Strange Stories #7. The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons

Strange Story #7: The River Styx Runs Upstream
Author: Dan Simmons
Collected In: Prayers To Broken Stones


Her skin wasn't cold. It was just different.


If mainstream horror stories are overrun by zombies, then 'weird fiction' is haunted by the far more ambiguous conception of 'the dead'. Although zombies rise from the grave, we know they aren't our loved ones returned. They are just ravening monsters in the same bodies. Know the rules of the fictional zombie universe and you can kill one with no moral qualms or regrets. Whereas, with 'the dead' there is some suggestion that what has returned is the person who died... but just altered. Strange.

Often such stories use the archetype of 'the ghosts', but an interesting sub-genre (or sub-sub-genre, maybe) comprises of those where the dead person has physically come back. Often they're back for revenge, but sometimes exactly why is unclear. Sometimes they have been brought back by the living rather than choosing to come back themselves... and sometimes it is uncertain exactly what has returned.

The first story I read to use this concept (and possibly the first 'strange story', as opposed to straight up horror, I ever read) is The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons. Simmons's stories don't seem to feature in many anthologies or accounts of literate horror fiction for some some reason - maybe because he has written in so many genres; maybe because he seems to have largely given up the short story form (the natural home of weird fiction, I'd argue) for bloated novels; maybe because his more recent political views have by all accounts become a bit 'out there'. I haven't kept track of all of his books, partly for some of the reasons just mentioned, but he was on fire at the time of writing this story. It's taken from the fantastic collection Prayers To Broken Stones - Harlan Ellison's introduction is almost worth the cover price alone, especially for all you aspiring authors out there. This book made a big impression on me when I read it as a teenager; it's by far his best book in my opinion.

The River Styx Runs Upstream is the opening story, and it tells of a world where an obscure sect/business venture known as 'The Resurrectionists' can bring people back from the dead, as long as the family pays an ongoing tithe. In a brilliant touch, it is told from the point of view of a young boy who doesn't really understand the concept of death as yet. He is unable to distinguish the smiling, silent person who has come back home from his dead mother:

I saw that she never blinked... It didn't make me love her any less.


After death the boys returned mother comes back to 'live' with them; his father keeps repeating that people should think of it like someone recovering from an illness. She doesn't blink, or talk, or sweat; she waters the plants but still waters those that have died since she has. The father stops sleeping in the same bed as her and takes to drink; certain members of the family never return to the house. (There's hints throughout the story that certain sections of American society take a dim view of The Resurrectionists and those who use their services.)

There are other deaths the boy experiences as he grows up - the pretend deaths of he and his brother as they play at 'Cavalry and Indians', a dead squirrel found in the woods, a family dog that has to be put down (because it growls at the resurrected mother), even a kid from the local school who drowns. And there's a sense that the narrator's natural reactions to these events are being warped by the presence of his 'mother' in the family home. It is a natural and human part of growing up to learn about death, and that what you love will one day die. But how can he when he can still hold his mother's hand?

The consequences of not learning this, for the father, the brother, the narrator of the story (and perhaps for society as a whole) are made clear as the story progresses. In effect, it is as much heartbreaking as chilling - the strange story delivering an emotional wallop as well as ambiguity.

Next Week: Strange Stories #8. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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No Insects At Sea

I mentioned a few postings back that I wanted to try writing stuff for specific markets this year- the stories in The Other Room were written just as they came to me, without worrying about whether anyone would want to publish them until afterwards. And I still will write some stories in that manner, but I wanted to challenge myself to write some to within a specific word count, theme etc. too.

I pleased to say the first of these stories, written for the second City Of Hell anthology (head honcho = Colin Barnes) has been accepted. It's called No Insects At Sea - the setting of the City Of Hell stories is a pretty grim and disturbing one, where giant insects have taken over the world. It was a challenge to write a story for such a setting - not the grim and disturbing aspect, I have that covered - but the giant mutant insects. Such things aren't my normal style. I'm pretty pleased with the result - it seems to me a good combination of what I do best and the darkest elements of Colin's vision.

I think it will be awhile before the second City Of Hell anthology is released, but in the meantime you can read an interview with myself by Colin on the website for the series. The author picture was one I supplied for Colin to 'make scary' but even his Photoshop skills couldn't make me look anything than smug and/or slightly simple.

Other Indie Authors Are Available #7

Some more great books I've read recently from the B-roads and country-lanes of publishing (links are to Amazon UK)

Sweats - Keith Brooke


This is the second Keith Brooke story I've read, and it's unlikely to be the last on this showing. As it's a short story I don't want to give away too much of the plot. Let's just say that this is intelligent, well-written, head-fuck science fiction.

