World Fantasy Award Bust

Yeah, sorry. I am doing this.

Late to the party, as usual.

I was looking up some stuff about Peter Straub, because Ghost Story keeps getting better and I'm thinking I might want to read more of this guy, and I noticed that he had won the World Fantasy Award for his book 'Koko'. And after my initial excitement I was reminded of all the outcry concerning the World Fantasy Award bust, a little while back.

Let me say first that I'm a troubled and isolated individual and very much an introvert, so even the notion of coming out of my door and viewing the world in all its exotic variety is very much abhorrent to me. And because of this and of growing up in a circle of friends and family members that is practically exclusively white, I don't really come into contact with racism often or even at all.

(But then this isn't really about racism for me. This is entirely about identity dismissal.)

So then, with my extremely qualified criteria for giving my opinions on this:

What do I think of the doing away with the bust of Lovecraft as the physical representation for the World Fantasy Award, in response to public outcry against Lovecraft's racism, present in his work and personal views?

I think it's a silly response.

Lovecraft is dead and though he definitely had more than a few racist tones in his work and writings, he apparently lamented his racism later in life.
Regardless of if any of what he did was despicable or not... We are so many influences rolled up into one I keep finding it stunning when people show such a short-sighted, unwilling effort to see how others have come to be what they are or were. They focus on the aspects and then stamp a seal of disapproval and outright condemnation on the whole.

What I'm saying is that he was human and he fucked up and he has since lamented and guess what; he's dead and gone. Gone a while. A little over 80 years in fact. So really quite dead. So I'm not going to spit in the face of his memory and label him as just this one aspect of the identity that he was. Unthinkingly dismiss all his troubles and woes and joys and hates.

But hey, you do you and just label anyone however you want to. Dismiss them and be just as bigoted as the person you think you hate. But the truth is he didn't know you for you and you can't know him for who he really was.
Be unfeeling, unsympathetic, closedminded and above all, stand strong for your righteous beliefs, all bubbled up into the safe cocoon of your own selfish, warping hate.

Ahem.

There was some talk of a Cthulhu statue for a while, which would have been indescribably awesome, (see my cthulhu-plague marine to the right, partially modelled on Bill Nighy's Davy Jones)  but I figure they couldn't get far away enough from "The Toxic Legacy of Lovecraft" with that. so here we have it then... The replacement.

An ugly tree.

The reasons for doing away with the bust might be blinkeredly focused on just one aspect of Lovecraft's character, like a bad case of tunnel vision,

but to be honest I never liked that singularly ugly bust of his face. So regardless of the reasons that prompted it, I do applaud the change.

But you could've at least given us something more inspired than this. Something more representative of the imagination and dedication inherent in the act of creating this type of art.

Sure, using the face of a particular author for a specific genre in literature was never going to stand the test of time, like a bust of Mozart would for music, but I'm rather thinking that a random-ass statue of a sun in what looks like a bonsai tree won't either. 

As an afterthought.

It's the same sentiment about which language the books are in. For now, all the contestants need to have their entry having been published in the english language or have to have been translated to it.

But calling it the World Fantasy Award seems very odd by those criteria, if you rule out the books not published in English. It's typical western hubris. Our own little centre of the world.

You know, that'll have to change and eventually there'll be an uproar about that as well.

Because times keep changing. Our beliefs, language, cultures and religions are uprooted and outdated and they will change with the times to conform to the predominant cultural zeitgeist of the moment. And in 10-thousand years there will be but one race on this earth and we'll all belong to it, and they'll look at this time and they'll shake their multiple green heads and grey flippers (for fotosynthesis and to blend in with the rest of the fishes, respectively. Obviously.) in bafflement, shrug their blobroxus, continue on with their day and forget all about this ridiculous rage of a bunch of humanoids about an even deader humanoid's bust and whether or not it was inappropriate to use his face to celebrate the act of imaginative writing.

Or so I can hope.

Update

I'm trying to take it all a little less serious nowadays, so here's me being relaxed.

