Robert Silverberg, transcending

i love Robert Silverberg. as a writer, he's many things: a provacateur and a challenger of the status quo, a trippy painter of hallucinations, an enchanter who is able to weave glittering tapestries of beautiful prose, a graceful and dignified Grand Master of speculative fiction, a stylish stylist who changes his style to fit his story, and  an unpredictable wordsmith of the New Wave scifi school who likes to get right up in your face with his bad self. he's mercurial.

it is enjoyable reading the range of criticism concerning his books because to read those critiques is to see two things: (1) how deeply he can get into a protagonist's head and how little interest he has in making his heroes palatable and user-friendly for his audiences; and (2) how he is something of a renaissance man - his books just read so differently from one another - people will dislike them for so many different sorts of reasons, it is like they were all written by different authors. he's a chameleon who has no problem writing about assholes.

but as with all great writers, Silverberg does appear to have an overriding obsession or two that seem to be central to each of his books: a person struggling to change, protagonists struggling to truly understand themselves, characters yearning to transcend. its been said that the brilliance of a writer or director or artist in general can be sometimes defined by their limitations: a brilliant artist will work on one piece their entire career, remaking it over and again, in different permutations with different ramifications; their message may change as they themselves change, but their central themes remain the same. and so it is with Silverberg - a writer whose style may shift according to his whims and his goals, but whose themes will no doubt always be concerned with one great idea: How Do I Move Beyond Myself?

***

DYING INSIDE

Dying Inside is a sterling example of 70s New Wave science fiction. it is about a telepath whose powers are fading. dude is a miserable, depressive asshole who whines endlessly about his life. the end.

wait a sec, maybe that sounds like a bad read to you? well my friend, let me tell you... throw that impression away! this book is superb from beginning to end. it is thought-provoking, often delightful, often hard-edged, completely enjoyable. Silverberg is such a masterful writer and many times i had to stop and reread different passages to better enjoy the beauty of his prose and the intelligence of his ideas. that sharp wit! the story is never monotonous and always resonant.

it is an episodic novel, moving freely from past to present and back again. we meet our not-so-loveable narrator David Selig, his child psychologist, his girlfriends, his sister and the rest of his family, and a fellow telepath. our loser-ish hero makes his marginal living ghost-writing papers for college students, so there are several anecdotes where we see inside a couple students' minds. our hero is an unrepentant jerkoff, so we also get to read his often excruciating views on women and blacks (his thoughts on black empowerment were particularly troubling). we are shown a couple of his essays, one on Kafka and the other on the Electra complex, and they are fairly interesting - as standalones and as commentary on the narrative itself. each chapter is its own separate, challenging, wonderful little experience. my favorite parts include: a dry and rather evil session with our child protagonist as he toys with an overly-literal child psychologist; an exceedingly creepy and effective 'bad trip' (i think we can safely assume that telepathy does not improve LSD); and best of all, a brilliant flashback to our lonely telepath's youth, as he relaxes in a field, moving through the perspectives of a bee, a fish, two kids getting laid in a forest, and a surprisingly spiritual old farmer.

of particular interest is the the novel's other telepath - the confident, capable, cheerfully guilt-free Nyquist. the chapters about the relationship between the two are illuminating in illustrating how Selig's main problem is not so much his telepathy but his fear of openness, of genuine human connection. Selig's problems do not come from his gifts, but rather from his own neuroses. and so the narrative is basically an accounting of how Selig grows to understand his own issues and then tries to move past them.

in his many other fantasy & scifi novels, Silverberg has proven himself a visionary master of often hallucinatory prose. his ideas can be sublimely poetic, so ambiguous as to be almost intangible, so far-reaching that they can be a real challenge to digest. one of the really fun things about Dying Inside is seeing how Silverberg harnesses his talents for what is basically the prosaic, diary-like musings of a not-that-special guy with some very special powers. Dying Inside is bursting with creativity - as if the author is illustrating how stories can be told in ways that are new, fresh, effervescent. Selig is mordant, jumpy, neurotic, and highly sexual, by turns cynical and empathetic, and... hilarious! his narration is often a real treat and the free-flowing, occasionally stream-of-conscious thoughts have a chatty, relaxed, loose-limbed kind of appeal that makes the novel smooth yet tangy going down. and it's not just the distinctive, nakedly honest narrative voice that makes this novel so appealing; many chapters practically overflow with playful, jazzy approaches to style and structure, and there are plenty of sophisticated insights delivered both broadly and in deadpan. Silverberg's generous imagination busts the seams of the narrative; the result is a refreshing tonic.

***

DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH

gentle elephant things in the jungle; furry man-shaped things in the mist. our hero, former colonial station chief, returns to this strange planet much changed. the planet itself has changed: its residents no longer considered mere "animals", beasts of burden to be used as humans see fit... they are "people". a surprisingly liberal future-Earth now recognizes these beings as sentient, as does our hero. he returns to this place, full of regret for past actions, craving understanding and redemption, yearning for the intangible. he will seek to provide recompense and he will know change, a great and terrible change.
 
this marvellous classic gets everything right: a beautifully detailed yet still mysterious world... a flawed protagonist striving to accomplish ambiguous yet still understandable goals... intriguing mysteries and a strange quest... aliens that feel genuinely alien... and a powerful idea running through it all: to truly understand others is to truly understand yourself; one cannot be accomplished without the other.
 
there are shades of Heart of Darkness here (even including a character named "Kurtz"), except turned inside-out: the darkness within man made almost inconsequential; darkness made light. i was also reminded of tales of colonial India (even including an alien character named "Srin'gahar"), the misdeeds and the culture clash and the ugliness and the beauty. i was also reminded of Sherri S. Tepper's Grass, a book published many years after this one that takes one of this novel's central ideas and runs with it, in a much more horrific direction.

as always, Silverberg writes about the need to understand ourselves and the yearning to transcend who we are or who we are supposed to be. physical travel that parallels inner change. and such is Downward to the Earth.

***

THE FACE OF THE WATERS

the world is an ocean; humanity has come and cannot go. humanity lives on a chain of artificial islands and is perhaps now doomed, due to typical human stupidity & cupidity. where to flee? to an uncharted place on this uncharted planet; to The Face of the Waters. to find death or transcendence, or both?

our hero is a doctor, alienated from his tiny society and alienated from himself. he yearns for something, something more, something else... Earth? connection to his fellows? a deeper meaning for his life or something to explain the meaning of the life he has lived thus far? he yearns and breaks himself upon the wheel of that yearning. broken and then remade? he is a classic Silverberg protagonist.

this is less of a science fantasy adventure and more of an extended & dreamlike existential crisis. mournful and hopeful in equal measures. the central character is multi-faceted and drawn with depth and clarity... the author's self-portrait?

