Best Movies of 2021 Post & Podcast with Issa Diao of Good Clean Fun!

 

Here are my Ten Favorite movies of 2021! Joining me on the podcast Is Issa Diao, he is a filmmaker, having written and directed a film with the same name Good Clean Fun as his long time band. As lead vocalist of Good Clean Fun Issa traveled toured internationally and he is a total movie nerd.  In this episode we talk about our favorite movies of 2021. 

We greatly expand on the movies in the podcast and Issa gives his favorites! 

Podcast with Issa on Apple Podcasts!

On Spotify 

 With video on YouTube

Honorable mentions (more thoughts on the podcast)

Blood Red Sky - German vampire on a plane with hostage takers! Better than it has any right to be.

No time to Die - Fitting end to Craig's Bond.

Reminiscence- Pretty cool Sci-fi starring Hugh Jackman directed by Westworld's Lisa Joy.

Judas and the Black Messiah - Great biopic.

Censor - cool Meta horror movie.

 

Worst movie :

Senior moment- A rom-com starring William Shatner and Jean Smart with Hallmark channel production levels. Yikes.

 

10. Space sweepers

Totally bonkers Korean Sci-fi movie! I have seen this compared to Guardians of the Galaxy, which is fair in terms of humor, moments of breezy tone, and fun that are all over this movie. That said the setting is dystopia cli-fi with an evil mega-corporation choking the earth and the sweet little kid is actually a bomb filled with nano-bots. Some of the design is Blade Runner-ish but the action is swift and fun. I really liked it, the only ding is the English language actors are awful. ha-ha.

Space Sweepers Trailer

 

9. Nobody

Nobody with Bob Odenkirk was super fun. If you always wanted to see Saul go John Wick here you go. Don't overthink it RZA and Christopher Llyod are natural screen partners. The bus scene was my favorite. Great to see Michael Ironside on screen again. Pure dumb fun.

Nobody Trailer

 

8. Candy man

Best score of the year. Smart sequel that tied in social issues to the existing franchise. It grew on me over time.  I am confused that there was no story credit for Clive Barker, the closest thing was a character reading Weaveworld in one scene. Seems against WGA rules, but whatever It is hard to talk about without spoilers but if you are fans of the OG movie then I think it is worth updating. Very well directed. I was a bit hurt in the moment that I watched Take Shelter the night before I saw it, and that might be a better horror movie.

Candyman Trailer

 

7. Pig

I have mixed feelings on the movie. Nic Cage is great, while Mandy is still his best movie of this century he has not been this good on screen since Leaving Las Vegas. The trailers will mislead people to think this John Wick with a Pig. Nope this is a somber movie about grief and uses the Portland foodie culture as a metaphor for the game we play to be part of civilized life.  As an Animal rights person, the idea that Cage's character is so motivated by the love for his Pig is great but the movie misses a chance to make that point more clearly and then undercuts the message near the end.  Liked it overall but not as much as I hoped to.

Pig movie trailer

 

6 Gunpower Milkshake

I know it is not high-art, and many will hate it but I LOVED Gunpowder Milkshake. It takes place in a world where men only exist to be mowed down. Karen Gillian (I think of her from Doctor Who, even though she is more famous from the MCU) leads this movie that will get John Wick comparisons but it is more stylized and surreal. Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, Lena Headey, and Carla Gugino are all awesome, but Basset gets my most serious Laugh out loud moment.  I had a few nitpicks but the fun stuff outweighed the bad.

Gunpowder Milkshake Trailer

 

 5 Swan Song

Swan Song (AppleTV) is a great movie. A slow burn creepy tear jerker about a father/husband played masterfully by Mahersala Ali who hides the fact that he is dying from his family so he can replace himself with a clone. There certainly is a PKD what is human question posed by this concept. However, there is little surreal or off-beat. This is a drama at its heart.  I am sure many will be bored by the pace but I found the creepy build effective. No horror tale works if you can't put yourself in the shoes of the character. The question of what makes me who I am? Can I be replaced?  Powerful themes of grief.

