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Ah, US Presidential elections! An opportunity for citizens to civilly debate their differences and then settle on a candidate who best reflects the values of the nation, all in the spirit of good fellowship and totally without inflaming irreconcilable ideological and cultural divisions.

So, if you’re sad that the fun of a presidential election has just passed, and won’t come round again for another four years, have I got good news for you! The book we are reviewing today is about the 2036 election. The premise: one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination is an MIT-designed Artificial Intelligence named AIDAN.

AIDAN, the creation of one Dr. Isaac Shipley, has already established itself as a competent CEO, now aims to unseat the favorite for the nomination, the temperamental Senator Quinn Albrecht, and position itself as the top challenger to incumbent president Sarah Mincetti.

Naturally, while AIDAN is a bit awkward at first, it quickly gains ground due to the fact that it is a distributed intelligence network that can literally start raising money to address a problem within minutes of being told it exists. Typical politicians’ “I feel your pain”-style bromides can hardly compete with that.

But the world of politics isn’t so straightforward as that. There are all sorts of behind-the-scenes plots, conspiracies, blackmail threats and double-crosses going on that make the campaign far more difficult. And the vulnerabilities of human and machine alike come into play: where exactly is the machine drawing its data from? And as for the human candidates; why are they continuing to fight never-ending political battles when all they really want to do is go home to their loved ones?

The book reminded me of some of the better Hitchcock films, in that it’s a fast-paced thriller, yet also seems to have a certain wink-to-the-audience quality that gives it a lighthearted tone. I mean, virtually every dialogue between the Republican president and her wife is laden with cheesy sexual innuendos. Maybe you disagree, but I can’t help feeling like that’s supposed to be funny.

That said, the book raises some very profound and interesting questions politics and AI, and while this might be controversial, I think it is quite probable that something like this will happen in the future. (“God help us, in the future.”) I doubt they’ll bother to actually give the AI a body, though. The debates will just look like when Watson was on Jeopardy! Why, the very fact this book exists tells you that the idea is in the air. Science fiction is so often the precursor of science fact…

It’s an entertaining, thought-provoking, mildly disturbing, and often campy take on politics. Rather like The McLaughlin Group.

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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.

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Haven’t I written about this game enough? I mean, I wrote a post for the 10th anniversary, and it’s not like the game has changed since then. I have. (I’ve become a better writer, for one thing.) And the world certainly has!

But the game is… the game. It’s the same one it always was. So why am I once again writing about it?

Well, part of it is of course the urge to share it with other people. In my opinion, the more people play KotOR II, the better off the world will be. I mean, I even got my mother to play it. My mother is not a gamer, to put it mildly. (But she did work on a science fiction magazine in the 1970s, and was aware of Star Wars before it was cool. She saw this trailer at a convention in 1976.) And she loves this game almost as much as I do.

But there’s more to it than just my desire to indoctrinate as many people as possible into the cult of KotOR II. As the world changes, things in the game take on new relevance. You can’t live through an election year in the U.S. and then play the Onderon section of the game and not notice… things. But this is not, and will not, be a political post. It would be a disservice to the greatness of KotOR II to drag it down into that cesspool.

I also will not bother to compare and contrast it with other installments in the Star Wars universe. Let it suffice to say that I appreciate the irony that KotOR II is both a sequel and a story which, to use the popular phrase, “subverts audience expectations.” These are both things which I typically dislike. It only goes to show that greatness lies not in “what” but rather in “how.” If sequels and subversion strike us as bad, it is because the ones we are familiar with have been badly done.

But the fact is, what makes KotOR II a story people still remember decades after its release lies not in any comparison to either current events or to other works of fiction. No, it’s because of the richness of its characters, the weight of its story, and the stark, haunting world it creates: the war-ravaged republic, shuddering under the weight of its own expansionary ambitions and fractured by wounds still raw from the recent conflicts, now facing a threat from enemies born of past atrocities. Into this swirling maelstrom comes a lone former Jedi, tormented by the demons of uncountable past horrors, and guided by a mysterious old woman…

Enough! I will not bore you to death by saying again all the things I’ve said before. If you are new to this place, or you just can’t get enough of hearing my thoughts on this thing, you can read my retrospective here, or my other retrospective here, or just listen to my thoughts here. Moreover, I encourage you to watch SulMatul’s magisterial analysis here, or Jake Norton’s playthrough here. If you’re in a hurry and want a quick overview, Geetsly’s video here is a good one. For those who prefer to read rather than watch or listen, try Scorchy’s Let’s Play here.

As for me, I’ll raise a glass to my favorite work of fiction; this masterpiece of the art form. I said I’ve changed since I first played this, and here is one of the ways: before, I used to try and explain why I love it, articulate what makes it special. But now I’m content to just enjoy the magic of the story. I hope you do too.

Ruined Chapel‘s regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.

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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.

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Okay, imagine if George Lucas directed a rock-and-roll opera reboot of The Searchers. If that sounds insane, you’re right, but it’s how I’d describe this movie. Of course, Lucas didn’t actually direct this–Walter Hill did–but it shares GL’s fondness for ’50s diners, sports cars, and underworld bars.

The movie begins with rock singer Ellen Aim getting kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, and the strong, silent Tom Cody, her ex-boyfriend, being recruited to rescue her. He’s joined by the streetwise mercenary McCoy and Aim’s manager, an arrogant, snobbish type who acts above it all.