***

THE BOOK OF SKULLS

i have a soft spot for this one. it is a thoughtful tale of college students on a road trip slash quest slash metaphysical odyssey, their destination a secret to immortality. the only problem with obtaining this secret is that major bummer, The Grim Reaper. one of the group has to be sacrificed (i.e. murdered) and another must die by his own hand. the cast of 4 are stereotypes: the studly poor guy, the studly rich guy, the queer, the jew. although on friendly terms, they are decidedly not a group of close lifelong mates. i was absorbed by Book of Skulls' depiction of how social inclusion & exclusion, ability to dominate, class background, and various other differences all cause the characters to continually shift allegiances.

the characters felt both on-target much of the time and, at other times, oddly alien - too sharply differentiated from each other, if that makes sense. i saw much that was familiar as far as the lifestyle and behavior of these guys' lives goes, but found no one that i specifically connected to in terms of actual characterization. but still, there is something about reading the story of college guys thinking they know it all, while also trying to figure things out about themselves, while in college thinking i knew it all, while also trying to figure things out about myself, that made it an intriguing and enjoyable and often really thrilling experience.

***

LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE

Valentine finds himself outside the city of Pidruid one afternoon, completely bereft of memory, as the city makes ready for the arrival of Lord Valentine - one of the four great Powers of the mega-world of Majipoor. what's a man to do in such a situation? why, join a traveling band of jugglers, of course. travel a lot, meets lots of new people and see lots of new things, have a bunch of trippy dreams, and eventually reclaim a fabulous destiny.

i first read this sometime in junior high. it is an often dense novel and certainly a surreal one at times, but there is a purity to it that, upon rereading it recently, made me realize i must have been able to fully grasp it when first reading it age 14 or so. it became one of my favorite things.

although Lord Valentine's Castle is about Finding Your True Self and What Makes A Good Leader, i found the novel was also concerned with two other things: World Building and Silverberg's Vision of a (Semi) Perfect World.

haters of world building need to give this novel a pass. but for those who appreciate the intensely detailed visions of otherworlds created by various scifi and fantasy authors, this is the book for you. "intensely detailed" is a good phrase for this but it should be qualified. not intensely detailed like George RR Martin (you won't always know what color sash a person is wearing and if it matches their brocade jacket) but intensely detailed in that we visit so many different places across the grand world of Majipoor and they are all so beautifully described and so well-differentiated from each other. at times i was reminded of how easily Jack Vance rolls out cities & countries & worlds, one after the other, with such style and skill that he makes world-building look like a lark. however Silverberg does not have Vance's economy of language or spartan stylishness. this is world building in the classic sense in that the reader gets to enjoy sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph of gorgeous description. boring for some; entrancing for me. reading this really made me feel like a romantic (also in the classic sense of the word) young nerd again. the language is beautiful and Majipoor really came alive.

this is also in many ways a near-perfect world. it does not know war or famine or cruel leaders or reality tv. its species and races live in relative harmony. personalities are either sunny & open or, if not, at least genuinely amusing in their grouchiness or arrogance. cold-eyed justice and professional emotional support are both given by far off dream-senders, so no need for pesky police or helpful therapists to get up in your face - they'll see you in your dreams, whether you've been good or bad or inbetween. Majipoor is a liberal, generous, and usually cheerful society. its people respect the natural wonders of the world and various preserves are specifically set aside for keeping those wonders sacrosanct. reading Lord Valentine's Castle made me realize that this was all the author's version of his own ideal world. good for you, Silverberg. your dreams are wonderful and i would like to live in them, please.

Silverberg established himself as a sometimes challenging and often provacative author of New Wave Science Fiction. Lord Valentine's Castle was a step in an entirely different direction: epic science fantasy. but such a curious version of an epic! writing that makes you slow down and enjoy things instead of rushing forward to the next conflict. a narrative that is full of dreams and dream battles and dream epiphanies. characters who are mainly undramatic and often trying to do right. an emphasis on the environment as a precious thing. turning the other cheek and not automatically drawing your sword when someone gets in your way. and writing that is charming and sometimes eerie and brightened by a lacquer of pleasantly vivid psychedelia. splendid writing. splendid author!

A Chip Off the Old Engine Block

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
Dan's rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available: NOW so go get it!
Price: Worth it's weight in gold

When Victoria McQueen was young, she had a unique gift: she could summon an old covered bridge that would take her wherever she wanted to go. After an encounter with Charles Manx, a Rolls Royce Wraith-driving kidnapper with a similar ability, her life is torn to pieces. Twelve years later, Charles Manx comes looking for the girl that got away and not even death is an obstacle...

First off, I think the title, NOS4A2 (Nosferatu, get it?), while clever, is very misleading since Manx isn't a vampire. Fortunately, that's the only complaint I have about this awesome book.

The lead, Victoria McQueen, is a broken woman whose life is thrown into further chaos when Charles Manx thrusts himself back into it. She rises to the occasion and does what any mother would do when her son is kidnapped: kick ass and take names!

Charles Manx, the villain, is like an even creepier version of Willy Wonka, abducting Children and taking them to another world, Christmasland, where it's Christmas every day and the children become feral little monsters. His Wraith is a pretty chilling car, with its inescapable back seat and mind of its own. I couldn't wait for Manx to get what was coming to him.

The supporting cast is also well drawn. Victoria's baby-daddy Lou, son Bruce Wayne, FBI agent Hutt, and Bing are all fairly memorable characters. I loved Maggie Leigh and hated to see her go out the way she did.

There were some Easter eggs in the text, references to It, The Stand, The Shawshank Redemption, and my favorite, the tie in to the Dark Tower when Manx mentions the doors to Mid-World. Heck, Derry is mentioned so I think it's safe to assume Hill's stories are part of the King-verse and thus the Dark Tower.

This was my first Joe Hill book and it won't be the last. While he writes like his father, he doesn't seem to have many of his father's bad habits. His prose reminds me of Stephen King from back when he was still in touch with his Richard Matheson/John D. MacDonald roots: chilling, evocative, and not long-winded or over-written. Even the fates of the characters reminded me of King from his heyday.

Five stars. That is all.

View all my reviews

The Merkabah Rider series

Weird Western is a genre that I've held dear for a long time, a love that first bloomed with Joe Lansdale's treatment of Jonah Hex and that was strengthened by Stephen King's Dark Tower series.  While going through Dark Tower withdrawals, I stumbled upon the Merkabah Rider series and I'm very glad I did.

The titual Rider is a gunslinging Jewish mystic pursuing his former mentor and betrayer, another mystic named Adon, through the old west.  Only as the series progresses does the full scope become clear.  Edward Erdelac crafted a four volume love letter to the pulps that manages to weave Christianity, Judaism, and the Cthulhu mythos together in an exciting tapestry.

Merkabah Rider by Edward M. Erdelac

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Merkabah Rider: Tales of A High Planes Drifter is a collection of four tales about a Jewish mystic gunfighter.



The Blood Libel: Fate draws The Rider to Delirium Tremens, a mining town where hostility is brewing between the residents and the Jews of nearby Little Jerusalem, who've allegedly turned away from God and kidnapped the daughter of the local preacher. Can The Rider find the cause of the trouble before the Angels of Death wipe out everyone in Little Jerusalem?