Swan Song Trailer

4 Boss Level

A time loop movie with a surprising serious cast for a movie that feels like a B-action movie. I say that with affection, not judgment. This movie stars underrated action star Frank Grillo. This movie had a movie theater opening and was a few weeks from national release. Joe Carnahan the director has made a few above-average movies Narc & The Grey for example. With a cast of Grillo, Naomi Watts, Mel Gibson, and a cameo by Michelle Yeoh. This movie has an 80s action movie tongue-in-cheek feel, it has lots of laughs, a few solid moments of emotion pulled off by the actors, and lots of great action. I am kind of overtime loop movies but I had lots of fun with this one.

Boss Level Trailer

3 Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho was not perfect but a really cool horror movie. Edgar Wright clearly was overdue doing a non-comedy. Visually it was amazing, super influenced by Giallo and Argento. Anyone who has seen those movies knows they are super awful towards women. Wright uses this story to deconstruct the genre and flip it. A not-so-subtle story about the haunting nature of misogyny for victims of harassment and rape culture.  Thomas Mackensie is great, Matt Smith is perfectly awful.  General Zod was great. Big thumbs up. Only thing I didn't like. It was a little long, the police station scene could've gone. The music was overbearing and didn't always work for me.

Last Night in Soho Trailer

 

2 Dune

I know I can't divorce the four times I have read the novel from my viewing experience but it is interesting watching the difference in how people are new to the universe. Lots of nitpicks that the characters are two-dimensional and flat. I have to disagree. First off I think people new to to Dune are probably overwhelmed by the visuals and the world. I love the novel but this movie has way more depth.  I heard this knock going in so I was looking for smart ways DV and the movie gave characters more depth than ever before. Take the Box test scene. Lady Jessica's visible fear, Paul and Duncan Idaho's joy at seeing each other. Paul has always been hesitant to take the throne. The Baron is always Capitalism embodied. Leto's fear when facing the Baron, also i understood his desire to save his people from Shai'halud on a deeper level.

You don't need the Dune trailer really...Come on...

1  Stillwater

Matt Damon is great in the movie sure, but it is not the movie in the trailer. It is not the movie you think it is. A very surprising movie that made me feel tons.  Absolute best movie of the year. It is hard to talk about without ruining the things that make it surprising. 

Stillwater trailer

Book Review: Pearl by Josh Malerman

 

Pearl by Josh Malerman

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published October 12th 2021 by Del Rey Books (first published January 1st 2019)

I can’t exactly hide the fact that I am a big fan of Josh Malerman the writer, the storyteller, and the person.  He is becoming a regular on my podcast because I read everything he writes and I pretty much always want to talk about it. Pearl which was titled “On This Day of the Pig” when it was published by Cemetery Dance in a limited edition was one I admit I avoided.

It didn’t help that some moron who probably had actually read referred to it at a horror con as “Cujo with a pig.” That is so wrong I barely want to comment on that. Let me digress for a minute and explain why I was nervous to read this.

I have been vegan for a long time. Before it was cool to say plant-based, I mean Bill Clinton was in office for a total of two weeks when I had my last bite of dairy products.  In 1993 in the hardcore scene there was plenty of support for the decision but no one in the mainstream had heard of it. There were 1% of the products and restaurants that there are today. You had to really believe in it. I didn’t care about health at all. I was 100% committed to Animal Liberation, and was inspired as much by reading books like Diet for New America by John Robbins as I was hardcore bands like Earth Crisis.

During that first year that I was vegan, I decided to put my activism to work and did an internship at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen in rural upstate New York. I spent that summer taking care of rescued farm animals. I have lots of stories about how I learned the personalities of all the animals there. It is one reason why I am still Vegan.

We are here to talk about pigs. Let me tell you what I learned. Pigs are super smart. They were aware of the farm’s schedule, the time of day things was supposed to happen. I use the example that they blocked an intern who had a bag of apples from leaving basically staring her down like ‘we know you have more apples.’ It is also a feeling you get, their eyes are more expressive than dogs even.

So a horror novel about pigs sounded awful to me. I was not for any demonizing of the sweet, intelligent emotional complex animals who are systematically enslaved for their flesh and end up as hipster bacon jokes. Then I read Goblin and in that book Malerman has a story that very passionately lays out the emotional turmoil for a gorilla in a zoo, so I got more curious. When we talked about that story I got more comfortable about reading this book. I know that is tons of words before I even talked about the book but I think it is important to understand where I am coming from with this novel.

On the surface this concept is ludicrous. No author who hadn’t proved themself with a hit like Bird Box could pitch a horror novel about a telepathic pig. I am sure the marketing teams at Del Rey were nervous too. They rebranded it, and I think ultimately that was a smart move.  
 
