She Walks in Shadows is an anthology of short horror stories written by women exploring Lovecraftian themes and the Cthulhu Mythos through a feminine She Walks in Shadows is an anthology of short horror stories written by women exploring Lovecraftian themes and the Cthulhu Mythos through a feminine lens, one that has all too often been ignored or marginalized in the genre. Lovecraft and his followers and imitators included few women in their work, mostly as a few inconsequential extras or particularly disturbing antagonists, but the writers included here take his themes and explore them in ways Lovecraft, stuck in his own stunted and bigoted worldviews, could never have imagined.
Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who has since become a prolific and interesting author tackling these themes throughout her work, these stories represent some of the early critical and creative reevaluations of Lovecraft’s opus as authors grapple with the intractable racist and sexist themes endemic in it, taking it to new and thought provoking places. In other ways, though, this remains a pretty typical Cthulhu Mythos story anthology in which the authors riff on the old tropes, with some writing more straightforward homage (and tedious Mythos poetry) while others try to engage with these themes on a deeper level. Whether retelling some of Lovecraft’s stories from flipped viewpoints, such as Lavinia Whatley (The Dunwich Horror), Asenath Waite (The Thing on the Doorstop), or even Marceline (from Lovecraft’s most infamously racist story, Medusa’s Coil), or taking us to the far future, Roman Britain, or farther afield to confront the colonial and gender ramifications of the themes, there are some clunkier works and some stronger ones. All in all, a fairly strong collection worth checking out if you are craving more contemporary rethinkings of cosmic horror....more
Charles Baxter is a prominent local writer in Minneapolis, a long time English professor at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota, most revered fCharles Baxter is a prominent local writer in Minneapolis, a long time English professor at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota, most revered for his strong texts on the art of writing. I was a history student during my time at the U, so I wasn’t really aware of his influence, but as I came to be more interested in local creative writing culture, his work seemed intriguing to me. There’s Something I Want You to Do, in particular, a thematic short story collection focusing on an interconnected group of characters set near the Minneapolis riverfront, looked like a project that would really appeal to my interests.
Having recently read his 2020 novel The Sun Collective, though, I found myself unimpressed by his literary attitudes and unfortunately this same languid mood, fatalistic and yet mawkish, predominated in the stories here. In many ways, in fact, they serve as a prequel to the themes and concerns of The Sun Collective. The stories in There’s Something I Want You to Do themselves, each named after a sin or virtue and all working the title statement into the narrative, are well crafted, strong in their evocation of place and emotion and compelling in the way Baxter weaves the scenes together, particularly the dreamlike intrusions of its magical realist moments in which characters are delivered psychic prophecies or converse with the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock on the banks of the Mississippi.
However, for me, like with The Sun Collective, these positives are mostly undone by the cloying tone of the narrative as a whole, which even though it treats its characters as real people cannot seem to help judging them. Baxter presents, all in all, an extremely white world with even the Japanese-American character reading as white to everyone else and he writes women as though he’s never heard the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but is unconsciously determined to will her into existence.
While Baxter doesn’t quite divorce his novel from the politically charged tension of US society, even by 2015, including a particularly interesting scene in which a stolid Midwesterner is confronted by a zealous anti-abortion activist, he is quick to compare the woman’s right wing fervor as comparable to her daughter’s aimless social justice activism. They are both zealots who can be safely ignored. He is ultimately, I feel, writing this vision of contemporary Minneapolis in a way that feels all too disconnected from its reality, with no ear for anyone under fifty and no understanding of the way that the city or the country has changed, for better and for worse....more
It was interesting to read this compact collection of short fiction ten years after it was written in reaction to the fraught year 2012, ostensibly enIt was interesting to read this compact collection of short fiction ten years after it was written in reaction to the fraught year 2012, ostensibly envisioning what wonders and horrors the future might bring. Compiled by writers from the Minneapolis-based literary blog, The Tangential, this baker's dozen of brief works imagine the future through various lenses, from droll dystopian satire to surreal post-apocalyptic dreamscapes, with some fitting the theme more clearly than others.
