Occultation and Other Stories, by Laird Barron

9781597801928
Night Shade Books, 2010
245 pp

"The brain is a camera, and once it sees what it sees there's no taking it back."

I do believe I've found a new favorite contemporary horror writer in Laird Barron.  He is probably (at least, as far as those I have read) the only author who can put together a compilation of his stories and keep me totally involved, off balance and maximally creeped out through the entire book without any exceptions. He's also one of the few horror writers in my experience who writes his stories with prose to equal pretty much any literary author, and he does not rely on cheap thrills, hack-em/slash-em gratuitous gore or gross shockers to strike a genuine chord of fear that continues to resonate long after the last page has been read.  The visual imagery of these stories is also striking; there are some scenes that are still playing in my head right now as I'm writing this post, especially from "Strappado," a story whose ramifications hit me like a sledge hammer. Whoa. The dark atmosphere that envelops the book as a whole hits you the minute you open to the first story and then never lets up. Obviously I really liked Occultation;  there's absolutely nothing like a few excellently-terrifying stories to get the adrenaline pumping.  I just wonder where this guy gets his inspiration -- oh, strike that...I don't think I want to know.

As in  Barron's The Imago Sequence, there is a focus here on the cracks in our "earthly architecture" allowing the unearthly inhabitants of the cosmos who lurk there to peek in or wander on into our landscape;  more importantly, they also allow for the more earthbound to catch an unwanted glimpse of what's out there waiting in the shadows. Occultation also continues Imago's themes of absorption and transformation, although this time there is a bit more focus on the occult and the workings of madness than in the previous work, with more than a hint of our own mortal insignificance as aligned with the greater powers that lurk.  Here's a quick rundown of these frightening little tales:

1. “The Forest,” a brief tale that in hindsight serves as a thematic preview to the following stories.  A cinematographer, Richard Partridge,  is invited to what will become both a reunion and a goodbye in the New England woods. His host is a world-famous filmmaker fascinated with "untangling the enigmas of evolutionary origins and ultimate destination," whose newest work offers Partridge a  glimpse into Earth's future, along with the present means of communication with those who are destined to inherit the earth.  Elements of "The Forest" will reappear later. 

2. “Occultation," a story that takes place in a run down old motel along the desert highway.  While a sleep-deprived couple boozes it up in their room, playing "Something Scary," getting high on X and stopping to have sex every now and then, a strange stain on the wall captures their attention. The light in the room doesn't work and the shadow continues to grow; in the meantime, while they partying and the shadow attract their attention, outside the room, "the world had descended into a primeval well."  

3. "The Lagerstätte," which details a woman's decline into madness from her grief at losing her husband and son simultaneously in a plane crash.  Or does it? Related in a manner that leaps around time in a nonlinear sort of way, the story has several jarring, discordant reflected directly from her mind, a place where the line is blurred and often shattered between hauntings, hallucinations, and reality.


4. “Mysterium Tremendum,” an offering about two couples who take a brief camping vacation into the woods of the Pacific Northwest guided by a strange antiquarian book called the "Moderor de Caliginis" found quite by chance.  The story starts out slowly, but builds into one of the creepiest stories in this volume, as the group slowly realizes the truth of an earlier warning that "The Crack that runs through everything stares into you."   Definitely one of the best stories in the book.   The descriptions of the woods in this part of Washington are not only spot on, but downright chilling, as is the creepy ending.

5. “Catch Hell, ”which has much more of an occultish-type touch than Barron's normal fare, although it is one of the stories that definitely embodies his themes of transformation and the "dread of aloneness."  A couple who've recently and mysteriously lost a baby come to the Black Ram Lodge, a former trading post in the 19th century which became a mansion before becoming a tourist spot. Just 40 miles east of Seattle in the hill country, it's a whole different world, as they will soon discover. 

6. “Strappado.” Now we've come to my favorite story of the entire collection, one which absolutely necessitated a reread. Moving out of the woods, even out of the country, "Strappado" takes place in India, where two former lovers are reunited and eventually find their way to an exhibition of the work of an outlaw artist.  To say more would kill it, but I came away from this story both times absolutely stunned at the sheer portrayal of the insignificance of human lives.   Much like "The Procession of the Black Sloth," my favorite story in Barron's The Imago Sequence, "Strappado" is highly reminiscent of an Asian horror film. If they ever did make this story into a movie, leaving nothing to the imagination,  I'd probably have to pass. It's that creepy, and the final few lines of this story really did a number on me in terms of its ramifications.  The title is sort of a double entendre -- you just have to think about it for a while to figure out why. 

7. “The Broadsword” features a retired field surveyor who has a secret that will ultimately return to bite him. A long-term resident of the old, arte deco apartment building known as The Broadsword, Pershing Dennard lives alone.  His story starts with voices heard through a vent -- and an acknowledgement that someone knows he's listening.  Once again, Barron starts the action very slowly and builds it to a horrifying climax that's still resonating in my head, and once again, there is a crossing of the "axis of time and space by means of technologies that were old when your kind oozed in brine," and a hapless human being caught in "the black forest of cosmic night." 
 
