Book Review: The Yith Cycle

    Chaosium’s “Cycle Books” are a fantastic series of themed anthologies (for the most part). But they do have one thing that I’m not thrilled with, usual series editor Robert M. Price. It’s not one thing I can necessarily point to. Sometimes his introductions give away major plot points and spoil the story’s surprise. That’s annoying. Especially as short stories often live and die on their dramatic or surprising endings. He also has a sort of Tom Snyder style pomposity. There’s something in his writing style that makes me think of a boorish cocktail guest, speaking too loudly, relentlessly name-dropping, and smoking especially rank cigarettes. And finally, I find myself in disagreement with him on his interpretations of Lovecraft and the Mythos on a semi-frequent basis. However, I must admit that his knowledge of the subject is deep and profound, with a wide reach. He frequently pulls stories and information from surprising sources.

    With “The Yith Cycle” he has collected several stories either directly involving the Great Race of Yith, or dealing with related topics like mind transference or unusual time travel. The Great Race featured in the original H.P. Lovecraft story “The Shadow Out of Time,” which is among my very favorite. Their history is strange and convoluted, but the gist is that they’re aliens from somewhere very distant, who transferred their minds into creatures in Earth’s distant past. From there, they reached forward into the minds of various beings throughout Earth’s history (including the protagonist of “The Shadow Out of Time”) and into our far future. In that future, in a time after Humanity has passed into forgotten history, they will eventually project themselves into beatle-like things in that future. The Great Race is not especially evil or hostile. In fact, while they certainly couldn’t be said to have Humanity’s interests at heart, they are fairly civil, and for an alien species, somewhat relatable. Simple, right?

    The anthology starts with the novel, “The Purple Sapphire,” which I have reviewed previously. I was not a fan.  And in truth, I just don’t see why it was included.  Connecting it to the concepts of the Yith seems like a stretch.  You could have put in H. Rider Haggard’s “She” or any number of other “lost civilization” or “reincarnation” novels and it would have had just as much point, and perhaps less racism (perhaps?).  From there things improve. There are several good stories and interesting reads. I especially liked ‘The Horror from Yith,’ a round-robin story by three authors. Each segment explores and expands upon a theme, using some recurring characters. One of the authors has a follow-up story included, ‘The Changeling,’ which is also quite good. ‘The Sands of Time’ is a cool old science fiction story, reminding one of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others of his ilk. And the next story, by Richard L. Tierney is quite interesting, building on Lovecraft, but also on ‘The Sands of Time,’ and using other genre references. It has a very 70s, anti-hero kinda thing going on.

    One thing that started to bother me a lot were the typos. I know Chaosium isn’t a big publishing company, but I found the frequency of typos, especially in the second half of the book to be off-putting.

    The book would have been stronger without the inclusion of “The Purple Sapphire,” but features enough good stories that anyone interested in The Great Race should certainly give it a read. If you want a bit more science fiction in your Lovecraftian, cosmic horror, this is the way to go.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: The Broken Cycle

    After his many misadventures in “The Hard Way Up,” John Grimes is given a mission nobody wants with a ship captained by a guy who really doesn’t want John around. But things go off the rails pretty quick, with John and a tough lady cop stuck together in a dilly of a pickle.

A. Bertram Chandler published “The Broken Cycle” eight years later than the stories in “The Hard Way Up,” and it’s clear tastes had changed a bit, or the author had become a bit more untethered. There is some strong language and some semi-graphic sex. Where earlier Grimes stories would have been solidly PG, this book roves into more R-rated territory. And the sexism is still there, even if it’s been tempered a bit by modernity.

    The story is fast paced and mostly unexpected. There was a point where I could tell there wasn’t much left of the book, and I had NO idea how things could possibly wrap up. Often, I had no idea where Chandler was taking me. One of the strengths of these Grimes stories is they read fast. That helps to gloss over some of the shortcomings. In the case of this book, there really isn’t much story or seemingly much point. It’s just some stuff that happens. It’s kind of like a filler episode from a TV series. I don’t feel like anything of note was advanced, but it’s still perfectly enjoyable to read it while waiting for a better story (hopefully) in the next book. Had the book been longer or less readable, with no more content, it might have become a grueling slog.

