Audiobook review: The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones , Isabella Star LaBlanc (Narrator)

 

The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones , Isabella Star LaBlanc (Narrator)

8 Hours, August, 2022 by Simon and Schuster

 I know better but I fell into a trap with this audiobook. When I saw there was an original Stephen Graham Jones audio novel, I couldn’t resist. I was fresh off interviewing Stephen at the Philip K. Dick Fest and was excited because I had not heard of this one. The trap is entirely my fault as I know better. While SGJ has been on a slasher kick lately his favorite novels of mine are Mongrels and The Only Good Indian. With a title like The Babysitter Lives I assumed I was dealing another slasher, which was a good trap. Unintentional misdirection. 

 If you don’t want anything spoiled know this is a horror audiobook, well produced, with a good reader in Isabella Star LaBlanc. It is about eight hours long, available as an audible original but also on the Libby app. I recommend this audiobook for horror fans of all stripes, but SGJ fans cannot miss this one. 

 So genre authors play with power cords, every SF writer has to do the major tropes of the field from time travel to generation ships and so do Horror writers. So you all should not be surprised that SGJ would one day do his own haunted house novel. I was excited to see him translate the various tropes through his personal lens as he did so well in his werewolf masterpiece Mongrels. One thing I know from talking to Stephen in interviews is he likes to consume the related media as fuel for his spin. You can feel the history of Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson getting SGJ’D in all the right ways.  

 One of the first things you have to figure out is why is the POV character staying in the haunted house. The Torrance family snowed in for The Shining, Lisa Morton’s The Castle of Los Angeles was a haunted theater that the main character had sunk every penny into.  Right off the bat Charlotte the babysitter is perfect, she is hired to stay in the house and take care of the kids, she can’t leave. Just to make her situation even more clear, she had a disastrous ALMOST disaster the last time she was the babysitter, and even though only her mom knew, Charlotte on the night before her SAT, is sensitive. This was perfect.

 The misdirection worked on me because I was not aware this was a haunted house story so when the kids were missing early in the book I felt it. I was nervous for Charlotte, as the novel unfolded into a deeper mythology and the elements of the classic tropes played out I found myself very engaged with the story. The element that Charlotte discovers slowly that the house she is in has been a part of local Halloween mythology unfolds in way that works perfectly with oral storytelling of it all.   

 Again I want to point out that my audiobook reviews are never as detailed as my reviews of material in prose. I will say I was confused from time to time in the final act and that is the limit to me of the audiobook, not the story itself. If I am not following the story, I don’t have a problem re-reading parts. I don’t always feel comfortable rewinding on an audiobook. Also, I consume audiobooks during walks, or eating lunch at work, so I can be distracted. 

 The Babysitter Lives is a GREAT entry in the long tradition of haunted house novels, in some ways it is an even better entry in the Stephen Graham Jones canon so yeah listen to it.

Book Review: Shrouded Horror: Tales of Uncanny by KC Grifant

 

Shrouded Horror: Tales of Uncanny by KC Grifant

You may have noticed in my reviews of late I have been on a short story kick in my recent reading. In part that is just what books came down the pike but it is also that I have been working on some short stories myself. It was a good time for me to read this.

 

It should be noted that this book is from a local,  co-chair and founder of our Horror Writers Association chapter and I got to work closely with Kristina on the Stokercon we hosted here in San Diego. It was at Stokercon when a copy of this book ended up in my bag of books. I was glad to have it and it was a surprise, that Kristina said she wasn’t sure how it happened but here we are.  We are also doing a Podcast interview that will live here eventually: _____

 

The style is short punchy, powerful horror tales in a classic mode. Think EC comics, Twilight Zone, and bite-sized horror stories that display a variety of styles and influences. I didn’t honestly know what to expect, I had not read any Grifant work and was familiar with her Horror western series. That sounded a little Victorian to me, but that may be a stereotype for historical horror fiction.  As is always the hope with a collection of stories, the contents showed off a variety of styles of horror. 

 

Some stories caught my attention stronger than others like the unsettling pandemic story All Aboard: “Maurice didn't remember everyone's names, so he had given them nicknames in his own mind especially the ones who didn't dragged themselves into stupors aside from Nick veins and Ellie look alike, there was Bug Eyes, Blue Eyes and Tired Eyes, Skeletor, Fake Tan and Flabby Man so far none of them had any symptoms not the telltale purpleish hue along ones cheeks, another of the viruses and in his inexplicable side effects.”

 

First Maurice’s names for the people is a nice touch because it builds his character as much as it sets the stage for everyone else.  With that last line, the world-building and the pandemic fears end off a paragraph that mostly was about characters.

 

“The water looked burgundy in the twilight making him think of runoff chemicals, blood, toxins. He hated looking at the water but couldn't help it. The endless lapping waves gave him Vertigo making him feel like he was about to tip over me swallowed by the depths.”

 

This passage is vivid but more than just descriptive, it places the reader so directly into Maurice’s nervous thoughts. The blend of sensation and fear ingredients is exactly what makes horror effective.  

 

One other thing I look for in a collection is an author’s ability to play with the power cords of the genre. Vampires, werewolves or zombies.  In this collection, an example of this is from ‘Just Another Apocalypse: “The zombies are slow for the most part but not completely endanger us. They have enough cognitive skills to figure out the basics - how to wield a weapon, communicate with each other, even how to drive a car in some cases. They like to travel in packs. Some of them act like toddlers, carrying around the equivalent of a security blanket, random objects they find on the street or on one of their victims. They are distracted by TV or phone screens, which was funny at first but now I feel irritated at how stupid they are. Like, die off or be functional members of society, you know?”