8. “–30–" After just a minute of time on Wikipedia, I learned that " –30–" is a way journalists signal the end of a story.  And indeed, a finish is captured in the beginning of this tale with the lines "You know how this is going to end." Two biologists who have past history but haven't been together for a long time are stationed together in a module within a hemisphere out in the desert of Washington state.  Their work is scheduled to last for six months; the only relief is the occasional helicopter re-supply. They are situated in the former base of  cult-like group called "The Family" whose killing exploits are legendary, much like the group under Charlie Manson in the 1960s. The Family is gone now, but there may be something lurking out there still. Or not.

9. “Six Six Six.” This is another story I had to reread.  A young man and his wife inherit a big house in the forest, where events of the past continue to reverberate in the present and evil lurks within the very walls. Along with "Catch Hell," "Six Six Six" takes on more of a pure occult style; of the two, this one has much more of a haunted, claustrophobic atmosphere that oozes through the pages.  I always wonder about the people in stories or in movies who come across a door bolted shut by every possible means and decide they absolutely must open it.  Never a good idea.  

The quotation opening this post really says it all.  I'm just in awe of Laird Barron's power to get under my skin and to jolt me out of my comfort zone;  frankly I thought that after Imago the act would be so difficult to follow that it couldn't possibly be as good.  Well, it is. Occultation is an excellent companion to The Imago Sequence. There are so many elements at work here  -- isolation, trauma, survivor guilt, a new look at old ruins, the insignificance of humanity in a grander cosmic scheme, and more.  The backdrop of the forest is absolutely perfect with its covering mists and darkness where anything is bound to jump out or worse...where things lurk just waiting to be stumbled upon.

Highly recommended -- darkness is definitely not needed for the hair on the back of your neck to stand on end.

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, by Laird Barron

9781597800884
Night Shade Books, 2007
239 pp
(hardcover)

"We are born, we absorb, we are absorbed. Therein lies the function of all sentient beings." 

This is actually a reread for me; I first read this in 2007 when it was published, but I recently felt the need for reading horror and really couldn't remember much about this one, so I pulled it off my shelf.  After finishing it this time, it came to me that I must not have really put any effort into it during my first go, because frankly, these stories are absolutely unforgettable.  The reader is taken off guard, thrown into that sense of unease from the first page, and with only minor respites between stories, is for the most part kept off kilter until the last sentence of the book.  The Imago Sequence more than exceeded my expectations in terms of the fear quotient -- that feeling I get when I read something that keeps a) the hairs on the back of my neck bristling, b) my stomach in knots, and c) the feeling of looming dread alive and well throughout.  Add in a writing style where horror meets literature, and well, they just don't get much better than this, folks.  Seriously.

Contained in The Imago Sequence are nine stories, three of which (*) are so well written and so incredibly creepy that I'm still thinking about them two days later.

1. "Old Virginia," the tale of a  CIA agent  assigned to a detail in the wilds of West Virginia, kept in the dark about an MK-ULTRA project until it's too late;
2. "Shiva, Open Your Eye," a short but powerful entry in this collection. A presence whose sole task lies well beyond human comprehension takes on human form, leaving bodies in its wake.  Read this one carefully -- it sets the stage for most of the stories that follow.  
3.*  "Procession of the Black Sloth," which is one my favorites  in this book, is so unsettling that I had to read it twice.  Set in Hong Kong, with a variety of creepy characters, a man is sent to uncover who is at the root of corporate espionage, and ends up uncovering his true destiny.  Much of  "Procession of the Black Sloth" is viewed via scenes aired on televisions, in photos or other media, and it  reminded me of a lot of the Japanese and Korean horror flicks I watch when my husband's away that keep me up all night afterwards listening to the creaks in the house.  This one had much the same effect -- I had to set the book aside for a day before I could continue.

4."Bulldozer," a story set in the wild west where a gun-wielding, tough-guy Pinkerton operative has been sent on a mission by PT Barnum to recover a stolen Necronomicon-type tome and runs into serial murders that  are part of a  hideous ritual.  I really didn't appreciate this one until reading later stories in this book, but it was good and frightening all the same.
5. "Proboscis," in which an actor who's seen better days tags along with some bounty hunters on a mission to snag a serial killer and realizes that there are devourers among us...
6.* "Hallucigenia."  This is another one of the entries in this novel that provides an off-the-charts goosebump-producing experience as you read.  A wealthy man who's been around  and his beautiful, young  wife are out on a drive when their car suddenly breaks down; while it's being fixed the wife decides to go shoot some photos and comes across an old barn. He follows and out of nowhere his wife is seriously injured, left with a strange crack in her head that refuses to heal. As he's trying to make sense of what's happened at that barn, he spares no expense in tracking down anyone connected with the place.  That day, in more than one way, was a life-changer; "Hallucigenia" provides several OMG moments of sheer delightful fright.
7.  "Parallax," which runs more along the lines of science fiction than the others, where a man whose wife suddenly and out of nowhere goes missing tells the story of the aftermath of her disappearance; the payoff comes at the very end of this story and will leave you stymied.  I liked this one -- and like many of the other stories, it demanded an instant reread.
8. "The Royal Zoo is Closed," is probably my least favorite story in the collection; that doesn't mean it's bad but I just felt that the others were far, far better.
9. * "The Imago Sequence," another of my favorites and probably the creepiest of them all, has as its main character a noir-type protagonist who is hired to find out what happened to someone who went missing, and to find two of a set of three photographs that taken together are known as the Imago Sequence.  The first one strikes some inner chord that  is disturbing enough to the protagonist that he has to see the others, especially the last one.   Truly one of the major highlights of this book, this story held me in its grip and didn't let up for a second -- and I'm still thinking about it.

