Short Story Sunday 22: Rogues in the House (Reading Conan 07)

It has been a long time since I wrote about Robert E. Howard’s Conan. I’ve been meaning to write stuff for the blog more often this year. If you’re reading this in 2020 you know the kind of year we’ve had. If you’re reading this from sometime in the future, then I would like to apologize from bringing up the horrors we went through.

Suffice to say that it’s been too long since my last time hanging out with the Cimmerian. Long ago my goal was to read all of the Conan stories written by Howard and write something about each one as I go along. Unfortunately, since writing about each story requires time and effort, the project stalled a few years ago. Recently, I’ve been taken by the Conan bug again (lucky for me it wasn’t another altogether dangerous bug, yes more dangerous than Conan) and decided it was a good idea to give this another go.

Another reason to pick up this project again is that I’m looking forward to reading Conan in physical medium. The edition I’ve been reading so far is an ebook compendium of all of Howard’s Conan stories. I also have the three-volume set edited by Karl Edward Wagner. It found it randomly in my local used bookstore and, liking the covers and having always wanted to read these stories, I picked it up. I didn’t find out about how well-regarded they are by fans of Howard and Wagner until after I have purchased them. They do not collect all of the stories, mostly the later ones. I’ve got a three or four more to read as ebooks before I start reading the Wagner edited volumes. That’s extra enticement.

Short Story Sunday 21: Jo Walton and Ted Chiang

I’ve been reading stories in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 for three weeks. I’m starting to get a bit tired of them, not because of the content necessarily as I’ve enjoyed these last six stories, but of their length. The very short length of these stories has limited their scope and depth. That changes today as one of the stories is technically the length of a novelette and it has the kind of deep storytelling that I was looking for and it’s tremendous. 

“On the Wall” by Jo Walton

Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)

Originally published in Strange Horizons (September 2001), edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj

This is my first time reading something by Walton but I’m already a big fan of her through her various non-fiction writing at Tor.com. I’ve been meaning to explore her body of work, but I simply seem to never get around to it. Because of that I welcomed the opportunity to get my first taste with this anthology.

Short Story Sunday 20: Gene Wolfe and Patrick O’Leary

I had a good time reading short stories last weekend so I decided to do the same again this week. I was hoping for some better stories. One of these confused me and I’m still not sure what to think of it. The other certainly delivered the goods.

“Queen” by Gene Wolfe

Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)

Originally published in Realms of Fantasy (December 2001), edited by Shawna McCarthy

I haven’t read much by Wolfe, but what I have read has blown me away. The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace are worth your time and will certainly stay with you for weeks after finishing them. That’s the effect they had on me. I’ve read a handful of his short stories and all of them read like they’ important and worth reading, even if they often leave me questioning what actually happened. That’s standard fare for a Wolfe story.

Short Story Sunday 19: Ashok Banker, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana L. Paxson

I’m making a serious effort to return to blogging this year. I’ve shared a couple of projects designed to help me work through my pile of unread books and encourage me to write more at SUR. I have no specific projects outside of those which is a good thing since they’re plenty ambitious as they are. Year’s Best Fantasy 2 is included on my Currently Reading list at Goodreads which ties into one of my 2020 blogging projects. I figured a good way to break that down into bite size pieces is to revive Short Story Sunday. This originally started with a Science Fiction anthology by David G. Hartwell and I thought it would be a nice little call back to revive the series by reading a couple stories in another Hartwell anthology.

“In the Shadow of Her Wings” by Ashok Banker

Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)

Originally published in Interzone (April 2001), edited by David Pringle

L’École des Robinsons (Godfrey Morgan) by Jules Verne Review

I’ve been a fan of Jules Verne since my youth. My dad has a collection of several of his works in French. It’s nearly an entire shelf of matching little red hardcovers, about the same size as mass market paperbacks. I believe it’s the entire The Extraordinary Voyages series, but I’m not entirely sure. I read a few of them between the ages 10 to 12 and enjoyed them a bunch. I’ve reread a couple as an adult and I can confirm that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea holds up. It’s one of only two Verne books in my personal collection. Itching to read another of his works I borrowed a couple of my dad’s books when I visited at Christmas. One of them is L’École des Robinsons (often titled Godfrey Morgan in English after the protagonist). As you can probably guess form the French title, it’s an island survival story in the same vein as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Having finished it recently, I can attest that some of Verne’s books are better suited for the audience of a 10 to 12 year old than to an adult.