Pearl is a pure horror novel and I don’t think I can ruin much with the telepathic pig spoiler, although I managed to open this book knowing nothing about the plot. Pearl as a novel only works because it is 200 % mood and vibe. With a crazy concept, it works because Malerman is committed to the paranoia and building the vibe over the long stretches of the book.

Part of the problem is the reality Is pigs are generally cute soft-looking creatures, they are not exactly bears or sharks. So why are we not laughing at moments like this…

“Pearl rolled to his feet and trotted towards them.
“Fuck,” Mitch said, “He’s coming.”
“It’s just a fucking pig.” Jerry said half breathless.”

For one thing, Malerman understood, and I am assuming he spent some time around pigs that the uncanny freaky thing about a pig is when you look in their eyes and really feel them looking at you. That is why a telepathic pig is scary, because they have lots of reasons to be mad at us. He also took the time to show the madness around Pearl. He took it deadly seriously and so at this point we are accepting it.

Those little details are also genius horror writing. Mitch is scared and Jerry tries to convince himself more than Mitch. Half Breathless is a detail that just puts you in the fear of the moment. I have read 9 novels by Josh Malerman and the thing that unites them all are storytelling chops. Pearl more than any other novel is a showcase of his amazing skill for the tiny details that make horror work.

Pearl doesn’t have a scary-looking monster or a million-dollar gimmick it has a vibe and the author clearly tries to express a fear he clearly felt. Sure there are Axe-wielding killers, a few acts of violence of typical horror story but those were not the moments that crawled under my skin.

“When she whirled to face the pen, her ponytail struck her cheek. As if it were webbing itself.
The pigs weren’t watching her.
Only pearl.
Sitting how he always sat, his front hooves limp, his head tilted toward her.”

It is not an accident that Pearl's magic comes from his eye. The eye the humans call his bad eye, but Pearl knows the one sealed shut is the good one.  Those eyes, I’m telling you I related to those moments. It is impossible to not in those moments of eye contact with a pig and feel awful for what humanity does to these creatures. If you don’t you are trying to protect your desire to think of these animals as products, not lives. Here is the amazing thing.

So here is where I have to quote the Usual Suspects like a dork. Yep, the greatest trick quote. What else do people quote from that movie? Yes, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he hadn’t written an animal rights horror novel. That is correct, right? Malerman intentionally or not has written an animal rights horror novel.  I have read a couple of reviews and the animal rights theme is not really central to these comments. I only saw one review out of the first 10 refer to this aspect. There were plenty of readers who just couldn't suspend disbelief. One person who referred to Pearl as the villain.  Hmm, we will come back to that.

The last Malerman book I read was almost entirely characters and setting. An interesting thing that happens in this book is the characters kind of naturally melt into the background over time. Let's take Susan for example who goes to the farm disbelieving in Peral’s curse on people. She doesn’t believe in the slightest. The novel goes us tiny effective moments of character, enough to know her. The fact is the only person in the book I think a lot about now that I have closed the book is Pearl.

Pearl is not a monster, despite her being the person who instigates all the chaos. The reality is that her motivations are clear. When we spend time with her, we understand that she is learning and growing. The why of her abilities doesn’t matter at all.  Because she changed by watching her fellow pigs be lead to their death. Take a moment and think how that would make you feel? If you are not this novel will help you with that…

“Pearl remembered. And looked for it. As the man in blue was stepping slowly toward him, he searched.
The feeling he’d had the very first time he saw (witnessed) the power of the farmer, what farmers could do to the pigs. The time Pearl saw…”

As if to further hammer home this important theme of the book there is a powerful moment with Bob Buck can’t even explain to himself why the pigs are not being killed at the rate they were supposed to. Pearl is stopping him and he feels a loss of control. Here the power of the farmer, and the power of Pearl collide. Much of writing horror is getting into the fears of characters. Here is an interesting fear. Bob Buck like many of the characters and probably most of the readers doesn’t want to lose that power over the farmer.