    I’m taking a break from John Grimes now that I’ve finished the first omnibus in which I found this. Baen published “To the Galactic Rim” a few years ago as the first part in their complete reprinting of Chandler’s Grimes stores. Fans of classic science fiction should go get these. While I didn’t love this particular book (I enjoyed it just fine), the omnibus in general is great stuff.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: The Hard Way Up

    The third book in A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes series, “The Hard Way Up” follows Grimes’ first foray into commanding a vessel of his own.  Across seven short stories, we’re treated to Grimes and his crew facing off against various Science Fictional dilemmas and foes.

    It’s classic Golden Age Science Fiction stuff.  Rocket ships, bug-eyed aliens, space dames, and Australians.  Interesting worlds and trouble with authority.  It’s solid entertainment.  This isn’t high art.  This isn’t going to change hearts and minds.  This is fun, adventurous fiction.  A great read.  It was written in the 60s and early 70s, so there is some of the typical sexism and I think a bit of racism; but not worse than usual from that time.  Otherwise, a great read.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Tabletop Roleplaying Review: Eldritch Skies

    The first thing you’ve got to know is that chances are, you’ll be reading a newer edition of this book, and it’s meant to be for the “Savage Worlds” rule system. The blurb on the back says it’s for “Cinematic Unisystem,” and that all the rules are contained within, but I’m assuming this is an oversight from when the new edition was printed. You will need “Savage Worlds” if you wish to use the book as is. That said, I don’t think it would take much effort at all to convert this over to any number of game systems, and dropping out any mechanics, it would work just fine as an alternate universe sourcebook for “Call of Cthulhu.”

    That bit of bookkeeping out of the way, let me get on with it.  “Eldritch Skies” is a slightly pulpy Science Fiction game that uses H. P. Lovecraft’s writings as a basis.  It strips away a good deal of who and what came after Lovecraft, trying to stay only with what the man himself wrote (which still includes the creations of some others, like The King in Yellow and the Serpent People).  Lovecraft often read like Gothic horror, but the content was often more in line with Science Fiction, so this works surprisingly well.  The cosmic horror is still present, but it is not as gloomy.  Humanity’s place in the universe is tenuous and unassured, but it isn’t destined for some immediate, ugly end.  This might be a bit odd for many, more used to “Call of Cthulhu’s” darker, constant existential danger.  An “Eldritch Skies” series need not end with everyone dead or insane.  It could very well end up with folks in some pretty good places.  But the universe will still be a dangerous place, filled with extremely alien threats, and like all life forms, Humanity’s time will pass.

    In “Eldritch Skies,” the events of various Lovecraft stories, particularly ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ ‘At the Mountains of Madness,’ and ‘The Shadow Out of Time,’ and some others have happened. The governments of the world became aware of aliens and the forces of the so called Mythos. They became aware of Deep Ones, the Great Race, the Elder Things, and more.  And they began to explore the weird technologies, and weirder ‘magics.’  It didn’t take long for history to take a new path, culminating in the achievement of interstellar flight in 1996. The default time for this game is 2030.  Humanity has been in space for some time.  We’ve discovered some worlds, set up some colonies, made some enemies, and learned some new lessons.  We share the dark with the malevolent and the apathetic.  We scrounge resources and hunt down ancient artifacts to learn new sciences.  It’s a big, dark, weird universe, and it doesn’t care.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel; nobody waiting to rescue us or show us the way.  Some of the life out there doesn’t even seem to know we exist, and that might be the best possible situation.

    I love this setting.  Lovecraft’s more Science Fiction side has often been my preferred, and those few authors who lean in that direction tend to make me happier.  I like space based Science Fiction where the aliens are really alien.  And I enjoy that while this game is dark, and there are dreadful dangers, it is not without joy or hope or excitement.  It is much more how I actually see the universe, empty of the divine, but open for those willing to reach.  And that’s a great place for roleplaying.  It’s the stuff of drama and character.

    Since first hearing about this book a few years back, my imagination has run wild.  It’s a setting I very much want to visit.  I’d love to play, but I’m much more likely to run something in it. There is so much potential, so much to explore.  And that it’s rooted in one of my favorite author’s work, but taking it in such a different direction than is normally done...That’s exciting.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Tabletop Roleplaying Review: Diaspora

    In spite of being into the hobby of Tabletop RPGs since I was a lad back in the 80s, and in spite of being a science fiction nerd, I have never played the grand old game of “Traveller,” not only one of the first commercially available rpgs, but THE Science Fiction game. It’s squarely set in the Asimov/Heinlein/Clarke/Niven side of things (less woo, more tech). I always meant to get around to trying it, but never did. Then a few years ago, I saw a review of “Diaspora” from VSCA Publishing. It grew out of a group’s enjoyment of Traveller, but hunger for a different style of play. They’ve used the Fate system, which I’ve heard a lot about, but haven’t used at all. Generally, it looked like a very group storytelling focused, harder Science Fiction game than is typical; and that made me curious.

