Book Review: Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century Howard Bruce Franklin (editor)

 

 

Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century
Howard Bruce Franklin (editor)

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Most of my reference and non-fiction book reviews are generally going to be shorter but this is not your typical history book about the science fiction genre. The split is about 50/50 between history and context and actual Science Fiction stories from the 19th century, some having been written 50 to 70 years before Hugo Gernsbeck gave the genre as a marketing name. While some of the names such as Edgar Allen Poe is known for writing gothic and horror, and well his detectives his story ‘Mellonta Tauta’ about a hot-air balloon ride a thousand years in the future was a revelation. 

The same with a robot story by Moby Dick author Herman Melville, decades before that was a term. Time travel stories and weird fiction tales by greats like Nathaniel Hawthorne. I personally enjoyed the historical non-fiction context a little more than the actual stories. Let's get into the idea that these are actually SF because those who like to narrow genre definitions will think so. 

It is true none of these are as clear early examples as HG Wells or Frankensteins and of course The Blazing World' by Margaret Cavendish a SF novel from the 17th century if we are going to spilt hairs. You can’t read those Poe and Melville stories and not acknowledge them as SF retroactively. Let's be real. 

The author of this book just recently and sadly that is how he got on my radar when he recently passed away. Seemed like a scholar who was doing really good work. He was known as a cultural historian and not so much a SF guy. He had almost twenty books as editor or author. His histories of the Vietnam War and the movements against it were the books he was most famous for. Two books I really NEED to check are Countdown to Midnight, an anthology of SF stories about nuclear war released in 1984, and his Bush-era book Crash Course to Forever War. 

 Good stuff. Anyone who is serious about the study of science fiction should have this on their shelf. 

 

Novella Review: Vintage Season by C.L. Moore writing as Lawrence O'Donnell

 

Vintage Season by Catherine Lucille Moore Writing as Lawrence O'Donnell

First publication: Astounding Science Fiction, September 1946

50 pages (Collected many times)

 Anyone who follows my reviews and writing knows I love the pioneers of science fiction and horror. The trailblazers were writing at a time when there was no long tradition to draw on. When this novelette, novella, or short story depending on how to classify it was written, it was just twenty years after the genre got the name science fiction itself. We know the tradition of the SF vibe is longer than the time a name has defined it, but that doesn’t take away from the groundbreaking power of the 20s, 30s, and 40s Golden Age. Early in that century of Science Fiction young writers like Cathy Moore were the young voices that built the foundations.

 Her position as a pioneer in SF and horror is underrated because little of her work has been translated into film, although she worked in Hollywood. Academics who study the pioneer days and the impact of women will tell you she is one of the greats. Still, I admit I discovered her through Lisa Yaszek's amazing anthology The Future is Female only a few years back.  CL Moore started writing in the women’s dorm at Indiana University in 1931 and a few years later she was a regular in the magazine Weird Tales alongside HP Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, and her future husband Henry Kuttner. The tales were in a boundary zone of SF, Horror, and Fantasy, sometimes all three.  I hesitate to bring up her first husband Henry Kuttner, they were both on the path to genre success when they became a duo. Neither needed the other, but they became a powerful team.

 While this stone-cold classic is often credited to both of them, it appears that this was mostly the work of Catherine. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that it was written under a pen name they both used. You see in the Forties there were only so many spots in the pulps and if you had already appeared in a magazine in a year, you could use another name. There were other reasons but for whatever purpose this CL Moore was first in print under the name Lawrence O’Donnell. 

 Vintage Season is considered a classic. I decided I wanted to read it after hearing Robert Silverberg talk about it in a recent interview. He said it was not only a favorite of his, but he wrote a companion story that took place adjacent to the events. This made me interested and a collection of Moore/Kuttner I had on the shelf included the story. So why not? (oh yeah spoilers from here on out.)

 Published in September 1946 the same month President Harry Truman started Operation Paperclip to bring former Nazi scientists into government service and the first TVs were mass-produced. So yeah, this story was a long time ago. When we read these classics from this era the first thing, we must realize is that stories that sound familiar came later, part of the excitement of this era was seeing authors first play with these themes. There was a 19th-century tradition of time travel stories from Rip Van Winkle and Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, but atomic war stories were new as we were just over a year from the first use of them and even SF had only been Atomic weapons/energy a little bit, most notably Lester Del Rey’s Nerves.

Vintage Season is a time travel, but since I went in cold, I didn’t know that and was glad that I didn’t know that ahead of time, it added to my experience. I thought maybe it was a haunted house story, as the first few pages were built around a house and a group of weird strangers who had paid a weird amount of money to stay there. Even though the house is not particularly nice, various groups are bidding for it. 

 This creates a mystery for the owners who want the first group out so they can sell the house, but they are weird, and they won’t leave.

