This is a post-apocalyptic survival story with supernatural romance elements. Neither of these are genres I particularly like, but this book pleasantly surprised me. Part of what makes it work is that not a lot of time is spent on explaining why the apocalypse occurs. One minute everything is fine, then bam! It’s… not fine. Everything is destroyed and monsters are coming out of the Earth to kill everyone.
The story follows a woman named Sairha, and a man named Sven whom she had just met prior to the apocalypse. The couple, as well as Sairha’s friend Cassandra, start out on a trek across the wasteland. Along the way, they meet other survivors, as well as plenty of monsters and other dangers.
It’s pretty much what you would expect from a post-apocalyptic story, but what makes it work is how the monsters are kept out of sight for much of the time. They are most threatening as a lurking menace, hinted at without knowing exactly what they are.
What also makes the story effective is how the tension is built. More than once, the party goes to some sinister location, such as an abandoned store, and, after a nerve-racking buildup, nothing particularly bad happens. This has the effect of ratcheting up the fear so that when something does finally happen, it’s like an explosion of energy. “Hours of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of terror” as the saying goes. Not that the story is boring, of course, but you can see how the endless hiking across a wasteland is going to wear down the characters’ patience.
There are a few decisions the characters make that I questioned, but as I have said before, it wouldn’t be a horror story if everybody made the right choices. All told, if you like dark supernatural fiction with just a bit of romance, this is an excellent choice.
The setup: it’s Thanksgiving Break, and two students, Claudia and Marnie, are the only ones in the dorm. They decide to watch the traditional TV airing of It’s a Wonderful Life together to pass the time. As they watch the classic film (and the commercials) they do a bit of bonding, as well as reflecting on their own lives.
As is typical of Bertocci, he uses his deft knack for dialogue and his ability to blend cynicism and sincerity, often in the same sentence, to paint a vivid picture of two young women both starting out in life. It’s a very short sketch, but it’s effective all the same.
It’s probably even more effective if you’ve actually seen the movie. But, I confess, I, er, haven’t. I suppose I should fix that one of these days. Especially since the whole point of Bertocci’s story is how the film has the power to bring people together. Which is of course one of the great things about fiction generally, not just that specific movie. Although I suppose sweet, uplifting stories are the best for this sort of thing.
Anyhow, this book is a quick and pleasant way to get into the spirit of post-Thanksgiving. i.e. sitting around having eaten too much and watching whatever is on TV. Which may not sound all that interesting, but in the hands of a true king of the craft like Bertocci, it can be the basis for strong literary fiction.
I don’t often review non-fiction books, let alone books that touch on that dread menace “current events.” I figure very few people, after a long day at the outrage factory, want to pull up my book review blog and read yet more kvetching about politics.
And don’t worry! This book was published in 1998, so perforce it doesn’t say anything about the 2000 election, 9/11, the Global War on Terror, the 2008 recession, Benghazi, the 2016 election, Covid-19, the invasion of Ukraine, or anything else that we millennials can remember being traumatized by. Gen Xers and older, I can’t vouch for you, but I understand you’re made of sterner stuff than we snowflakes. You drank from garden hoses, after all. As for Gen Z? I’m pretty sure they can’t read, so we’re safe unless one of you makes a TikTok about this. Onward!
So what is this book about? Well, to begin with, it’s about legibility.
A State, defined broadly as an entity which governs some group or territory, needs to know what is contained within that territory. Every sovereign State needs to have its equivalent of a Domesday Book. After all, how can you claim to govern a place if you don’t know what’s in it?
However, any administrator will tell you that it’s much easier to administer something when it is well-defined, clear cut, and uniform. In Scott’s word, legible. So, for instance, when the German Forestry Department was trying to get a handle on their stock of trees in the 1700s, they found it was expedient to chop down all those untidy, irregular bunches of plants that had grown up over the centuries and replace them with nice, regimented, evenly-spaced spruces. Much simpler to know how many trees per acre, right?