As I've posed before, I love the kind of weird fiction that messes with the readers ideas of reality; well sci-fi can do this just as well (as anyone who's seen Inception or Moon can attest), and Sweats is an excellent example.



Theatre Of Curious Acts - Cate Gardner


Cate Gardner's short fiction was one of my best discoveries of 2011, and this longer story doesn't disappoint. It tells the story of a group of WW1 soldiers back from the horrors of the trenches, only to find themselves in a curious land, trying to get home and also trying to stop the world from ending (maybe). Gardner's fiction is always full of strange characters, images, and references - just off the top of my head here we have dragons, fallen angels, the Yellowbrick road, weird starving zombie-things, and Death as a love interest - but she handles each element with such aplomb and verve that it never grates or seems gratuitous (the start of the story is a bit in-at-the-deep-end in terms of the number of characters and time-frames introduced, but once acclimatised to Gardner-world the reader is okay). This is both funny and horrific in places, and it also has a hidden emotional depth in the way the repressed emotions and relationships of the WW1 solders are handled - a new facet to Gardner's talent. Recommended.


Willy - Robert Dunbar


This is a really hard book to describe; the author comes from a background of writing literate horror I believe (this is the first Robert Dunbar I've read) but this was something else - I'd almost describe it as 'Modernist horror'. Some of the ambiguity is almost like Conrad; some of the neat typographical tricks worthy of B.S. Johnson. Oh, and it's got one of the best uses of teenage first person narration since The Catcher In The Rye too.


It tells the story of an unnamed boy attending a new boarding school (he is 'troubled' in some unspecified way). His room mate is a boy called Willy, and the narrator soon develops a hero-worship style relationship with Willy.

There are half-heard rumours about Willy though - indeed the whole narrative swirls with nebulous rumour and hints. The central character overhears conversations but doesn't understand their full import, leaving the reader trying to piece together exactly what has happened. I imagine some readers will find this novel frustrating and a bit of a prick-tease - constantly hinting at a satisfying answer to the mysteries it sets up, but never delivering the goods. But I loved it - the constant sense of threat and of misunderstanding creating a really profound, stifling atmosphere. Robert Dunbar seems to me a virtuoso of ambiguity here.


Claire Obscure - Billie Hinton

This is a great book, and exceptionally well written. It's essentially a love-triangle story, although a complex, strange, and disturbing one. In its forensic depiction of emotional states and the dark side of love, it reminded me of some of Margaret Atwood's more realistic stories - high praise. I also liked the author's obvious love of words - the word definitions that headed chapters (which was in character for Claire) and the letters to Virginia Woolf were both great touches. One slight (and I do mean slight) flaw was the central characters yo-yo-ing between two men occasionally got repetitive. But otherwise a cracking book - recommended to all fans of literate fiction.

Find Out....

Find out why the Abominable Gentlemen think Romantic poet Shelley was a bit of dick here...

... find out what I had to say when interviewed on the E-Book Bin site here...

And find out that there's going to be a Phonogram 3 here...! (uh, well, maybe....) And if you don't know why that's such an exciting prospect, check out this essay on the Phonogram graphic novels here...)

Strange Stories #6: The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr.

Strange Story #6: The Screwfly Solution
Author: James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
Collected In: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever 
Anthologised In: The Oxford Book Of Science Fiction Stories

... I knew it was real because the frogs stopped croaking and two blue jays gave alarm calls.

This week's strange story comes from the world of science fiction rather than horror; as anyone who has read my post The Horror Genre and Cardamom Ice Cream will know, I take a pretty relaxed view of genre boundaries... James Tiptree Jr. was the pseudonym of of Alice Bradley Sheldon, although confusingly this story was first published under the name Racoona Sheldon. It's not really relevant to this post, but the world of sci-fi seemed to get its knickers in a twist about whether James Tiptree Jr. could possibly be a woman at the time...It seems quaint and faintly ridiculous to read about it now, especially given the obvious feminist leanings of some of the stories, including The Screwfly Solution.

I don't think any readers would doubt that The Screwfly Solution has elements of horror, of tension and threat in its make up. But is it a 'strange story'? What I want to discuss in the context of this story is the ending; the resolution. In particular, does a 'proper ending' to a story kill off the ambiguity, the mystery that I've been arguing is central to how a 'strange story' works? Opinions may differ. And spoilers, obviously.