The Blood Libel does a great job of introducing The Rider and his world. The Rider's continuing quest is to find his mentor and betrayer, another mystic calling himself Adon. The world building is surprisingly deep for a 70 page novella. Erdelac introduces the Sons of the Essenes, a Jewish mystical society with branches in all parts of the world, as well as revealing parts of the Rider's history.

The story itself is a nice melding of western standards and Jewish mystacism. I'm looking forward to when The Rider goes up against The Great Old Ones.

The Dust Devils: An unending dust storm grips the town of Polvo Arrido as The Rider rolls into town. Can The Rider find clues to Adon's whereabouts and save the residents of Polvo Arrido from the bandits that have them under thumb?

While I didn't like this one as much as The Blood Libel, it was still pretty good. It reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom more than anything else. The Rider's past was fleshed out a little bit more and, once again, he took a pretty good beating and still came out on top. The one complaint I have is that he walked into an ambush a little too easily when he visited Scarchilli.

Hell's Hired Gun: The Merkabah Rider encounters an old preacher, who recounts the tale of Medgar Tooms, a gunfighter that killed an entire town after the death of his family and now stalks the prairie dragging chains and leading a pack of ravenous pigs. Can the Merkabah Rider put an end to his reign of terror?

Hell's Hired Gun was pretty good but didn't involve much in the way of magic from the Rider. The violence was well done and the subplot of the Hour of Incursion by the Elder Gods mention in the first story was elaborated on.

The Nightjar Women: The Merkabah Rider finds himself in a town where no children are born and three prostitutes seem to be in league with a dark power...

At last, The Rider gets a hint of Adon's whereabouts. More of The Rider's past is revealed, and more about the Hour of Incursion. Lots of Talmudic stuff in this one and The Rider seems more human than ever. The Merkabah Rider continues his transformation into one of my favorite weird western characters. That's about all I'm going to reveal for fear of spoilage.

Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name by Edward M. Erdelac

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Merkabah Rider is a Hasidic gunfighter well versed in Jewish mystacism, on a journey across the Old West in search of his mentor and betrayer, Adon. This is the second collection of his tales.

The Infernal Napoleon: The Rider is pursued by the minions of Lilith and they catch up with him in the tiny town of Varuga tanks. Can the Rider overcome half-breed demons and a cannon that was used in the war between angels to continue his search for Adon?

The Merkabah Rider's question resumes with a bang. The Infernal Napoleon was a great plot device. Both biblical and Lovecratian mythologies are references, most notably the story of Samson. By the time it's over, the Rider has been through the wringer yet again.

The Damned Dingus: The Rider is on a train that is robbed and looses his gun to the robbers. With Doc Holiday and Mysterious Dave Mather in tow, The Rider goes to reclaim his Volcanic pistol and gets a lot more than he bargained for...

Wow. The Damned Dingus was damned good. The Lovecraftian overtones get even stronger and the invisible creature was straight out of a Lovecraft tale. I geeked pretty hard when the stone bearing the Elder Sign made an appearance, as well as the mention of Hyperborea, The Necronomicon, and Al-Hazred. It appears The Hour of Incursion is growing near...

The Outlaw Gods: The Rider's travels pit him against serpent men, monstrous trees, and the Black Goat Man. Can even his allience with a Hindi mystic and a host of spirits help him defeat the Black Goat Man and his consort?

Astute Lovecraft readers will guess the identity of the Black Goat Man's consort but that doesn't make it have any less impact. The Rider's palaver with Chaksusa and Chaksusa's revelations about the nature of the universe or universes reminded me of Roland and the Man in Black in the Gunslinger. The scope of the Merkabah Rider's quest even reminds me of The Dark Tower. The same sense of urgency is building. If I didn't already know there are two more volumes planned, I'd be wondering how Erdelac was planning on wrapping things up in the next sixty pages.

The Pandaemonium Ride: With a new ally at his side, the Rider goes to hell to get some answers from Lucifer. He won't like what the ultimate betrayer has to say...

You know how some books are so good you can't talk about them without cursing?  Sweet. F#cking. Christ. The full scope of the Hour of Incursion is revealed in this tale and it's a f#cking whopper. I knew the saga of the Merkabah Rider was going to be huge in scope but this is even bigger than I was prepared for. I've never read anything that explained the relationships between the Lovecraft mythos and that of the Judeo-Christian one. Heave and hell united against the Great Old Ones? It's f#cking mind-boggling. Also, I really liked that the staff Solomon Kane uses is in the hands of Kadebe.

Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel by Edward M. Erdelac

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Every reader eventually stumbles upon a book (or series) that feels like it was written with their particular tastes in mind. For me, one of those works is the Merkabah Rider series.

Volume three picks up where volume two left off, with The Rider, a Jewish mystic gunfighter in the old west, persuing Adon, his teacher and betrayer who means to bring about the end of the world.

The Long Sabbath: The Rider and Kabede ride into a remote camp with a horde of zombies on their trail, led by three rogue Sons of the Essenes. How can they survive when the soldiers throw them in jail on sight?

The Long Sabbath was a good reintroduction to the saga of the Merkabah Rider. The gore factor was high, both with the zombies and the other vile things, and more details of Adon's plans were revealed. One of the things that I love about the Rider is that he isn't a super hero and frequently takes quite a beating. Adon's renegades were formidable foes and I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of the same.

The War Shaman: Misquamacus is massing an Indian army to exterminate the Mexicans and white men and it's up to The Rider, Belden, and Kabade to stop him with the help of friends new and old. But can they stop Misquamacus from summoning one of the Great Old Ones?

The Rider didn't actually do that much in this one. It was more of an expository segment with the identity of Adam Belial revealed. Without giving anything away, I was not dissatisfied with the revelation in the least.

The Mules of Mazzikim: The Rider parts ways with Kabede and Belden to go to Yuma to find Nehema. But will he find her... or trouble?

Here we go! The Rider meets up with the succubus from then first book and chaos ensues. More details of the overall plot are revealed and the Rider winds up in a precarious predicament by the end.

The Man Called Other: The Rider winds up in the clink and meets up with...

Holy Sh!t! Revelations of a unbelievable magnitude are revealed when the Rider has a meeting that has been a long time coming. Much like the last stories in the previous volume, Erdelac turns everything on its ear. Man, the wait for the fourth and final volume is going to be torturous.

The Fire King Triumphant: The Rider and company return to Tombstone to get some answers...

There's not a lot I can reveal about this story without giving too much away. There are revelations, shocks, a cliffhanger, and Lovecraftian beasties.

Merkabah Rider: Once Upon a Time in the Weird West by Edward M. Erdelac
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With a bullet lodged near his heart and the Hour of the Incursion just days away, the Rider and his small group of stalwart friends do everything in their power to stop Adon from rousing the Old Ones and ending existence. But whose side will Lucifer take in the conflict? And which of the Rider's friends is fated to betray him...?