Between them, Cody and McCoy are able to rescue Ellen, but that’s just the start of the drama. Cody has made an enemy of the gang’s leader, Raven, who views to get revenge. Besides that, seeing Ellen again stokes the fires of old emotions, even if Cody’s stoic personality refuses to let him acknowledge them.

It’s not a complicated story. On the contrary, it’s simple, straightforward, and raw. What makes it work well are the aesthetics; a pitch-perfect blend of ’80s punk with ’50s rock-n’-roll. It’s unique, compelling, and effective. Rich, without being overwrought. Bold, without being pretentious.

Amy Madigan almost steals the show as McCoy. The character could so easily be a walking cliché, but Madigan manages to make her feel genuine. She has a very expressive face that communicates toughness but with a hint of deep emotion behind it. And we don’t need to know her whole backstory; the play of feelings in her eyes tells us all we need to know. She’s scrappy and hard-nosed, but in a way that seems earned, and not like she’s just there to be the perfunctory Strong Woman™.

Now, that is not to say this is a great movie. It’s not a great movie, and it wasn’t trying to be. And therein lies its strength: it has no grand ambitions; it’s just trying to tell a good story in an interesting way. A mood piece.

The only major problem I had with this movie was that it uses a common trope that I hate: which is the idea that you punch somebody’s lights out and they will be unconscious for a bit, but otherwise fine. This happens all the time in fiction, and it’s stupid. A fist to the head is not a precision instrument, and it can do serious damage.

But, since the ethos of this film is that of a comic book—back before “comic book movie” became shorthand for a CGI-heavy installment in an interminable franchise of capes and spandex—I guess a bit of unreality is allowable. I dunno.

Apart from that, it’s a pretty enjoyable flick. I’m not sure how I never heard of it until recently. Apparently, it was a box office failure. Which, ironically, is probably a good thing, because if it had been a success, it would have spawned a Tom Cody Cinematic Universe, which would inevitably have become stupid. They actually did make a spiritual sequel, Road to Hell, but despite the fact that I enjoyed Streets of Fire, my interest in seeing it is exactly zero. 🎶 “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away…”🎶

Like empires, movie franchises are doomed to become victims of their own success sooner or later. Better to make a one-off that fails with the moviegoing public but finds a second life as a cult hit.

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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.

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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.

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Book: Candy Coated Murder by Kathleen Suzette is a cozy mystery set in the town of Pumpkin Hollow. When local busybody Hazel Martin is murdered, Mia Jordan tries to solve the mystery while also preventing the town’s corrupt mayor from cancelling the Halloween season.

Like many another cozy mystery, I think it’s best not to take it too seriously. The way the town politics are depicted is not exactly realistic, and the mystery isn’t really solved so much as the killer just eventually reveals themselves. Chuck Litka could have a field day reviewing this.

Having said that, I liked it well enough. It’s campy and quick and it’s about a town that’s obsessed with Halloween. We need to encourage that sort of thing.

Movie: The Uninvited (1944) Richard Pastore recommended this movie to me. It’s about a brother and sister who buy an old house on the coast of Cornwall. They soon learn the house is haunted. More than that, the house haunts the mind of a young girl in the nearby village, whose mother died there when she was very young.

The dynamic between the main characters is excellent, and the movie does a great job of balancing creepy supernatural scenes with light banter and comic relief. The acting is strong and the ghost effects are quite good for the time.

Last year I recommended The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and if you liked that film, I would recommend this as well.

Book: The Horror of Mistvale Hall by William Jeffrey Rankin. This is a creepy tale very much in the tradition of M.R. James. At least, it is for the first two-thirds or so. The last act is more of an action-horror story in the vein of Lovecraft, or even of games like Doom or Quake. This may seem incongruous, with James’s brand of horror being rather Victorian, but I actually liked the dissonance. Part of what made James’s stories effective was the sudden, jarring intrusion of terrifying abominations into a comedy of manners. A good mix of old and new styles of horror.

Book: Haunted Halloween by Gwen Taylor and Jen Booker. This is a cozy cruise ship mystery, although most of it does not actually take place on the ship, but in a haunted Irish castle. When a storm strands the tour group inside the castle overnight, the assistant director of the cruise (who is also named Mia, just like the protagonist of the other cozy mystery above) ends up having to solve a fifty year old murder to put a ghost to rest. The mystery was predictable, but the setting was pretty good. It also reminded me of…

Movie: High Spirits (1988) This is a horror comedy set in an Irish castle whose owner opens it to tourists to raise money, trying to play up the ghostly attractions of the place. However, it then turns out to actually be haunted.

Parts of it are quite good, especially the scenes with the late, great Peter O’Toole. (In his younger days, he’d have made a damn good Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, BTW) Other parts are stupid, or in some cases downright unsettling and more than a little bizarre. The film is extremely uneven, but probably worth seeing just for O’Toole’s performance.

And now it’s your turn, dear reader. Have you any good Halloween-related media to recommend? We have less than a week to go, and I’m still trying to find just the right thing!

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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!

You have to see it in context to really appreciate it. Somehow, the old ways still do manage to hang on in some form, don’t they? You can’t keep a good superstition down!

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…

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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.