You want the pigs to die and because of your breakfast. The fear in this part of the horror novel is subtle but believe me, it motivates ugly behavior. It is generally my philosophy to only talk about my veganism when someone else brings up the subject. In almost three decades vegan I have experienced often people who feel "threatened" by someone who does not eat animals. The very idea challenges people and sometimes they react by being bullies. Also keep in mind we live in a country where the reality of meat production is so nasty that laws were created making it illegal  to take pictures of meat being raised. This part of the novel really captured the fear of confronting the reality.

 So far Malerman has been subtle and I would forgive some readers for missing the point. It is there but whatever. There is no mistaking what is going on after page 237.

 The message could not be more clear.  “…as if the man (Bob Buck?) was immune to obscurity, unable to be blocked out, like the pig, the pig Pearl, who haunted this man because this man haunted him, because this man lined up pigs and slit their throats in front of other pigs, suddenly Susan was seeing Pearl’s point of view, Pearl’s perspective as if Pearl was slave rising up from the mud and blood to kill his captors, to slay those who slayed his mother, his father…”  

This goes on for another page and a half. I really don't want to lay it out here. I am giving you a taste. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The worst bad guys in movies have their motivations. Pearl is a villain to Susan in the novel, maybe to most of the readers but he is the hero to me.

Pearl is not Malerman’s best, but it might be the most impressive to me personally. That is why I was honest in the opening oft his review about my feelings, which are very positive towards pigs. This might not work for you, but this novel really worked for me. I read three Malerman novels this year, something I only did for one other author in Philip K Dick for obvious reasons.

I say it over and over. The hype is real, Malerman is a storyteller supreme. Pearl is a 5 star recommend but be prepared to challenge your thinking.

Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

 

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Hardcover, 341 pages

Published September 28th 2021 by Tor Nightfire

I was very excited when I heard about Tor spinning off horror novels into Tor Nightfire, a smart move of course because in the last few years the horror novel has come raging back to the forefront. So this novel, which appears to be the U.S. edition of a British release of a horror novel by an American novelist living across the pond. With blurbs from favorites like Sarah Pinborough and Paul Tremblay. Giants like Mike Mignola and Stephen King also blurbed this book so I feel like a bit of a poser for never hearing of Catriona Ward before.

Well, mistake fixed she is on my radar now. I know I say this often before I developed a system for reading books without knowing what they are about. I put this on hold and forgot about it until it came in at the library. No clue what it was about. I certainly think the reading experience was more wild for that reason. Here is the strange thing. While I considered this a 5-star book, It was closer to a DNF or a 2-star book than a 4, and I know that doesn’t make sense, but hear me out.

I think this book is great, and impressive but the line between a terror-inducing, bonkers experience and unreadable crap was super thin. I absolutely understand why someone would feel differently than I did. It is very hard to get into why without spoilers. Try to explain the genius of Hitchcock’s take on Psycho without spoiling the Marion Cane twist.
 
Before I say fuck it and go into spoilers let me say that I found Ward’s writing sublime at times. This book is quotable in a thousand places. Just strange stuff like…

“I am not dead, I can tell, because there is a strand of spaghetti on the green tile floor. What happens after death may be bad or good but there won’t be spilled spaghetti.”
 
But I could do a hundred examples like that through the course of the novel. Funny, smart, and insightful while being off-beat, bizarro, and just plain creative. So many turns of phrases I was jealous of. The story itself remains better spoken of with a spoiler warning in the rearview mirror but I will say this. It is a puzzle inside of a puzzle. Every time you think you have a handle on it, the goal gets pushed back.

When Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes came out it worried me that they were marketing the ending. How could it live up to the hype? It did. Much is made about the secrets withheld in this book and it is true when they get revealed it is in the same dangerous place as Behind Her Eyes. If you make that far do you accept the ending? It tied the room together like the Dude’s rug and for that reason I suggest this book to ALL lit horror readers.

From the very beginning, the book has a disconnected, and strange first-person style. All the clues are there but the amount of confusion it causes is one hundred on purpose. I am fine with confusion as long as I am entertained. The funny, wry prose was enough to carry me but I get that many readers would not be able to hang.  You have to make it to the end but it all pays off. If a cat POV and first-person narrators who lie and contradict each the other narrators or invent characters that don’t exist in one chapter to the next sounds confusing. It is. If you hang it will make sense.

Yeah, I think this is one you should read.

OK Spoilers….