Here we are, the ultimate volume in the best weird western series since the big daddy, The Dark Tower. Erdelac pulls out all the stops in this one. We are treated to such wonders as a steampunk cyborg created with Yithian technology, shoggoths, a scientist with an alien mind, an angel from another universe, and a golem made of pieces of dead gunfighters. Couple this with the Rider dying of a bullet wound, a sigil-covered train, and the manure hitting the windmill on every page and you have one book that is impossible to put down.

All the seeds Erdelac planted in the previous three volumes are finally bearing squamous, cyclopean fruit. Unlike the previous three volumes, this one is a single story, not a series of linked stories. It's the biggest book in the series by a hundred pages. Any doubts I had that Erdelac could weave a novel length tale have been put to rest.

Faustus Montague, Kabede, Dick Belden, The Reverend Mr. Goodworks, and Yates made worthy allies for the Rider on his final journey. As with the previous volumes, Erdelac does a fantastic job tying together elements from Christianity, Judaism, and the Cthulhu mythos.

The ending of the saga was all I could hope for. All the big payoffs were there, from the true nature of the onager, the tzadikim and the Tzohar to the final conflict between The Rider and Adon. I'd say it was the best volume of the series.



Special Bonus Feature - An Interview with the Merkabah Writer!

What was the inspiration behind the Merkabah Rider?
I can trace the Rider back to three definite sources. The first is Robert E. Howard, particularly his weird western stories ‘Old Garfield’s Heart,'‘The Horror From The Mound,’ and his Solomon Kane stories, a great weird adventure series about a grim Puritan swordsman battling evil wherever he finds it. As a nod to that, the Rod of Aaron which appears in Merkabah Rider is meant to be the same Staff of Solomon given to Kane by N’Longa, the African witch doctor. The second is the original Kung Fu television series, which featured a butt kicking fish out of water character (in this case a half-Chinese Shaolin monk) passing through the American West. The imagery of the series stuck in my head as a kid, and I always wanted to explore that sort of clash of cultures. Finally I would cite The Frisco Kid, a comedy western starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, about a Polish Rabbi traveling across the west to San Francisco. Merkabah Rider isn’t a comedy of course, but I think the various mikvah rules Wilder’s character was forced to abide by in his travels and the look of an Orthodox rabbi in the west (and the various reactions of stock western characters to him, including at one point mistaking him for a Dutch Reformed) come from that. I tried to write weird western stories as a high schooler and could never make an interesting enough protagonist. The ideas sat shelved for many years. I was reading an angelology book and came across the term ‘merkabah rider.’ The character just sort of sprang up in my mind, all in black with the beard and curls, riding a fiery horse. I was able to revisit the old weird western concepts then and plug in this more interesting character. It just clicked after that.

How did you research the mythology? Do you have a background in religious studies?
I grew up Catholic, and I always had an appreciation for ritual and hagiographies and the like, what saint was patron of what and all that. I think I wanted to be a priest when I was in first or second grade. The character of Abraham Van Helsing in all his incarnations always appealed to me too – I think especially seeing Peter Cushing in the Hammer movies employing all these religious artifacts and odd techniques to battle vampires (like lining the vamp’s resting place with consecrated hosts in the shape of a cross in one movie). I developed an appetite for folklore and obscure mythology. No formal training, I just read a lot. For Merkabah Rider I first approached books on basic Judaic practices, then started studying Hasidism and Jewish folklore, which is extremely rich and nearly untapped in fiction so far as I know. Geoffrey Dennis’ The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism is a book I can’t recommend enough. It’s a wonderful starting point. He runs a great blog too. I tapped a good deal of John Milton and Dante Allighieri. Lots of paintings of their works for visual inspiration. Gustave Dore, William Blake, etc, and of course Lovecraft. The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Daniel Harms was very helpful in chasing down Mythos info.

What was the catalyst for combining the HPL mythos with Biblical myths and stories?
I knew I wanted to incorporate the Mythos as it’s such a great and pervading concept in genre fiction. Then, in the course of my reading into Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, I started coming across references to the primordial dimension that existed prior to proper Creation, how it was a forbidden area of study. I started feeling echoes of Lovecraftian tropes. Forbidden study?! There are instances in mystic biblical and pagan thought of God as being the force that brings chaos to heel, wills order upon it, defeats a personification of it (usually a dragon) to enact Creation. Marduk vs. Tiamat, Zeus vs. Typhon, etc. Then, in Dennis, I came across the entry for Rahav –

‘A cosmic seas monster first mentioned in the biblical book of Isaiah….Talmud called him Prince of the Sea, echoing the Canaanite name or their sea god, “Prince River.” God slew him when he refused to help in creating the earth.’

Sounded like Cthulhu to me…I don’t know if Dennis has ever read HPL, or likewise, if HPL ever read Talmud, but the connection seemed neat, and that’s where fitting biblical and Mythos cosmologies together began.



How much forward planning did you do for the Merkabah Rider series? Once Upon a Time in the Weird West seems like you had a clear picture of how the end was going to shape up even in the first book.
I think I figured out the ending about midway through writing the second book. The character progressions almost wrote themselves. There was one last minute change. Belden was supposed to die at the end of book three, but I decided I liked his secular interactions with the Rider and Kabede, and it made sense to have him there at the end.

Were there any Westerns in particular that inspired Once Upon a Time in the Weird West? 
Definitely the titular Once Upon A Time In The West had an impact. I think I got the idea for the train's inaugural run as a central event from that. Blue Moon Fugate probably came from Henry Fonda's character a little bit too, as well as a character in Richard Matheson's Journal Of The Gun Years. There is a scene in the cantina when the mariachis are playing, I had characters from maybe half a dozen different westerns and movies that had an influence on the series pop up in the background.

Was there a reason you decided to ride solo and publish through Createspace for the final volume in the series?
I wasn't really happy with the quality control of the publisher. Things I had caught in editing kept making it through to the final product as well as plenty I missed. The second book, I edited almost entirely myself because the guy they assigned me just flaked. I also wanted to regain all the rights to the series. The first book's contract expires next year, and then the other two in subsequent years. I didn't want to tie up the rights to the last installment with a brand new contract. I don't know that I will self publish again if I can help it, but a couple different authors I really respected suggested I go that route if I wanted to finish the series without waiting three years for the other contracts to expire, so I gave it a shot. I ran it through two editors besides myself, so hopefully it turned out alright. It was originally supposed to have eight interior illustrations but the artist pulled out on me the month before it was due.

Any plans for a return to the Merkabah Rider universe?
I've thought about writing prequels that have been alluded to in the series - the Rider's war years with Belden, his adventure with Misquamacus which is plotted out and could probably make a novel or novella, and his first meeting with the Rev. Mr. Goodworks, but I'm not in a rush. I was approached by somebody about pitching a modern day version of Merkabah Rider to a major publisher and I came up with a way to pick up the story in the same universe with different characters (mostly - some of the immortal characters might return) in the present, but I probably won't write that unless they go for it.