What's next on the blog is some stuff concerning Paradise Lost. It'll be a longer project which I'll be dipping in and out of. I've read two out of the 12 books already and I'm looking at how to approach writing about them. I'm thinking a very relaxed way of writing.

Right now I'm reading Ghost Story by Peter Straub, as part of the Terror 8 set of books. Also because I've heard enough about it over the years and guess what, though I'm only 150 pages in, It's very good. I love how it's structured and how the mysteries seem very close to the surface but yet are able to remain just out of reach. It also has complex and interesting characters, though the women seem unanimously unlikeable.

Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age

Gaming-wise I'm replaying a childhood favourite that's just had a remaster. It's quite a substantial difference from the one I played, with updated graphics, markedly better sounding music (which always was one of the best things of the game) that was re-recorded with a new orchestra.
A new trial mode (which I'll see when I'll try it out, if I even do), and apparently there's also new stuff in this one, as it's the remaster of the version of the game that the western release never got.
I have little problems with the game but it still irks me hugely that I can't change the ridiculous dressing choices of the characters. That and Vaan's hideously unlikable English spoken voice.
The Gambit system is complex, but rewarding once you figure out how it all works and the combat starts moving like a well-oiled train.

It's been a while since I've been so involved in a game. Might have been since Metal Gear Solid 5.
The best kind of plain ol' escapism. A whole world to conquer.

I also managed to see Kong: Skull Island this weekend, which was way more brutal than I thought it would be.

It was pretty great but I found that the plot kept jumping between scenes sometimes, which gave me some disconnect with the film. John Goodman and Samuel L. were amazing, as per usual. All of the other actors seemed a little miscast. Tom Hiddleston's posh british accent, in particular, made me gibber with mirth every time he opened his mouth.

Something I did not expect at all were the numerous homages to Apocalypse Now. Very obvious and very, very welcome. Just lovely.

I still might prefer Peter Jackson's King Kong, though. There was something so magical about that movie. And the music is still very beautiful.

Fuck that insects part though.

Personal: Road of Faith and The Second Apocalypse - part 3

The Second Apocalypse

This next bit won't be for everyone because I noticed that it might be very incoherent for anyone who hasn't read the books.
But because of some of the bleed-over of the negativity and the fact that these days it is almost inextricably linked to the Road of Faith stuff, and of course the fact that this whole Faith post has had its ultimate origin in this; because I wanted to talk specifically about the hidden end goal (by my thinking) at the heart of the Second Apocalypse's narrative, It still is the final part.

As such, this isn't a review and should maybe not be read if you haven't read the series. Because I think I'll be revealing its end, or what I hope to be its end.
For that I need to talk about crucial elements and plot developments of the books.
That means massive spoilers, people.
Or at least I think they might be spoilers; this is mostly speculation and interpretation and I might still be way off. But I don't believe that I am.

I'll put a jump-break before I begin to spoil in earnest though, because I'll first try to convince you to go and read the books yourself.

Everything but the Unholy Consult

Anyway, before I jump into it I should maybe say that if you haven't read anything about this series and you like challenging Epic Fantasy fiction, this might be something you want to take a look at.

Scott Bakker's the Prince of Nothing trilogy and the following Aspect-Emperor quartet (it was supposed to be a trilogy too, but you know how things go) together form parts 1 and 2 of the Second Apocalypse series. It's not tacked on either. The whole thing was supposed to be three books, but every book has since escalated into its own cycle.
And this is because the story needed that room. It simply has to be so, there is no redundancy here.
The books themselves aren't even that long either.

The Prince of Nothing trilogy is set in a world of religion and war. There are various forms of deliciously complicated, but structured, magic systems and an eclectic assortment of gods.
Also, for once humanity is not the worst thing under the sun; they are outstripped by vile monsters that prey on them in all the worst ways; the Inchoroi.
There is a once upon a time great and mortal race that has since, at a terrible and unforeseen price, left its mortal tethers behind; The Non-Men, who now live on at the world's fringes, possessing power and madness in equal measure.

Written by a philosophy teacher, the series has got the deep philosophizing in spades and this is reflected in the characters, who are exceedingly well realised, though they might not necessarily be likeable.