    I’ve skimmed it a few times, reading a couple chapters several times over the years since I bought it. But this time around, I decided to get serious and really read it thoroughly. And that became a strange trip. Early on, reading about system creation and character creation, I kept thinking; “stop everything! I want to grab some friends and start playing this game right now.” But then, as I got into the ‘mini-game’ sections about melee, space, and social combat...my excitement kinda died, and reading the final section of the book was almost an afterthought.

    The system and character creation segments are great, and I very much want to use them in a game at some point. What makes it different from many games I’ve seen is that it’s such a group effort. The group, including the referee/game master/what have you, all take part in the creation of the setting you’re going to play in (a small collection of linked star systems called a ‘Cluster’).  Each person takes some ownership over a system, and as a table, you all make choices and forge the relationships between those star systems.  This is where tech levels and resources are figured out.  A player roles for certain numbers, but then interprets those numbers in whatever way makes sense.  There is a great little example, where they present a set of rolled statistics for a system, then show multiple variations on what that might mean.  You could easily have two players roll exactly the same numbers, but come up with completely different systems when they interpret what those numbers mean.  I like that a lot.

Then, with those systems as a background, you all create your characters. And part of character creation involves linking yours to another, so that while not every character has a direct connection to every other character, the group as a whole is linked in some way (like a chain).  I also really like that the characters don’t start out as low level schlubs who have to crawl and beg and fight to be able to gain enough power to do anything of note.  You’re playing characters that are important people, interesting people, shapers, doers, legend makers.  If you take the a skill at what they call ‘apex’ level (and you will take one at that), you’re not just good at something, you’re legendary.  You’re the neurosurgeon who was brought in when the president had a brain tumor.  You’re the actor who keeps winning the top award for performance in the 3D Vids.  You’re the barroom brawler who rose to be Zero-G boxing champion of the Antares system.  You’re the soft-spoken politician who swept the planet in a grassroots campaign of reform.  Essentially, you’re playing important people.  Not necessarily famous, but important to how the future of the cluster is shaped.

Then the game lost me.  Once it got past the creation of the setting and the characters, it gets into plug-in mini-games for determining various types of conflict.  I didn’t care for any of them, particularly, and I don’t care for the extremely ‘plugged-in’ feeling of them.  It’s almost like in a lot of older computer rpgs, where your party icon might be wandering around a large map, then you come across a monster and it zooms in to a little tactical map and do a totally different kind of game.  I didn’t like it in computer games.  I really don’t like it in a tabletop game.  Combat tends to be one of my least favorite parts of a game, because in a lot of systems it stalls the story.  These plug-in games seem to do that on another level.

So I did what I find myself doing so often. I mentally edited things.  I started looking at it like a salad bar; take what I like and leave the rest.  There’s so much good stuff about ‘the table’ having control.  A lot of stuff encouraging group connection and determination.  The way system and character creation is done, you might not even have a game master when you sit down to the table.  And I could see the game master job changing hands multiple times during a campaign.  That’s kind of exciting.  I like when players and their characters are drivers of the story and plot.  But I don’t see myself running or getting together a group for Diaspora as it is.  I think it will be like some other games with interesting mechanics I’ve read.  It will inform how I run a different game.  It does make me interested in other Fate games, as the mechanics for that seem very easy and intuitive.  I’ve heard very good things about “Mindjammers,” and could see using some of the better elements of “Diaspora” with that or a game like it.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Wonton Soup

    A couple years ago, I read James Stokoe’s awesome “Godzilla: Half-Century War” and knew that here was a comic artist/writer to watch. A lot of comic artists think they can write and are totally wrong, so it’s nice to see one who actually can. With “Wonton Soup” Stokoe lets his imagination and bent sense of humor off the chain. Someone called it a mix of “Iron Chef” and John Carpenter’s “Dark Star.” OK. I’ll give him that. But I also see a lot of the kinda cruel humor of “Lexx,” too.

    The story is about a couple of space truckers, one a prodigy chef who’s left school to taste life, the other a spaced out sex fiend losing himself in narcotics and anyone (or thing) that’s willing. They go around getting into trouble, eating and smoking whatever they can get their hands on. It’s stoner comedy, with meta references and a wild sense of fun (tinged with some bitterness).  The art is surprisingly vibrant for black & white, with Stokoe’s usual sense of strange.

