I’ve never used the “Press This” function before today; I expect I should probably think rather carefully about how and when I do use it, before making any kind of a habit out of it. But for the moment, I am just going to recommend the following horror story:
Ignorance and mass media.
My ignorance, to be clear. That title sounded a lot less snippy in my head.
Rather quick, rather flip notes, as I down coffee before work…
First; There are movies I haven’t seen. Quite a lot of them. Two that came up this morning were Scarface and Johnny Got His Gun (because the morning drive music included “Jack Sparrow” and “One”).
What else am I missing? What movies are really worth seeing (and trust me, the expectation that I’ve already seen it is not to be trusted)?
Second; So I’m on goodreads (as that widget in the lower right-hand corner may have indicated). It allows for a five-star rating system, and for me that basically seems to boil down to (1) I’m rating this because I want to establish I thought it was terrible, not that I just didn’t bother to rate it; (2) pretty bad to not-great, but with redeeming moments; (3) decent way to spend some time; (4) everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this; (5) everyone should try reading this.
There’s a whole lot of things falling into the three-star category, including some things that I’m feeling a little bad about, because they’d be four-star books if five-star ratings weren’t reserved for truly amazing things. And I’m wondering if I should reorganize, give everyone-should-try-this books their own shelf and stretch my ratings out so that there was a middle ground between “decent” and “everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this”.
I may be putting a bit too much thought into this, but I wondered.
Memories, all alone in the moonlight…
On my way home on the bus yesterday, I was flipping through my copy of American Supernatural Tales, looking to find the excellent “The Events at Poroth Farm”, when a fragment of text caught my attention:
…not an “animal of some kind,” as he put it. Something with a dragging tail, with scales, with great clawed feet–
And in the back of my head, a little voice is going wait, wait, I remember this…
–and I knew it had no face.
Yes.
“The Lonesome Place”, by August Derleth.
It’s been so long since I read that that I have no idea, now, where I first saw it. It’s been printed in a ton of places, but none of them ring any bells. I was surprised to discover it was by Derleth; I always thought of it as a children’s story, the kind of thing you’d find sitting on a shelf with A Touch of Chill and Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Witches. It’s got a sort of calm tone to the horror, nothing giddily overbearing. Puts me in mind of Bradbury:
“See, baby? Something bright… something pretty!”
A scalpel.
(It occurs to me, as I write this, that I might have a mildly elastic definition of “children’s story.” Might. I’m just tossing that out there for consideration.)
But yeah; I just thought I’d make a note of recognizing an old acquaintance, is all, one I didn’t expect to see there.
Thoughts on a recent movie.
Holy class warfare, Batman. (Spoilers follow.)
Pleasant moments.
So, the night before last, I couldn’t sleep, and was going through my Hallowe’en anthology. (It’s a couple of screens back, in that nifty little WordPress gadget on the bottom right of the page. Because I keep a few books on the go at once.) I picked an F. Paul Wilson story as likely to suit my mood, and then, because it was a response to Bradbury’s “The October Game” and because I was feeling awake and unfocussed and faintly worried I might miss a reference, I reread “The October Game” before going to “The November Game”.
I’m so very glad I did.
(Incidentally, if you haven’t read “The October Game,” I highly recommend it. I suspect a Google could turn something up, if you don’t have it in hardcopy. And it’s quite short, which is good, because I am about to get into things that, while they might not be spoilers, certainly run the risk of minimizing the impact. Read more Pleasant moments.
Our robot overlords are very confused.
Right up front: yes, I can see why Robopocalypse is often compared to World War Z. I think it’s an unfair comparison–WWZ is well-written. What follows beneath the cut is both spoilery and largely unaffectionate. Read more Our robot overlords are very confused.
I’m telling you stories.
By then serials were dying anyway, and of what use was a green suit with a long cape and wings on the sides of its cowl? In the real world, there was no room for Green Falcons.
Got to work this morning and I couldn’t get “Night Calls the Green Falcon” out of my head. It’s from Robert R. McCammon’s Blue World collection, or at least that’s where I first read it.
A shriek like the demons of hell singing Beastie Boys tunes came from the speakers.
So I went looking, and bless the man, he has the whole thing up on his website. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s written as a serial, it really suits being posted online.
“No, I haven’t seen him for a while, but I know what his name was.” He grinned, gapped-tooth. “John Smith. That’s what all their names were.” He glanced at the Green Falcon. “Can you breath inside that thing?”