What do I mean by a 'proper ending'? Well, the kind that the stories featured in this series to date lack, and the kind that some kind of readers need. Both What Water Reveals and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? end before the presumed events of the story have - what happens to Connie after she gets in the car with Arnold Friend? The Willows might appear to have a more definite ending at first glance, but really although the two travellers escape to tell their tale, the full dimensions of what has happened to them are never fully known.

The Screwfly Solution tells the story of a world where violence towards women becomes epidemic, and spreads in patterns like an infectious disease. At first this homicidal misogyny seems religious in nature, spread by fundamentalist groups called 'The Sons Of Adam'. But when the peace-keeping force sent into the area also start feeling the same, the reader realises something worse is going on. The men who have killed so many woman (and girl children) all seem to see it as the most natural, logical thing in the world. It's a generally horrifying story as this violence sweeps the world, infecting even the lead male characters who have been trying to work out its origin:

The dreadful feeling of rightness he had experienced when he found himself knife in hand, fantasizing violence, came back to him...

The seeming lack of reason, of logic behind what is happening, makes it a genuinely disturbing read.

The story, maybe because of its genre, has a different kind of ending to that of The Willows or Where Are You Going...? Firstly, what is going to happen afterwards isn't really an issue (the world has pretty much ended, so not much...) But more importantly, although the reader has been kept in the dark about the cause of the events throughout the story, an explanation is offered at the end. 

To be fair there have been hints at this beforehand, not least in the story's title, and the odd references to one characters research on insect behaviour and how to modify it. Anne living on what she can in the woods, hungry and suicidal, sees something (and really - spoilers!)

...I think they've done whatever it is to us. Made us kill ourselves off. Why? Well it's a nice place, if it wasn't for all the people [...] I saw it. It was there. But it wasn't an angel. I think I saw a real estate agent.

So there you go, ambiguity solved - aliens altered mankind's behaviour to make the males sexual urges turn to violence against women, then the aliens waited until the human race was extinct, and come to take the keys for planet Earth. Horrifying, certainly, but not strange, surely?

Well, maybe. The ending works really well, surprising but satisfying, and finally making sense of the title. But let's not forget that this conclusion is given to us from the point of view of a woman who has, in the space of about a month, gone from being a proud housewife and mother to being dirty and hungry [and] squatting in a swamp in mortal fear. She eats raw fish because she doesn't dare light a fire for fear the men of the local village (a 'liberated zone') will see. Her teenage daughter has been killed, by her husband. As far as she knows she is the last woman alive and she is about to kill herself before the winter cold does... And she thinks she's seen an alien.

Anne's repeated insistence that it was real, was there, show she knows how crazy she might sound, if anyone was there to listen to her. Is she really a reliable witness at this point? Even if she saw something, does one strange glowing figure really provide enough evidence for the cause of the story's violence?

The Screwfly Solution is a remarkable and horrifying story regardless of your view on this. But the really scary idea, to me, is that Alice is wrong at the end.

Next Week: Strange Stories #7. The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons

The Treble...!

Okay, make your own they're-like-buses-hur-hur joke here, but following on from my previous post about having two new stories available today, I can actually announce that there's now three of the blighters...

Dark River Press have published my story New Boy in their February on-line selection - you can read it and the other selected stories here.

They describe my story with the lines What's it like to be the new boy in the office? Especially when the office isn't all it seems... which I can't beat myself, especially pre-coffee.

It is, surprisingly, another weird, messed up horror story. I hope you like it.

Double Whammy

Not one but two new stories to tell you about today...

Firstly my story Haunted appears in the new collection of flash fiction 100 Horrors. The premise of the collection is simple: 100 authors, 100 stories, each 100 words long or less. (If you count the title, mine is exactly 100 words long - yes, I am a show off.) 

100 Horrors is the first release from Cruentus Libri Press and is out on Kindle now (UK | US) and there is also a forthcoming print version too.

Obviously there's a ton of different authors involved in this one, but suffice to say a number of them are 'alumni' from my In Defence Of Short Stories guest-blog post series, including: Colin Barnes, Victoria Griesdoorn, and Kate Monroe.

Secondly the gentlemen over at Penny Dreadnought have been busy again - the third issue, called The Lone and Level Sands is out now.

This apocalypse-themed issue of Penny Dreadnought contains four unique visions of the end:

Precious Metal by Aaron Polson
Only the Lonely by Iain Rowan
The New Words by Alan Ryker
He by James Everington

 Buy it at Amazon (UK | US), Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Some of you may remember the very first Strange Stories post, all of five weeks ago. It was on the great, great story What The Water Reveals by Adam Golaski (you can read it my post here).