If there was going to be a Merkabah Rider movie, who would you want playing The Rider?
Adrien Brody’s who I picture when I write him, mostly unrecognizable beneath the beard and payot. I was impressed with him in Hollywoodland.



The Merkabah Rider is clearly a love letter to all things pulp. Who are some of your favorite pulp authors and characters?
Like I mentioned, Solomon Kane. Howard is my favorite of the pulp writers. When I need to get in a writing mood, I pick up anything by Howard. He had a great imagination, a great knack for infusing the weird into unlikely settings. If Joe R. Lansdale is the father of the weird western, Robert E. Howard is the grandfather. As a writer of visceral action I really believe he's unequaled. Robert J. Hogan’s weird World War One stories featuring G-8 and His Battle Aces are tops. E. Hoffman Price wrote some great "Oriental" fantasy stories, like The Devil Wives of Li Fong. I like a lot of crimefighter pulps. The Avenger by Paul Ernst is my favorite. A very progressive cast of characters for it’s time, including a pair of highly educated African Americans and a petite, female jujutsu expert, with a wonderfully strange hero to lead them. Norvell Page’s The Spider is fantastic. Somebody described it as Robert E. Howard writing The Shadow. That’s a good way of putting it. The Spider is a madman. He sometimes lets criminal’s schemes play out longer just to make their end more spectacular – how great is that? Of course the prolific Walter Gibson’s The Shadow. I recently got into Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars/Barsoom novels featuring John Carter. I admit that I like Lovecraft’s concepts a little more than his actual writing, though I really like The Music of Eric Zann. It was a big influence on my Lovecraftian blues short story The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues. Going back even further, Ambrose Bierce (particularly his Civil War stuff which is harrowingly real and yet at times supernatural) is responsible for some of the best weird stories ever written.



Was there a book that made you realize you wanted to be a writer?
It’s gonna sound weird, but the first book that made me want to write was Simon Hawke’s novelization of Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives… I had never seen the movie (I don’t think I have seen it all the way through yet), but I bought it off the rack when I was in seventh grade and read the thing cover to cover in the same day. It was the first non-comic book, the first non-illustrated book I ever read and I was amazed at how intense and graphic it was. I don’t know if it was a good book (I lost my copy), but it fired up my imagination I guess. To bring me out of the gutter a bit, the second book was Jack London’s Call of The Wild, which Sister Marie read to our class the same year.

Who are some of your non-pulp influences?
J.R.R. Tolkien, John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy. He taps into a darkness that’s hypnotic. I’ll read anything by him. Richard Matheson is great. He’s done the Twilight Zone, I Am Legend and The Incredible Shrinking Man, but he’s also written these great westerns like By The Gun and The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock. Larry McMurtry, Stephen King of course, especially his short stories and novellas. Mickey Spillane, Mishima Yukio. Moby Dick has always been a favorite of mine. Peter Pan and Kipling’s The Jungle Book. In comics Alan Moore (especially From Hell) Kazuo Koike and Frank Miller. I like John Ford films, Sergio Leone, Walter Hill, George Romero, Sergio Corbucci, Michael Mann, Peter Weir, Anthony Mann…the screenwriters Paul Schaefer and David Mamet. Frank Frazetta’s art. Norman Rockwell. John Martin. Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash.

What's your favorite book?
Blood Meridian or, An Evening’s Redness In The West by Cormac McCarthy.

Who's your favorite author?
I can’t seem to stop mentioning Robert E. Howard! Probably McCarthy would be my favorite living author.

What's your favorite western?
Winchester ’73 starring Jimmy Stewart, Millard Mithell, and Shelly Winters. directed by Anthony Mann. Jimmy Stewart is hunting Stephen McNally, who stole his prize Winchester rifle. The rifle changes various hands, and we follow it as if it were a character. Jimmy Stewart is great in it. Dan Duryea has a nice turn too as badman Waco Johnny Dean.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring writers?
Don’t get discouraged. It’s very hard getting started and even then it’s still a big uphill battle the whole way. Don’t take criticism too hard, but be open to it when it’s constructive. Don’t try to write something you hope somebody will like. Be your own audience. Write the kind of thing you’d like to read. Write what you know you love.

What's next for Edward Erdelac?
I've got a very very dark themed western novel called Coyote's Trail coming out from Comet Press in July. It's about an Apache kid who survives a massacre and enlists the aide of a Mexican prostitute to lure out the soldiers responsible and kill them en flagrante delicto. Kind've a psycho-sexual revenge story, almost noire-ish, with no fantasy elements. I'm finishing up a novel set in World War II involving the Holocaust and Frankenstein. A couple other short story projects, and I'll be in three different Mythos-themed books this year. Nothing else really definite yet.

Leo Banks Tackles Homicides Old and New

Posted by James L. Thane
Four out of Five Stars




After twenty years of service, Leo Banks is recently retired from the police department in Rozette, Montana. Having married and divorced three women, he's living quietly and happily alone, fishing and doing some amateur geology. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, his old friends from college, Sarah and Gerry Heyman, show up in Montana on vacation, along with their two kids. Years ago, Sarah was Leo's first lover, but they split up when Banks joined the Navy against her wishes, and she ultimately married Gerry, who had been Leo's best friend.

After all the time that's passed, their reunion is awkward, and it's clear that Gerry is a troubled man. He's now a successful doctor in Mauvaisterre, a tiny river town in southern Illinois, and he's recently acquired a new elderly patient who's just been released from prison and moved into the nursing home in Mauvaisterre.

The new patient, Mickey Cochran, is mildly retarded, and fifty years earlier, he pled guilty to the murder of the wife of one of the town's most prominent citizens. Now Cochran insists that he did not commit the crime and Gerry Heyman believes him. Gerry wants Leo to come to Illinois and investigate the old case.

Banks refuses for a variety of reasons, some of them practical and others emotional, given his ancient history with Sarah and Gerry. Gerry returns to Illinois and attempts to investigate the case himself and a few weeks later is found on a lonely road, beaten to death.

Sarah believes that the local cops are not up the challenge of solving the crime and begs Leo, an experienced homicide detective, to come investigate it himself. Reluctantly Leo agrees, and before long, he finds himself knee deep in two homicide cases, one knew and one old, in a town where there are lots of buried secrets.

This is a great book with an excellent cast of characters, some of who are more than just a little off-center. There's a lot of local color and the Banks character, who was first introduced in Cupid, is now given a great deal of additional depth. The plot is intriguing and moves along at just the right pace.

I've insisted earlier that Robert Sims Reid is one of those writers who, sadly, did not enjoy nearly the reputation he deserved. It's hard to imagine anyone who might read this book and think otherwise.

Spies Like Us

The First Season of The Americans Proved That All's Fair in Love and Cold War

by Kemper

The KGB has determined that this portion of the report on the television program called The Americans does not reveal any state secrets and may be safely read by anyone wishing to learn more about how the brave operatives of the Soviet Union will eventually defeat the capitalist pigs led by the fascist maniac Ronald Reagan.  (In other words, no spoilers in this section.)