It’s about a man who used to play a hero in the old movie serials–you know the kind, right? Ten chapters to a story, dramatic cliffhangers, come back next week for the next thrilling episode in this dynamic mystery, “The Star and Question Mark”!
“Hey, amigo,” the man said, and flame shot from the barrel of the small pistol he’d just drawn.
I mean… okay, it is not entirely surprising that I am a sap for stories about people trying to live up to the stories; ones about the power of stories to change the world. Galaxy Quest. Shakespeare in Love–not the romantic plot or subplot or whatever it was, but the sheer weight of the theatre, the “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” Hogfather, and the difference between the sun coming up and a giant ball of flaming gas illuminating the world.
He kept going to the stairs, burdened with age.
“‘Dear Davy,’” the voice rang out. “‘I am sorry I can’t come to Center City this summer, but I’m working on a new mystery…’”
The Green Falcon stopped.
I’m not saying it’s great art. It’s a four-colour story, bright and simple and clear. It has a grim and bloody moment or two, but then of course it does; they always did.
Who was he? somebody asked. The Green Falcon? Did he used to be somebody? Yeah, a long time ago. I think I saw him on a rerun. He lives in Beverly Hills now, went into real estate and made about ten million bucks, but he still plays the Green Falcon on the side.
Oh, yeah, somebody else said. I heard that too.
I heard that too.
Open question.
Why do you own the books you do? I mean, why did you buy them instead of take them out of the library; why did you keep them instead of reselling or trading or giving them away?
What makes them worth it?
Settling through
I had a couple of ill-advised over-enthusiastic book purchases this year, and my number of owned-but-utterly-unread books is edging uncomfortably close to triple-digits. (In fact, I think it might be over triple digits, but I am not checking at the moment; the list of eighty-six is quite unnerving enough without entering the books from one particular bookcase.)
(The list was actually at eighty-nine as of April 30.)
In light of this, I’m making a serious effort to read what I own. I liked them enough to buy them, and as flip as I may occasionally be about this, that’s not a casual thing. And an untouched book strikes me as a horribly sad thing.
I just finished Terry Lamsley’s Conference with the Dead yesterday. I discovered I’d read a couple of them before–this isn’t atypical, I’ve read horror anthologies and magazines for a couple of decades, and it’s actually getting a bit hard for me to find an anthology or collection that doesn’t have something I’ve read before. Still, it was long enough ago that I decided it was worth a reread.
His writing seems quite plain–not in a bad way, but plain in the way M.R. James is quiet. The later stories in the book are slightly weirder; there’s the same calm explanation as always, it’s just relating how reality is doing a quiet little fever-dream melt and slip. They never quite end up portraying the misunderstandings of a character as reality, though–it’s something I associate very much with Ramsey Campbell, and with him writing the introduction, I was a bit anxious about the possibility.
Overall, a very good read.
(Please understand; I like Campbell’s writing, but I’d settled into the quiet ghost story mood of he collection, and I don’t think the style would have fit.)
Not wanting to turn out the light.
Let’s be clear: this is not being afraid to turn out the light. This is knowing that when you turn out the light, you will spend a moment (and moments can be very long) lying in the dark, listening to your breathing, and thinking about what you just read. And what you just read is creepy, and not relaxing, and you can’t quite stop dwelling on it.
(Awesome feeling, really. Right, where was I?)
I was browsing through my list of currently-being-read books and noting most of them don’t have that–or at least, I don’t expect them to have it. Still working through them, after all. Of the two that might, one is a brick of an anthology from ’85, and one is a limited-edition collection. (Yes, both are a pile of short stories; I find those tend to disturb much more easily than novels.) Both are hardcovers. Neither lends themselves to being read comfortably in bed.
This is probably a good thing at the moment, since I need to be up early tomorrow, and do not want to be awake thinking about how wonderfully Michael Shea handles shoggoths and limited-omniscient POV voice. But I still rather regret not having more quietly unsettling things to read.
In the meantime, however, I’ve finished Horns (yes, I know; started it yesterday and had it all-but-done the same, read the epilogue-ish moment today) and am looking around for something to relax with. I may dig out some Stuart MacBride; I’m not sure why the Logan McRae novels are always soothing, but at this point I’d just like to be able to unwind and read enough to get to sleep.