From the perspective of 2022 the visions of the future found in these stories feel very of their times, both in style and content. There is a definite creative writing seminar mix of ponderous metaphor and cheeky gimmicks, with a digitally inflected feeling exemplified by several references to the online writing hub Thought Catalog. The blase yet earnest, tongue in cheek yet vulnerable voice common to that platform and others like it throughout the 2010s feel evident throughout, a style that feels a more than a little dated today.
Still, it is weird reading stories conflating using social media to advertise corporate personal brands as a virus or a viral epidemic that causes immortality leading to people feeling “locked down,” as well as motifs of for profit prisons. The feeling that things might just be on the verge of a societal shift in 2012 is something I felt too, though it is incredible how even the direst story here doesn’t quite capture just how quickly things have gone since then.
In the end, most of the stories are a little ephemeral, with the standouts being by John Jodzio, Katie Sisneros, and Jay Gabler. Jodzio’s piece, Inside Work, may have the most tenuous connection to the collection as a whole, but his absurdist yet grounded story of suburban loneliness has some shades of Geroge Saunders. Sisnero’s When the Sun Goes, set two million years in the future has the most interesting take on a future civilization, using ancient board games to distract from the acceptance of doom. Gabler’s Seventh Grade Time Capsule, 1988 is the funniest, as a class of gifted St. Louis children speak to the strange future year of 2013. ...more
If I was slightly less enchanted by his Best Ghost Stories on my latest read than I was after first reading it, I think I can claim after finishing thIf I was slightly less enchanted by his Best Ghost Stories on my latest read than I was after first reading it, I think I can claim after finishing this collection of short weird tales by turn of the twentieth century English writer Algernon Blackwood, that these tales are definitely not his best. While a couple of the stories included here do make an appearance in the latter collection, the majority of these “tales of the mysteries and macabre” don’t really do much for me. Perhaps it was a side effect of reading the musty, yellowed pages of my copy of the book, but these tales felt just as musty and dusty. Many of Blackwood’s common motifs appear here; the mysterious power of nature, fraught relationships between characters, a strong build up of emotion, but all were better realized in some of his other tales of supernatural horror included the Best Ghost Stories collection and after a while felt quite repetitive.
The best of the pieces included in Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre are, like “The Heath Fire,” “The Wings of Horus” or “A Victim of Higher Space,” merely slightly more boring examinations of themes explored more effectively in Blackwood’s other stories. It didn’t help that many of them are particularly fraught with Blackwood’s period English racial attitudes and condescension, none worse than the first tale included, “Chinese Magic,” in which the entire shocking revelation of the story is that an English antiquarian loves China so much he delusionally believes his own wife is Chinese! Oh, the horror! One can only be thankful that it’s all in the poor chap’s head, the narrator concludes. All in all, these stories are only for completionists, I feel, and you can really stick with The Best Ghost Stories for a stronger representation of Blackwood’s ideas and moods with none of the works here being at all essential. ...more
One of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction series, The Ithaqua Cycle is a short anthology of “Cthulhu Mythos” pastiches focused on August Derleth’s litOne of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction series, The Ithaqua Cycle is a short anthology of “Cthulhu Mythos” pastiches focused on August Derleth’s literary creation of “Ithaqua,” basically his way to draw the plot of Algernon Blackwood’s novella “The Wendigo” into the “Cthulhu Mythos” shared world he was attempting to codify from the work of his mentor H.P. Lovecraft. The collection was compiled by editor Robert M. Price, who introduces each work through some rather overbearing commentary, trying to imbue them with some sort of literary merit rather than just another rehash of the same ol’, same ol’. It is a hopeless task.