The Soviets may have lost the Cold War but per FX’s The Americans it’s a good thing for the US that it was an arms race and not a disguise contest because apparently the Russians had taken wig technology to levels that we never could have matched. They managed to develop hairpieces that would stay on and undetected even when having sex.  There was definitely a wig gap between the two superpowers, and the communists even managed to find some capable agents to wear them.

In this first season we were introduced to Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) Jennings who appear to be a typical upper middle class couple with two kids and a nice house in the suburbs of Washington DC in 1981.  In reality, they’re undercover KGB agents who have been in America posing as husband and wife since the early ‘60s.

The election of Ronald Reagan as president has the Soviet leadership in a panic since they believe he’s a madman who intends to destroy them.  The Cold War is heating up, and the Jennings have an added complication with their new neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI counter-intelligence agent who is part of a team that is hunting Soviet spies under the leadership of their committed boss Frank Gaad (Richard Thomas).

The Jennings also get a new handler that they’re not sure they can trust.  Claudia (Margo Martindale), or Granny as they nicknamed her, is a veteran of the KGB who seems to want to undermine their partnership and does her best to drive wedges between them.

A marriage counselor could make a fortune off these two.

The set-up of doing a spy show during the ‘80s was a great idea, and the twist of making the main characters undercover Russians during the Reagan administration was inspired. If The Americans was just trying to be espionage thriller, it would have succeeded completely with exciting action and a tense cat-and-mouse game between the FBI and the Soviets.  What  made the show special is that the spy games are secondary to the complicated relationships between the characters that raise questions about the nature of love, loyalty and betrayal.

It’s shocking how little Philip and Elizabeth actually know each other when the show begins.  When they were assigned together they were ordered not to reveal any of the Russian background to each other as part of cementing their cover by only knowing each other as Americans. Even after living together for years and having children, they apparently kept a professional distance, but somewhere along the line Philip fell in love with his fake wife while Elizabeth is still somewhat resentful toward him since she got shoved into what is essentially an arranged marriage.

After almost two decades in the US, Philip is starting to question orders and increasingly worried about what would happen to the kids if they’re caught.  He begins the season hinting to Elizabeth that they should consider turning themselves in to the FBI because the knowledge they possess would allow them to cut a deal and probably be given new identities and a small fortune.

On the other hand, Elizabeth is still a staunch believer who would rather die than betray her country, and she’s worried that Philip may have been seduced by the American lifestyle. However, she too genuinely loves their children and after she discovers the depths of Philips true feelings towards her when he goes above and beyond the call of duty to avenge an old wrong she suffered, Elizabeth finds herself falling for the man she’s supposed to be married to.

The constant demands of their spy work make it hard for the two to become closer. Both of them regularly have sex with other people as part of honey-pot operations.  The whole situation makes for an intriguing dynamic that the two of them routinely trust each other with their lives, but they’re far less certain of counting on each other in a budding real romantic relationship.

Marriage isn’t just tough in the Jennings household.  The Beemans across the street are also having problems.  Stan spent a long time undercover while infiltrating a white supremacist movement, and there are strong indications that he may have done some ugly things during that assignment.  He’s having a hard time adjusting to life in the suburbs and is slightly suspicious of the Jennings even as his wife dismisses it as paranoia.  Stan’s intelligence work has him blackmailing a Russian embassy staffer named Nina (Annet Mahendru) into working as a mole for the FBI, but his attraction to her puts more strain on his marriage.

Philip is such a good spy that he drinks beer instead of
vodka in front of Stan.

With so many elements in play it would have been easy for The Americans to screw up a few of them, but it showed remarkably sure footing in it’s first season with very few missteps.  The ‘80s setting could have been used for easy jokes or nostalgic references, but it’s treated as a serious period backdrop to the story.  Even when Claudia plays a Ms. Pac-Man game while meeting Elizabeth, it’s used more to tell us something about her character rather than just a wink-n-nudge to the audience.  “I enjoy the maze part and the eating without eating part.  Pac-dots are calorie free.”

The show also showed a deft hand in choosing it’s music.  They passed on the temptation of simply loading up on tons of ‘80s pops songs in favor of picking their spots. (Or perhaps the licensing was too expensive.)   Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk is used incredibly well to build tension during a chase sequence in the pilot, and Peter Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers was perfect for the wrap-up in the finale.  Juice Newton’s Queen of Hearts helps provide a great touch of humor in which Philip is trying on a pair of cowboy boots at the mall and does a country-n-western dance step in front of a mirror much to the embarrassment of his daughter.  (Like many other immigrants to America, Philip has dreams of being a cowboy.)  The Cure, April Wine, Pete Townsend and Phil Collins also make The Americans' play-list.

The era also lends itself to more tension in a show with spy thriller elements.  With no Internet, cell phones or other modern devices, it means that all the characters have to do a lot more than type on keyboards. Physical messages have to be left at dead-drops and decoded by hand. Cameras and tape recorders are bulky and hard to hide. The low tech aspect gives the whole thing a kind of vintage charm while not letting it devolve into nostalgia porn.

Another aspect that works well is that the plot never depends on people behaving stupidly. Philip and Elizabeth are bad-ass agents who are very good at their jobs, and the FBI is also shown as smart and diligent.  Any wrong assumptions that anyone makes are portrayed as reasonable with the information they have at that point.  The smartness helps keep the basic premise viable. The Jennings are skilled enough at deception and covering their tracks to keep Stan from discovering what’s right under his nose, but Stan made significant and steady progress towards locating them throughout the year so that he seems very much like a threat and not some buffoon they can outwit easily.

Elizabeth uses her top secret red penlight to defeat the FBI.

The only person that could be accused of showing signs of ignorance is a secretary in Stan’s office.  Philip has been getting information from Martha (Alison Wright) by posing as a government agent named Clark who is supposedly secretly auditing the security of the FBI.  As Clark, Philip has subtly gotten Martha feeling attracted towards him and circumstances force him to play up that angle.  It’s hard to see how Martha can make love to Philip while he’s wearing one of his wigs and not know something is up, but the character is played with just the right amount of lonely desperation that we get the impression that Martha is just in denial, not stupid.

One of the things the show plays with is how much can go wrong through just random chance or misunderstanding brought on by the paranoia on both sides.  After the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in the fourth episode In Control, both sides are frantic in the aftermath.  The Feds worry that the Russians were behind it.  The Soviets are terrified that it’s a military coup led by Alexander Haig after his ill-advised comments about being in charge after the shooting.

The constant fear of what the other guy is doing puts everyone on such  a  level of alertness that any innocent mistake or miscalculation can result in disaster. One character’s personal jealously leads to an altercation that results in a vast escalation in the conflict between the KGB and FBI. Even random minor accidents such as someone burning their hand on a potato in a microwave kicks off a chain of unintended consequences.