There are a number of things that I loved about this book.  First, an interesting aspect about all these stories as a whole is that they point thematically in several of the same directions: a) there are the tough-guy characters who in their own realities can more take care of themselves in particularly knotty and extreme situations yet who eventually become putty in the hands of cosmic  forces well beyond their control and their comprehension; b) said forces are often described by Barron as mouths with appetites and he uses holes and cracks as symbols and metaphors that transverse all of these stories; c) the idea that our human need to know is often responsible for our own downfall resonates clearly -- as one character in "Bulldozer" notes, "Ignorance is all the blessing we apes can hope for," but the way Barron develops his characters here leaves little room for passive acceptance among them -- these people want to try to get a grip on understanding what's happening.  Finally,  d) there's a cyclical feel to a number of these stories, as well as the sense that some of them are connected across time and space.  Another reason that this book is such a winner is that Barron doesn't have to lay out scenes of explicit, slasher-film type gore to make his stories work -- he is one of the most gifted horror writers I've read. He is incredibly  talented in using prose that  takes readers to the edge of the worst that can happen and leaving them dangling  to experience the fear, panic and ultimately the hopelessness that abides there. He can create a most palpable sense of doom and dread without having to resort to cheapness, which sadly I've found exists in a lot of horror writing and which is why I rarely read much of it any more. 

There are a number of very eloquent reviews of this book on line; for my part, all I can say is that I am in awe of Barron's talent as a writer.  The outright uneasiness and the sense of being off-kilter I felt throughout this novel speaks to how deeply I was drawn into the worlds he's created.   I had to go back to read several stories a second time to make sure that what I'd just read was indeed the case, a number of these stories gave me an unstoppable case of the willies to the point where I had to put the book down and walk away for a while, and the fact that I'm still thinking of a couple of them two days after finishing is the icing on the cake of how very well written and downright creepy this book is.   The Imago Sequence is definitely a no-miss in the odd world of weird fiction.

The Horror at Oakdeene and Others, by Brian Lumley

0870540785
Arkham House, 1977
229 pp

I have been an avid collector of Arkham House books for quite a long time now and luckily got this like-new edition of The Horror at Oakdeene and Others a while ago.  The book is an anthology of eight stories written by Brian Lumley, whose early horror writings are among my favorites in the world of weird fiction and cosmic horror.  As is true in many anthologies, you take the excellent with the good with the not so hot in this collection, but when all is said and done, it's a pretty good conglomerate of weird fiction.  Lovecraft's influence can be felt throughout, but there is plenty here to mark Lumley's own writing style as well.

author Brian Lumley

The eight stories in the book (with a brief intro to each) are:

"The Viking's Stone"  -- featuring Titus Crow, Lumley's very own creation, about whom Lumley writes:  

"he is one to whom, in his unending search for mysteries and discoveries of marvels, the occult has been simply a passage down which his wanderings have taken him; where he has learned, on more than one occasion, outre things unheard of in the more mundane world of ordinary men. Crow may, in that snese, be called an occultist -- but so is he a most knowledgeable man and something of an expert in many fields."

In this story, Crow and his partner de Marigny get involved with a fellow scholar who is messing about with things he shouldn't and removes the "bautastein" (tomb marker)  of a bloodthirsty Viking when the runes say not to;  "Aunt Hester" finds a  young man going to visit his black-sheep aunt shunned by the rest of his family and in the process and  to his detriment he discovers why no one even speaks of her any more;  "No Way Home" is an eerie tale of a man who has been trying to find his way home for 15 years; this one is somewhat marred by its ending and although it started out like a hackle-raising ghost story it lost me at the finish.   The title story "The Horror at Oakdeene," finds Martin Spellman, an aspiring author who wants to do a compilation of "rare or outstanding mental cases," soaking up atmosphere  in  training as a nurse at Oakdeene Sanatorium.  Spellman tries to avoid the basement ward known as "Hell," where a fellow nurse may or may not have had anything to do with a patient's bizarre death.  Burglar William "Spotty" Morton decides to go back and finish something he'd started a year ago in  "The Cleaner Woman," but the perfect crime may still be out of his reach.  Quite possibly my favorite in the entire collection is "The Statement of Henry Worthy," a little reminiscent of HPL's Innsmouth adventures but with a clever and spooky twist.  This one takes place in the moors of Scotland, when Matthew Worthy, Henry's nephew, comes down to visit his uncle and to also follow in the footsteps of a lost botanist who had disappeared after finding a very unusual species of plant.  "Darghud's Doll" is another Titus Crow story, where Crow is not really involved in the action but shares a bizarre story about the power and  long reach of supernatural revenge. Ending this collection of stories is "Born of the Winds," a rather long, drawn-out account of a determined woman seeking her son in the frozen Canadian north.  This story started out fine but got kind of bogged down as Lumley combines a mix of mythologies that imho didn't match the state of hovering horror as much as the other stories in this book were able to.