Opening the anthology with Blackwood’s classic 1910 tale may, it turns out, may have been a bit of a mistake to set up your collection of bland fan fiction. While perhaps not Blackwood’s best, “The Wendigo” is still an evocative, eerie, roaring campfire-like piece that delivers a lot of mood and ends up making the other pieces following it look much worse in comparison. Blackwood’s writing is elegant in his creation of the desolate and mysterious atmosphere of the Canadian Northwoods and the inexplicable presence of its titular force, dragging the poor, sensitive French Canadian Defago into the icy forest. The rote stereotypes and bald racism that also pepper the tale are sadly typical of the time Blackwood was writing in. The Algonquin mythology of the windigo has here been lifted by Blackwood to serve his own purposes and bears little resemblance to the actual indigenous legends, but has come into pop culture as the prototypical Native American mythical monster, as discussed in Shawn Smallman's work Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth in History (definitely a more interesting read).
Price mentions none of this, except that the wendigo represents “genuine North American Indian lore” and murky insinuations that indigenous Americans are not really “native” to North America anyway (yikes) but has a lot to say about how the Wendigo can be analogous to various Biblical beings and how Derleth added it to his roster of gotta catch ‘em all elemental Great Old Ones. To be honest, his commentary left a bad taste in my mouth but was also a little funny, so smug and self-serious about such astoundingly boring fiction.
For the most part, the thirteen other stories in The Ithaqua Cycle are simply tired retellings of the same motifs with much less atmosphere, pointless inclusion of Cthulhu Mythos references for the sake of references, and continued, unquestioning use of the same old racist tropes. Spanning a period of time from pulp writer George Allen England’s 1923 “The Thing from Outside,” three of Derleth’s own stories written in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and various other genre writers writing from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, the bulk of these works follow basically the same plot;
“a party of stock white characters has a tough time of it in the Canadian wilderness, ia ia Ithaqua Fatagn! Never trust the natives…”.
The legend of the windigo is so eerie and affecting, it’s disappointing that so little comes of it in these tedious so-called cosmic horror tales. Perhaps the fact that the whole lot of these writers are British or American white dudes doesn’t help them go anywhere more novel. While a couple of them try tackling a different setting (maybe Siberia during the Russian Civil War or a WWI flying ace) or even build into some dumb fun encountering a crazy cannibal rustic in a rotting swamp cabin, as a whole the collection is just bad.
All in all, the stories collected here do little but reinforce my view of “Lovecraftian” fiction at the end of the twentieth century as an ossified, creatively bankrupt exercise in rote referencing and cliched regurgitations, content to wallow in unquestioned racist tropes and cliches. None of the stories bring any surprises or really anything any reader of weird fiction or horror hasn’t already seen over and over again.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s first collection of fiction, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory is a thoroughly enjoyable collection of short Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s first collection of fiction, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory is a thoroughly enjoyable collection of short stories. Best known as the creator and writer for the Netflix show Bojack Horseman, Bob-Waksberg's distinctive voice really comes through in all of these stories, drawing on the whimsy and pathos, relatability and inventiveness that he brought to the show. Often sad, but with a lot of positivity as well, in these stories he focuses on relationships of all types, from familial, to romantic, to that between a human (ManMonster) and a goodog.
There’s definitely a bit of George Saunders in these tales of everyday life, often with a surreal or a slightly otherworldly tint (eternal train rides, dimensional doorways, superheroes) but Bob-Waksberg’s voice is distinct, his use of puns and alliterative wordplay will instantly recall his work on Bojack Horseman. I particularly enjoyed the widely varying ideas and perspectives explored in the collection, from short, humorous pieces like Rules for Taboo to longer works like “More of the You that You Already Are.” All in all, a very impressive debut.
This collection of distinctive and intricate stories continued to impress me with the depth of Karen Russell’s imagination and the care with which sheThis collection of distinctive and intricate stories continued to impress me with the depth of Karen Russell’s imagination and the care with which she crafts her writing, managing to fit such a wealth of characterization and world building into each piece. It seems that with each of her collections her voice becomes even stronger, and this was my favorite of her works so far. I was enchanted from the first story and as we proceed from mountain ghosts to tornado ranching, an all too plausible post-apocalyptic world to the devil haunting new mothers in gentrified Portland neighborhoods, each offer an entirely different experience tied together by perfectly evoked human emotion.
