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As I touched on in this post, I approach drama criticism differently than many people do.  I tend to criticize specific things like “I liked the performance, but not the writing”, rather than just say “I didn’t like that character”, for example.

I just realized the other day why I do this: it’s because I started in drama criticism by analyzing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, thanks to Gayden Wren.

For those who don’t know, there are only 14 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.  And Gilbert and Sullivan have been dead for over a century, so it’s not like there are any new ones coming out.

So, whereas fans of, say, Star Wars can always be looking forward to the next installment, G & S fans pretty much have to content ourselves with re-evaluating the existing body of work. This means watching performances, listening to recordings, and then critiquing and analyzing them.

Very quickly, a young G&S fan gets to know the core libretto and music pretty well.  Then they have to start comparing different performances and actors.  For example, I greatly prefer Martyn Green’s Ko-Ko in The Mikado to John Reed’s. Green always seemed spontaneous, (which must be really hard with material one has performed a thousand times)…

 

…whereas Reed seemed robotic. (In his defense, Reed did seem like a better singer.)

 

That’s only one small example.  I could write an entire essay about why the 1973 University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s recording of The Grand Duke is vastly superior to the 1976 D’Oyly Carte recording. (And I am an Ohio State fan, so praising anything from That Light Opera Society Up North is difficult.)

My point is, when you get used to seeing or hearing different performances of the same lines, scenes, etc., you learn to separate acting from writing from directing from set design and so on.  Being a G&S fan isn’t the only way to do this–I imagine Shakespeare aficionados are the same way.

But most people don’t evaluate works of drama that way.  They just make a gut reaction judgment on whether they liked it or not.

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A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Crowther, the secretary of the W.S. Gilbert society, tweeted:

My initial reaction was that the reason for this was that Gilbert’s works are inaccessible to modern readers because he was sometimes a bit of chauvinist, and most publishers aren’t keen to push the works of another straight, white, male Victorian writer.  Modern readers are looking for more diversity.

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W.S. Gilbert. (Image via Wikipedia)

I was about to say this, but then I realized it wasn’t true–and my own literary interests showed why.  (You can see my whole exchange with Mr. Crowther here.)

Specifically, I thought of H.P. Lovecraft, the early 1900s horror writer, whose influence on modern horror seems to be ever-increasing.  His ideas creep into films like Alien and The Thing, his famous monster Cthulhu is the shorthand for Ultimate Evil in some parts of the internet, and there is an entire genre of horror named after him. Only yesterday I wrote a review of a horror novel clearly influenced by him.

And Lovecraft is way, way less accessible to the modern reader than Gilbert. Gilbert, as I said, was a bit of a chauvinist.  Lovecraft openly sympathized with the Nazis.  His letters, while in other respects brilliant and insightful, show a man prone to almost genocidal racial screeds, and his books often contain appalling racist diatribes and descriptions.

Everyone who reads and enjoys Lovecraft’s work ultimately has to grapple with this undercurrent of White Supremacist venom that runs through it. (For the record, here’s where I did it.)

h-_p-_lovecraft2c_june_1934
H.P. Lovecraft (Image via Wikipedia)

So, if a racist Nazi sympathizer can have such an influence over modern writers, why can’t a lovable old Victorian dramatist have the same?

The answer is that Gilbert’s main claim to fame are the comic operas he wrote with Arthur Sullivan, and comic opera is out of fashion.  In fact, not only is comic opera out of fashion, but the form of musical theater that evolved when it fell out of fashion is also out fashion.

Gilbert’s other famous work, the Bab Ballads, are witty, short poems in a style that is, once again, out of fashion.

Thinking about the Lovecraft v. Gilbert issue was what really brought home to me how out of fashion metered, rhyming poetry is.  Because Lovecraft also wrote poetry, and yet, for all his influence, his poems don’t seem to get reprinted nearly as much as his short stories and novellas.