 “Why they live so contentedly in this ramshackle old house was a question that disturbed his dreams at night. Or why they refused to move. He caught some fascinating glimpses into their rooms, which appeared to have been changed almost completely by additions he could not have defined very clearly from the brief sights he had of them. The feeling of luxury which his first glance at them had a vote was confirmed by the richness of the hangings they had apparently brought with them, half-glimpsed ornaments, the pictures on the walls, even the whiffs of exotic perfume that floated from the half-open doors.”

 I love this part of the story. They are odd because they are time travelers, observers from the future. To the characters and first-time readers, it is an effective mystery why they are strange. My first impression was that they were witches or something silly, that the house was haunted. I was engrossed enough in the storytelling that I forgot it was a classic of SF.  There is a beautiful bit of prose when one of the time travelers is talking about music of another era

 “The calamity was single. The music did not attempt to correlate all human sorrows; it focused sharply upon one and followed the ramifications out and out Oliver recognized these basics to the sounds in a very brief moment they were essentials, they seemed to be in his brain with the first strains of the music which was so much more than music.”

 The answer of course is time travel, that these people are from the future and the reason they are so insistent on the house is because it is the one house that survived an atomic blast.  They have traveled back to see the war and do it from the one house that survived the blast.

 “The story is very simple, really,” Kleph said. “We travel period our time is not terribly far ahead of yours. No. I must not say how far. But we still remember your songs and poets and some of your great actors. We are a people of much leisure; we cultivate the art of enjoying ourselves.”

 It is subtle but Moore comments on tourism in a way. These travelers come from a better time and can only affect the past so much. They are observing, for the homeowners they can’t understand how the travelers can look the other way at the start of the war. They talk about the time travel as the rich talk of resorts.

 “This is a tour we are making -  a tour of a year's seasons, vintage seasons. That autumn in Canterbury was the most magnificent autumn our researchers could discover anywhere. We rode in a pilgrimage to see the shrine it was a wonderful experience, though the clothing was a little hard to manage.”

 So why witness destruction? It is history, a vintage season of another kind. A rare moment of history. It is a privilege to sit in a spot that promises their safety and watch the disaster unfold. When Moore portrays the destruction, it is some beautiful dark prose.

 “On the far skyline fire was already a solid mass, painting the low clouds Crimson. That sulfurous light reflecting back from the sky upon the City made the rows upon rows of flattened houses with flame beginning to lick up among them, and further out the formless rubble of what had been houses a few minutes ago was now nothing at all.

 The city had begun to be vocal. The noise of flames rose loudest, but you could hear a rubble of human voices like the beat of surf a long way off, and staccato noises of screaming made a sort of pattern that came and went continuously through the web of sound. Threading it in undulating waves of shrieks of sirens knit the web together into a terrible Symphony that had, in its way, a strange inhuman beauty.”

 Vintage Season is a classic deserving of the status. It is strange, powerful, and written with strong prose not always found in the stories of the era. A well-deserved spot in the canon.

 

Book Review: PsychoActive: Transformative Horror Novellas by Ryan C. Thomas & Anthony Trevino , Cody Goodfellow , Ed Kurtz

 PsychoActive: Transformative Horror Novellas by Ryan C. Thomas & Anthony Trevino , Cody Goodfellow , Ed Kurtz

 258 pages, Paperback
Published June, 2024 by Crystal Lake Publishing

 I suppose this year I unintentionally read books in bunches. Two books in a row by locals. Well, ⅔ of this book is local. This is my first book in the Dark Tide series, which is a series of novellas from Crystal Lake Publishing, an outfit I am familiar with but have yet to drive into their work to any great depth. It has been on my list to do so, and I am going to request many of these through my library system, as I like to do. 

 This one must get into the library system, with three authors out of four so connected to San Diego. Yes, these are friends. Anthony Trevino was a longtime co-host of the Dickheads podcast and co-author of a novel with me (Nightmare City – get it!). If I couldn’t write an honest review, I just wouldn’t review it. Despite a little internal bias let me get into this collection and why you should want to pick it up.

 Psychoactive is a collection of extreme horror novellas that collectively explore the themes of Transformation, that is the theme and all three novellas have their own feel. As a good anthology does, it highlights the strengths and skills of the authors represented. I’ll be honest this is my first time reading Ed Kurtz and his reputation is very solid, and that bore out..

 Ryan and Cody are authors I have known and read for 20 years now. Anthony, I have known a shorter amount of time, but we collaborated on a novel, and I have great respect for all three.  I am happy to report this is a book you should track down.

Cody Goodfellow is an author I have written about on this blog many times over the years. He is one of my favorite writers of my generation. It is wickedly frustrating to read his work and realize that he is not a household name. As talented as he is, the man should have way more sales and metric tons of awards. When I read his work the diabolical genius, I shared tables with fests and events drips off the page. In conversation with Cody, you know he is too smart for this world, and it comes out in his amazing fiction.

