation, but the tables are turned. There is a new story to tell and it is  Thurber  who must listen to  Eliot , though this time, it is Mrs. Eliot with voice. This story has deep themes ...