I have a collection that purports to be “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft” in front of me.  It contains mediocre tales like “Pickman’s Model” and “In The Vault” , but not his great poem “Nemesis”. If Lovecraft had only written horror poetry, probably he would not have one-tenth the influence he does.

So, why did poetry fall out of fashion?  I have no clue.  It’s easy to memorize (that’s part of the point) and tends to be shorter than the sprawling novels that students in schools get assigned.  And yet, poetry–or at least, rhyming and metrical poetry that adheres to rhyme schemes and other rules, is distinctly out of fashion.

(As an end note/bit of self-promotion: for those readers who like both Gilbert and Lovecraft,  I once wrote a short horror story entitled “The Revival”, very much in the Lovecraftian vein set around an amateur production of Ruddigore.)

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[Plot spoilers abound–but the power of this book is not in its plot, but rather in its atmosphere, so I don’t think it is ruined even if you know what happens.  But, fair warning…]

annihilation_by_jeff_vandermeer
“Annihilation” (Image via Wikipedia)

Annihilation is about a team of scientists–a biologist, a surveyor, a psychologist and an anthropologist–sent to explore a mysterious region called “Area X”.  This place was created by some unexplained disaster called “the Event” many years in the past, and the 11 previous teams sent there have either disappeared or, more disturbingly, returned as mere shells of their former selves.

The biologist narrates the story, beginning with the team’s entrance into Area X.  The main features of the landscape are a lighthouse on the coast and a structure which most of the team calls a “tunnel”, but which the biologist refers to as a “tower”.

Almost immediately, they begin to encounter strange phenomena–eerie moaning sounds at dusk, and then, a strange and disturbing line of writing created seemingly in plant-life on the wall of the tower/tunnel.

Before long, the team begins to distrust one another.  The biologists sees the psychologist hypnotize the others, while remaining impervious to it herself.  The anthropologist is killed in the tower, by what the biologist believes to be a creature writing on the interior of the tower.

It soon becomes apparent that the biologist is not a reliable narrator, as she gradually reveals important details like the fact that her husband was part of the 11th expedition–one of those who returned as a mere shell, before dying of cancer months after returning home.

No one and nothing is entirely reliable in Area X, and this is part of what gives the tale its unnerving atmosphere.  VanderMeer skillfully creates a mood of gnawing dread by introducing this uncertainty.  Other writers would do well to mimic his method of creating fear through implication and speculation rather than through blood and gore.

Eventually, when it appears the psychologist has betrayed them, the biologist makes her way towards the lighthouse on the coast, leaving the surveyor behind at their camp after arguing with her.  At the lighthouse, she finds a strange picture of the lighthouse keeper from before “the Event” and, even more significantly, a huge pile of journals from previous expeditions–far more than the 11 that “officially” were supposed to have taken place.

Finally, she finds her husband’s journal, but does not read it.  She exits the lighthouse and finds the psychologist lying wounded outside.  She has been attacked by the same creature–which the biologist now calls “the Crawler” assumed to be responsible for writing on the wall of the tower.

After a brief exchange, the psychologist dies and the biologist makes her way back to the camp.  Along the way, she encounters the creature responsible for the eerie moaning noise, though she escapes and never actually sees it.  After that, she is shot by the surveyor, but is able to withstand it, apparently due to some infection or other mutation resulting from her time in the tower.

She shoots the surveyor, and then returns to camp to make final preparations to explore the tunnel and find the Crawler.  She reads through the journals she collected from the lighthouse, concluding with her husband’s. His account describes he and his fellow team members seeing their doppelgangers entering the Tower–suggesting that these doppelgangers are the entities that returned from Area X to the outside world.  Most significantly, his journal is largely addressed to the biologist; and is meant to express his feelings for her.

To me, this was the most extraordinary part of the entire book.  While she has at times discussed her relationship with her husband, and how its deterioration ultimately led him to volunteer to go to Area X, her tone has always been cold and detached.  When she reads the journal and realizes that her husband made the journey largely as part of a desire to connect with her, and regrets that she never tried to connect with him in the same way, her tone changes–real emotion comes through.