If you don't mind drowning in a tide of human filth and darkness, go check it out yourself.

Despite of that darkness, to me, the world of the Three Seas felt like coming home.

Like those times when I was reading the Bible.

I've seen the term applied willy-nilly to books before and when read afterward they have always disappointed me, but Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse is truly 'Biblical' in scope.

Old Testament Biblical.

Like in the Bible, Bakker's world is filled with prophets, holy men and holy wars, a higher calling, faith and strife, divine purpose and divine reward and the like.
A culture near an inland sea, old sandy desserts and old sandy cities and an entire people marching from them to get to their promised destination, raping, killing and burning their way across unfamiliar lands because their gods tell them that it is right of them to do so, justified, and how the power of belief makes this possible and, of course, it talks about the darkness from where all of these things originate.

A book of Iron men and their Saints.

It's geared and designed to strike a chord with the subconscious upbringing of people raised within a Christian society, whether they believe or not. This goes so far as to include the same reverential tones even during the most dire subject matter and the manner of description, up to and including the same type of philosophical and biblical ambiguity in its various expressions.
I'm not sure how these books would connect with people not raised with christianity but I'm guessing that there might be some difficulties in identifying with them in those cases.

It bears repeating here that the books are extremely dark. This is mostly because there is little or no way to get away from the darkness, apart from the phenomenal world-building of course, the layers of the world bubbling up behind every sentence and every conjured up vista.
The acts are horrible and violent and the characters aren't likeable because the introspection present in the first Prince of Nothing trilogy is all-encompassing. It is in fact an overpowering level of introspection stripping characters bare to the dirty core of their selfish humanity. These are the most realistic characters that I've ever read, with nothing of them hidden. And at times it can be like looking into a too honest mirror, with all those things you might not want to look at or think about laid bare. They add a realism to the series that is hard to find anywhere else.
Sure there are supernatural elements, but they're mostly all evil.
And in real life there always seems to be more evidence of evil and sin anyway. That's why in fiction demons and bad beasties are generally more credible than angels or even a benevolent god. The horrors are easier to accept than any form of benign supernatural influence.

And the bad beasties here; the Inchoroi, are the most evil antagonists ever created. They can be brutally and horrifyingly over the top, but I believe there's a reason for this and I'll mention it after the jump somewhere.

The series is truly pitch dark and I can't stress enough that I am always shocked, time and again, whenever I read it.

But if you can take them, they're worth it.

Now on to that thing I was talking about.
How that it's linked to my faith and what I'm getting out of it.

Definite SPOILERS for the Prince of Nothing and the entire Second Apocalypse up next.

Personal: Road of Faith and the Second Apocalypse - Part 2

Depression and Nihilism

With the loss of a man's faith, something necessarily has to come in its place. To keep the mind balanced lest it eats itself.

But to this day, I have not succeeded in giving meaning to my life without it.
Where once was my faith, there is now a bottomless hole, and it devoures everything that is tossed in. Without divine meaning and purpose, death becomes the end, and since death is inevitable, nothing we do matter.

Without meaning I instead stand at the yawning hole of the abyss, unable to look away from its darkness. And with every distraction, capable of turning me away from its dark contemplation but a fleeting fancy, I am forever teetering on the edge.

As a pessimist by nature I usually see only the worst in things. And every worst thing leads to sorrow.

These days I mostly rationally choose to believe that nothing truly matters. There was never anything greater guiding us, there is no goal and no purpose; we lead an aimless and painful existence, and when we die, we simply end. Our brains halt and we stop functioning. We decompose and our bodies are reintegrated into the energy that is cycled throughout the living things of this world. There is no damnation and no exaltation because there is no design. And that in itself has become both excuse and goal.

Because of the above it might seem that the depression that comes and goes is entirely contingent on my relationship with my faith and upbringing. This is of course not true.

There are various factors, not all of which I'm able or willing to share.
But one major thing is that I'm a sensitive little fucker. A stray word, an odd look, a huff or a puff can unhinge me enough that my day is ruined. It becomes my mind's focus for the longest time. It makes me think and think and it's always in the direction of the worst.
I suppose I should call it 'Highly Sensitive' but labels have always been annoying to me. Nobody fits in anywhere perfectly, and when one is labeled it gives others the license to look at you one way while dismissing all that you are.