Except… it turns out a forest is actually a complex ecosystem, with many different elements that all affect each other. So trying to make it a neatly-organized farm for growing wood destroys the network of organisms which make it a healthy forest. Something the German administrators discovered the hard way.
Scott goes on to demonstrate how this mindset leads to the same mistake in a variety of circumstances; whether it’s planning a forest, a city, a farm, or even a nation. In each case, people whom Scott calls “high modernists” believe they can make a primitive and backward system run along modern, scientific lines; only to find that in fact the organic systems that evolved over generations, while on the surface appearing messy and chaotic, actually run according to a highly-developed order.
As a result, technocratic efforts at reform often don’t go as planned. But this doesn’t stop technocrats from trying! Their faith is the faith of Ulysses Everett McGill. I know I just referenced this scene a few weeks ago, but really, it cannot be quoted too often:
(It’s worth pointing out that the Age of Reason they had in France was shortly followed, not coincidentally, by a period known as “The Reign of Terror.”)
That speech is just too perfect for the mindset Scott describes, right down to the bit about electricity, regarding which Scott observes:
Electricity had for [Lenin] and most other high modernists an almost mythical appeal. That appeal had to do, I think, with the unique qualities of electricity as a form of power. Unlike the mechanisms of steam power, direct waterpower, and the internal combustion engine, electricity was silent, precise, and well-nigh invisible. For Lenin and many others, electricity was magical.
And as he explains, despite their professions of science and rationality, it sometimes seems to be the planners who are the zealous adherents of dogma:
If the proverbial man from Mars were to stumble on the facts here, he could be forgiven if he were confused about exactly who was the empiricist and who was the true believer. Tanzanian peasants had, for example, been readjusting their settlement patterns and and farming practices in accordance with climate changes, new crops, and new markets with notable success in the two decades before villagization… By contrast, specialists and politicians seemed to be in the unshakable grip of a quasi-religious enthusiasm made even more potent in being backed by the state.
So, what are all these planners, administrators, designers, technocrats, politicians, and bureaucrats failing to do? While Scott (and I) poke a great deal of fun at them, there can be no doubt they are very smart people, and often well-intentioned. So what are they getting wrong?
Scott’s answer is metis, which is a Greek word that means something like “skill,” “cunning,” or “wisdom,” although according to him, none of these quite perfectly capture the meaning. It is essentially the expert knowledge of a craft which can be gained only through experience, and not easily transferred through words. Scott uses the analogy of riding a bicycle. It’s virtually impossible to learn on the first try only by reading instructions. You just have to practice it.
Complex systems evolve patterns of operation which grow naturally over time, and which are often more efficient than they at first appear. Attempts to modernize or streamline such systems destroy these intricate patterns, leaving a cold, sterile form intended to make its function follow it, in an inversion of Sullivan’s maxim.
I feel pretty confident that anyone who has ever been involved with some large organization has seen this pattern play out. I myself have, more than a few times. In that sense, nothing in Seeing Like a State is truly a revelation. It’s something everyone has observed at one time or another. But Scott articulates the problem so eloquently that it feels like a breath of fresh air.
Not, of course, that it has done much good. Some of the worst examples of the kind of errors he describes have happened since this book was published. Some of them are ongoing. The financialization and commercialization of the world economy have, if anything, accelerated the destruction of metis, and replaced the organic flourishing of generationally accrued wisdom with bureaucracy, AI, and cryptocurrency. One cannot help but think of Treebeard’s description of Saruman in Lord of the Rings: “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”
There are three books I’ve read that I’ve put down, staring into space with slack-jawed amazement, saying to myself, “Whoa, now I understand!” One is The Seasons of a Man’s Life, the second is The Meme Machine, and this is the third. I highly recommend it to anyone who has to deal with complex systems on a daily basis, which is pretty much all of us. Unfortunately.
Anytime I see Zachary Shatzer has a new book out, it’s an instant buy for me. Even if, as in this case, I have no idea what it’s about, his name alone is enough to get me to pick it up.
As it turns out, Mayor of Turtle Town is a collection of humorous short stories and essays. Some of them read like Dave Barry-style observational humor articles, others are more distinctly fictional. All of them contain the familiar wit and wisdom any reader of Shatzer would expect.
