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You remember the other week when I reviewed that “biography” of Baron Ungern-Sternberg and talked about how it was cool to read a book that didn’t over-explain things to the reader? Well, this book is like that too, only it’s an alternate history story rather than a biography.

You can tell things are different in this world. The story is about the Energy Wars of 1994, when terrorists of unclear affiliation attacked the Johnson Space Flight Center.

General Gus Grissom, who apparently did not die (I think–see below) in the Apollo 1 program in this timeline, is heading the response to the attack. Under his command is the narrator of our story, Peter Caudell, with the framing device of Caudell telling the story many years later to his daughter.

It’s a very short book, taking only about ten minutes to read, but it packs a lot into those ten minutes. Mostly raising more questions than answers. Which is good if you’re like me. My motto is that the best books are the ones that leave you questioning what’s even real.

Still… it would have been nice to have things a bit more fleshed out. The author does include an Afterword which explains some things, but even the explanations raise questions. For example, there’s a note about where the clones of Stalin are located in this alternate world.

This is why I included the parenthetical note about Grissom above. There are multiple references to clones throughout the story, in a way that suggests they’re important, but I could never figure out exactly what the deal was with them.

But in a way, this makes the story feel more authentic. I feel like clones were all the rage as the sci-fi trope of the 1990s. I know I was a big fan of clone-related stories when I was a kid. AI and robots and simulation theory are all right for these young people with their short pants and their comically oversized lollipops, but me, I’m from the Old School. Give me that old-time warehouse with rows of clones in test tubes. If it’s good enough for the Galaxy of Fear, it’s good enough for me.

Anyway, back to the story: it’s well-written but kind of incoherent. But I’m strangely okay with that, because it really does feel like reading a fragment of a dispatch from some other reality.

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Well, right off the bat, you’ve got to love the title.

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Crowther since I was a teenager. He was the world’s leading expert on W.S. Gilbert, and I was a kid who used a dial-up internet connection and an iMac G3 to read archived Savoynet discussions on the G&S Archive.

Well, times have changed, but Crowther is still the leading expert on W.S.G. Now I have faster internet and a MacBook Air, but I have never lost my appreciation for Gilbertian humor, which is to say, sharp wit and clever satire. Crowther’s book contains plenty of both.

Which is not to say he’s just imitating Gilbert. Far from it. His style is different; darker and starker, with a harsh edge not found in most of Gilbert’s works. (With important exceptions.) Crowther tackles the absurdity of the modern world by heightening it just enough, until the contradictions and hypocrisies become impossible to ignore.

Some of the stories verge on horror, most notably “Jasper” (which animal lovers may wish to skip), others, including my favorite, “The King’s Juggler”, are more in the Victorian satire vein, wherein we are invited to shake our heads and chuckle sardonically along with the author. And some are downright uncanny given current events.

You don’t see a lot of books like this any more. Short stories have been said to be dying for decades. Now, novels are said to be dying too, and indeed literacy itself may be on the way out. Therefore, I encourage you to rage, rage against the dying of the light by reading this collection. It’s just the right blend of Victorian and modern cynicism.

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Only Adam Bertocci could tell a story about a small high school chess club rivalry and turn it into a grand drama about life, art, the nature of genius, and the meaning of greatness.

Parker Sabatini is an accomplished chess player in her school’s casual chess club. One day, Ali Wolfhart, on leave from the cheerleading squad due to injury, stops by the club. At first, she seems like just a novelty. Until she starts winning. And winning. And winning. To the point that Parker begins to become obsessed with Ali’s uncanny gift for the game.

Like Salieri vs. Mozart in Amadeus, Parker struggles to comprehend why this divine fire of genius should have been bestowed upon a cheerleader, of all people. Her obsession turns to jealousy, culminating in a violent outburst at a chess tournament.

The book is told as a series of interviews with students and faculty at the school, narrating how the relationship between Ali and Parker evolved. Or, perhaps, devolved. (This style of narration foreshadows that used in Bertocci’s recent novel, The Sorcery of White Rats, which is also excellent.) In the course of these ruminations, the interviewees muse on all sorts of topics, ranging from educational philosophy to the meaning of life.

There’s been many a novel written that doesn’t tackle themes as heavy as these, but as always, Bertocci addresses these big questions with a light touch and economy of words. The book takes only about 30 minutes to read, and it leverages each word for maximum impact.

In the end, Ali’s genius remains enigmatic; as genius always must. Perhaps the best attitude to take towards genius is simply to be grateful that one is fortunate enough to have the opportunity of witnessing it. That’s certainly the attitude I take when I read one of Bertocci’s books.