    My only complaint about the book is that it’s sort of food porn, but the food is all Dr. Seuss nonsense.  I mean, it makes sense in the context of the story, but part of me kept wanting the cooking scenes and food parts to be more serious and real. Probably a completely unfair expectation, but I couldn’t help it. I found the sometimes extensive food porn parts less exciting because I couldn’t sample anything or use any of the techniques myself. Silly, huh?

    Years ago, I worked with an artist to write a short comic called “ProxyFight.” We worked long and hard on the six pages. Both of us were fans of “Lexx” and other weird science fiction films, TV shows, and books. Reading “Wonton Soup” made me so nostalgic for my time working on “ProxyFight” and all the other stuff the artist and I had planned to follow up that short with. Alas, that never happened, but I still have those memories.  By far the best collaborative experience I’ve had. It made reading "Wonton Soup" oddly personal.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Old City Blues 2

    Giannis Milonogiannis takes us back to New Athens, 2049. More cases of cyber-crime hit the city, and the Special Police have to figure it out and take it down. The second volume of this old-school style cyberpunk comic series is more of the same. But that same is some very enjoyable stuff.

    The writing is quick and confident. The art leans far more into the realm of manga/anime than I like, but not so far that I couldn’t make my way through. A lot of Cyberpunk anime draws pretty blatantly from William Gibson specifically among genre titans, and this does the same. I was frequently reminded of Count Zero and some stories from Burning Chrome.  Evil megacorporation; scientist pushing things too far, cyber-psychosis, the slums, cyborgs, and some explosions. But it’s all handled well, and worth reading for genre fans.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: The Purple Sapphire

    There’s been a lot of back & forth about H.P. Lovecraft being racist. There was a kerfuffle a while back about getting his bust removed from the World Fantasy Award. Was Lovecraft racist? Yeah. Read his letters. He says some awful stuff. Stuff that was fairly in keeping with guys like him, from his background and geography, at his particular point in history. And that racism leaked into his fiction, mostly in the guise of sinister, swarthy foreigners. You could read a lot of his work and unless you’re looking for it, miss those dashes of racism. The same can not be said for other writers. Robert W. Chambers, who wrote the fantastically haunting collection of short stories “The King in Yellow,” for example, also wrote the terribly racist (not to mention goofy and overwrought)  “The Slayer of Souls.”  And then there’s John Taine’s “The Purple Sapphire.”  Wow. Lovecraft’s racism seems to me to have been the product of a sheltered upbringing, a dreadful time in American race relations, and general ignorance. John Taine’s racism seems similar to that classically British, condescending contempt for all people not “like us.”  

    In this particular book, the racism is directed primarily, and persistently against Asians, particularly Tibetans. There is so much talk of them being “filthy,” “dirty,” “covered in filth,” etc. that I thought there might have been some kind of cultural reference (Taine’s culture) that I was missing. But I don’t think so. In the author’s eyes, as seen through his characters’ eyes, Tibetans are dirty, ugly, filth covered sub-humans. And I’ll tell you, that gets mighty old, mighty quick. I’m used to swallowing a bit of old timey bigotry. It’s unfortunately part of the package when you’re a fan of the pulps and movie serials of the early 20th century. But this book goes beyond the usual levels. It reminded me of when I tried to read “Heart of Darkness,” but was defeated by the rampant hatred of non-whites that was clearly coming from the author, and not just a character. At the end of the day, the racism was enough to spoil this book. But it didn’t stop there.

    Getting past the chauvinism, it’s also a pretty terrible book. At nearly two hundred pages, there’s almost no story. There are long, tedious sequences of characters talking in a strange, stilted way that feels like a mid-level melodrama from the dawn of sound in motion pictures. You can tell the author thinks he’s writing clever dialog. But unless it’s packed with amazingly witty references that went over my head, it’s not clever. It’s just stilted and lame.

    The only saving grace this novel has, if it has one, is that the female lead is surprisingly useful and competent. I was struck on numerous occasions by how unlike many contemporary female characters she was. None of the characters were especially interesting or well realized. But she was on an even level with the two male leads. So, there was that. And that alone.