A few highlights:
“Dad Writes a Book” is a story about a good-hearted but creatively-challenged man who attempts to write a novel with help from his family. The process will be familiar to many of us in the writing community, as will the payoff at the end.
“Characters” is a list of characters all meant to be in a single story, although how all of them would fit together is, by the author’s own admission, a bit of puzzle. Regardless, I would certainly read that a story if it were ever written! As it is, it’s quite entertaining.
“My Dad’s Tank” may be the most emotionally powerful story Shatter has ever written. It’s still funny in its way, but really bittersweet as well. Probably my favorite story in the whole collection.
“The Hottest Trend of 2034” is absolutely brilliant. I can’t tell you why. It just is.
There is much more to enjoy, but I don’t want to give it all away. Mayor of Turtle Town is a fine introduction to the wonderful, wacky world of Shatzer for those who have yet to enjoy his work. And for longtime fans such as myself, it’s another delightful addition to the collection.
This novella combines Celtic folklore with a sci-fi twist. “The Otherworld” of the ancient tales, whose power is said to wax with coming of the dark half of the year, is here portrayed in the form of aliens rather than fairies or ghosts.
The book follows a pair of researchers, Dr. Siobhan Ryan and Dr. Michael Sullivan. There’s a Mulder/Scully-esque Believer vs. Skeptic vibe between them, which emerges as they witness increasingly strange phenomena. It begins with crop circles and other extraterrestrial appearances in the quiet village of Clooncara, followed by visions experienced by the town’s children, and soon escalating to even more bizarre, and more terrifying, events.
The story reminded me a little of Arrival, a little of Childhood’s End, and maybe just a dash of Lovecraft thrown in when describing the alien world. That is all to the good. On the other hand, some of the decisions made by the scientists reminded me a little of Prometheus. They might have been a bit more careful when dealing with world-threatening aliens.
But then again, we would have precious few good scary stories if characters behaved intelligently or cautiously. Let’s face it, practical thinking is antithetical to good horror, as is perhaps best illustrated by this Far Side cartoon that I was thinking about recently. So I could live with some poor decision making by our protagonists.
I liked the idea of the energy in the air as Samhain approaches, and indeed, I think this is a real phenomenon which careful students of Halloween can observe. Obviously, there was something about the changing of the seasons that has caused this part of the year to be celebrated since ancient times, and I like the notion that the old rituals were only other forms of what modernity dubs “space aliens.” The line between archaic superstition and modern scientific speculation can be a mighty fine one.
All in all, this is a good mix of sci-fi and folkish fantasy, and perfect reading for this most eerie time of year.
This is a collection of various books, articles, short stories, poems, and even sheet music dedicated to Halloween as it used to be celebrated. The bulk of the book is devoted to chapters describing forms of Halloween celebrations in various countries and eras, and how the rites of other holidays, such as the Celtic Samhain, evolved gradually into the holiday as we know it today.
The editing and organization of the book is somewhat peculiar. For example, we are told over and over about the same superstitions and party games. I lost count of how many times I read the story of a young woman eating an apple and then looking into a mirror at midnight, in the expectation of seeing the apparition of her future husband. And as for quotes from the poem Hallowe’en by Robert Burns, well… as “Weird” Al Yankovic would say, “If you missed it, don’t worry; they’ll say the line again and again and again.”
Still, there’s no doubt the older customs are interesting. The practice of trick-or-treating is actually barely referenced; as most older Halloween celebrations seem to have been focused far more on parties and games, particularly those with divinatory elements.
As much as anything, this book is a window into what people did for fun in the days before television, video games, and the internet. Bobbing for apples with letters carved into them seems a rather dull pastime these days, but when one considers the otherwise limited entertainment options available, one sees it differently.