So, one of the consequences of that is that I severly overthink things. Like a dog worrying at a bone I can't stop chewing at the images and sounds and my pessimism obliges by then immediately offering me the worst case thoughts and scenarios.

That way I risk slipping further into the self-defeating spiral of depression and when that happens the nihilism comes into play.

I seek reasons to stop caring, to make the thoughts diminish,  and sometimes it is with nihilism that I take away their sting. 'Nothing matters' becomes the excuse. it becomes the balm and then in the bleakness it also becomes the goal. It is a trap and it gets me every time.
I know that, as an individual I can't go through life thinking everything is useless. It leaves me uncomitted, uninvested and very much adrift.

But I can't help it and I can't look away. The serpent bites its own tail and the venom makes its jaws lock tight.

It's something that continuously saps my strength and something I keep struggling with every day. And as someone who can't talk to others easily and whose friendships dwindle with the passing of the years, It's hard to speak of these themes and these horrors. because no-one else is willing or is unable to truly understand or has in fact no need to adress these things.

So, isolated, I try to shunt it aside and find an outlet somewhere else. Mostly, and most benignly, in fiction.

Meaning through stories

Games, tv-shows, movies, comics and above all, books.

Fiction is safe because for fiction to work, there needs to be a purpose, there needs to be meaning to the narrative.

And it is almost always made clear to us. Willing investment is a prerequisite. And immersion takes care of the rest.

Things start to matter, because we're told that it matters. We follow the characters along and their views become our views. We follow along and ready ourselves for the coming of joy and heartache. But it's always at a safe remove. And these stories will never end if we don't want them to. Things cycle and purpose becomes ever renewed.
It is Heaven.

But it's a choice. and not everyone can commit to it.

I used to be able to commit to any kind of narrative. Until I started thinking about what I read. This is not an indictment of those books or the age at which I read them. It's rather more something like wistful regret. Of a time when I didn't continuously think. when I didn't seem to have this inability to switch off. When meaning didn't need to be found and I could just enjoy the story for its own sake.
Most likely this is just another rose-tinted lens through which I view the past. I likely always overthought things too much. But I'm digressing.

In fiction there is meaning, but there was once a time when there was also meaning in my life.
So I seek out works inspired by the tenets of my upbringing because they still resonate with me. Because they can not help but connect on a very deep and almost spiritual level.
I don't think I purposely seek out these stories to find a meaning to ascribe to the reality through which I move. But I can not deny that it is the stories that could possibly slot into my past upbringing and the world-view that came along with it, that have hit hardest with me.
When you label something, a guiding influence, that was and still remains important in your life, as a fiction, everything that is associated with it or that draws inspiration from it, becomes fair game.

That's why anything demonic is so interesting because it is only tangentially related. Because as it's not the center there can be no real need for purpose here and it becomes mostly just for fun. Mythological stuff and meta narratives are also a huge draw. They don't even have to be dark.
I'm digressing again.

The thing I'm talking about is stories with Christianity as its foremost understructure, (Here read Christian Doctrine, meaning; The Bible, this is not Protestantism or even Catholicism, I always identified just as a Christian, basing myself solely on the Bible.)

Some of the things that have been special:

-Clive Barker's Next Testament, which could give an explanation for the madness of the old Testament and the 2000 year gap where it seems God isn't active.
-The Third Testament by Xavier Dorison, proposing that things were supposed to go different and God might have abandoned his ideas of apocalypse.
-The Goddamned; The Old Testament viewed through an ultra-violent lens. Noah, the same. Exodus: Gods and Kings, with God as a lunatic child.
-Hellblazer, though it rambles on and broaches alot of topics, it's very good at times. Preacher, with its crap comic that has a great central idea and nothing else, but it did give rise to a potentially very good tv-show. Lucifer, which goes too fantastic sometimes but damn me (haha) if it isn't magnificent.
-Penny Dreadful ,which was cut way too short, with its introspective look on good and evil. With the main character; the beautiful and incredibly tormented Vanessa Ives forced to take a choice between God and the Devil, it was taken from us too soon.
-American Gods and Small Gods, with their very similar takes on power through belief. Though these books aren't really about Christianity and with especially American Gods taking a coward's road in not adressing Christianity in a world filled with active gods, they are centrally about power through belief.
-Vikings, in its inclusion of gods both old and new, and how the characters deal with this. I've already mentioned the quote above, and it gives a good insight on how deep the show can go. It's mostly up to the viewer though; not everything is shoved right in your face.
-Malazan, also not about christianity per se, but it's got philosphising on anything under the sun, including beliefs and gods and how they interact with the world of men. That and I have some ideas about the Crippled God himself.

And lastly, but firstly in meaning and importance.
-The Second Apocalypse, with its secret reactionary subversion to the themes and central tenets of the Bible. I'll talk about that in the next post. But I'll be unable to do it justice regardless.

There are of course alot more narratives and types of narratives that have drawn my attention and that I have ended up loving. But this is only about those narratives that I'm drawn to because of their relation to my past faith and upbringing, though these are hardly the sole reasons why these books, comics and tv-shows are so good. Each has their own merits.

These stories will inevitably attract me because it is very much a primal thing, isn't it? As a person raised within the tenets of Christianity, draped and hung with chains and tethers of guilt and shame, sin and love, sacrifice and redemption and who, most of the time, has cast off his religious convictions and beliefs, to actually have been immersed inside all of that religious imagery and faith for half of my life, and devoutly believing it too... Regardless from what environment you're raised in and how far you end up from it; the things you were raised with as a child, never truly leave you.

-----

These days I have less time for fiction, and this is partially because of the blog, partially because of work. With less actual reading time and not alot of down time in between work and blogging; what I consume, inevitably gets to be ruthlessly analysed. I'm not sure yet if this is a bad thing.
As I've said before, it is my hope that the darkness will be left for a large part behind in this post.
I'll have to see how that goes. Now on to the finale.

Personal: Road of Faith and The Second Apocalypse - Part 1

This is about my Road of Faith and the things that go with that, and ultimately, finally, in the third part, how my religious upbringing influenced my reading experience with Scott Bakker's Dark Epic Fantasy Series; The Second Apocalypse.

Along the way I will be talking about my personal views, depression, nihilism, christian doctrine and some of the religious fiction inspired by it (that I've read). I've tried to keep it down where I diverged too much from what I originally wanted to talk about and I've kept it in check for the most part, but forgive me if I sometimes ramble.

You might get annoyed at what lies ahead and I urge you to please not take any offense, as this is quite personal and probably isn't even really meant for people outside of my personal circle. If it does happen to leave an impact in unknown, likeminded souls; good, it might help somebody.

Some people need the bad, in order to feel like themselves, and I've begun to fear I might be one of those people. In response to this I will be trying to condense the negativity that has threatened to de-rail the blog at several times into this one huge post (now three), so I can figuratively and literally leave it behind me here, in case of future reference, or in case somebody might be interested.

After this post it'll be a slow climb back upward into positivity, I hope, but Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up into light.

The Road Of Faith

As a kid growing up in a christian household, having to go to church on a weekly basis and not much liking the congregated mass of people desperate to show their devotion; standing, singing, raising hands, forcing everyone else to join in though sheer eye-balling pressure and despite being very honest in my faith, I did not much like all the effort and being a very shy, uncertain and introverted kid, the public displays of worship smacked (true or not) of posing, of liars and deceivers.

It bears stating at this point that my native language is Dutch...I know, I'm sorry.
Original copy presented here in its very well-read condition (read: falling apart).
'Groot Nieuws Bijbel' translation.

Always pushed into bringing and reading my Bible, I began to do just that; I consistently, almost exclusively, began to read it in church, but to bury my face from the sight of the older churchgoers frowning at the kid sitting in the back when the proper form would be to stand up in front, raising your hands in the air and showing the Lord you were praising Him, shouting your devotion, singing songs of eternal love, asking forgiveness for all your horrible sins because you are not worthy you small sinful child nothing without his grace.