    To sum up; this book sucked.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Musings on the Lovecraftian Universe: Part 1

    What follows is not meant to be a scholarly exploration or dissertation. S.T. Joshi and others far, far more qualified and eloquent than myself covered any territory I might wish to navigate. Instead, it is simply my random thoughts about the Mythos (some call it the Cthulhu Mythos; Lovecraft called it Yogsothery; I’ll almost certainly use different names on different occasions). In part, this is to solidify or hash out some of my own interpretations that might appear within my fiction and in Lovecraftian roleplaying games I might run. And in part, as with all these blog posts, I hope (usually fruitlessly) to instigate some conversation on the topic. I called this “Part 1” because I assume I’ll want to revisit the subject at some point.

    You will no doubt notice that my ideas of the Mythos are heavily colored by the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game. Absolutely. And I also don’t worry too much about ‘canon.’ This is true. Like Lovecraft, I tend to pick and choose, lift what I like, drop what I don’t, and re-combine it into something more to my liking. Any writer, or artist, or musician does the same thing. They’re not always honest about that. I stand on the shoulders of giants (and dwarfs, and mortal men).

    First up, some thoughts on hierarchy, gods, monsters, and the nature of the Universe. Lovecraft postulated a specific type of universe in his fiction. He broke with a good deal of horror tradition by putting forth a universe where there was no Divine.  The God of the Bible is a myth, and nothing more.  He takes that one step further and puts Humanity in a universe where we are completely alone, just a biological infection clinging to life on the surface of a rock ball, hurtling through a soulless void.  For some, that idea would be bad enough (I actually find it exhilarating and liberating, but that’s another post).  Lovecraft then populates the universe with beings so alien, so powerful, so mind blasthingly outside of our understanding that they seem to be gods; are worshiped by some as gods.  But they are not gods.  The gods of our mythology are at best made up, and at worst, masks pulled over the more terrifying reality.

    There seem to be different strata of these things. Some are powerful on a multiverse level, others are galactic scourges, others dominate worlds, and yet others slink in the shadows, hunting for scraps. Cthulhu, the most famous of these things, is to my mind nothing more than a very ancient, very powerful, very strange being from another world. Likely part of or a last remnant of some ancient, ultra-alien civilization. Some say he is trapped, but I think it more likely that he simply sleeps, under the ocean (or in a pocket dimension) in a weird city, filled with alien architecture. And while he sleeps, psychic projections of his dreams have tainted Humanity, especially the more sensitive and artistically prone, leading to cults and myths and even some ‘revealed’ knowledge. But Cthulhu isn’t the chief of these aliens; he isn’t a god, he isn’t the ultimate evil. Whatever he has planned, no matter how unfathomable to humans it might be, it is still the plan of a thinking being. He/it may not conform to the physics we understand, but he conforms to some deeper, physical truth we haven’t grasped. Like all the ‘beings’ in the Mythos, he exists in the Universe and follows its rules. The rules only seem to be broken due to our lack of understanding. Once again, I cite Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  In the case of Cthulhu (and many of the other alien beings/species in the Mythos), there is some technology, some scientific understanding that is either beyond our current understanding, or more troubling, beyond our capability to understand (at least with our current physical brains).

    Now, where I’ll probably get controversial is with my take on a few of the others.  Hastur, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and Azathoth, in particular. I think of these not as beings; not as consciousnesses, but as embodied concepts or forces. Azathoth is blind creation, the Big Bang.  When an atomic bomb is set off, it momentarily communes with Azathoth. Azathoth lives in every star, in the heart of every atom. The ‘Blind Idiot God’ is simply manifest creation, spewing forth into the void. Hastur, on the other hand, is manifest entropy; the chaos of ultimate dissipation; the winding down and crumbling of all things. Shub-Niggurath is the manifestation of biology, of organic life. She is the drive behind certain types of matter coming together and forming into basic life forms, evolving into more complex forms, and spreading throughout the Universe. She is the drive for survival inside all life to its cellular core. And Yog-Sothoth is, in a sense, the binding agent. He is physics; he is reality; he is spacetime. These manifest concepts occasionally coalesce into things more rightly thought of as beings. They become avatars of their associated ‘god.’ The King in Yellow is a shadow, a reflection of Hastur. He is a concept, become flesh. A bringer of chaos and madness; a Typhoid Mary of Entropy. The Black Goat in the Woods is a similar residue of Shub-Niggurath. And when a so called wizard tries to gain Outside knowledge from Yog-Sothoth, he or she taps into an avatar of the concept, perhaps seeing weird glowing spheres or monstrous tentacle things. If, at the core of all reality, there is a burning mass of something, with things dancing around it playing insane music, then that thing is but a bleed-off of the idea of Azathoth; something of flesh and blood (even if it isn’t flesh and blood as we understand it).