All in all -- a pretty good volume of tales of terror influenced largely by HP Lovecraft; a highly-recommended must for collectors  if you're into Lumley or Lovecraft or this brand of cosmic horror/weird fiction.  

The Big Book of Ghost Stories, ed. Otto Penzler

9780307474490
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2012
833 pp
paper

There is nothing I like better than a good, old-fashioned ghost story, and here in The Big Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Otto Penzler, I am completely in my element.  Ghosts are everywhere, roaming in the old English abbeys, conjured up in the eerie atmosphere of the Victorian seance room, moaning in old castles, sailing the seas, you name it, and a ghost will be found there.  This is an incredible collection, one I couldn't wait to get to every time I had a moment to pick it up.  

The stories in this book are divided into thirteen (of course!) sections and cover a broad spectrum of authors, many of whom are known for their supernatural writings as well as others whose work is not as famous.  As Penzler notes in his introduction, many of the stories that appear in this volume have not previously been anthologized, nor have they appeared in book form anywhere else. And as he states, the stories that are found between the covers cover the range from the Late Victorian era through the heyday of the pulp mags, and he's also included some of the works of modern tellers of ghostly tales. I found perhaps two out of the entire collection that just didn't do it for me; the rest more than surpassed the creep factor I always hope to feel when reading a good anthology of scary stories.    

There's just nothing more to say really, except that if you're a huge fan of ghost stories, if you can move beyond the vampire/zombie/werewolf genres that top the horror charts today,  and if you are not bound to the gory, hack/slash horror to get your chills, this book just might do it.  It's incredibly rare to find a near-perfect anthology of stories; this one definitely fits that bill.  There's an added bonus as well:  when introducing each story, there is a short blurb about each author and his or her other works.  I've used this feature to full advantage for future ghost-story reading.  

Super book, best read at night when everyone's asleep and it's eerily quiet, The Big Book of Ghost Stories will likely most please readers of more cerebral weird/horror tales rather than what's popular on the shelves today.  I highly recommend it!

Banquet for the Damned, by Adam LG Nevill

9780753513583
Virgin Books, 2008
408 pp

While I happen to sit on the side of the fence of readers who claim that horror is much more potent in short-story format, once in a while I run into a full-length novel that can throw a continually sustained chill down my spine.  Banquet for the Damned did just that. Although it didn't give me nightmares or produce the sort of night terrors that some of the characters suffered in this book,  the creep factor was intense enough to where I read it in one sitting -- alone, at night,wind howling outside, the perfect horror-read atmosphere.

Banquet for the Damned is set in the Scottish town of St. Andrews. As the story opens, in a "night empty of cloud and as still as space," a young man is slowly moving away from the town, across a beach to the dunes where he's fully enveloped in the darkness.  But he hasn't done this consciously, and he suddenly stops dead in his tracks, confused, realizing he'd only been sleepwalking. As he wakes he becomes aware that he's traveled a mile from his residence hall, where he'd earlier fallen asleep working on his thesis.  Out of the darkness comes a voice calling his name; fear sets in as he hears movement coming toward him. What he sees drives him into the sea, thinking that his pursuer won't follow -- but it's a big miscalculation on his part.

Arriving in St. Andrews are two leather-clad, has-been heavy metal rockers who've driven there from Birmingham. Dante has received an opportunity to work with his idol, Professor Eliot Coldwell, who works at St. Andrews University's School of Divinity. Some years back Coldwell had written a book called Banquet of the Damned, a volume of his "carefully recorded visions and bodily sensations induced by hallucinogens," such as dialogues with various spirits; probably something along the lines of the books produced in real life by Castaneda.   The book was Dante's lifeline through all of the hard times, and now he has been invited to St. Andrews where his hope is to create a concept album and make a musical comeback based on Banquet of the Damned, along with Tom, his friend and companion. The new university term hasn't yet started so all is relatively quiet in St. Andrews, but their arrival coincides with a police investigation underway at the beach where their curiosity gets the better of them as they go take a look at what's happening, and immediately wish they hadn't. 

Also in St. Andrews is an American, Hart Miller, who has flown in from Africa where he's been doing anthropological fieldwork studying the phenomenon of night terrors. Informed by a friend in St. Andrews that a student committed suicide in his car after a series of nighttime trauma, he came to Scotland to hopefully gain more first-hand case studies to add to his work. Posting flyers that direct anyone with "nightmares, disturbed sleep patterns, or night terrors" to come to him for a "confidential analysis," people begin coming -- many of whom share the same basic stories and same symptoms, some of whom later disappear into thin air.  
 The unease sets in from the beginning and increases throughout the novel, helped along by other mysterious characters -- Coldwell, his beautiful young student protegé, some of the staff at the School of Divinity and others along the way through whom the mystery behind what is happening at St. Andrews is slowly revealed to the reader.  In fact, intensifying this edginess is what Nevill does best throughout this book, revealing the terror through multiple points of view, often distorting our vision of the reality of things.   As Dante's hero worship of Eliot begins to slowly turn to disillusion, as Hart's research leads him to a discovery that lands him in the thick of things, as seemingly normal people begin to take on more sinister overtones, it becomes all too clear that there is something menacing and malignant which has "arrived to disturb the calm" of this town. 