According to this volume, Halloween is closely associated with Scotland, and indeed, imagining the feeling of gloom that must have pervaded the denizens of the bleak moors with the coming of winter, it’s easy to see how a night of diversionary festivities would have been most welcome. Perhaps we moderns, with all our creature comforts, have forgotten the simple pleasures of sitting by a warm hearth with a blazing fire and a cup of cider, safe from the wind and darkness outside the walls of our little cottage, and surrounded by good friends.
As one essay, “Halloween: A Threefold Chronicle” by William Sharp, makes clear, even as far back as the 1880s the traditional ways were struggling to stay alive in the face of modernity. Here is Sharp’s quotation of one Mr. MacDonald’s description of the state of Halloween celebrations in Scotland, complete with regional accent:
Weel, sir, it’s dying oot. Schoolin’ an’ railways an’ a’ the rest o’t’s bad for auld customs like these. In some airts the pu’in o’ the kale stalks is no’ to be seen at a’; in others it’s lingerin’ on among the farm folk; but every here and there it’s believed in as firmly as it was in the day o’ our grandfathers.
This reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? where George Clooney’s character says:
Yes sir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes sir, a veritable Age of Reason, like the one they had in France. And not a moment too soon!
Is this book indispensable? No, not really; unless you happen to be a Halloween fanatic. And I know not all of you are. But if you’re the sort of person who wants to throw a traditional Halloween party, in an old barn, with candles and haystacks and paper cut-outs of witches, and so on, then this guide will contain many useful tips for planning same. I don’t even like parties, but reading this gave me half a mind to do just that…
It was H.P. Lovecraft, you know, who wrote the phrase “the most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” By that, Lovecraft meant that putting together seemingly-unrelated facts, human beings could discover undreamable wells of horror.
But, that was Lovecraft, and his business was horror. Naturally, he looked at everything from the horrorist’s perspective. Can correlating dissociated facts have other uses too? Well, let’s put a pin in that for now. (Either a pushpin or a grenade pin; your choice.) For now, we must get to the work at hand: reviewing The Thing From HR by Roy M. Griffis.
If you’re like me, when you see “HR”, you probably think “Human Resources.” But in this case, it means “Human Restraint.” The narrator of our story, Narg, is a shoggoth who works in benighted vistas beyond time. If you have read Lovecraft, you know what that is. If you have not read Lovecraft, just know that shoggoths are scary tentacled monsters.
And yet “Human Restraint” and “Human Resources” are not so different after all. As Narg explains, his work involves lots of tedious paperwork, office politics, and all the other things we associate with bureaucratic offices. The fact that his department deals with human souls is incidental; the annoyances of clerical life are, it seems, truly universal.
And then Narg is sent to do some field work among the humans. His consciousness is installed in the form of a Professor Weisenheimer, a newly-arrived faculty member at an American college. To guide him among the humans, the upper management has also provided him with a human guide also existing in the same body. A good idea in theory, but like so many bureaucratic operations, it is administratively bungled, and the human consciousness that guides Narg is that of a surfer dude named Murphy, or “Murph.”
Together, the two extremely different minds are forced to guide the vessel of Professor Weisenheimer among the humans. In addition to trying to discover why Narg has been given this assignment (again, like so many organizations, the memos are not clear!), they are soon drawn into a conspiracy among the college faculty involving stolen uranium, communist spies, and of course, eldritch blasphemies and horrifying rituals. This is a Lovecraftian story, remember.
And yet… it’s also profoundly anti-Lovecraftian at the same time. A fittingly-Schrödingerian duality. (And yes, this book does include a cat named Schrödinger.) Not only is it a comedy, which is not a word often used in connection with the gloomy old prophet of Providence, but it is ultimately about very human concerns and concepts; the things that make life worth living. Sentimentality, in other words, which is a concept almost entirely absent from the Cthulhu mythos.
I recently watched the film Living, starring Bill Nighy, which is a remake of an Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru. Both films are about a government clerk who, on receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, is forced to confront the question of how he wants to spend his remaining time on Earth. Ultimately, what he discovers is that he wants to spend doing a modest bit of good in the world. Both versions are extremely beautiful films, and I highly recommend them.