I liked Worse Than Myself, the book the story is collected in, very much and left a comment saying so on Adam's site. In a nice turn of events this lead to Adam reading my piece on his story, and offering a response here.

"Instead of ambiguity, I suggest mystery."

It's an interesting response and well worth reading (and let's face it, slightly flattering) - check it out, as well as Worse Than Myself if you haven't already.

Strange Stories #5: The Willows By Algernon Blackwood

Strange Story #5: The Willows
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Collected In: Ancient Sorceries & Other Weird Tales
Anthologised In: The Dark Descent, The Weird, plus many others...


The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid...

I was reluctant to write about The Willows as part of this series, simply because so much has already been written about it: from HP Lovecraft in his famous essay Supernatural Horror in Literature from 1927, to Iain Rowan's blog post on it in his current series on his influences (interesting and well worth checking out). While Blackwood isn't a household name, this story is probably more well-known than any I've feature to date (except the Tom Waits song) and many horror fans talk about the first time they read it in awed tones - it's the weird fiction equivalent of hearing Teenage Kicks for the first time.

So what I've decided to do is write about one specific thing about The Willows - it's setting, which must rank as one of the best in horror fiction, and is a significant part of why I love it so. There's lots of other stuff going on in the story, naturally - the cosmic horror element, the psychological angle etc. - but focusing on the setting allows me to write about Blackwood's story without feeing out of my depth... and also without any spoilers. Result.

The Willows tells of two companions travelling down the Danube river, in a region where the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes - and right from the start it's clear the setting will be key to the story and it's atmosphere:

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous.

Blackwood was one of the first horror authors to extensively use nature and the outdoors as settings, rather than the traditional gothic castles or tombs. This natural background to The Willows is both a realistic depiction of an actual place, and evocative and symbolic. When the two of them land on an island for the night, it isn't a permanent place marked on any map, but a temporary refugee who's banks are tumbling away as the Danube rushes past them. They don't plan to camp on it more than a night, but it's little surprise to the reader when events conspire to ensure they stay longer. And all the time their island is shrinking, crumbling - much like their faith in a rational, everyday world.

It's clear that the two travellers have inadvertently strayed into somewhere where they weren't meant to be, and now cannot leave:

[the view] woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders...


And then there are the titular willows- constantly swaying, rustling, concealing, at times almost like a character or threat themselves.

But the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing...

When attempting to write about Blackwood's use of setting and atmosphere, it's tempting just to quote ever bigger and bigger chunks of the story itself to illustrate my point... but that would be self-defeating. I hope, if you haven't yet had the pleasure of reading The Willows, that this blog post will have intrigued you to do so.  If you have read it, you probably don't need me to tell you how good it is.

All I know is, despite the bigger, awe-inspiring horrors hinted at in the story, one thing that always remains vivid for me is the faint crash in the night, as more of the island they are trapped on crumbles away.

Next Week: Strange Stories #6. The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)

Sneak Preview... The End Of The World

No this isn't another Mayan thing.

The third issue of Penny Dreadnought is under construction, and this time the Abominable Gentlemen are dressed as the four horsemen, for the theme for this one is post-apocalyptic. My story, He, is like a cross between a monster-movie and William Golding's The Inheritors.


As a sneak preview, check out the excellent cover art by Alan Ryker:

Previous issues are available now:

Volume 1: Introducing Penny Dreadnought, Insidious Indoctrination Engine of the Abominable Gentlemen. (Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes and Noble | Smashwords)

Volume 2: Descartes' Demon (Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes And Noble |Smashwords)

Strange Stories #4: What's He Building? by Tom Waits

Strange Story #4: What's He Building?
Author: Tom Waits
Available On: Mule Variations 

What the hell is building in there?

Can a song be a strange story? Well, if any can, it's this one. Calling it 'a song' seems more inaccurate than a story to be honest, since it basically consists of Wait's gravelly, spoken-word narration and weird clanking noises in the background. It's hard to be objective, but I think the words on the page work pretty well.

I can remember quite clearly when I first heard the song. After leaving university I lived in a shared house with three old school friends - we spent quite a few evenings drunk, or whatever. And when we weren't playing the Bloody Roar on the original Playstation (I was always the Japanese-schoolgirl-who-could-turn-into-a-giant-rabbit character) then we'd be watching MTV2. Normally it was indie or the safest of dance music, but occasionally something odder would be played. And once, it was What's He Building? by Tom Waits. 