Russell excels in creating a seamless melding of the surreal and the everyday that I seem to crave, infusing humor and melancholy, the relatable and the uncanny in equal measures. Her stories seem to spring from some strange intersection between our own world and the world of the impossible in a way that really appeals to me. The Bad Graft, for instance, was a particularly fascinating story in its combination of a familiar story of millennial angst with a mystical presence involving joshua trees of such a strangeness it can be hard to describe. In Bog Girl: A Romance, set on a fictional North Sea island I had to look up to see if it wasn’t actually real, a lonely teen falls in love with a three thousand year old bog body, and things only escalate when he brings her to school. In the end, the biggest thread that runs through the stories in Orange World is that they defy expectations. ...more
After having been very impressed by the first collection of short stories I read by Karen Russel, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, I was very excited lastAfter having been very impressed by the first collection of short stories I read by Karen Russel, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, I was very excited last year to read her first novel, Swamplandia! Unfortunately, in spite of the inventive magical realist setting, captivating atmosphere, and intriguing, life-like characters, I was less impressed by the sum of its parts. Perhaps the length of the novel caused it to bloat a little in certain sections? Having read that Russel had written about the same characters in previous stories in her first published short story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, I decided to check it out, specifically in audiobook form.
Like Swamplandia!, the majority of these short stories are set in the swampy, fictional Florida county of Loomis, often vaguely linked to each other and narrated through the voices of precocious children with absent, naive, or negligent adult guardians. Among them, “Eva Wrestles the Alligator” is connected most closely to the story of Swamplandia!, though Eva’s grandfather Sawtooth also narrates in the story “Out to Sea.” Many of the other stories, from “The Star Gazer’s Log of Summer-Time Crime” to “The City of Shells”include these characters in cameos and characters from one story show up in others as well. This, along with the linked setting in general, is something that really appeals to me and the tone, which invites comparison to the works of George Saunders in particular, with their quirky characters and plots that straddle the line between the mundane and the bizarre, something that feels stranger than fiction. Like something just weird enough to be real, even if it involves sled made from the carapaces of giant child size crabs children can rent from a local entrepreneur to sled on the Florida dunes. All of these elements are definitely ones I appreciate.
Unfortunately, in almost all of these short stories, in spite of their intriguingly detailed stories and engaging characters that draw you deeply into their worlds and dilemmas and mysteries, most of the time, they simply end, just when it feels like the peak of their tension, leaving things feeling unfinished , fragmented. What happens to the two boys left up on the mountain? What is the cynophobic camp counselor going to do with the last sheep? These endings feel less like ambiguous ones, leaving them up to the reader's interpretation, but more like they simply ran out of steam. My favorite of the stories, the namesake one, does feel self-contained and satisfying though, which perhaps exemplifies her later work in Vampires, and it’s interesting to see Russell’s ideas change. I’m looking forward to reading her newest collection, Orange World and Other Stories shortly....more
So You Want to Be a Robot was a moving, thought provoking collection of short stories that really highlight the ability of speculative fiction to explSo You Want to Be a Robot was a moving, thought provoking collection of short stories that really highlight the ability of speculative fiction to explore the complexities of human experience and consider it in new ways, from the exciting to the disconcerting. After reading their story “Our Aim Is Not to Die” in A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, I was curious to read more of Merc Fenn Wolfmoor’s work, requesting their debut collection from the library. They will definitely be someone whose work I will continue to look for in the future.
Wolfmoor really has a knack for tackling a wide variety of genres, ideas, and tones, from the dark urban fantasy of “For Want of a Heart” to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi of “The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie,” and the fantasy of “Iron Aria,” but using them to touch on deeper questions of existence in a way that really appealed to me. Their connection to themes that thread throughout the stories are impressively strong, in particular that of the titular robots, as well as monsters, linking them to questions of gender identity in ways that feels very effective and compelling.