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Imagine a biography. But not a normal biography. This biography starts out with the narrator—presumably the author, although we can’t be sure—describing how he doesn’t know anything about his subject. He wanders around for a couple chapters, talking to random people, including his girlfriend, about how he doesn’t know anything about this guy.

Some of the people he meets give him advice. Some of them tell him conflicting stories. Then he decides that since nobody has a really firm grasp on the facts, he will use literary license to fill in the details of his subject’s life. That is, he will just make stuff up.

Having told us he is going to do this, the second part of the book begins, chronicling the life of the subject as imagined by our author. You might think that, while what we are reading is not true, it will at least be clear.

But you would be wrong, because the author assumes you will be familiar with most of the details surrounding the main character’s life. Even though, again, he is making it up.

People appear and start talking with no introduction. Who they are and why they are there is not explained. The focus and perspective shifts abruptly without warning.

Also, it is translated from French.

You might say this sounds like it would be absolutely baffling.  Completely incomprehensible and impossible to follow. But wait! I haven’t told you the very best part yet.

The subject of our story, Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, sometimes known as Roman, is totally insane. Thus, everything he does, he does with no apparent reason or motivation. The main through line in his life is violence. Some kids dream about being doctors or firefighters; young Ungern-Sternberg dreamed about committing war crimes. Well, he achieved his dream.

What history does confirm about Ungern-Sternberg is that he was an anti-communist (“White”) general in the Russian Civil War. He committed many atrocities fighting in southern Russia and Mongolia. At some point, he decided he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and attempted to reestablish the ancient empire of the great warlord of the Asian steppes.

Even Pozner’s account, as fantasy-based as it is, agrees with later historical research on this point, although Pozner almost certainly took it upon himself to embellish Ungern’s rampage with extra horror. Because, you see, Pozner was a communist, and deliberately chose the Mad Baron as his subject to make the anti-communist side look as bad as he possibly could.

In that respect, he made a good choice, because the Baron’s reign of terror definitely does not make him a sympathetic  figure. Of course, Pozner left out many of the atrocities carried out by his own side. He’s far from the only chronicler of history to do that.

Now, here’s the odd thing: for as bizarre as this book is—and it certainly is way more bizarre than what I was expecting when I went looking for a simple biography of an obscure historical figure—it is nonetheless interesting, and held my attention in a way that a conventional history probably wouldn’t have. In the words of Benoit Blanc: “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.”

Books like this don’t get written anymore. Nowadays, books hold your hand, explain everything, often multiple times. In a weird way, it was refreshing to read a book that was like, “Here’s a baffling account of a little-known period in history, as seen through the eyes of a violent lunatic and described by a lying communist. You’re on your own, kid; have fun storming the castle!”

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What’s more important: having a good system, or having good personnel? Broadly speaking, this distinction can be used across many fields of endeavor, whether it’s debating what makes a superior NFL team or evaluating how to run a company. It can be applied to the study of history—think Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory vs. Marxist interpretations where economic and sociological factors are primary causes. It’s a major division across academic disciplines, i.e. “the Humanities” as opposed to “the Sciences.”

All Tomorrows is a work of speculative science fiction that seems to lean heavily on a systematic analysis of life itself; that is, evolutionary biology. It is framed as the work of a future alien xeno-biologist recording the history of humanity as it evolved and journeyed into space. Like Gibbon standing among the ruins of ancient Rome, the narrator is reflecting on all the trials and challenges faced by the many species that originally came from Earth.

The initial “next steps” for humanity as described in this book include journeying to Mars, and of course, the inevitable Earth vs. Mars war that follows. From there, humans begin breeding to become better adapted to space travel, and over the millennia turn into a variety of strange creatures.

Speaking of strange creatures, they eventually encounter a species referred to as “the Qu”, beings with a God-complex who remake other lifeforms they encounter in experimental ways, leading to some true abominations. The Qu have seeded other worlds with lifeforms based on dinosaurs from Earth’s past, and once they meet “the Star People”, they are disgusted with this upstart species, and remake them into a variety of abominations as punishment.

Eventually, the Qu depart, and evolution continues to take its course, eventually leading to the rise of a machine-intelligence based empire with no regard for biological life. This empire also eventually experiences its downfall, and over hundreds of millions of years, new species of intelligent life arise to take their place.

As the timescale implies, the scope and span of this book is huge and sweeping. There are no “characters” as such, unless we consider whole species as characters. Many of the creatures described seem disturbing and abominable, although perhaps if given the chance, they would say the same about us. Evolution produces many strange things.