It’s a surprisingly romantic and touching passage–only a few paragraphs, but very moving.  Like Victor LaValle in his excellent Ballad of Black Tom, VanderMeer has succeeded in imbuing his tale of Lovecraftian cosmic horror with real human emotion–no mean feat, given that the genre’s creator premised it on the insignificance of humanity.

After reading the journals, the biologist enters the Tower and finds the Crawler–a suitably mind-warping encounter with the indescribable, in the best Lovecraftian tradition.  At the center of the unimaginable, incomprehensible thing, she sees the face of the lighthouse keeper from the photograph, providing some hint at the creature’s origin.

After this last encounter, the biologist decides to follow her husband’s last recorded plan which was to go to an island off the shore.  The book ends on an ambiguous and yet strangely bittersweet note.

I have said that the core of Annihilation is not its plot, but rather its atmosphere.  Reading what I have outlined here does not give you the sense of it.  VanderMeer writes the sort of story I love: an undefined time and place, with the tension residing in the eerie setting and the horror being the horror of doubting one’s own sanity.  He has written the book that At The Mountains of Madness wanted to be.

There are some flaws–early on, I felt it was bogged down too much by description. (Though I have frequently been found guilty of too little description.)  He uses the expression “far distant” too much, and occasionally the biologist’s detached, scientific tone would be jarred by the use of a word like “scary”, which seemed too simplistic to me.

But in spite of these flaws, it nevertheless remains one of the creepiest books I’ve read. If we use Lovecraft’s own definition of a weird tale:

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.

…then Annihilation serves as the very model of a weird tale.

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Surreality is a “hardboiled” murder mystery with a modern twist: much of the mystery takes place in the eponymous virtual online world.

Suspended Columbus Police Detective Keenan is tasked with investigating the virtual murder of Franklin Haines, one of the creators of the online game “Surreality” at the opening of his new virtual casino. You might think virtual murder isn’t such a big deal, except it also entails the loss of millions of real dollars.

Keenan, suspended for shooting and killing a murderer in an alley months before, is assigned to create an avatar in the world of “Surreality” and investigate the case. As he does so, he meets a variety of strange characters, including one expert hacker whose avatar in the virtual world is a penguin. He also encounters virtual thieves, thugs, prostitutes and other staples of noir detective fiction; all of whom practice their unsavory professions freely in the “pretend” online world.

But soon, the effects of the game world begin to spill over into reality; occasionally in lethal fashion. As Keenan moves back and forth between investigating virtual crimes and real ones that are bound up with it, he also begins to deal with his own demons.

I won’t spoil the whole mystery by summarizing the plot. It is complex and twisting, but not confusingly so. It is very much in the hardboiled detective story tradition, and competently done. I was able to figure out who the perpetrator was going to be a little before it was revealed, but it was an effective story even so.

While the dialogue is very snappy and never boring, even when explaining highly technical matters, the characters (especially Keenan’s friend and fellow officer Caliente) do tend to engage in snarky banter even in the most intense situations. I did not like that. In my opinion, professional police tend to be very terse and clipped when speaking while in action-they want to waste as little time as possible.

A related issue is that at times the mood of the story shifts too abruptly. It goes from witty wisecracks to investigating a homicide scene back to wisecracks again. The “serious” moments sometimes did not last long enough to work. My recommendation would be to have the story begin with the light mood, and steadily grow darker. The characters can start off bantering, and then become more intense to show that things are getting serious. (The neo-noir mystery film Chinatown follows this model.)

In spite of these issues, Surreality is a very strong, well-paced book. By mixing 1930s mystery tropes with a high-tech cyber setting, it creates a delightful atmosphere that reminded me of the “familiar-yet-alien” vibe of books like The King in Yellow or the game Deus Ex, which I love. There were many times when I would read something and think “I wish I’d written that!”