I going to assume you read the book or don’t care about spoilers. The first clue was from the cat on page 58 of the hardcover. I just thought it was a cute gag to have the cat be a POV character and first-person narrator. It was a relic of earlier draft according to the afterword but smart. The Last House on Needless Street on the surface appears to be a novel taking a massive dump on the rules of first-person. It is not because the twist (you have been warned) is that the POV is a person with Dissociate Identity Disorder. Multiple personalities and they are very different to each other. Part of the fun of the novel is that Ward does an amazing job of holding out details long enough that I read hundreds of pages and guessed incorrectly multiple times what was happening.

So the cat…

“I looked and looked for ways to escape, but there weren’t any. A couple of times I just ran straight at the door when it opened. I am not a natural planner. Ted scooped me up in a friendly sort of way. Then when we were on the couch and he stroked me or we played with a piece of yarn, until I stopped crying. “There are bad people who would hurt you or try to take you away from me.”

Totally normal thing to say to a cat. Well, the people out there who will hurt you part is normal. Not so sure about the "They take you away from me," thing, that is not normal. So it got me thinking, OK Ted what the fuck is up with you? A kid is missing from the lake. They searched your house. Found nothing. Somebody wants to study you. Maybe you have a daughter, she goes away sometimes, where is mom?  I had tons of questions about Ted.

People who want answers right away are going to DNF the hell out of this book.  For me, the cat finding blood and searching for the flip-flop in the kitchen was when I really started to think I understood. Lauren is not his daughter, and the cat is going to somehow save her. Then the Cat tells us he is not real.

This reveal on page 190 strips another layer comes off the façade. At that point, you think you understand. Fuck Ted am I right?  It makes sense that Lauren would invent the cat. When Ted tells us he is protecting her, triple locking etc. We KNOW now that the fucker is crazy, he took the girl at the lake. That is Lauren she invented the cat tried to escape. Hey look at us smart readers we figured it out.  Awesome.

There are almost 200 pages left. I kept reading and doubted myself. It was a smart twist to reveal that the cat was made up but in many ways, it throws readers off the scent of the twist.

“The first time I tried to run he took my feet.”

A lazy reader or even me will assume that Ted tortured her, cut off her leg. but the reality the leg is nothing more than an invention of the mind. and if it is not convient for her to have a leg anymore it is gone. We are still to invested in hating creepy Ted. You will hate Ted for such a long period of the book when he ends up bleeding in the woods you won't be ready for another layer but it won't make the effect any less powerful. Wait Ted is bleeding, good. Right? In the back end, you are not even sure who is the dominant personality and by the end, that is not clear. Some of the narrators are evil and some are not.

The line that really got me…

“One of us is imaginary,” she says “and it’s not me.”

Over time the various ways the layers come off reveal problems the characters only begin to accept…

“I had always felt that there was something wrong with me. I was like one of the tracings I did on her baking paper, a bad one, where the comic book underneath slipped; the lines slewed across the page, and the picture became a monstrous version of itself.”

This makes for a powerful ending when it is revealed that the girl in the lake was the POV character's sister, that she was not kidnapped but died in an accident and the whole thing is an elaborate internal cover-up. Yep, this is a powerful ending. What a crazy ride of a reading experience that will leave you shocked and confused. Most importantly for me, I was entertained.

 On page 341 when a character comes right out and tells us exactly what is happening with identity disorder but we have been so fooled that our brain rejects it. When Ted in the last chapters sees his mother in the mirror and promises to stop hurting the body if she promises to leave them alone it is heartbreaking. An excellent conclusion that wraps it all together.

The marketing of this book is hilariously off. For fans of Gone Girl, this book besides having a twist and being good is not a fair comparison. Haunting of Hill House, yeah maybe but that is pure misdirection.  This novel is in a tradition with Robert Bloch’s Psycho but it is so much more expansive and experimental.

Overall Genius and will be on my top ten of the year for sure.

Book Review: John Brunner (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) by Jad Smith

 

John Brunner (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) by Jad Smith

Paperback, 200 pages

Published January  2013 by University of Illinois Press

 I am not going to say much here because I intend to use it as a source one or two articles on John Brunner. At the same time I want highlight some things. John Brunner has been a favorite writer of mine since the early 90s. I first noticed him as just a name on the shelf at the used book store I shopped at in the home town Caveat Emptor. There was always several shelves of his books. And I had never heard of him. I looked a few titles just curious what his books were about. I knew nothing about him but the book Crucible of Time just sounded mind bending.  I got and I admit it was beyond my teenage reasoning. I had a feeling so I kept on the shelf and planned to give it a shot.