    Compared to those manifestations of concepts, beings like Cthulhu, Dagon, or Tsathoggua are almost (I stress almost) comprehensible. Though defying our common understandings of life, they still seem to be individual things, things that are the result of something similar to evolution some kind of environment somewhere else in the Multiverse.  And on a much more relatable level are species not too dissimilar to our own. I don’t just mean Ghouls and Deep Ones, which seem entwined with us in some way; offshoots of a close branch on the evolutionary tree, or something produced by genetic tampering. But things like the Flying Polyps, the Elder Things, the Mi-Go, or the Great Race of Yith are not so unlike us as to be incomprehensible.  They are alien, with alien thoughts and alien feelings.  They may be technologically and culturally very different, possibly much more advanced, but they are just other creatures, such as ourselves, clinging to the faces of planets, trying to survive in a universe that carelessly grinds us all into dust. Their plans, schemes, civilizations, and kingmaking is no less pointless than our own. Perhaps we will never share enough common reference points to be able to satisfactorily communicate or cooperate with them, but we could potentially operate on roughly the same level with a bit of time and development. I suppose the same could be said for Cthulhu and others more on his level, but the scale of time and development would likely be in the billions of years, as opposed to hundreds or thousands.

    Codifying the Mythos is tricky, and perhaps ultimately pointless. It is malleable and changes with each author who dabbles in it. I think that’s part of what makes it so wonderful and strange. The Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, by the nature of its game mechanics, needed to do just that; to solidify and classify the unimaginable. There are times where that makes some sense in the game, but I feel that once you go beyond species like the Mi-Go or the Deep Ones, you’ve really entered the realm of Clarke’s ultra-tech, where rules of what is and could be break down. How does that play out in a story?  How does that work in a game?  That is up to the author, I guess.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: Valiant 2016 Free Comic Book Day Preview

    The Valiant Comics re-launch from a few years ago had me really excited...for a few months. It was nice to see a bunch of titles launching from someone other than Marvel and DC, characters with some history and fanbase, but enough freedom to tell new stories. Plus, Cary Nord doing art for X-O Manowar?! Yes!!!  Sadly, like Nord’s time on the comic, my interest did not last. X-O Manowar spiraled out of my interest with the introduction of stupidly 90s character Ninjak and the loss of Nord’s art. Bloodshot seemed vaguely interesting, but not quite enough to keep me reading. Really, Archer & Armstrong was the best, but I drifted away from that, too.

    They’ve kept going without my business, and keep putting things out that almost make me want to start reading them again. Now, with their “Summer of 4001AD” line, my interest is piqued again. I like science fiction stuff. Are they boosting their characters into the future? What’s going on? Well, this sample preview doesn’t really tell me. But there are a few interesting things. I don’t know anything about Rai, but he looks kinda like a Japanese Bloodshot. OK. He’s running around in a futuristic dystopia filled with virtual reality and a blasted Earth. Sure. Sounds good. The very short bit from Divinity II adds to my desire to read Divinity. Seems like some crazy, Grant Morrison type mega-Science Fiction, and you know I’m there for that. Archer & Armstrong looks sufficiently weird and funny that I’m sure I’d be enjoying it if I’d stuck around. Faith seems as one-trick as ever. I’ve not read anything from it before, and I know it gets a lot of praise, but so far as I can tell its lone selling point is a “plus-size” woman superhero as the lead. I hope there’s more to that in the actual comic, but there isn’t in the preview. And the sample of Bloodshot remains almost interesting enough to want to read it. Almost.

    This preview did for me much what walking through a comic shop does with Valiant. It makes me curious to see what they’re doing, but not curious enough to drop any money on their books. Though I’d buy a trade of Divinity if I saw it.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: ROM Issue 0

    Legal issues. Legal issues suck for fans who just want to enjoy a thing. Be it music rights, or what have you. Rom was a comic I used to pick through when I was a kid. I think one of my brothers read it. I’m sure I snagged a few issues out of the 3 for a dollar bin at Pro Libris in Bangor, ME. I liked the look of the character. I liked the space battles. Only later did I find out there were legal battles behind the scenes. This or that person or company owned this or that element. Blah, blah, blah. Fast-forward a long, long time, and IDW has managed to get it all sorted out, bringing Rom back to comics just in time for 2016’s Free Comic Book Day.