Other readers have complained about the repetition of the night-terror scenes, but I thought they were necessary for raising the tension level right off the bat.  Some have noted that Dante makes some really stupid decisions, and that is true, but my take is that in his growing state of disillusionment, he's kind of slow or maybe unwilling to grasp what's really going on.   My issues with this book are in some of the characters: first  Tom -- while you could argue that he had to be included as the first link in a chain of cause and effect as to Dante's current predicament,  we really only see  him through Dante's eyes without any real fleshing out,  so when he comes to a bad end it's not as horrific as it might be, leaving the reader unsympathetic as to what actually happens to him. And when he and Dante have a fight and Dante begins to think about their relationship, the book gets a bit draggy while we have to go through the sordid backstory that I really didn't think added to the tension of the main story.  Second is Hart and  the way he speaks -- it  is so stupid, having him refer to the women as "honey" -- sort of unrealistic for most modern American men. But on the whole, I found Banquet of the Damned  to be  a disturbingly good occult horror read.  There are no gimmicky creatures, the terror is manifested at times but for the most part cerebral, and the tension is sustained throughout the story, keeping you alert and ready for what might happen next.  Nevill writes without going overboard in the telling, and if the object of writing horror is taking the reader briefly into the zone of  the worst that  might possibly happen and letting him or her experience the fear, panic and hopelessness that abides in that space, well, he's done a great job.  The setting is inexorably linked to its already-charged historical atmosphere -- St. Andrews  was once a place of religious martyrs, witchcraft and the cleansing of heresy ; Nevill has just added a new dimension to the already-existing history of darkness there.  It works perfectly, from the dunes on the beaches to the dark Tentsmuir forests.  Highly recommended.

A Book of Horrors, ed. Stephen Jones

9781250018526
St. Martin's Griffin
first US edition, September 2012
448 pp
(published previously in the UK, Quercus, 2011)
advanced reader copy (thank you, LibraryThing early reviewers program!)


 oh my...it's been a while since I've read any horror/sci-fi/fantasy or other novels in the strange/weird zone, but I've recently finished A Book of Horrors, a new volume of horror edited by Stephen Jones, who has edited a number of books I have in my library.   The problem with anthologies is that you have some pieces that are really, really good, some that are sort of so-so, and some that you just plain don't like, and this book pretty much follows the same pattern.  On to the book discussion now.

In the introduction to this book, editor Stephen Jones notes that "The time has come to reclaim the horror genre for those who understand and appreciate the worth and impact of a scary story."  Lamenting the fact that the traditional horror market is being "usurped" by publishers and booksellers who are aiming "horror-lite" fiction at the "middle-of-the-road reader," -- including   'paranormal romance', 'urban fantasy', 'literary mash-up' or even 'steampunk' in that category -- he offers this collection of stories as a return to the scary.

Personally I think it's entirely possible to enjoy both "horror-lite" and  the really creepy, hair-standing-on-end type of horror that Jones is talking about.  Take me as an example.  I can scare myself wide awake with a Lovecraft story or something totally evil from Ramsay Campbell [horror] while enjoying a  laugh at the further adventures of Bob Howard in the Laundry Files by Charles Stross [horror lite].  While I don't care for paranormal romance, undercover werewolves or zombies, let's don't be slamming the "middle-of-the-road reader" or people who really love that stuff --  if it weren't for  all of the people who love  "horror lite" and buy the books that keep the bookstores open and the publishers in business, well, enough said;  it's also sort of demeaning to turn up one's nose at others' reading choices.

Now having got that out of the way, there are a number of stories in this collection that are pretty creepy and edgy, as well as some that are just kind of so-so, and all of the stories in A Book of Horrors include a short piece by each author where he or she talks about the inspirations behind his/her work.   There are five which managed to give me a case of the willies and produced that growing sense of agitation and unease while I read them:

Ramsey Campbell's "Getting It Wrong",  the tale of a mysterious radio quiz show, where a contestant  on this bizarre show reaches out for a help from a co-worker by phone, à la "Who Wants to be a Millionaire,"  but as it turns out, the contestant's need for a   "lifeline" is not just for help winning money;

John Ajvide Lindqvist's "The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer," seriously creeped me out.  It's about a father and son who live in an isolated house in the woods and accidentally summon something that threatens to tear them apart;