Then as my views on environmentalism evolved and I read Brunner’s Classic the Sheep Look Up. I was not prepared in 1993 when I read it for how powerful it felt. I felt like I was seeing how things could’ve been if pollution didn’t get some more regulation. When I read in the Bush years it felt even closer to reality. The exact eco-challenges were different but the book still spoke to me. That is when I got serious about reading Brunner. I have read most of his major classics and will continue to learn more as time goes on. When the Dickheads journey with Phil is over I am going to read as many Brunner books as I can.

So reading Jad Smith’s fantastic Master of Science Fiction series on Brunner was just incredible for me. I knew a little about Brunner but not compared to Philip K. Dick who has multiple biographies and dozens of books about him. While we don’t have the exact timelines that we do for Dick it was amazing to learn about Brunner’s life. How he discovered HG Wells as a child, how he sold his first novel as a teenager, the various names he published under.

I want to read all the books in this series but this was where I needed to start. It is a must-read for anyone who takes scholarship of 20th-century science fiction seriously. I think John Brunner is one of the best but if you want me to say more you’ll have to wait. I have articles to write on the man.

Book Review: Come Tomorrow by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

 

Come Tomorrow by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

Paperback, 154 pages

Published June 2nd 2020 by Notion Press 

 

Podcast interview with JP! 

 

Video of interview! 

It is a strange effect of the internet age when people you have never met in person feel like a close friends after years of online interaction. This author is one of those for me.  Jayaprakash Satyamurthy is a writer based in Bangalore India but is someone whose opinions I have always respected. He and I have much in common. We both have homes filled with rescued animals, are vegan, love Black Sabbath, old school science fiction, and writing weird shit. So why has it taken me this long to read his work? Good question as he has even been a guest on Dickheads for our Counterclock World episode.

I never had that fear that he wouldn’t be a good writer, So it is no shock that Come Tomorrow is a great collection of powerful writing deserving more attention. I want to be careful here and I think I need to approach an issue that I know Jayaprakash has addressed recently as well.

I read plenty of old school so with newer genre fiction I do at times choose work many times passed on writer's whose company I enjoy. I also try to balance the overly white-male problem of genre fiction. As an Indian writer Satyamurthy has made clear there is a fine line when writing about his hometown where you can feel western readers having a gee-whiz reaction to reading about “exotic” locations that can feel icky. The reality is I like reading the local flare of authors from anywhere, Jayaprakash in India, N.K. Jemison in New York City or Joe Lansdale in East Texas.
 
I like geography in fiction, so I have to say I like that Satyamurthy’s stories in this collection have a grounded feeling in his city, one obviously I know little about.  The reality is that feeling melted to the background and is way down the list of reasons I LOVED this book. I got into the stories that surprisingly connect subtle ways I found the setting really invisible at times. I have a favorite but all 10 stories contain a powerful evident on every page. The book gives indications of influence often there are moments of cosmic dread that recall Lovecraft of course, but also Weird Tales greats like Aickman and Clark Aston Smith. Also moments mundane cracks of reality more in line with the Philip K Dick influence I can’t help that see.

The book opens with the title story which has a ghost story inside of a ghost story set-up and brings moments of cosmic dread when you are not expecting it. The first of many powerful moments that highlight Satyamurthy’s power for building comes in this story. A character is having a nightmare that they are covered in rats.

“The sun rose, and set, and rose again, many times over, but the rats still covered me, a foul cloak that adhered to me no matter what I did, and I could not make out the streets I was running through were.”

That is one hell of an evocative sentence. Very few writers can say so much and pack so much vibe into a single sentence. The second story presents a really powerful kind of paranoia in a character who is driven mad by an intense form of pattern recognition. It is subtle but the story manages to create a hopeless pull in the patterns. The character refers to his marvelous terrible brain. I think many of who writers of dark fiction can relate to that. This is a powerful story that I found myself re-reading when working on this review.

My favorite story in the collection is “Shadow Me No More.” This is a powerful weird tale that could also be described as surreal horror. I loved every strange word of this paranoid story of a person haunted by their shadow. “I can’t grab my shadow’s throat, can’t shut up what never makes a noise. He follows me everywhere and I can’t help but read the terrible knowledge we share in his swagger, his svelte glide, his smooth traverse across the wall and pavement, poster and window, puddle and cowpat. I can’t help detect smug, subtle mockery as languidly oozes from my feet when the sun is angled and the shadows are long.”