    Unfortunately, I immediately got a Stan Lee era Silver Surfer vibe. He’s a Space Knight! So, he’s now on contemporary Earth fighting alien invaders. Production budget isn’t an issue on a comic book, so setting a cosmic comic on contemporary Earth is almost as baffling as it is infuriating. Also, the dialog isn’t great. It’s not terrible. I mean, it’s not Stan Lee awful. But Rom references his various tools by name in a way you usually get in Saturday morning cartoons. “My ENERGY ANALYZER will reveal all.” Sigh. The art is OK. Rom’s design is a touch more Japanese-mecha looking, but not as much as usually happens with these newer redesigns.

    So, I’m glad the character is back in rotation. I’m glad the legal issues have been worked out. Now, maybe they can put a better team on it some time.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: The Arsenal of Miracles

    Look, there were some very thoughtful science fiction stories being written throughout the Golden Age. This isn’t one of those. Gardner F. Fox didn’t really write ‘thoughtful.’ He wrote a lot, and he wrote fun. Essentially a holdover from the Pulp era. This isn’t meant as a slight. He wrote a solid ripping yarn.

    With “The Arsenal of Miracles,” we find a crazy future where Humanity and another humanoid species have clashed over habitable worlds. Both species live in the shadows of ancient aliens, and the secrets of those aliens become the crux of the book.

    There are a lot of fun ideas, if not a lot of character development, and not a heck of a lot of plot. There’s a dash of Edgar Rice Burroughs thrown to kick things up. And you can see a bit of Sword & Sorcery, especially in the early part of the book. The book drifts off the rails in the final stretch, though. It reaches a climax, but then meanders on to a second finale that is less than thrilling.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Lord Tedric

    E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith is one of those authors I’ve always been aware of, but never really read. I know his Lensman series is one of the major inspirations for Star Wars, and kinda archetypal Space Opera. With Lord Tedric, he plays with time travel and alternate dimensions, as well as various bits of Science Fiction and Fantasy to tell the story of a man, made god.  

    Maybe I was just not tuned into this one, but I had a devil of a time paying attention. I never really connected with any of the characters or the plot. I feel like there was something interesting at the core, but the execution is lacking. I think there’s a humorous bent to the writing that I simply wasn’t catching. Like in-jokes you recognize but don’t understand.

    One of these days, I’ll finally sit down to the Lensman series. One of these days. But this isn’t going to make that day come any faster.

    This story would later be expanded into a novel and follow-up series by Gordon Eklund. It seems like it became much more of a science fiction-y type thing under Eklund. But this original novella drops its kinda crazy opening for a dull Medieval procedural about knights and kings talking in semi-Shakespearean language.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Endless Shadow

    Somehow, being an avid science fiction reader for more than 30 years, I’ve managed to never read any John Brunner. I know I’ve bought some of his books over the years, but unless I’m forgetting a short story somewhere along the way, Endless Shadow is the first thing I’ve read by him.

As half of an Ace Double, Endless Shadow is a novella set in a future where Earth is building a network of transport gates to re-unite its scattered descendants on distant worlds. Two new worlds are about to be opened, one a stagnant matriarchy and the other a world of death obsessed cultists. Could one of these worlds bring down everything Earth has built?

While the Science Fiction concepts certainly feel like they come out of the Golden Age, this 1964 novel feels intensely modern in some ways. It’s a reminder that women and people of color were given much more to do in science fiction of this era. Not by every author, sure. But not infrequently. And it wasn’t uncommon for novels and novellas to be about philosophical ideas, which is where this books main thrust aims. Does death make life worth living? Is life worth anything? Where does one find meaning or a reason to go on? Heady stuff.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: The Rim of the Unknown

    When I was a lad, and first getting into the works of H.P. Lovecraft and other weavers of weird tales, Frank Belknap Long’s name quickly entered my literary world. His story “The Hounds of Tindalos” was one of my favorites from the circle of Mythos writers I tapped into. Years of shopping at my favorite book store (Pro Libris on 3rd Street in Bangor, ME) netted me a lot of Lovecraft related books and collections by authors from that ever growing circle, including several by Long. Like so many of the books I hoarded, I never got around to reading them. Until now.

    With “The Rim of the Unknown” I got a sampling of his work from the late 20s through the mid 50s. A few were clearly of a Lovecraftian bent, especially 1927’s “The Man with a Thousand Legs.” While others felt more like a Ray Bradbury pastiche, like “Fuzzy Head.”  Many of the stores featured the Atomic Age fear (of nuclear annihilation) and hope (of a new, superior breed of humanity) that so marked the mid 20th century Science Fiction. Several of the stories had the Twilight Zone style “twist” endings (“The Cottage,” I’m looking at you!). And there were several stories with that 50s assumption that space flight would just be a thing we did; no big deal.  He also wrote a lot about families and family dynamics.  This seemed a bit odd, considering he was not a family man.  He got married around the age of 60, but never had children.  