With humans at large generally of the opinion that more knowledge is always better, few people would feel the need to admonish the small boy reading in the ultimate book of wisdom and they would leave me be. Also, for myself, I figured I might as well learn something by reading and learning more in and of the Bible during this time of forced devotion, give or take about 2 hours on sunday morning.

As to the belief that more knowledge is always better; No, looking back over the years, it really is not...: ironically I can paraphrase the Bible here, via the rather amazingly good tv-show Vikings;

 Ecclesiastes 1: 17-18 via the 1917 Tanakh translation (I think)

He that increases Knowledge, Increases Sorrow.

 "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun. And, behold, all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate. and I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is vexation of the spirit. For in such wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge, increases sorrow."

It is the cautionary tale of a man in torment because of his accumulation of knowledge.

As usual it's one of those passages that encourages closed-mindedness and to take the good book as the sole measure by which to view, understand and interact with the world. 

That doesn't make its core truth any less true though. More knowledge, and it's a specific type of knowledge meant here of course, leads to a soul in turmoil. This isn't about knowing how to start a car or how to build a rocket capable of space-travel.

Anyway, when I opened my book, I almost always read the Old Testament.
The dark, the violent and very much the bloodiest part of the Bible, barring the unrestrained madness that is Revelations, of course.

Tales of a God of blood sacrifice and horrific plagues, apocalyptic floods and columns of fire, of a God so petty and so sadistic that he'd send 2 she-bears to tear apart 42 children because they dared call an old man "Baldie". Of ascendancy by fiery chariot, wild visions in the dessert and of a whole people getting preferential treatment by dint of simply being the first on this blessed, blighted earth.
Of a man spilling his seed on the sand rather than granting his late brother's wife children and of God murdering him for it, because he is a voyeur who likes a happy ending.

You know, the fucking horrific tales.

Now that I'm older I wish I could say that I was fascinated by these tales because I noticed the incongruity between the bloodthirst of the First Testament and the forgiving message of the New. But that'd be a lie: It was definitely the violence, the tales of war and forced marching in deserts and God's horrific supernatural interventions in the affairs of men. I've matured enough to appreciate the difference between the two, though.

Somewhere in the years of endless questioning why, the continuous heaping up of misplaced guilt and shame; I inevitably lost my faith. This did not come down to one moment, but it was rather the consequence of alot of things. Too many things to mention or to go into really. I'm not even sure when it happened.

We can never really know all the influences that led us to make a decision, or even assuming we are capable into making a decision that is not already determined based on every influence that we are made up out of. The decision of a puppet held up by a million strings of influence is not really a decision made by that puppet.

And you know what;
maybe I still believe and this is just a protest. A refusing to acknowledge, a refusal to give credence that a being so horrifically arbitrary could or even should have this much power over me. In that case, I suppose I would be one of the people thrown into the eternal pool of fire who even in their agony, knowing the truth, would still renounce him. Helplessly, endlessly, railing at the dealt injustice.

Today

As someone who grew up inside what is probably some subsect of protestantism, I once devoutly believed in a personal, caring and loving creator.

These days, I might believe that the God of the Old Testament was a spoiled and bloodthirsty child. That the New Testament demonstrates the actions of a more mature God; still dabbling in his creation, still convinced of his own moral superiority, but with a more lenient, less blood-drenched hand.
Of these days, I might believe that God has finally attained wisdom enough that he knows better than to take an actual hand in his creation. He lets us run rampant because nothing he does can alter the wild abandon that is humanity's urge for self-mutilation.
That or he is dead. Or he has taken his bags and left in utter frustration. leaving behind an aimless, warring humanity that is sat like a bloated leech on what was once a garden Paradise, but now a dying husk. Aimless, pointless, and utterly without redemption.

In the next part I talk about nihilism and the exact opposite of believing in God and where that leads me. Oh, joy.

The Time Lord is dead.

The Announcement teaser for the 13th Doctor.

Spoilers.

Seriously, don't scroll down.