From start to finish this was my favorite story. Of course, I like the music and metal references in “No More Iron Crosses.” Since I was listening to music as I was reading I could turn on the Massive Attack song mentioned in the story and this provided a nice synergy. Also when in the next story Axes of Discordance the character started a band I turned the band Satyamurthy plays bass in Djinn and Miskatonic and that helped create a great vibe.
 
I am not sure what it says thematically but several of the characters have careers or jobs in advertising. There are small tiny connections in the stories but mostly they stand on their own. The comparisons to great writers like Thomas Liggoti and Laird Barron are fair. There is a similar level of quality. Readers looking for that cosmic level of dread combined with razor-sharp wordsmithing and uncanny knack for looking at the weird bubbles floating up in our reality then Come Tomorrow is worth every penny spent or minute of attention given.

Book Review: No Second Chances by Rio Youers

 

 

No Second Chances by Rio Youers

Hardcover, 400 pages

Expected publication: February 22nd 2022 by William Morrow & Company

 

This is a very hard review to write for a couple of reasons. I really don’t want to spoil this book as it is not even set to be released for a few months. I went into this book cold, not knowing a thing besides my love for past works of Rio Youers. He seems to slowly transitioning himself from weird supernatural books to crime thrillers.  I enjoyed his powerful indie debut Westlake Soul, that book was like a coming-of-age take on Johnny Got His Gun and The Forgotten Girl which felt like John Farris The Fury and Firestarter by King getting an update is still probably my favorite.
 
This book No Second Chances and the last one Lola on Fire are straight action and crime stories built entirely on the power and strength of the Rio Youers secret ingredient. Characters. This freaking Youers guy knows how to write characters with complications that we can still root for. That is a tough trick for any author but it is this one's strength. He writes bad guys you hate on a level that is very near to Luc Besson and Stephen King who are to me the best writers of bullies in any media.

Speaking of King, It should be noted that the guy who created all those mean assholes himself called this book hot and pointed to the villain as Bond bad guy worthy. He also called it a Hollywood Noir and while it is LA noir or Southern California noir I would be a little nervous calling that as some might think that means it is about the film biz. It is not. The book also strays out into the desert and crosses the border into Nevada and that region plays a big role in the setting and feel of the final act. The LA of the novel feels pretty recognizable coming from a British Canadian. Who did Well done choosing neighborhoods and settings. It feels experienced. It is also the first major novel I read that acknowledges the COVID world.

Look in a way I would compare this to True Romance in tone but I don’t know if that is fair or not either. For whatever reason, that vibe kept coming to mind. No Second Chances is a page-turner not because of some huge high concept, it is because Luke and Kitty most of all are characters, I am interested in. So If you trust on going in cold read no further and pre-order it. You see it is a character-based Noir thriller that twists and suspense galore. and the less you know the better.

OK, you have been warned. Light spoilers ahead…  

Kitty is from Louisville, a young black woman who has dreams of striking it big in Hollywood. She is pretty and talented no she just needs the luck. This novel is about the city of broken dreams. It is a known thing that every waiter or Uber driver in LA has a script, or headshots ready to try and make their dreams of stardom come true. Kitty like many of those hopefuls got into the wrong line of work in the meantime. She is a courier for a Youtube/insta star Johan Fly.

Pitfalls of Hollywood are a daily reminder for Kitty. Across the street in her Silver Lake neighborhood is Luke Kingsley. He was a one-time rising star who was married to an equally famous soul singer Lisa Haynes. So what happened to his career? After their turbulent relationship played out in the press and social media, Lisa disappeared. Luke woke up during a camping trip with her blood on his shirt and three years later Lisa was never seen again.

The cops are sure he did it but have no proof. Social media convicted and canceled him. He can’t get work and his life is over. Kitty finds him fascinating as she knows who her neighbor is. Their stories come together when Kitty sees Luke try to take his own life. She breaks in and saves him and that is the start of a strange friendship. Kitty keeps an eye on him, she doesn’t know him but he knows it will be in the tabloids if she takes to get help.