    My favorite stories were the ones that tended toward the weirder, more “big idea” Science Fiction side of the spectrum.  “The Trap” was has a very Twilight Zone feel to its plot and resolution.  But the core concept of the alien in it is something kind of special, and I think puts it firmly in the Lovecraft Mythos.  At the end of the volume there are three companion stories that I really, really enjoyed.  “The Great Cold,” “Green Glory,” and “The Last Men” were all written in the mid 30s, and all take place in an extremely distant future of the type envisioned in books like William Hope Hodgson’s “Night Land.”  So far into the future, the Earth is nearly unrecognizable, and what we consider the “natural order” has been disrupted. In this case, Humanity has fallen, to be ruled over by alien (not extraterrestrial) intelligences descended from what we once saw as lowley. Each story looks at Humans living under the yoke of millennia of controlled breeding and institutionalized servitude, and how a thread of what makes us who we are might survive.

    The thing I probably most came away with from this anthology is that Frank Belknap Long was, perhaps, not a great writer.  He was creative.  He was certainly prolific.  But while I sit back and wonder why people aren’t reading Andre Norton, or Robert E. Howard, or some of the other really great talents of Weird, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror stories, I understand why Long may have fallen mostly into obscurity.  His prose is acceptable, without being especially artful or impressive.  Many of his tales have a very dated feel, not just in language, but in general concerns.  This might work more as a glimpse at the psychology of the day than as a compelling read.  Go read “The Hounds of Tindalos” (not in this volume), for sure.  It’s great.  Much of this...There’s a reason it’s forgotten.  But for fans of the weird tale, for folks into this kind of fiction, it’s worth a read.  You’ll find things to enjoy throughout. 

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Railhead

My recent re-engagement with the works of Andre Norton, and something of a re-awakening of an only slightly dormant infatuation with Golden Age Science Fiction couldn’t have come at a better time. My brain was in just the right condition to receive Railhead, the new novel by Philip Reeve. Longtime readers of the blog will know that Reeve is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I first discovered him through his juvenile Jules Verne style romp Larklight, but really came to be a fan with his book Mortal Engines and its follow-ups. With those books, he delved into a lot of the ‘big idea’ Science Fiction spirit I love so much. And he has returned to that with Railhead, a very big idea, Golden Age soaked adventure yarn. A galactic railroad network, threading through stargates, taking humanity from world to world; all under the watchful eyes of ancient AI. Excellent.

What Reeve does that was less common during the era of Asimov, Norton, Heinlein, and others, is populate his wild settings with interesting, nuanced, challenging characters. In Railhead, Zen doesn’t always make great choices. He doesn’t always do the right thing. He’s not a perfect young man. And he’s not alone. Are the villains really villains? Are the heroes heroes? Or are they just people trying to do the best they can with the things they’ve got? Whatever the case, I really like reading about Zen. I love Flex, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, and Nova. I was curious to find out where the Threnody Noon story would go. And the Guardians? The Hive Monks? I want more.

This is the beginning of a longer story; that much is kinda obvious. There are a lot of things introduced, and not all of them are explored to satisfactory degrees. But there is a satisfying story arc to the book. While leaving things in place for events to continue, I like that there is some closure, some resolution. And I’m certainly looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Also, and you’ll know this if you’ve read his other Young Adult novels, Reeve is one of those authors who seems to delight in abusing his characters, and yes, killing them off...especially if they’re one of the ones you really love. This is something that I find thrilling. Knowing that any character, at any time, could get snuffed out makes the reading more intense. And it challenges me, in my own writing, to be more daring; to remember that in life and so in stories, stuff happens. People get hurt, they die, they come into sudden fame or glory or infamy, they fall in love with the wrong person, that make the wrong choice, they find unexpected beauty.

Like Heinlein’s “juvenile” books, and a lot of others from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Railhead features some young protagonists and there’s no explicit sex. Otherwise, it’s written as though for adults, without condescension or the accepted lowering of writing standards frequently found in young adult fiction. This is a good book. And it happens to be appropriate for teenagers. Sci-fi readers of all ages should check this out. And of course, go back and read Mortal Engines and the other books about the Predator Cities. Great stuff. Hester Shaw, man. One of the great characters.

-Matthew J. Constantine