Although the book appears to be heavily steeped in systematic thinking, at the very end, the limits of such thinking are revealed. I won’t spoil it, but the title has a significance that becomes apparent only in the last line. This is where the comparison to Gibbon feels most apt; even when discussing the evolution of life on a massive scale, the author somehow never loses sight of the particular, of those little details that we categorize as “human.”

The book is illustrated by the author with images depicting all the different creatures described, which offers us a glimpse of how deeply unsettling and bizarre they are. H.R. Giger would be proud.

All in all, the book is a great way to stretch your imagination and think in cosmological scales. I’d even go so far as to say it’s inspiring, because all the vast cycles of rise and fall imply many untold stories within them. Highly recommended to fans of science-fiction.

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Remember that book, CCRU Writings: 1997 – 2003 that I reviewed last Fall? The one full of weird occult philosophical ramblings about AI, techno-demons, and inhuman pseudo-mythology?

If you read that review, or the book itself, and thought, “that was good, but it’s just not bizarre enough”, well, my friend, have I got good news for you!

Cyclonopedia is written in an academic style. Or rather, it’s what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote in an academic style while on acid.

The book is framed as a found manuscript discovered by an American tourist on a trip to the Middle East. What she finds is a disordered collection of notes loosely centered on the works of a Dr. Hamid Parsani, who has developed an esoteric theory of the world, particularly the Muslim world, and the Global War on Terror.

Dr. Parsani’s thesis, insofar as it can be discerned from the many cryptic documents and references, is that the Middle East is actually a conscious organism, powered by a dark god that lives beneath its surface. This viscous Lovecraftian xeno-intelligence is the substance we know as “oil”, and it subtly shapes humanity to suit its purposes. It runs our machines, drives our economies, and provides the impetus for massive wars, all in an effort to increase its control over the Earth as it seeks to burn as bright as its nemesis, the Sun.

Scattered throughout the writing by and about Parsani are references to other characters, including an American soldier called “Colonel West”, a Kurtz-like figure who has begun to understand the bizarre and occult nature of the battlefield and gone rogue, leading a renegade Delta Force unit on brutal sorties informed by his and Dr. Parsani’s research into the esoteric nature of the desert and the demonic forces that rule it.

This West character is especially interesting to me because in certain respects he parallels the real-life Lt. Col. Allen West, who was tried for the use of unnecessary force during the Iraq War, even down to such minor details as the fictional West’s fascination with oil and the real-life West’s line that “if it’s about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can,” which he said by way of defending his actions. Is this literary license, satire, hyperstition, or mere coincidence?

I’m probably making this sound more compelling than it is. Parts of it read like a really dry and incredibly confusing dissertation, punctuated by moments of bizarre horror that aren’t as shocking as they might be simply because they feel so out-of-left-field. Still, like CCRU, the book does manage to gradually instill a sense of gnawing unease in the reader.

And also like CCRU, most of this unease comes from the fact that its central insane thesis seems to align with observable facts. If the Middle East really is a sentient force that compels humanity to wage eternal war over the black gold beneath it, we would expect to see exactly what we do see in the real world.

More curious still are some of the things that the philosophy of Cyclonopedia implies rather than stating outright. For instance, the curious fact that the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originated in the Middle East, and slowly but surely defeated and subjugated the sun-worshipping religions—a fact which dovetails with the supposed envy the dark god oil harbors against the sun. (“Since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to destroy the sun!“)

It’s worth noting that the basic concept here isn’t all that different from Dune: a mysterious desert populated by a adherents of an esoteric religion, and a vital resource that is key to control of the universe. Frank Herbert based his story on the Muslim world to begin with; Cyclonopedia is like what would happen if you removed the sci-fi setting, and restored Dune‘s weird, psychedelic vibe to Mesopotamia proper. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Cyclonopedia is stranger than both.

Now, this is where I need to step back and acknowledge that most people are not like me. Most people like a story with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, and do not like to feel like their understanding of reality is slowly unraveling when they read a book. So I probably have a higher tolerance for this sort of mind-bending madness than most. And even I was getting impatient after a while. In a lot of ways, the book felt like it was building up to a payoff that it never delivered.

So, should you read it? If you love bizarre esoteric theory-fiction that requires a huge amount of close reading to even begin to understand. Since I think that only describes about nine people in the entire world, it’s likely not for you. But if you’re one of the nine, you’ll probably love it.