2020 Blogging Projects #2: Unread Comics

I own a lot of books. Most of them I’ve read. Many still that I haven’t. This second year long project to help me work through my TBR shelf and to encourage me to write stuff for SUR will focus on comics.

I’ve put together a list of comics I’d like to read this year. I was going pick a number and use that as my goal. Instead, I’ve made a list of all the comics I own that I have yet to read and pick some from there. Here are the lists, sorted into four categories.

Multi Volume Series:

This list is made up of series, mostly. Not necessarily complete series or complete runs by a single creative team on a series, though many on this list will fit that description. All I mean by series for the context of this project is any comic that I own that has two or more volumes of it that are unread. Here is that list, in no particular order:

2020 Blogging Projects #1: Currently Reading List

One of my resolutions for the New Year is to start writing regularly at Shared Universe Reviews. In order to help me stay focused and to help accomplish my goals, I’ve thought up three projects. This is the first.

I have a secret shame that isn’t so secret, since it’s broadcasted on the internet. However, the internet is so full of publically shared secrets that I’m sure this particular guilt trip of mine is flying so low under the radar that I’m certainly the only one that knows about it. Yes, you guessed it, it’s my To Be Read pile of books. Specifically, the number of books I’m currently reading which easily surpasses a dozen books. As you can guess, I’m not actually reading over a dozen books with any kind of regularity. They’re mostly books that have been abandoned that I still want to finish reading (as opposed to books that have been deliberately abandoned, a rare event thought it does happen).

Horror Week 2016: The Birth of the Modern Vampire: Lord Byron, John Polidori, and The Vampyre

John Polidori.

Everyone knows the scene. On a stormy Transylvanian night lit by a full moon and serenaded by the howling of a wolf, a mysterious coach pulls up to a dilapidated castle. Timidly, the coach’s passenger makes his way to the castle door. As the door slowly creaks open, we finally see the lord of the manor—a formally dressed nobleman with regal bearing—a creepy and ironic image of a proper European aristocrat.

At which point, Count Dracula bids us welcome.

Dracula is not like other traditional monsters. His elegance and sophistication set him apart. Much like a Bond villain, Dracula could almost pass as a head of state or a captain of industry. The horror comes from our knowledge that underneath that polished exterior lurks a creature ripped out of nightmares and campfire stories. And that contrast between the outer and inner character provides the complexity that separates not only Dracula, but most modern vampires from all those more interchangeable creatures that go bump in the night.

Horror Week 2016: “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe

You don’t have to look any further than kids’ campfire stories to realize that the best scary stories are timeless. Good horror can seize you by the throat no matter how much time has passed since its inscription. Perhaps that’s why, autumn after autumn, year after year, readers return to the works of Edgar Allen Poe, a 19th century master of the macabre.

When Mario asked me to be part of this project, I knew I wanted to revisit “The Masque of the Red Death.” Even though this story was written in 1842, it continues to be hauntingly timeless, touching on the same horror themes that scare readers still today. Better yet, enough time has passed that it’s now in the public domain, and anybody can read it for free.

In 2016, it may often feel like the world is ending, and that’s a theme we visit often in contemporary fiction. I can think of at least two modern bestsellers that explore the idea of a plague that eradicates society, prompting an apocalypse: The Stand by Stephen King, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Poe’s “Masque,” however, is one of the earliest. In this story, the Red Death’s excruciating pain is matched in terror only by its guarantee of death.

Horror Week 2016: Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Turn of the Screw is a novella penned by nineteenth century British author Henry James. Considered to be part of the literary ghost story genre, the novella was originally published serially between January and April of 1898 in Collier’s Weekly Magazine, being later compiled into a single volume the following October.

The novella provides a ghost story that is unlike many of the ghost stories being produced during the nineteenth century, which is what makes it so fascinating to me. Rather than having a purely supernatural gothic story, James’ tale creates a sense of anxiety through eerie realities. Its unnamed narrator is a young woman who is hired as governess to two children at Bly, a remote English country house belonging to the children’s family. What begins as a pleasant summer in the country soon turns  distressing and traumatic as the governess becomes convinced that the children are consorting with a pair of malevolent ghosts. The ghosts you see are of two former employees of Bly: a valet, one Peter Quint, and a previous governess, Miss Jessel. In life the two of them had been scandalously discharged for their forbidden sexual transgressions with one another, and their spectral visitations with the children hint at Satanism and possible sexual abuse. Clearly, as the governess sees it, ten-year-old Miles and eight-year-old Flora must be protected. But her attempts to protect the children from hazards that are possibly immaterial, she instead winds up traumatizing the little girl and killing the little boy.