This is especially the case in the collections strongest work, the namesake story, a greatly affecting piece that really made me question how I feel about how society forces conformity in ways that hadn’t occurred to me before. In any case, it will be interesting to see their writing continue to evolve and what other places they will take us. ...more
A People’s Future of the United States is a particularly effective anthology, I felt. The diverse group of authors showcased in the collection really A People’s Future of the United States is a particularly effective anthology, I felt. The diverse group of authors showcased in the collection really capture in their stories the anxieties and hopes for the future of the United States during this uncertain period. Drawing from Howard Zinn’s quintessential history text, the tales collected in A People’s Future of the United States explore what the coming years of centuries could have for the marginalized voices of our country. The collection included authors I’d read before, such as Omar El Akkad and Lesley Nneka Arimah who each wrote stories that recalled what I enjoyed about their work, but I also enjoyed encountering writers I’d never heard of before, like Malka Older and A. Merc Rustad, inspiring me to check out more of their stuff.
I was very impressed by the strong ideas each of the authors used to connect their stories to the themes of the collection, as well as the variety of styles they used. Victor Lavalle’s introduction drawing on his own experiences provided a great opening to the collection, which explores such important topics as race, gender identity, immigration, or all of the above. Some authors drew upon a more allegorical approach while others used an academic or journalistic lens, some satirical and some tragic. For the most part, though, the authors tend more towards the dystopian side of “the dystopian and the utopian” dynamic mentioned in the blurb. This is definitely an understandable stance to me. Times are dark right now, and picturing how, even as things get darker, people will struggle and survive is a cathartic and strength inspiring writing and reading experience. All in all, I really enjoyed getting to check out such a great cast of writers, experiencing just how many different viewpoints were explored. ...more
Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose was an interesting premise for an anthology, featuring flash fiction in both comic and prose formats, eachFlashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose was an interesting premise for an anthology, featuring flash fiction in both comic and prose formats, each in conversation with each other. I find flash fiction to be a strangely neglected format, as it can take a lot of skill to pack so much feeling and mood into so compact a package, and I feel the contributors here do a good job of it. I always enjoy being able to flip through so many topics and voices in one anthology.
In Flashed, a variety of themes, a work was chosen from some prominent writer or cartoonist, from Linda Berry to Steve Almond, with two others responding with an original piece of flash fiction or a comic of their own. This led to some very innovative and imaginative groupings, and it was always interesting to see what elements or motifs were picked up on in each. I would definitely love to see more projects along these lines. ...more
This is a diverse collection of essays, short stories, and poems that reflect upon the current state of extreme disparity in the United States, where This is a diverse collection of essays, short stories, and poems that reflect upon the current state of extreme disparity in the United States, where the tiny percentage enjoy staggering wealth while the vast majority get by with less and many with nothing at all. The inequality endemic in American culture is evident but a lot of people - especially the white, the privileged, the naive - seem hesitant to really engage with the racial, economic, environmental, and political injustice that plagues our nation.
The essays here, some original, some collected from various other publications, while perhaps not delving too deeply into politics, are good introductions to the viewpoints of many vulnerable groups in our societies. As these prominent writers explore issues of racism, immigration, homelessness, poverty, work and gender from the perspectives of rural and urban, north and south, across ethnic and religious backgrounds, the reader gets a broad view of the US.
Most interestingly, the novelists Karen Russell and Claire Vaye Watkins each wrote gripping personal essays, the former about homelessness in Portland and the latter her childhood squatting on public land in the Mojave, while Roxane Gay’s short story set in rural Michigan was among the strongest in the book. The most compelling, to me, were the journalistic “Death by Gentrification” discussing gentrification and police brutality in San Francisco by Rebecca Solnit and Patricia Engel’s portrait of Miami, “La Ciudad Mágica.” Eula Biss’ essay on “White Debt” and Chris Offutt’s “Trash Food” were also interesting, though not without flaws. All in all, each piece offers much food for thought if not an in depth discussion on current affairs.