 

One of my favorite feelings in horror is when a story can make me feel one of my fears. One of those fears is intense isolation.  One of my favorite stories in the collection U-Train builds isolation inside one of the most populated cities on earth. Built on that weird feeling when you are waiting for a train or bus that is late. A feeling anyone who has ever relied on the NYC subway system knows. From U Train: “They don't want us out, we're not getting out,” I tried to explain but they were all panicking. Headphones and cupcakes shouted for help at the stairs until they were horse. Stupid kids. Suit did eventually climb down to the tracks and walk a few feet in the darkness, just to turn around.”

 

Other highlights include ‘Unrest’, an unusual serial killer story set outside of a cemetery… “And he will never let the graveyard be.”

Now it was really time. I rise and shed my facade. It is disconcerting to be so big, so airy after the comfort of boundaries, the comfort of contained flesh period now I cannot feel, I cannot leave.

I can only serve.”

 

‘From Sea to Shining Sea’ is a contender for favorite although I was a little bummed when I realized that it was short, I mean a very short story. Still, it is a great piece of world-building I wish was longer. “Acidic clouds rolled over the horizon as they stepped out onto the dock a film of bubbles glinted on the darkly brewing Atlantic. The blooms had stayed, killing off thousands of fish as warmer temperatures had brought out jellies that never before charted.”

‘Puddle of Comradely Despair’ has a great opening line: “When I came to, I was a collapsed pile of half liquefied bones in the middle of 148th St. Literally. No shit. Just lying there like an egg frying and a bored kids driveway.” This is one of the stranger pieces here, but as such I found it amusing.

‘The Peerlings’ is a fantastic way to end the collection with a science fiction tale, that again I thought could sustain a longer work. Shrouded Horror, is an excellent debut collection Giart shows that she has a style and voice, that is worth checking out. Shrouded Horror should be on your list if you like horror short stories because it does the mission perfectly, it is a great sampler of an author and made me want to read more of her work.

 

 

Book Review: In Time’s Empire We Are All Slaves by David Gill

 

In Time’s Empire We Are All Slaves by David Gill

133 pages, Paperback
Published November, 2015 by Pravic Books

Before this book was handed to me during the Philip K. Dick Festival I didn’t know that Professor David Gill ever wrote fiction. As he teaches English at San Francisco State I should have assumed he did, I am sorry it took me this long to learn this. David Gill is one of the best and nerdiest Philip K. Dick scholars we got. Three-time guest on our Dickheads Podcast and the man behind the Total Dickhead blog, the last year’s amazing 16-week online course on PKD. The man knows his stuff.

If you couldn’t tell from the title this pint-sized volume is filled with Pink Beam Fiction, inspired by the master. Gill’s collection is short, sometimes, micro-fiction that packs tons of ideas in the short word/page count. The writing is strong, and I thought we needed more work from the Professor, but I also know he has lots of research and music to make.

Consider this passage from the title story… “He saw beneath her faded Rolling Stones T-shirt, visions of earth girded with hundreds of orbiting satellites whizzing by one another at great speed; he saw freeways advance and multiply like veins across the surface of earth; But mostly he saw in the half-light was concrete disappearing beneath a silver hood, driving, early in the morning, sometime in the future, and he knew from the field, the concrete was cold.”

This passage invokes an internal landscape and creates both a solid and surreal atmosphere at the same time. Each of the stories while short has the complete package. Each has a beginning, middle, and end filled with themes, messages, and points of view. As a reader, I am OK with lush language and stories but as a writer, I like to not waste words. I like how much Gill does with very short stories.

In one of my favorite stories called The Adjustment: “He was planning their wedding, picturing their home in the suburbs, naming their children. She was quite stunning, in a shimmery dress with her long brown hair and a regal nose, like on a statue. He was rather plain looking with a receding hairline in a weak chin.

She decided to have another drink with dinner and see where that got her period she found herself wishing he had a more interesting job, slightly nicer clothes, and a bit more hair he was madly in love but had already convinced himself she was out of his league.”

Without giving away the twist, this is a neat little Twilight Zone-ish with a hint of Black Mirror look at technology all in 5 mini-pages.

“... Mike, I'd like you to make this man a bit more attractive to me.”

While not entirely predictable, the way the story expresses a point of view is a great example of how Science Fiction can be used to explore ideas - some as simple as what we find attractive. Another example is from the story The Human Engine. This one is about a T.S. Elliot simulacra and is about as Pink Beam as it gets exploring what it means to exist itself.

 Nate's tone was accusatory, “you shut yourself down?”

“I would think that's within my rights,” the poet replied.

“Even if you were flesh and blood belonging to God and all that, you still wouldn't be within your rights to shut yourself down. It's against the law.”

“How would the prosecution proceed against a corpse? 

“Listen you are not flesh and blood you were constructed in this lab by my team as such you are a possession of this company, the Ingolstadt consortium.”

The stories in this collection get a little longer as they go, it is a small inexpensive book but for the money, it is jammed with radical and well executed stories with a delightful old school feel. Yeah, I say pick it up.