But why am I bringing this up? What can a pair of slice-of-life drama movies possibly have to do with this Lovecraftian horror comedy? Well, this is where that bit about correlating contents from earlier comes in: because despite differences in setting, tone, genre, etc. The Thing From HR has basically the same theme: that what’s important in life is helping out as best you can. Even if you’re just a lowly bureaucrat in some department nobody cares about, you still may have a chance to, in some small way, make the world better. And you should have the courage to do it, even if it means going against standard practice and talking directly to the big boss.
Now, of course The Thing From HR is largely a bawdy, irreverent, horror-comedy, with all that entails. Lovecraft purists might object to that; but I would guess most readers will find it hilarious. Particularly enjoyable are all the exchanges between Narg and Murph trying to understand Earth slang. And by at least one metric, it’s the most suspenseful book I’ve ever read: for the first time ever, I actually skipped ahead a little to see if one character would be okay. (The answer, as it turned out, was ambiguous.)
If you like Lovecraft, but also don’t mind affectionate parodies of his oeuvre, then I highly recommend this book. Even if you’re not a fan of Yog-Sothothery, though, this one will likely be a hit. It’s got plenty of horror, but also plenty of humor, and plenty of heart.
You may or may not be familiar with the game Doom. It was one of the first first-person shooter games, and help popularize the genre. Back in the ’90s, kids my age would play it, and our parents would worry that these violent games would warp our minds. Like we would all grow up to be a bunch of socially-maladjusted violent weirdos or something. But of course, we were all fine, just fine! It was merely a healthy outlet for our aggressive instincts, an aid to develop our hand/eye coordination, and a cure for adolescent boredom. We were cured, all right…
Anyway, the game was so popular, there was a series of novels based on it. This was before Harry Potter came out, so I guess they were desperate to try anything to get kids to read.
Unlike the game, where the protagonist is a silent cipher for the player to control, the novel introduces us to Cpl. Flynn “Fly” Taggart, a marine who has been disciplined for refusing to fire on civilians. Before he can be formally removed from the service, his unit is ordered to the Martian moon of Phobos, to investigate mysterious goings-on involving the Union Aerospace Corporation base there.
Fly is a likable character: tough, loyal, and unrelenting. A very Robert E. Howard-esque protagonist. Which is good, because he soon finds himself having to fight through hordes of nightmarish monsters that would be right at home in an REH story.
Also, in contrast to a game where the character’s motivation is up to the player, a character in a book needs specific and understandable reasons for doing what they do. And Fly has one: he’s searching for his fellow marine, PFC. Arlene Sanders, his best friend. And yes, they are just friends, that’s all. She’s going steady with another member of the unit, also a friend of Taggart’s. His narration keeps reminding us about their “just friends” status over and over until you know he’s lying, even to himself.
Is this a textbook 12-year-old boy’s fantasy; having to mow down hordes of increasingly horrifying monsters with an arsenal of increasingly powerful weapons, all in quest of finding that one girl that you insist you don’t have a crush on? Oh, yeah. Is it nonetheless surprisingly effective? Again, the answer is in the affirmative.
The writing is fresh and witty, and keeps the action moving along nicely while still allowing for some good character development. It’s not the greatest thing you’ll ever read, but I’ve read far worse. It was a story that kept me reading to see what would happen next, and that’s all you can really ask for out of a book.
Mark Paxson once described Stephen King’s The Gunslinger as “simple and brutal and intriguing”. That’s about how I’d describe this book… maybe with less emphasis on “intriguing”. It knows what it’s doing, and it does it well. There is no pretension here; just a simple story, told with hardboiled gallows humor and punctuated with cliffhangers at the ends of chapters. (And, for that matter, at the end of the book.) A latter-day pulp novel.
Truth be told, it was way better than I expected. Admittedly, it’s not a book for everyone. It’s violent, fast-paced, and doesn’t really break any new ground in terms of plot twists or the like. But it’s a fun way to kill a couple hours for anyone who enjoys sci-fi horror.
Now… if only someone had written a novel for Chex Quest.