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There’s an old line which I’ve seen attributed to Pericles: “just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” I am very skeptical as to whether Pericles said this, but the sentiment is fundamentally sound. Politics exists in all nations at all times, and can be defined simply as the endless competition for the power of governing. In democracies, people compete for votes. In oligarchies, for the support of the strongest factions. In monarchies, for the favor of the crown.

Thus, there will always be politics. In the latest Brad and Karen thriller, the pair are both caught up in developments stemming directly from government policy changes. Brad in that much of his research funding has been terminated and Karen in that she is having to work with a much more aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Both are affected when one of Brad’s colleagues is taken into ICE custody and then mysteriously murdered. As usual, the duo works to solve the murder, though this time getting information through Karen’s usual channels is more difficult, as the federal authorities are very secretive about their operations.

If you’re a fan of Brad and Karen thrillers, I probably don’t have to tell you to read this. Unless, perhaps, you are also so horrified by current events that you don’t want anything that reminds you of them. There were a few, I think, who declined to read Mark Paxson’s wonderful novella The Jump for that very reason. And that’s a pity, because it really was a phenomenal book that explains current events far better than most mainstream news outlets.

So, my advice to prospective readers of this book is to be undeterred by the political themes. Even if you don’t agree with them! As you might guess, the distribution of ratings for this book is bimodal, with some long-time readers of the series being alienated due to the beliefs held by the main characters.

This may be a controversial opinion in itself, but this review just makes me sad. When did people lose the ability to read a story even if they disagree with some of its ideas? Are some people unable to read Kidnapped just because they are not Jacobites? Political disputes, up to and including wars, get forgotten with time. (“Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor…”) What doesn’t get forgotten are good stories.

Well, anyway, back to the book itself: in the end it practically turns into a spy-thriller tale, complete with secret agents leading double lives and a dramatic cycle of betrayal and revenge. And I love a good spy story.

Pick up The ICE Murders. Yes, it might force you to think about things outside of your normal perspective. But isn’t that what books are for?

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I don’t generally care for zombie apocalypse movies. I also don’t much care for the “found family” trope in fiction. This is a zombie apocalypse movie that ends with a found family, so… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

A few weeks before Christmas, a comet is expected to pass near the earth, one that has not come by in 65 million years, since the extinction of the dinosaurs. People naturally see this as an occasion to party.

Except for Regina and Samantha Belmont, two sisters living in LA. Regina, the elder, spends the night with her boyfriend in a steel-lined movie projection booth, and Samantha hides out in a yard shed after a fight with the girls’ abusive step-mother, Doris.

As a result, both are spared the effects of the comet, which turns most of the population into dust, except for a few who are turned into zombies, one of which eats Regina’s boyfriend when he ventures out. Desperate to find any survivors, the two sisters head for a radio station that is still broadcasting. The DJ is nothing but a tape, but they meet Hector Gomez, another survivor who had spent the night in his truck.

When Samantha decides to start broadcasting her own announcements over the radio, the signal is picked up by a group of scientists who had prepared for the comet’s effects, and are looking to find survivors to bring back to their labs.

What follows are series of frightening experiences, from zombie police officers to sadistic zombie stock-boys when the two girls venture into what they think is an abandoned mall. Eventually, they reach the scientists’ lab—but even there, they are not safe from the hungry undead.

Eventually, Regina, Samantha, and Hector emerge from the apocalypse, along with two other young survivors. As Regina remarks, having taken on the role of matriarch in the newfound family: “The burden of civilization has fallen to us.”

That’s a basic, spoiler-free plot summary. But it omits the best character in the film, a rogue scientist named Audrey White, who is played exceptionally well in her brief screen time by Mary Woronov. She has only a few scenes, but they’re some of the most memorable ones in the film, and I would be remiss not to mention her performance.

So we’ve got zombie horror, a found-family ending… you would think I would hate this movie. But I don’t. I was actually really impressed by how well the film used its spare resource to focus on the core of the story. There is very little fat in this thing; it shows you just what you need to know to understand the characters and keeps moving along.

Then there’s the aesthetic, which is pure ’80s. The clothes, the hair, the cars, the music etc. As someone who never actually experienced the ’80s, I can’t say for certain, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything more aggressively ’80s than this. It’s a world for young people, and like another 1984 film declared: “tonight is what it means to be young.”

But part of being young is growing up, and that’s what Regina does over the course of the film. It’s never belabored or heavy-handed, but in a crisis, she goes from being an immature goof-off teenager to a capable and resourceful woman.

I never in a million years would have imagined I’d like a movie like this half as much as I do. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s well-written, and above all else, it has real heart; not cheap sentimentality nor faux-sophisticated cynicism. Why can’t they make movies like this anymore?