Some things are better discovered for oneself.

Book Haul: Evil is a Matter of Perspective

Here's some pictures of the grimdark villain anthology 'Evil is a Matter of Perspective' for those among you who are still on the fence about buying this book.

Sadly I was one of those people who learned about the kickstarter too late and for the longest time I figured I wasn't going to be able to get one.

Turns out that even though you might not be able to get any of the fancy editions, luckily you can get the trade paperback version still online.

Sooner ordered done than said, I says... or something.

Actually quite a hefty book.

There are about 500 pages of villainy goodness.

Bear in mind though that every single one of these tales is a part of a larger world and most likely ties into an existing storyline somewhere, someplace.
.
If you are a sequential reader you might not enjoy this so much. But if you're looking for a glimpse into any of the author's worlds, you will be well served.

Taking a look at the contents I notice some names I'm familiar with.

-The Broken Dead short story ties into Michael Fletcher's Manifest Delusions universe, of which Beyond Redemption is book 1, the best grimdark book you've never read.
The short story apparently takes place after Beyond Redemption with all the spoilers that entails, so I could go and read it right now If I wanted to but I'm planning a re-read sometime in the future. I'll wait to read this till after that time.

-The Carathayan by Scott Bakker ties into his Second Apocalypse world. I absolutely love his stuff so even if nothing else gets read, this will be.

For the rest, what do I recognize?

-Teresa Frohock's Every Hair Casts a Shadow  ties into her Los Nefilim world which I thought her Miserere (which I read and really liked) was a part of but apparently it is not.

-The Syldoon Sun Ties into Salyard's Bloodsounders Arc which I was going to read this year but which has been pushed back, sadly.

Better than Breath from Stavely's Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne, the same.

Most of the other writers are at least known to me.

Janny Wurts Wars of Light and Shadow is set to conclude one of these years. I've noticed it a couple of times now and it has always intrigued me. Given time I'd love to read it the whole saga.

From what I've caight of Tchaikovsky's Shadow's of the Apt it seemed to weird for me, but the short story's inclusion here gives me pause. maybe I should give it a look.

Marc Turner's story blurb for his first book gave me huge Malazan vibes and his Chronicles of the Exile is one of things I will definitely read. Sometime... I swear. Honest.

Beaulieu's Song of the Shattered Sands might not be for me, though I have a book of his. signed and everything if you believe it.

The rest of these writers I'm not too familiar with.

Take a look to see if you recognize anything.

Also: every single short story comes with its own artwork, which is incredibly cool. And some of these look quite bad-ass.

I don't know what this story is about, but that is definitely Ozzy Osbourne.

Btw, Matthew Ward is the guy who wrote the rulebook lore
for alot of the Warhammer 40k stuff. Surprise!

Ooohw. That is GOOD artwork.

So, yeah. Looking good.

 For myself, I do wish that more of these were stand-alones. Because as they tie into so many big existing worlds already I can't bring myself to read more than a few.

Three tales of awakening Consciousness

This is just one of those random things that've caught my attention whenever I've stumbled across them in my reading or viewing and I thought it would be an interesting thing to take a look at.
Be warned though. It's going to get a teeny bit dark.

It concerns three interpretations in three different properties concerning the time when, and this is provided you follow along with evolution theory for the moment, mankind, in earlier form or not, first became aware of his self.

Three moments for the awakening of man's consciousness. 2 are semi-positive and one is very much negative.

Coming fresh out of the review for Something Wicked This Way Comes it seems right to put this one before the rest. It's a positive little story, or at least more positive than the others, and in the book itself its introduction is mostly odd as it comes from a man who is deeply introspective and as such has made up his mind about life's purpose.

"First things first. let's bone up on history. If men had wanted to stay bad forever, they could have, agreed?Agreed. Did we stay out in the fields with the beasts? No. In the water with the barracuda? No. somewhere we let go of the hot gorilla's paw. Somewhere we turned in our carnivore's teeth and started chewing blades of grass. We been working mulch as much as blood, into our philosophy, for quite a few life-times. Since then we measure ourselves up the scale from apes, but not half so high as angels.