One of the first moments when I really felt for Luke shortly after he starts to return to himself. He is speaking to Kitty.

“I didn’t do it you know.” He lowered the cloth and looked at her with tired bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t.”

We have seen all kinds of cases like this in the media. Most often the guys accused are guilty. It is easy to see why Luke would be assumed to be guilty. None the less Youers plays with our feelings for Luke the right amount. Is he guilty or not? Well, not for me to say at this point.

I really liked that there is nothing sexual about Kitty and Luke’s friendship and that is a key and important thing. Both characters are broken by LA, one over the years after having the break and one realizing it wasn’t all she imagined it to be. They are not in this story for romance. Luke is destroyed by the lost wife whose death everyone blames him for. He misses being rich and famous sure but it is the lost wife and broken dreams that haunt him.

Kitty just wanted an edge and selling Canary a new drug that enhances mental sharpness is all the rage in the city. What will it hurt if she just has a little herself? That is the mistake that ignites the book. When Jonah responds it is with a present. The scene with the box is great because it is a super-effective tonal shift.  That moment is like a hammer breaking apart Kitty's dreams, the inciting nightmare.

“Kitty lifted the lid and her first reaction was to scream, but there was nothing to scream with. Her airway collapsed, drawing everything inside her chest into a hard, frosty ball. She gagged and fell backward onto her ass, pushing herself away from the table, from the box.
“You said I could trust you Kitty,” Johan said. “You lied.”
Johan is a dick. Why he is ….

I am super serious about the spoiler warning now.

This novel is a crime book but Youers skill for writing horror and revulsion are on display in the final act.  

“Luke felt a wave of revulsion and sadness, but they were obscured by a more aggressive rush of feelings. The idea that he was within moments of seeing Lisa was too huge to grasp. He stood in its shadow, waiting for it to topple and crush him or provide elevation to the top. "

The reveal that Luke was wrong is satisfying, and these reveals are horror-inducing. The author's roots show like a three-month-old bleached hair. That is a feature, not a bug. but for all suspense action and more, the biggest gut-punch is the bad guy. There is a reason King pointed this out.  Jonah makes such a great bad guy because he is the kind of attention whore rich kid who is used to get away with things. Every time he invokes my Dad's Lawyers it hurts knowing those well-paid assholes have bailed him out before, and they will keep doing it.

The structure of the final act is really perfect cutting between the investigator who hated Luke and believed him guilty and the action with Luke and Kitty. The back and forth is well done. Rio Youers is in the club of authors I will follow regardless of genre. It doesn't feel a 400-page book, the pages simply rip back quickly.

Book Review: Philip K. Dick on Film by Gregg Rickman

 

Philip K. Dick on Film by Gregg Rickman

Hardcover, 176 pages

Published July  2018 by Arrow Books

This is the second non-fiction book I have read on Philip K. Dick this month. I have had this one on the shelf almost the whole time we have been doing the podcast, but I know how exhaustive Rickmann’s writing about Dick is so I decided to wait until I was further into reading PKD’s catalog before reading it. Plus I am working on an article that does lots of Blade Runner commentary so I decided it was time.

There is a very important reason that this book is needed and it is something we talk about often on the podcast. When it comes to movies and books when things are marketed off handily as PKD-ish or Phil Dickian often they are speaking of the films based on his work and not his stories or novels. They think paranoid action tales with capable heroes on the run from the government or reality are what makes a story in that mold.  I admit my own novel Goddamn Killing Machines is more like a PKD film than a novel, and you will have to wait till I get a sequel to see the novel influenced actual Phil dick stuff, but that is an aside.

A Scanner Darkly is the most faithful adaptation to date and it is overdue that a serious Dickhead addresses the difference between the stories and the films. In that sense, it is an important read for serious Dickheads but also I think more important for film nerds who may be looking for a way to understand the catalog of the man who inspired all these important films. It can also highlight what the film industry is understanding and not understanding.

It is well researched with details about the various productions and goes through Blade Runner 2049. Rickman’s understanding of Dick’s work is of course top-notch. If anything is missing in this book is a deeper dive into the missing elements of Man in the High Castle, but that could be me projecting as someone who saw it end, Rickman at the time was seeing a show in progress.
So yeah I am a big fan of Rickman’s work, and this is one I intend to use often as a reference when writing articles.  Expect to see it in the footnotes of a couple of articles.