It also did not hurt that the book is set in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, and much of the “real world” action takes place in areas I have often been to myself. Author Ben Trube is a graduate of the Ohio State University, as am I, and some of the scenes are set on OSU’s sprawling campus. Having seen much of it firsthand, I can say that Mr. Trube has a knack for describing buildings and scenery that I wish I possessed.

But even if you have never been to Ohio, you will enjoy this book if you like crime thrillers, or cleverly constructed plots in general.  I highly recommend it.

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Upon the verdant fields, the summer sun shines bright and warm.

And from behind the hill, the sound of cheerful chatter rises.

Yet, ‘neath the tranquil mask, there hides a heart all black and filthy

Pumping out the wretched blood that this facade disguises.

Upon these lovely fields, the very souls are sacrificed

To those damned Gods who dwell in other horrid spheres.

Behind the people’s laughter is a growl, inhuman and unholy,

Of something in the shadows that grows hungry as it hears

The poor unthinking wretches who frolic in its thrall.

Beneath the chiming bells, the passer-by may see its soul:

The ossified remains of carnivores and monsters

A-dragged up from some old and stinking wormy hole.

******************************

The pretty city brims with personalities so witty,
Who, recalling naught of times gone past,
Celebrate the future, knowing it can never come,
And optimism is the only thing to last.

But off the shore there lies the glinting lizard eyes
Awaiting as the predator the fateful opportunity.
For howsoever far civilizations come
There remain those lacking in remorse or pity.

Guided by the cosmic laws, by no ideas or cause,
There loom the claws of obsolescence.
From somewhere across the bay seems to come
A fearful, frightful wail of demoniac essence.

But neither God nor Devil could long becalm the revel,
But perhaps they did not want or need to.
For all these things must end, howe’er that end must come;
It cometh no matter what the revelers do.

******************************
In spite of their political biases, newsmagazines
Often have some excellent photographs.
I once saw a picture of the seaside that
Might have been an impressionist painting.
The truth of course is much more ugly.

Even the sea lies.

******************************

“All forks in the road are as knives in the flesh”,
Said the Commander to his men.
The Enemy approaches, binding us with blood,
Yet I know my loyalty must be to my love.
But faced with the choice of my love or
my hunger, which to choose?
And so I am a courier, a runner,
And I’m back in the ancient tomb,
And the ruin’d palace, and the museum,
And the casino, and the farmlands,
And my choice is the same as it ever was;
Between power and love. Yet!—
Perhaps it is no choice at all. I may
Have both, or neither. Such is the
Nature of things that choices appear
As if they were not. And I still see
Her hair, and her eyes and her body
And her shoes.
The clock is digital, so there is no ticking,
Only the sound of the battery.
I shudder as I gaze into the simmering
Void that mocks my existence,
And I fear death, not because I wish to live,
But because I cannot lose my thoughts of her.
I steady myself. The minds of Gods and Goddesses
Dead or Never Living seem to reach me.
Left or Right or otherwise
Make the move.

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The statue spoke with a voice that echoed for centuries
As we stood in that dread cosmic citadel.
Surrounded by the dying celestial bodies,
It pronounced its sentence upon me.

Was it all predetermined? said I,

And was answered only by silence.
I gazed again into the eerie twilight of infinity.
For minutes verging on eons, we drifted
Into the quiet certainty of decay.

I spoke again, knowing the question at last:

Could I have changed it?

A bell chimed in the blackness.
The Statue Spoke,
and all that remained of Creation spoke with it:

Would you?

I looked at the darkness without
That was as Sol itself compared
To the darkness within.
I had known what it all meant
When I made my decisions.
I may have hoped otherwise–
But I had known.

No, I said finally.

All at once, the Fortress began to collapse,
And my Stony companion and I
Were left to the pitiless void.
And before the Universe and I felt each other snuffed out
That awful voice said to me:

Then it was you who predetermined it.

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In this forest, each night seemeth haunted and dark;
The cold Autumn landscape relentlessly stark;
While the beasts of the night snarl and bark–
As in legends of Devils and Ghosts.