I remember feeling distinctly more sober after watching it than before.

In many ways, this works similarly to the Joyce Carol Oates story I talked about last week - the character's words are all realistic, and the actions of the mysterious "he" of the title could be equally mundane. Is the song in fact more about the speaker than what he speaks about; more about the voyeuristic small-town attitude that people have "a right to know" what their neighbours are doing? Well maybe; it's certainly a factor in what makes the song's meaning so ambiguous (there's that word again). 

But... it's hard not to speculate about the little details, to wonder about:

He has no dog and he has no friends and his lawn is dying... and what about all those packages he sends...

He's pounding nails into a hardwood floor... and I Swear to god I heard someone moaning low...  (I always heard this as someone moaning "lo", as in lo and behold)

Enough formaldehyde to choke a horse...

I heard he was up on the roof last night signalling with a flash light...

We wonder about these details, and what we wonder is the same as the what the small-town narrator I've been so dismissive about wonders: what's be building in there?

Like all great strange stories, we never find out.

Next Week: Strange Stories #5. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

One Hundred And One Horrors

Here's the flyer for 100 Horrors, which my piece of flash-fiction Haunted will appear in:

As a special treat for my readers, here's an extra horror, just for you:

*shudder*

Other Indie Authors Are Available #6

Well, January has been a good month - a record number of ebooks books sold (a record for me, that is, not one in the Norris McWhirter sense), by far exceeding my previous monthly best. Plus a couple of new stories accepted, which I hope to be able to tell you about soon.

For now, though, you'll have to make do with this interview with me over at the Penny Dreadnought site. I know, another indie author interview. This one was conducted by a man without any flesh on this face though, so it has that going for it.

I've read a lot of good books too recently, including these ones by fellow indie-authors. Find one you like the sound of, download, and tuck in:

---

Welcome To The Underworld - I.F. Rowan

Well this was a pleasure to read - four interconnected short stories/novellas about Dao Shi, a conman, fraudulent exorcist, and reluctant hero. The setting is an unamed imperial city, with the war in the mountains a constant background. These four stories do a great job in building up the detail of the world, and how Dao Shi's personal story might connect to its wider politics and machinations. There are moments of humour here, excitement (the descriptions of the various demons are particularly good), and moments of genuine sadness too. Throughout it all the author does a great job in writing from Dao Shi's point of view, and his character is what drives these stories - somewhat vain, lover of food, but always insightful and humorous.

The author says in his afterword that if enough readers enjoy these stories there may be more - here's hoping for a Volume 2.

From Catullus - Scott Robinson (Translator)


I review this from a position of complete ignorance, both of the original Latin poetry of Catullus or of any traditional translation of his works. So this was completely new to me & I enjoyed it a lot. I suspect a lot of of reviews of Catullus will use the word "bawdy" but it certainly fits - the tone is often conversational, lewd, or derogatory. Certainly a mile away from the lyricism that seems to be modern day poetry's default mode (which takes a bit of attuning to).

It's certainly intrigued me to find out more about Catullus, and the Latin poets in general, which I assume was the translator's intention. And I do love the fact that self-publishing has opened the door for projects like this, an obvious labour of love which wouldn't have seen the light of day in the pre-ebook age one feels.



Ill At Ease - Various

Ill At Ease contains three stories by three different authors; all are dark (huzzah!) and focus on the psychology of the protagonists; none end happily. (A collective of dark authors? What a fantastic idea...!)

 Stephen Bacon - 'Waiting For Josh'. A strong opener, this is a well-written story about a man returning to his childhood home town to see his ex-best friend, who is dying. Old secrets are revealed. Some really strong imagery and scenes; my only complaint was it was a tad predictable in places.

Mark West - 'Come See My House In The Pretty Town'. For me, the highlight of this collection - another old friends reunited story, but with a more sinister tone. With its small isolated English village setting, this is almost like The League Of Gentlemen played straight instead of for laughs. If you are afraid of clowns this will do nothing to help...

Neil Williams - 'Closer Than You Think'. A ghost story, or the tale of a man having a nervous breakdown accompanied by strange visions? You decide. Another good story, I particularly liked the way the horror seemed to take place in such mundane settings - supermarket car parks and rubbish tips.

There's also some interesting notes from each author, explaining the inspiration behind each story. Overall a strong collection, and one that will definitely lead me to explore further work from all three writers involved. I've already bought another Mark West book.