"The Man in the Ditch" by Lisa Tuttle (who is an excellent storyteller, by the way) is one of those story where the sense of unease starts at the beginning and doesn't let up.  A woman's visions and feelings of apprehension are ignored by her husband and build to a crescendo as they move into a house in the Norfolk countryside that the wife is positive is the site of a long-ago sacrifice;

and finally, "A Child's Problem" by Reggie Oliver and "Near Zennor," by Elizabeth Hand, which might just be the best stories in the entire collection. In Oliver's gothic-styled story set in the early 1800s, a boy is left with a wealthy uncle by his parents on a grand estate.  He is lonely and wants the company of his uncle, and his interest is piqued by the uncle's chessboard.  When he asks if the uncle would consider playing chess with him, the uncle instead sends him on some mysterious riddle-solving quests.  As the boy roams the grounds in search of the answer, he uncovers something  horrific connected to his uncle's past.  "Near Zennor" takes place mostly in Cornwall, and also deals with the revelation of past secrets that reach out into the present in a most creepy, eerie and extremely satisfying way.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed here; out of fourteen short stories only five managed to actually get under my skin in any significant way, but then again, that's the nature of the beast when you're dealing with anthologies.  As far as recommending it -- well, everyone has their own idea of what's scary, so I'd say if you're a horror fan of the type who likes the feel of the hackles going up on the back of your neck, give it a try. 

The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross

There's something to be said about a guy who can combine HP Lovecraft, various writers of spy fiction, computer geekness and a little of the management nitwitnedness of Office Space and come up with a series of consistently good novels that incorporate all of the above.  After all, as he notes in the afterwords of his first series novel, there are a lot of similarities between Lovecraftian horror and spy fiction, especially the espionage novels set in the Cold War.  Along  the way he throws pointed barbs at iPhones, cults, Power Point presentations, evangelical Christians, handguns and other sources of irritation -- all of which come off as funny, but only because you realize that some of the things he pokes sarcastic fun at resonate with your own fears, peeves, and annoyances.  This guy is Charles Stross, who is the author of four books that comprise The Laundry Files, one of my favorite series of novels ever written.  If you'll pardon the expletive, I don't know he manages to keep coming up with this amazing shit -- each book is different, sending the main character Bob Howard, computational demonologist,  into perilous adventures as he and the Laundry, the super-secret civil service organization  Bob works for, prepare to save humanity from the onslaught of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN -- an apocalypse arriving from the multiverse.   The people at the Laundry have developed some very modern and secret technologies that combine the most high-tech electronics with the occult to keep Bob and others like him safe to defend the world -- all based on magic as a form of mathematics.  These novels remind me of old-time adventure stories with a hopped-up occult/geek/horror twist that for some reason unknown to myself I just can't seem to get enough of.

These books are perfect for someone like me -- I never did jump on the Twilight bandwagon, I don't do talking werewolves or other stuff like that, didn't swoon over the zombie phase and actually waited for it to die down before venturing back into the world of fantasy/horror because this kind of stuff seemed to dominate the bookstores forever.  Tons of people like that sort of urban fantasy/paranormal romance stuff -- and that's great, but it's just not my thing.  So I ran across my copy of Atrocity Archives at home while reorganizing my bookshelves and decided to give it read, and within a couple of weeks, completely finished the Laundry series, finishing one book and picking up the next right away.  I can definitely recommend each and every novel to anyone who is a) into HP Lovecraft; b) likes irreverent humor and sarcastic wit; c)  likes occult fiction; d) enjoys the old Cold War-type spy fiction and e) looking for something entirely different.   I'm hooked on these books now, and sadly, having just finished the last one, I am not looking forward to having to wait for a while to get back to the Laundry and Bob Howard's latest adventures. 

So now, to the books themselves: I loved them all, have very little in the way of negatives to say about any of them, so I'll just offer a barebones outline of each one in their publication order.   It goes without saying that you simply must read them in the same order or you'll be totally confused. 

The Atrocity Archives

9780441013654

Ace, 2006

originally published 2004

368 pp

paper

Take a helping of HP Lovecraft, toss in a layer of spy fiction, add a hefty dose of computer hackers & math nerds as well as the absurdity that can exist among bureaucrats who manage a cubicle-filled office, and you've got The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross. The title of the book covers not only the main story "The Atrocity Archive," but also "The Concrete Jungle," a novella that starts with one too many cow sculptures at Maynard Keynes, as well as an interesting essay by Stross entitled "Inside the Fear Factory."

Bob Howard works for a super-secret government agency called The Laundry. He's a computer guy who does stuff like fix sick Beowulf clusters, calibrates tarot permutators and does security audits of collecting card games to ensure that "stoned artists" in Austin Texas don't accidentally come up with a "great node." A year earlier he'd applied for a job in active service, and as the novel opens, he's getting his first crack at it. His assignment is to break into a company called Memetix (UK) Ltd., where a mathematician has succeeded in duplicating the Turing-Lovecraft theorem. It's in the world's best interest that the theorem is kept under wraps -- because certain mathematical computations can rip "honking great holes in spacetime," and once that happens, those things that live in the angles of different universes can make their way into ours. His mission is successful, and some three months after a mishap during a training class lands him a suspension he is sent back out into the field again. He ends up in Santa Cruz, where he is supposed to talk to a gorgeous scientist named Mo who is not allowed to leave the United States because of the nature of her work. When she is kidnapped and Bob intervenes to help her (which is against SOP) he ends up with a head injury and a flight back home. Shortly afterwards, Bob gets a new job in the Laundry under Angleton, his new boss -- and is assigned to accompany Mo (now back in the UK) to Amsterdam -- and all hell literally breaks loose.