I can hear the melancholy wind as it moans,
Swirling around the trees and the stones,
Making the branches to rattle like bones,
As night birds cry out from their posts.

In the dying orange light of the fire
The shadows a-dancing begin to inspire
Shimmering shapes all dreadful and dire
Surrounding me here in my room.

I glance at the door, to be sure of the lock,
Another wind gust makes the cabin walls rock.
And I fancy I hear an inhuman voice talk
And whisper of pain and of doom.

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Symbols, shapes, and puzzle pieces–
Queer and ancient Formulae–
All appear upon the crumbled desert wall.
Obscured with sands from Eastern breezes,
Here are signs, but none can see
What things they signified before the fall.

The All-Seeing Eye, the Winged God;
A haunting vigil they are holding here,
Exuding pow’r where’er their shapes recur.
This is the ground that prophets trod–
And fled as well, perhaps in fear,
As many a fallen Idol will aver.

At the base, a bony memory
Holds forth the remnant of a hand,
Bleached white from innumerable days.
Whether he is cautioning, or he
Is beckoning–who can understand
The meaning of that vacant gaze?

 Like this poem? Then maybe you’d enjoy my book of similar short stories and poetry.

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[AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m still working on my next book.  In the meantime, enjoy this little flash-fiction sci-fi/horror tale, written in the Lovecraftian/Alien vein.]

space station

It is with sadness and trepidation that I present for the first time since the shocking events of May 24th, 2077, the final transmissions between the on-site Tech Specialist and myself during that fateful expedition aboard the A-57 Research Station.

Everyone is pretty familiar with the station’s sad state prior to that day—how it was gradually developing minor flaws and breakdowns in key systems. It was these breakdowns which ultimately led to the Board’s decision to defund the station. Had it not been for the untimely failure of the station’s onboard data transmission system, it would not have been necessary to send a specialist up to the station to manually retrieve its last recorded findings.

The specialist was equipped with standard space exploration suit, a typical array of nano-machine tools and networked data collection devices for such a mission.  It was, all in all, a completely routine assignment, and as his handler I was not expecting to deal with some of the situations which we ultimately confronted. What follows is the transcript of our communications, up to the point at which I lost contact with him:

  “My systems show you’re at the docking bay entrance now. Confirm?”

            “That’s right. Looks like most of the power must be gone from the place—there’s only emergency lighting. There’s a viewport here—I can see the earth. Wave so I can see you.”

            “Heh. Can you open the door?”

            “Roger that.” [Sound of hissing, buzzing as he apparently rewired the door.]

            “Okay, I’m inside now.”

            “What can you see?”

            “Not much. Main corridor seems even darker than the last one, can barely see in here. Looks like it’s… decaying. What the…, is that rust?”

            “No, it couldn’t be—it’s not made of metal. It’s strange that it’s only emergency power—the readings show full energy levels. In any case, the layout says you’re a couple corridors away from the data lab. Go down the main corridor and go left.”

            [Clanking of his magnetic gravity boots on the stations floor.]

            “It’s so damn dark, and—there’s some kind of… goo or something coating the floors. Like oil.”

            “That’s really weird. Might explain the weird auto-transmissions we’ve received. The energy signatures suggested it was overloaded, but I don’t…”

            [Distant crashing and hissing sounds.]

            “What was that? Hang on a minute.”

            [Heavy breathing, more clanking. Sound of hiss as door opens.]

            “I went through this door at the end of the hall. Where should I be now?”

            “You should be in the observation room. Should be a big window.”

            “Well, it’s closed. Emergency light here too, and—[expletive]!”

            [Sound of fighting, then heavy breathing.]

            “What happened?”

            “I just saw a head—it was flying around the room! I—I didn’t know what I was seeing. “

            “A head? A human head!?”

            “No—a, uh, animal or something. Did they run animal experiments up here?”

            “I think so—maybe they forgot to throw out their trash or something.”