It's like Mags Bennett joined the KGB.

The Americans extends the murky ethics of espionage to the viewers because we’re not entirely sure what kind of outcome we should be hoping for.  Philip and Elizabeth are obviously the main characters and you can’t help but root for them to some extent, but they’re still trying to subvert  the US.  They’re not psychos, but they are trained killers, and both are willing to do heinous things including murdering innocent people in the service of their mission.  The flip side is that the FBI agents have gotten a wink from the Reagan administration to escalate their actions against the KGB, and spilling blood isn‘t out of the questions so nobody’s hands are clean in this.

Still it’s Philip and Elizabeth that seem to want to do what they think of as the right thing as they continue to watch out for each other. We all know how the real Cold War ended, but with The Americans you may find yourself hoping that at least two Russians get a happier ending than history provided.

The KGB has determined the remainder of this report may only be viewed by those who are already familiar with the daring exploits of it’s brave operatives.   Those who don’t know their glorious history but continue reading will be sent to a Siberian gulag.  (In other words, spoilers follow.)

WOOL OMNIBUS (Wool, #1-5)

Hugh Howey

Broad Reach Publishing

Reviewed by Carol

Five out of five stars

Forget Wool. This should have been called Forge.

Writing that's a power-punch to the gut. Direct, slow build of heat, singeing as it suddenly roars into flame. A world that feels solid, heavy, hard-edged, soldered with characters that are heated and molded into something new. This isn't knitting a scarf so much as forging a steel chain.

I absolutely love the character of Juliette, determined, essentially elemental, a person that rocks my character world. I love how all her metaphors are mechanical ones, problems and solutions both. Even though I'm completely tool-impaired, her thinking was relatable, a clear schematic of sense. "But as Bernard's footsteps receded... she felt a new resolve steel her nerves. It was like encountering a rusted bolt that refused to budge. Something about that intolerable stiffness, that reluctance to move, set Juliette's teeth on edge. She had come to believe that there was no fastener she culdn't unstick, had learned to attack them with grease and with fire, with penetrating oil and with brute strength" (p. 132).

But as organized and mechanistic as Juliette is in her world, by no means is she limited in her range of emotion: "She had made the same choices as an adult, to love without sanction, and so her hypocrisy was more keenly felt" (p.137)

Howey has a gift for understated prose, and the writing was one of pleasures of the book. With clear, straightforward language he captures subtlety of emotion and action. The funeral scene just about made me weep:
"But then, the lowering of the body and the plucking of ripe fruit just above the graves was meant to hammer this home: The cycle of life is here. It is inescapable. It is to be embraced, cherished, appreciated. One departs and leaves behind the gift of sustenance, of life... We are born, we are shadows, we cast shadows of our own, and then we are gone. All anyone can hope for is to be remembered two shadows deep" (p.158)

I absolutely loved all the little connections linking the sections. I was particularly fond of the shadow imagery and the chain imagery. A moment in the uprising solidly hit the connection:
"It startled Knox, this sudden link to a mysterious past. And it wasn't that terribly long ago, was it? Less than two hundred years? He imagined, if someone lived as long as Jahns had, or McLain for that matter, that three long lives could span that distance. Three handshakes to go from that uprising to this one" (p.321)


Sophisticated in its ethics and philosophy. Although I expected something unusual given the buzz, I was still astounded at what I found. While it is not a novel I would read again and again (that's what Kate Daniels is for), it's powerful and worth a second read.

Thoughts on the Omnibus:
Wool: Stunning in its character development. Introduces the psychology of the people in the intimate space through the story of the sheriff and his dead wife. Romantic, tragic, doomed; truly a hint of Romeo and Juliet.
Wool Two, Proper Gauge: Compelling mix of character and plotting. Mayor and Deputy find renewal during the search for a sheriff. Using the climb gives a terrific tour of the physics and politics of the silo without infodump.
Wool Three, Casting Off: Juliette takes center stage, struggling in isolation in her new job. Powerful discoveries mean the pattern starts to come together.
Wool Four, The Unraveling: The overarching structure clarifies, like being able to see a map zooming out. Delicious ending line of kickassitude.
Wool Five, The Stranded: Action packed tension. Delicately balanced characterization means no villains here. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never go cave/wreck diving.



Recommended for: dystopia fans, revolutionaries, thoughtful fantasists

Five dust-smudged and elusive stars.


Also published at Goodreads and  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/

Justice at the point of a lance

The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France
Eric Jager
Published by Broadway, 2004

Reviewed by Sesana
4 out of 5 stars

One man accuses another of a crime. The other denies it, and accuses the first of filing a false charge against him. Forensics aren't an option, and it's one man's word against another's. How do you decide who's telling the truth? In medieval France, the two men may duel to the death to prove who is truthful, because God will protect the honest man and help strike down the dishonest man.

This book relates the story of the last trial by combat sanctioned by the French government. The case is pretty simple: Jacques le Gris is accused by Jean de Carrouges of raping his wife. This is primarily seen as a crime against Carrouges, and not his wife, Marguerite. A quick word of warning: the assault itself is rather graphically spelled out. I presume this is because Marguerite gave very detailed and consistent testimony. But it is pretty disturbing, and I imagine it could be triggering. Was it necessary? No, not really, unless the point was to show just how sure she was of what happened.

The entire book is very detailed, and in a good way. Jager has obviously done tons of research, and clearly loves his topic. We know exactly what oaths were sworn when they went to combat, among other things. It makes it feel real in a way that a drier account of the same events would not. Sure, Jager could have skimmed over less important details, if he'd really wanted to. But we wouldn't have the same sense of place. And actually, it can be a thrilling read. This is the sort of book I'd recommend to people who like historical fiction, but don't read much history.

I have one very small issue with the book. Apparently, Marguerite later became the victim of an effort to clear the name of le Gris through slandering her, claiming that another man later confessed to having assaulted her instead. The book very nobly clears up that bit of slander by exposing it as an outright fabrication. The author also takes up Marguerite's side by pointing out that she pressed her suit, against overwhelming odds and the threat of death (if le Gris had been found not guilty through trial by combat, she would have been burned at the stake) and maintained a very consistent story. What it does not do is point out the underlying sexism here. It drives every turn of events from the assault itself to how it had to be prosecuted to the aftermath. I feel like the book is incomplete without addressing the institutional sexism that made everything we read here possible.

Also reviewed at Goodreads.

Hell & Gone (Charlie Hardie #2)

Hell & Gone
Duane Swierczynski
Available Now!

Picking up directly after the events of Fun and Games, we find Charlie Hardie in the clutches of The Industry or The Accident People or Secret America, or whatever you want to call them. While Hardie’s former colleague is on the lookout for him, finding him proves difficult. “They” don’t screw around when they have a task to accomplish and burying the whereabouts of Hardie is their number one objective.