"The Concrete Jungle" finds our hero once again wrapped up in a job for Angleton -- where he is ordered to go to Maynard Keynes and count the cows. His findings lead to the possibility that someone is playing around with "gorgonism," and may be planning to unleash its power via hacked CCTV networks.

Both "The Atrocity Archive" and "The Concrete Jungle" are great fun. Both make fun of the bureaucratic crap people in government jobs have to deal with -- budgets, paperwork for the sake of filling in paperwork, timekeeping and managers who have nothing better to do with their time than to make life tough on the employees and demand accurate paper clip counts in case of an audit. Bob's weird roommates at Chateau Cthulhu are also a good source of laughs. Beyond the humor of it all, Atrocity Archives combines spying, the occult and Lovecraftian horror into something very geeky and at the same time very original.

If you've got a geeky or irreverent sense of humor, this book should be just up your alley, especially if you also happen to be a fan of Lovecraftian-type horror, occult fiction and the occasional Cold War spy fiction novel.  Being in tune with geek culture is also a plus, although I have to admit that it's not one of my things. Looking at several  reviews, a lot of people have commented on the long time it takes to get into the story in "The Atrocity Archive," but I didn't care -- I was highly entertained; in all honesty, much more so by "The Atrocity Archive" than "The Concrete Jungle." Don't miss the essay at the end of the book -- it's well worth spending some time on.

The Jennifer Morgue
9781930846456
Golden Gryphon Press, 2006
313 pp
hardcover

Bob Howard and the Laundry return, this time in an adventure with a very James Bond flair. The geek culture and Lovecraft influence are still there, but this time Bob is lifted out of his office chair and smack into a case where once again the fate of the world hangs in the balance.  Back in the 1970s, the CIA was eager to retrieve a Soviet submarine that had gone down in the Pacific Ocean in a mission known as Operation Jennifer, located at Jennifer Morgue Site One.  They finally lock onto it, but as the sub begins to rise, suddenly something down below starts stirring; at 3,000 feet below the surface it is suddenly pulled back down. The CIA is in violation of the Benthic Treaties made with the Deep Ones (codename BLUE HADES), and in accordance with Article Five, Clause Four of the treaty, the Deep Ones decided to exercise their salvage rights and to claim the sub.  Flash forward to the 21st century:  Bob Howard, newly promoted,  is in Darmstadt, Germany after a harrowing ride on the autobahn.  He's supposed to attend a joint meeting with his international counterparts and he meets Ramona, an agent from the Black Chamber (America's "superblack agency dealing with occult intelligence.")   Together they are tasked with cozying up to  a rather nasty billionaire named Ellis Billington, who has acquired a CIA spy ship with plans on invading a section of disputed BLUE HADES and DEEP SEVEN (the Cthonians)  territory in the Caribbean at Jennifer Morgue Site Two.  Bob's boss, Angleton, wants to know what exactly Billington's going to do there, so that he can work necessary action to keep Billington from "pissing off" DEEP SEVEN and BLUE HADES.  If that happens, well, let's just say humanity is in for a load of trouble.  Angleton would prefer not having to worry about how he's going to have to tell the powers that be.   All of Britain is now depending on Bob, and Angleton warns him not to make his "usual hash of things."   From that moment on, our erstwhile hero (and Stross' novel) goes into James Bond mode, complete with weapons that would make even Q proud, the secret-agent car (here a Smartcar rather than an Aston Martin), casino action and Bond girls, and even code names like BROCCOLI-GOLDENEYE. 

What I love about this book (and the others as well)  is that it really doesn't take itself very seriously and it's hard to keep the laughs away.  There are so many jokes in here (Power Point presentations, bad-guy monologuing and suits are at the root of many) -- my only problem is that I'm not very much into geek culture so I'm probably missing a lot.   But the story is so much fun to read that it's really hard to stop until it's all over. Yet, with all of the positives, the thing I didn't like much about it is that Bob gets sort of lost in this one to the other characters -- there's a reason why but I can't spill it -- while the book loses something taking the route Stross decided on.  The second story in the book, "Pimpf",  is not nearly as good as Jennifer Morgue or its predecessor Atrocity Archives -- but it does introduce a character who will show up again in The Fuller Memorandum.  My advice -- try the Atrocity Archives; if you like it, you're going to like this one.

The Fuller Memorandum
9780441018673
Ace, 2010
310 pp
Hardcover

"It's Bob Howard vs. Evil -- and Evil cheats."

Third in the Laundry series, the story behind The Fuller Memorandum is related via Bob Howard's memoir of some pretty harrowing events.  Two years prior to the events of this book, his boss Angleton had suggested to Bob that he write his memoirs.  When Bob wonders why a 30 year-old should even start thinking about an autobiography, he discovers that it's in the book of rules that officers above a certain rank keep a classified journal or update their memoirs.  The info will be classified and used as a part of the Laundry's "institutional memory." If something ever goes awry while Bob is out keeping evil at bay, at least the knowledge in his "thick little skull" will have been preserved.  The Fuller Memorandum is one section of Bob's memoir that covers his story of "the beginning of the end of the world," among other things. 