            [More clanking, heavy breathing]

            “What would have caused the windows to all seal?”

            “Some kind of emergency warning might have gone off—again, could be tied into why we got those signals.”

            “Too dark—no emergency lights even. I’ve got my flashlight and—whoa!”

            “What happened?”

            “This area’s demagnetized or something—I’m floating.”

            “There should be two doors—try to reach the one on the left.”

            “Roger that.”

            [Long silence, followed by hiss of doors opening and a metallic clang]

            “Ok, this area seems better lit, although it’s… flickering. I can’t, uh, I can’t see the source of it…”

            [Slow clanking of his footsteps. Strange hissing or growling noise heard. A few seconds of silence]

            [Weird scrabbling or scratching sound]

            “Oh, God!”

            “What?”

            [Sound of metal screeching]

            “What’s going on up there?”

            [Heavy breathing.]

            “Answer me, man! What’s happening?”

            (whispered): “Be quiet. They might hear you.”

            [A minute’s silence. Distant scratching or hissing heard. Grunting or yelling; inaudible words, and then a howl.]

            “Are you there?”

            [More hissing and growling, ending in a final, metallic grinding or crunching sound.]

            <SIGNAL LOST>

That was the last of the transmissions received from him. I cannot speculate as to the meaning of his final words. We can only conjecture whether this bizarre and abrupt ending had any connection with the sudden degradation of the station’s orbit, and its furious plunge into the Pacific ocean, many weeks ahead of its scheduled destruction. Most of the station’s wreckage was incinerated of course, but among the few pieces recovered, one unusually large section of its hull survived relatively intact. The research team sent to recover the debris found it had a strange hole torn in it. Obviously, all debris is expected to be badly damaged, but the hole bore the appearance of having been torn deliberately from within.

Perhaps it is only a strange coincidence, but the specialist’s final words lead me to wonder if there is some unknown sentient force at work. In connection with the new reports of deep-sea divers glimpsing bizarre creatures lurking beneath the sea, and the sudden decimation of the whale shark population that has recently occurred in that part of the ocean, it leads me to feel it necessary to urge caution when exploring that region, and I think sending Naval forces to the area is advisable. Some may argue that it seems unlikely anything dangerous may lurk down there, but while it is certainly true that the darkest depths of the sea are very inhospitable to life, I contend that something which had once resided in the blackness of space itself could easily survive the extreme conditions of the ocean floor.

THE END

 Like this story? Then maybe you’d enjoy my book of similar horror-themed short stories and poems.

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As promised, I’ve been working on my next book.  I hit a bit of a rough patch where I wasn’t sure how much exposition to give.  It’s a new thing for me because previously I’ve only known two different scenarios in my writing:

  1. Writing a section that is just really fun to write.
  2. Writing a section that I need to have, but am not enjoying and am just slogging through.

Needless to say, the things in category 1 are much better done than those in category 2.  The latter inevitably end up needing to be revised.

But I reached a point in my new book that was really neither.  I felt like I could go either way on this section; I could linger a bit and give some more atmospheric exposition, or I could just say what I needed to say and move along to the next part.  I’m torn about how to go–part of me wants to move on, and I have read advice for writers that says not to put in unnecessary stuff.

On the other hand, I think (and have been told by multiple readers) that my earlier stories fell into the trap of moving too quickly and not lingering enough on certain things to set the scene.  So I am inclined to spend more time on stage-setting than I ordinarily would, to try to correct for this tendency.

One thing this forces me to do is really picture the scene in my mind.  This is harder than you would think.  In the past when I have written stuff, I have had a general sketch in mind, but nothing too detailed.  This caused me to try and get away with saying some pretty vague stuff.  This way, I’ll now have a more firm idea in mind, and can communicate it better to the readers.

The scene I’m currently writing is also important because (not to give too much away) it is setting up a location that the protagonist will return to later, where the majority of the action in the story will take place.  So it’s a good opportunity for some foreshadowing, and I don’t want to miss out on that.