You know how I sometimes talk about I struggle with having enough description in my books? Mark Paxson, who is himself a fan of minimal description, has even said that sometimes I should add a little more description. He’s right, but unless it’s something really nifty, I generally get bored describing things. I’d rather move the story along.
Well, this book does NOT have this issue. It has some of the most description I’ve ever seen. Fans of description will be in, as they say, hog heaven.
Which, to be clear, is as it should be. It says right on the cover that it’s a cozy mystery, and cozy mysteries are, above all, about vibes. The town of Cape Mystic, Washington is shown in vivid detail as a windy, rainy, Halloween-obsessed community, with more than a few mysterious legends and secrets hidden away under its gray skies.
In short, it’s exactly the sort of place I could fall in love with; and so I didn’t mind reading about it described down to every last richly Autumnal detail. If you love Autumn and/or Halloween, you should enjoy this book.
Now, some of you might remember that a while back, I reviewed a book called Junkyard, which was also a sort of cozy mystery–albeit a sci-fi one. I enjoyed the book, but Chuck Litka read it after seeing my review, and his review was much harsher. (And frankly, extremely entertaining.)
And I can’t honestly say I disagree with what Chuck said in his review. The plot had holes you could fit 660 drums of maple syrup into. All Chuck’s critiques are quite valid; I don’t dispute them in the slightest. And yet, I enjoyed Junkyard. Why? I dunno; I guess just because I liked the setting and felt like all the rest was not meant to be taken seriously.
I think the same could be said of Harvest and Haunt. It’s true that the mysteries which make up the plot are not the stuff of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. And I’m pretty sure the Cape Mystic law enforcement officials do not follow proper police procedures most of the time. I bet if Chuck reviewed it—not to put him on the spot—he could find plenty more issues.
But, I’m not here for a taut legal thriller or complex detective story. No, a book like this you read because you want to feel like you’re immersed in the setting. Like you’re the one in the dark, rainy October evening; hurrying home along dark streets because the howling wind has knocked out the power, and a storm is rolling in, and loose Halloween decorations are swirling in the eerily charged air…
See? Certain things can bring out the desire to describe, even in me. If you want a strong Autumn atmosphere, this is a fine choice.
I know we’re not supposed to judge this, but I think this book has a pretty cool cover. I’m a sucker for “The Shadow Knows” trope, and this one does it well. I’m also a sucker for Victorian fashion. Blame it on my love for Gilbert & Sullivan and Sherlock Holmes stories. So when I saw this book reviewed by Katie Roome on Periapsis Press, I knew at first sight that I had to give it a try.
It starts off like a Jane Eyre-type story, about a young woman hired to be a governess at a remote country estate. Elise Cooper journeys to Greenmere House to teach, but quickly ends up becoming a student herself, learning of the House’s ties to ancient mysteries and folklore. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say we plunge deep into the world of Arthurian legend and the mythology of the British isles.
If I have a criticism, it’s that the book is a little too fast-paced. Elise goes from being an innocent young woman to confronting The Big Bad in a relatively short period of time. I wouldn’t have minded more time for the character to develop.
On the flip side, that could also be construed as a positive thing, because the world the author created was so interesting I wouldn’t have minded staying there longer. It’s a haunting, bittersweet, simultaneously creepy and yet also somehow serene place, at least when monsters aren’t actively attacking our heroes. I could say more, but I won’t. Hopefully I’ve intrigued you enough to make you want to give it a try yourself.
This is a great story for anyone who enjoys old-fashioned tales of mystery and romance; meaning romance not in the sense of love, but in the classic sense of a tale of adventure and chivalry. It features a charming protagonist, plenty of fantasy and magical elements, and a unique setting. Fans of C.S. Lewis in particular are encouraged to check it out.
This is a post-apocalyptic survival story with supernatural romance elements. Neither of these are genres I particularly like, but this book pleasantly surprised me. Part of what makes it work is that not a lot of time is spent on explaining why the apocalypse occurs. One minute everything is fine, then bam! It’s… not fine. Everything is destroyed and monsters are coming out of the Earth to kill everyone.