It all begins with Bob's assignment at RAF Cosford, where he is supposed to take a look at an aircraft that is the site of some strange incidents.  He's also supposed to try to stop these weird things from happening, and while he's there, he needs to take a look in Hangar Six, part of the RAF Museum annex. His contact is Hastings, who tells him that the plane is from Squadron 666, a plane that did duty for the Laundry, logging some 280 hours on the "other side, escorting the white elephants." Just what that means isn't clear at the moment; Angleton had said something about white elephants but now Bob needs to take care of the problems. A forgotten ward leads to an explosion, survived by both Bob & Hastings, but the lady at the front desk, now bringing tea to the hangar, is caught up and killed.  Under orders to take time off from the Laundry while he awaits any further action, Bob picks up his wife Mo (who also works for the Laundry) from the airport to find that Mo is in pretty bad shape, "two millimeters away from a nervous breakdown."   But because Bob is not yet cleared, Mo can't talk to him about what happened to her.  Expecting a messenger with a Letter of Release, what shows up at his doorstep instead has followed Mo home from Amsterdam, an Uncle Fester lookalike wearing the "mortal skin of a dead man walking," bringing Bob into CLUB ZERO, involving a cult called The Free Church of the Universal Kingdom, a nasty bunch of groupies of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, the end of the world.  To make matters worse, Angleton has disappeared, and Bob is left to try to figure things out for himself. At the same time, The Free Church of the Universal Kingdom (oh! I just noticed their acronym would be FCUK!), the Americans and the Russians are all looking for something called the Teapot as well as  the Fuller Memorandum, a document that will help to awaken the "Sleeper," a first step toward a chain of events leading to the end of humanity.   As Bob's investigation proceeds, he enters into what may be the weirdest case in which he's ever been involved, one that could very well signal the beginning of the end.

According to Wikipedia, where The Jennifer Morgue was written as a sort of pastiche send up of Ian Fleming's James Bond, The Fuller Memorandum is written as an "homage of sorts" to the work of Anthony Price, author of a series of spy novels featuring Dr. David Audley and Coloner Jack Butler.   Lovecraft's influence is still alive and kicking in this book, along with occult conspiracies and some more earthly horrors.  The same cynical, sarcastic humor and asides  (this time directed at Iphones, cultists, workers' rights and handguns among other things) in the other two books are still here, as are the author's excellent characterizations.  Also in common with The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue, while the action is definitely over the top,  I loved it -- I absolutely can't get enough of The Laundry or of Charles Stross' writing.   I hope this series lasts a good, long time.

The Apocalypse Codex
9781937007461
Ace, 2012
326 pp

 "Bob Howard may be humanity's last hope. Start praying..."

Still recovering from the hair-raising events of The Fuller Memorandum, Bob now finds himself on the Fast Stream track for promotion, and his superiors have decided that he needs to attend some Professional Development training with regular civil servants who don't work for the Laundry.  Bob of course, doesn't want to go -- he'd rather audit some courses at the Dunwich facility that would improve his prospects for survival for "when the tentacles hit the pentacle." But of course, he has no choice, and after the first "four hours of soul-destroyingly banal tedium," meets Gerald Lockhart, who is in charge of external assets.  Lockhart wants Bob to join forces with Persephone Hazard, code name BASHFUL INCENDIARY, who has been hired to investigate why an American televangelist has all of a sudden taken an intense interest in the people surrounding the Prime Minister.  The Laundry is not allowed to snoop on Number 10, but the activities of the televangelist, Ray Schiller, have whetted the organization's curiosity.  It's off to America for Bob, where he follows BASHFUL INCENDIARY to a retreat in the Rockies, where she will be poised to discover exactly what Schiller and his disciples are getting up to -- and it's definitely not pretty. 

According to Howard's own blog, he wrote The Apocalypse Codex with Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise in mind.  But you'll also find a lot of Lovecraft, as well as some "Wrath of Khan" moments as Bob tries to prevent a group of evil and somewhat misguided members of the Golden Promise Ministries from ushering in the Second Coming that could launch NIGHTMARE CASE GREEN before its time. That would be very, very bad indeed. 

In The Apocalypse Codex Stross has created a plot that starts out like a light tap on the gas pedal and then accelerates in increments to some stomach-tensing action as you wonder how the heck they're going to make out of this one before the apocalypse erupts. Although a great deal of the action is told from the perspectives of two of the other characters, it fits together well considering this story is coming from Bob Howard's memoirs. It also seems like the Laundry series is getting a bit more serious now as events are moving toward the inevitable fight between humanity and what's laying in wait inside the edges and angles of other universes, but I hope it doesn't ever lose its sense of humor and geekness that these books are noted for and that is part of the reason I love this series.   It's another excellent and fun installment of the Laundry series, but don't read this if you're a very religious Christian unless you have a sense of humor.  It's obvious that Howard has issues with fundamentalist Christians in the way he throws those pointed barbs around -- the arrows don't bother me, but some people might take his humor the wrong way.  If you can get past that, you'll be rewarded with a fun adventure that takes you deeper into the heart of the strange and mysterious Laundry. 

and now, the long wait before the next book....aaarrghh!