Upon awakening, Hardie finds himself deep underground in a prison somewhere on Earth. I know that’s a little vague but Hardie knows next to nothing about where he is, what day it is or even what the time is so he’s more than slightly lost. Charged with the task of running the prison as Warden, Charlie is responsible for detaining prisoners with backgrounds so devious, neither himself nor his staff are to be told why they’re there. The punishment for not playing along? His family’s safety is on the line.

I’m really digging this series although I have to admit, it took me a while to really get behind this book. I feel like Swierczynski had a lot to live up to after the events of Fun and Games and while it took a bit to get going, he finished very, very strong. A few of the confrontations near the end came across as both intense and hilarious, especially his dialogue (view spoiler).

I seriously have no idea where Swierczynski is going from here. The final pages present a scenario so ridiculous that I can’t help but be interested. It’s unfortunate that there appears to be a delay in it’s release but I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Also posted @ Every Read Thing.

Trust no one

Trust
David Moody
Infected Books, 2012
Available Online

Reviewer: Trudi
Rating: 3 of 5 stars

David Moody fans (or sci-fi junkies) will be pleased to note that this title is currently available online for free. And it's pretty damn fine. Not as strong as Moody's Hater, but perhaps it isn't even fair to compare the two because in a lot of ways they are very different stories.

Imagine if you will your average particle accelerator -- the Hadron Collider if you please. But instead of smashing sub-atomic particles into one another, let's say you're David Moody and you decide you want to take Shaun of the Dead and violently crash it into M. Night's Signs and Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind until you're left with this existential, entertaining mash-up of a story that's reflective, funny, and chilling in its probabilities.

Tom Winter is your average English bloke who has left his high pressure job in the city and retreated to the very small coastal town of Thatcham. His parents have recently died and he and his younger brother are trying to put their lives back together. Into this small town an unidentified aircraft of behemoth size deposits aliens from an advanced civilization. They claim they have come in peace. They claim they only want our help to get home. But are they telling the truth?

Moody is not giving us an action-packed, pulse-pounding story about an alien invasion here; rather, he's focusing on the psychological and philosophical ramifications of human behavior in the face of a peaceful close encounter of the third kind. It's pretty interesting actually the way characters behave, how they gradually grow to accept the aliens as non-threatening visitors, the questions it makes them ask of themselves and of one another, the deep desire to weigh in on meatier moral issues and "the meaning of life."

It's a slow build that did feel like it goes on a little too long in parts. I started to get a bit twitchy. I just wanted something to happen. In a way, that's very effective writing though. If the aliens do land in peace and it turns out to be pretty innocuous and ordinary, our human reactions might very well be to wish for something more outlandish and mind-blowing. This can't be all there is? Surely, there's something else to occur.

When the direction of the story does change, it happens abruptly and is over quickly. I guess I wish there had been more of a balance between the first three parts and parts four and five. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it or that I don't appreciate what Moody is trying to do here, I just longed for more B-movie action and less navel-gazing character angst.

For more of an adrenaline punch to the solar-plexus, definitely check out Moody's Hater trilogy.

This review is also posted to Goodreads.

Do you believe in aliens?

Area 51
Reviewed by Stephanie
Non fiction
4 out of 5 stars



"Wow!  It sure is hot in the desert.  Hey, why does that rattle snake have two heads?"

"I can tell you……."

"Oh, hello…I didn‘t see you there, just talking to myself and the snake---s.  I’m Stephanie, and who are you and what are you doing in the middle of the Mojave Desert?"

"I could ask you the same thing.  I’m Annie Jacobson, I wrote a book about Area 51.  It’s just over the hill there."

"The hill with the two Hummers on it?  Hey, and there seems to be a couple guys with guns…..uh……pointing in our direction."

"Yuup, but it doesn’t technically exist."  

"Why?  What do you mean by “doesn’t technically exist”?  Those guns exist.   Is it because of the aliens?  Oh it’s because of the aliens!  I KNEW it!"

"Yes, I talk about the Roswell incident a bit in the beginning of the book, but then I get into all the crazy military secrets.  What I mean by Area 51 not existing is that it has always been a Black Operation, which means our federal government denies it existence even though it sits right over there……as you so astutely observed."

"Thanks! So you mean the President and the rest of the government, close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and go LALALALALALA………..?"

"Kind of, but not really.  No president has ever “known” about Area 51.  Vannevar Bush, the engineer that was the primary organizer for the Manhattan Project started up Area 51 because he believed some things are on a need to know basis, and the president just didn’t need to know.  In fact, whoever works at Area 51 is on a need to know basis.   You only know about your specific field of work and that’s all.  I guess no one in that place knows the whole story."

"Did you say Vannever BUSH?  Oh god!  Those Bush’s are freaking everywhere and they ruin everything!  This explains so much……"

"There is no evidence that Vannever and W.  Have any familial ties.  Relax Stephanie."'

"Oh."         "Sorry."       "continue."

After WWII the United States government recruited Nazi scientists, because they were the best in the world, forgave all their odious crimes and set them up with pretty swanky jobs at Area 51.  This was called operation Paperclip.  The Soviet Union recruited some of their own.   Joseph Stalin used them to come up with some inventions as well."

"Uuck!  We had known Nazis on our soil doing god knows what………and we called it Operation Paperclip?  That doesn’t sound very intimidating.  Why not Operation Commando Eagle or something like that?  What were they up to anyway?  Investigating aliens, right?"

"Commando Eagle?  Isn’t that an Eagle without underpants?........ Anyway, they were doing all sorts of things, mostly testing nuclear bombs.  Bomb after bomb after bomb…….it’s a wonder the planet is still intact.   It’s a damn miracle any of us are alive.   For one of the tests they put a bunch of sheep, rodents, and 109 beagles in cages, blew up a bomb to see how it would affect them.   Turns out, plutonium is only lethal if inhaled; you can touch it, no worries.  The aliens, yeah, sort of……I tease about them again in the middle of the book to keep you reading."

"Awe, 109 beagles? They wouldn’t do that kind of crap today; PETA would be all over their ass!  By the way, teasing isn’t nice Annie."

"I know, I’m getting to it.  Couple of interesting tid bits I need to share first, when they tested some manned rockets they noticed a bunch of black dots high in the atmosphere.  It freaked them out until they found out they were dead bugs blasted so high in all the thermal nuclear bomb tests they were sent into orbit.  One of the scientist at Area 51 was known for inventing something  that kept the astronauts penises from freezing to the urine tube when they had to pee……….and they had this spy operation they called Acoustic Kitty, where they implanted listening devices in cats, that didn’t work out so well…..and…….."

"ANNIE!  The little grey men please.  By the way, since this stuff is mostly classified, how do you know all of this information?"

"I interviewed one of the original Paperclip scientists for a year right before he died".

"So?"

"Ever heard of Occam's razor?"

"Yeah, given a bunch of solutions to a problem, the simplest one is the most plausible one."

"Right.  Well…….."

"If you decide to read the spoilers beyond the break below you will find out why we can’t have nice things Stephanie……."

"Thanks Annie,  I’m scared, I think I peed myself a little. I think I'll go home now."