 Ryan C. Thomas is the author of many cult-hit extreme horror novels. His career started with the ultra-violent survival horror novel “The Summer I Died.” It is a classic around here and has almost become a movie several times for obvious reasons. It would be a classic. That book spun into a trilogy, and so did his body horror zombie bizarro fest Hisser, which he spun out into a trilogy, the third Hissers is when Anthony and Ryan first worked together. Ryan is a smart writer with a cult sensibility. He writes B-horror movies in A+ prose. He knows how to push buttons.

 Anthony is a smart writer, I wanted to work with him myself because we share similar interests but approach art differently. He has become very good at working with others and developing that third voice. He brings to his partnership with Thomas a precision of prose and a push to reach artistically further with their gore-drenched works. It is a good mind meld as all partnerships should be.

 Since the book opens with the Thomas & Trevino joint let's get going there. Love is a Monsterous Death is around one hundred pages of gore-drenched body horror and very subtle social commentary.

 “A civilization swirled in Theo's lap. The once microscopic organisms were now the size of pinheads. Tethered together by the faintest strings of vibrant red, Theo’s new biological family coiled over themselves, desperate for affection from those before them. They lashed out across the crotch of his jeans, and the tattered fabric of his couch cushion. Their love had been rejected but Theo knew this trio of insects just needed coaxing. Once they felt the rush of bliss that came with sharing their bodies, they'd be unable to resist the passion.”

 Ironically the closest comparison I can think of is Cody Goodfellow’s extreme horror masterpiece ‘Perfect Union’ which has recently been re-issued by Ghoulish Books. This novella shares the breakneck ability to go from vile descriptions to a sense of love and belonging that carried the brutal disease around the setting, in this case, a shitty apartment building filled with a bunch of characters forced together by circumstance. One of the most interesting characters was a vet with PTSD. 

 But we are talking about extreme horror…

 “Not all heroes wear capes or uniforms. The government thanks you for your service, citizen.” Ron saluted the freshly decapitated head in his hand, warm blood still dripping onto the carpet. He briefly wondered if he should remove the GIMP mask before packing it up but decided it really didn't matter when he could hear Theo getting closer.”

 If you have a strong stomach, and a sense of humor that will laugh at fart similes, then this novella has those too.  Sentences like “When the stench of burst bowls and rancid-fuck juice finally became too much…” wouldn’t work for me if the authors were not displaying a deeper story at times. Thankfully that is the case.  I am not saying this is Shakespeare, but this is smarter horror if you will allow yourself to vibe with it.

 Cody Goodfellow’s novella The Secret Eater feels less extreme in comparison to the first novella, but it is a disturbing tale as you’d expect. It is built on Cody’s ability to create rich settings that feel lived in. His Alaska in this story might convince you he lived there, and these were characters he knew. And maybe Hulder's family farm is based on some east county San Diego family moved up north, but this story feels like it had some real-life seeds.

 “We buried Dad in the backfield of the Hulder family farm on the 4th of July. It was perfectly legal, but naturally, there were rumors in town that we murdered him. The suspicion became certainty when half the town showed up for the memorial service. That's what the trashy books and podcasts will say, if and when such things are written we respected dad's wishes as a lapsed Catholic by forbidding an autopsy; but entering their mortal remains on the farm, we were keeping a promise he had made to the land.”

 I feel Alaska is a haunted land, and this family farm certainly jumps off the page. The best thing about reading this one is the characters.

 “We all knew the old gossip, it was the notorious bedrock of Hulder family legend some people went blind from drinking Grandpa Hulder’s shine, and it was local vigilantes who burned his fields, but the smart gossip was that they burned him out because he stopped.”

 That is not to say the horror elements were not effective. Cody is one of the most disturbing word smiths we got west of Laird Barron and south of Brian Evenson. This one didn’t make me laugh as much as some of his works, but I did enjoy what he was laying down.

 “The earthside and split like an open cyst. It came boiling out of the soil to speak with me. The long Mama. She eclipsed the moon with her enormous head, which had five faces that raps out commands and overlapping, whispering waves.”

 I think you should start with Unamerica, or Perfect Union. This is a great story but doesn’t scratch the surface with Goodfellow. If you like it keep that journey going. 

 Ed Kurtz’s Black Rings is a solid cosmic horror novella built around a missing stripper, and eldritch horror hidden under the club. Like Lovecraftian 8 MM. Good stuff but I admit I didn’t read it as closely as Ed is the one not coming on the podcast.

 Psychoactive is well worth the investment. Cody, Ryan, and Anthony will be coming on the podcast in August. So order it now and join us for the fun.