Most interestingly, the novelists Karen Russell and Claire Vaye Watkins each wrote gripping personal essays, the former about homelessness in Portland and the latter her childhood squatting on public land in the Mojave, while Roxane Gay’s short story set in rural Michigan was among the strongest in the book. The most compelling, to me, were the journalistic “Death by Gentrification” discussing gentrification and police brutality in San Francisco by Rebecca Solnit and Patricia Engel’s portrait of Miami, “La Ciudad Mágica.” Eula Biss’ essay on “White Debt” and Chris Offutt’s “Trash Food” were also interesting, though not without flaws. All in all, each piece offers much food for thought if not an in depth discussion on current affairs. ...more
Like Don’t Dream, published later, Colossus is a collection of vintage weird tales, here consisting of the science fiction stories of Minnesota writerLike Don’t Dream, published later, Colossus is a collection of vintage weird tales, here consisting of the science fiction stories of Minnesota writer Donald Wandrei, interesting mainly in his role as a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft and, with August Derleth, founder of the publishing house that preserved much of Lovecraft’s work. Of course, with Wandrei a long time citizen of St. Paul, living in a home not far from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Summit Hill neighborhood, a few blocks from where I currently live, there is the local interest for me as well.
As in Don’t Dream, the most interesting part is the biographical information in the introduction, here provided by another genre writer, Richard L. Tierney. Wandrei seemed to have been quite the character, though in some ways a little tragic, never really satisfied with his work. Tierney quotes Wandrei as writing of his own work, “they were all more or less routine pot-boilers without any particular distinction,” which is, sadly, an apt description of the material here.
For the most part, the stories collected in Colossus, published originally in various pulp magazines between the late 1920s and the 1960s, with the bulk coming out of the ‘30s, don’t really offer much to modern readers. The writing is, in general, pretty uninspiring and, in spite of a cool idea here and there, mostly dragged, making it difficult to maintain interest. For those interested in the “Cthulhu Mythos,” it must be noted that none of Wandrei’s stories here really draw from the style and in fact, are quite distinct from that of Lovecraft in terms of attitudes and themes.
Oftentimes, Wandrei’s stories mostly follow a few prominent motifs he returns to again and again. Along with a penchant for creepy love triangles (including one in which a time traveller lost in the far, post apocalyptic future falls in love with the mutated descendant of his crush and his villainous rival for her affections after generations of incestuous “repopulating the Earth”), Wandrei is particularly drawn to scenarios in which ill advised physics experiments involving the nature of time and space lead to the death of the researchers, all of humanity, the Earth itself, or the entire universe. I can only imagine Wandrei wouldn’t be a fan of the Large Hadron Collider. I do feel that Wandrei might have had some pretty innovative ideas for the time, ideas that later became more ingrained standards in science fiction. In one story, for instance, he posits a fourth dimensional object casting a third dimensional shadow, an idea used to great effect in, of all things, an episode of Adventure Time. For the most part, though, I think I preferred the stories in Don’t Dream, his “horror and fantasy” collection, though there is plenty of horror here and plenty of “sci-fi” concepts in Don’t Dream as well....more
“Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some that went straight to video“Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some that went straight to video. This seemed right. That’s exactly, literally, right, Aaron thought, already mocking himself.”
- From Tao Lin’s story Sincerity, included in this collection
Some of Tao Lin’s earliest published works of fiction, Bed has a lot of interesting scenes that capture the yearning sense of ennui and aimlessness of young adulthood after college, with Lin developing the detached, deadpan, semi-autobiographical yet surreal style he came to be known for.
The stories deal with those post-collegiate feelings of alienation, of being cut adrift, of not really knowing how to be an adult, what one wants, or where one is going. Working in a dead end job after college with a bunch of teenagers, say, or trying out sharing an apartment with an SO, going on vacation with your family, or hanging out with a sadly platonic college friend at an underground punk show, Lin is very effective in his depictions of the feelings of these relatable characters in the early 21st century United States.
For the most part, I felt the stories went on a little longer than necessary, though, becoming repetitive and, on occasion, somewhat interminable. There are some definite elements that tend to pop up multiple times, as characters go on bizarre, meandering tangents, asking each other “what if” questions on absurd possible events, and fixating on strange thoughts. However, the meandering pace can also be reflective of the disorganized, vague feelings of daily life and Lin can really make some great similes and vivid descriptions of the kind of wonder of the contemporary world. It really is a great depiction of the time it was written, and will be a perfect time capsule, I think. ...more
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