Well, I think the answer lies in the words “low budget.” This typically signifies bad special effects or other negative qualities, but having a low budget forces talented artists to squeeze the very best out of what they’ve got. A big budget is wasted in the hands of a hack, and even truly skilled creative minds may be tempted to get lazy, to let the big special effects and gorgeous production values substitute for solid storytelling. Filmmakers with limited means have no such luxury.

Seriously, even if you hate zombie movies, I encourage you to watch this. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but by all logic it shouldn’t have been for me, and I love it, so you just never know.

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“The past is a foreign country,” according to L.P. Hartley. In his latest volume, Zachary Shatzer sets out to explore this foreign country, armed with nothing but his own whimsical sense of humor.

The first, and perhaps most educational section of the book focus on Emily Post’s Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, published in 1922. Specifically, the section the proper usage and modes of address on visiting cards. Personally, I’ve wondered what visiting cards were since I listened to “The Grandson of Abdul Abulbul Amir,”  which includes the line: “and his visiting card / bore the name of this bard: / Count Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.”

Well, they were like business cards (which I’ve also never used) except in the early 1900s, everyone used them for social calls and occasions, and an incredibly complex system of etiquette evolved regarding their use. Ms. Post—excuse me, Mrs. Price Post, which is apparently the correct form of address for a divorcée—describes the rules for what a card should and should not say in different situations.

A few years ago, I reviewed a book that made reference to the debutante season, and I said it felt like reading about an alien civilization. I get that same vibe here. Frankly, the scariest part is that it feels like an alien civilization that is superior to our current one. Like we’re just apes throwing bones at monoliths.

But I digress. Shatzer then turns his humorous touch to more of the jests of Joe Miller, whose work he had previously collected in another volume. If you read that one, this feels like more of the same, although personally, I thought some the jests were too dark. As Shatzer notes, hating one’s spouse seems to be a source of much of Miller’s comedic material this time around.

From there we get an excerpt from a book (which sounded promising, I might actually read it), a selection of fables from the notoriously jaundiced eye of Ambrose Bierce, and a complete short story about baseball. Now, here I must confess that I find baseball to be extremely boring, and unless a work of fiction about it is written by, say, Mark Paxson or Kevin Brennan, it’s not a must-read for me. Shatzer’s humorous asides make it tolerable.

We then get another set of acerbic observations on relations between the sexes from a writer named Helen Rowland. I’d never heard of her before. Sadly, she seems to have had bad experiences in relationships. One of the running themes in this section is that men are constantly being unfaithful with chorus girls, which, oddly enough, was apparently the reason Emily Post divorced her husband.

Speaking of Emily Post, the book ends with another set of tips from her, this time on the art of camping, or roughing it without anything rough. This idea of simulating hardship while not actually having anything difficult or upsetting happen is, if anything, the most recognizably modern sentiment in the book. Perhaps that’s the reason Shatzer chose to end on that note, to remind us that we are not so different from our ancestors after all.

As a whole, the book is a charming look into the past, and an invitation to reflect on what future eras may think of our own. The public domain is a treasure trove of interesting works, and I hope Shatzer continues this practice of adding his commentary to older works. They can enliven even rather dull stories.

And I would also note that The Great Gatsby recently entered the public domain, so if Mr. Shatzer ever feels “borne back ceaselessly into the past…”

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Only Adam Bertocci could take one of the oldest and tritest riddles in the book (it dates to 1847, I discovered in writing this post) and transform it into a compelling work of literary fiction.  I mean, really, in this very short story he manages to weave together feelings of romance, fate, heartbreak, and dark comedy. I’ve read novels that didn’t have as much going on in them as this book does.

It’s the story of a chicken named Bertram, and the reasons that he decides to flee the farm life and go to… the other side. But, like many another literary crossing, this is more than just a literal crossing. It is a spiritual transformation.

This is somehow both very moving and deeply funny. I’m reminded of Paul Graham’s essay “Taste for Makers”:

The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings– or Shakespeare, for that matter.

That’s Bertocci to a “T”. He crafts something that is simultaneously a parody of the literary short form and a magnificent example of it. And he does it while staying true to the source material. The same cannot be said of many another modern adaptation.

And while I’ve never been as good at writing to prompts as, say, my friend Mark Paxson is… this made me wonder: what other hackneyed jokes or riddles could be repurposed as fodder for literary works? Knock, knock… who is there?

Well, I’ll leave that up to the rest of you. In the meantime, if you’re in the mood for a quick and clever literary experiment, pick this up.