It was a nice new idea and we were afraid we'd lose it, so we put it on paper and built buildings like this one around it. And we been going in and out of these buildings chewing it over, that one new sweet blade of grass, trying to figure how it all started, when we made the move, when we decided to be different.

I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever.
Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her.

And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them.
And he felt that seed like slime in his pulse, splitting, making more against the day they would multiply his body into darkness.
So that man, the first one, knew what we know now: Our hour is short, eternity is long."

So in telling this tale, he gives voice to his understanding of life's futility. Nothing lasts for ever and sorrow is inevitably coming. A bleak end to everything. Nihilism. There is, however, one thing he spends time on and one thing that he does deem worthy of merit and it is something that shines through in his story.

"With this knowledge came pity and mercy, so we spared others for the later, more intricate, more mysterious benefits of love...

...What could he say that would make sense to them? could he say love was, above all, shared experience?..

..We have common cause against the night...

..We love what we know, we love what we are."

The love people carry for one another, the love between family members, something that is above all, A shared experience. Something one shares, something of another that is also in oneself; ultimately still something selfish. But a connection ascribing deeper meaning to something that has none. The appearance of meaning and purpose where all is once again illusion. But a welcome illusion nonetheless. A reason to keep going.

But despite this aspect of his welcome positivity, this is still about consciousness so...

"So, in sum, what are we? we are the creatures that know and know too much."

-----

Another one of the tales I wanted to look at comes from Ligotti's Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Oddly it's been nominated for the Bram Stoker award. I think someone might not've got the point.

"For ages they had been without lives of their own. The whole of their being was open to the world and nothing divided them from the rest of creation.
How long they had thus flourished none of them knew.
Then something began to change. It happened over unremembered generations. The signs of a revision without forewarning were being writ ever more deeply into them. As their species moved foreward, they began crossing boundaries whose very existence they never imagined.
After nightfall, they looked up at a sky filled with stars and felt themselves small and fragile in the vastness. Soon they began to see everything in a way they never had in olden times.
When they found one of their own lying still and stiff, they now stood around the body as if there were something they should do that they had never done before. It was then they began to take bodies that were still and stiff to distant places so they could not find their way back to them.

But even after they had done this, some within their group did see those bodies again, often standing silent in the moonlight or loitering sad-faced just beyond the glow of a fire. Everything had changed once they had lives of their own and knew they had lives of their own."

Here we are again with a group of newly awakened primates, looking up at the stars in dawning comprehension of how small they really are. How little they themselves matter.
With a dawning awareness of death and what it means.

And here too, the texts' 'They', begin to love.

When they see the shapes of lost ones beyond the fire, sad-faced and lonely, they are of course conjuring up images of their dead ones out of the sorrow arising from the loss of a loved one.

Oddly re-reading this segment now also called to mind another memory.

Someday they'll have secrets, someday they'll have dreams.

-----

Though I've added some relevant tales on the sly here and there, now we come to the third of the stories I wanted to talk about. One of the three overt ones that speak of the time before the thinking man comes into the knowledge of his own thinking.

'...Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey "He said for you to give me your fucking share."...'


Huh, I thought that was gonna be a little longer.
And of course, it actually is. This story has a 1000 connotations because of its position in and relevancy to True Detective Season 1. You just can't go and name them all.

It's Rustin Cohle's views and experiences that inform everything about this story.
As such, spoilers for True Detective season 1.

The first thing that is apparent in this story is the unfiltered, negative nihilism. There is nothing redeemable about humanity in this story. It is remarkable that as smalle as it seems it actually says alot. It is undisguisedly a story with a basis on greed and violence, designating the human race as 'monkeys', imbuing them from the get-go with swearing and obscenity. There is no mention whatsoever of Love.

It's a harsh contrast with the other tales and it begs the question. Why is there no filter on Rust's nihilism? Where is the necessary positivity to make these ideas palatable?

Is it the fact that Rust, at the end of the tv-show, seems to find an eventual catharsis in his glimpse to the workings of the universe (Though he is in truth lying to himself again. It is what he does.), that the show can get away with a bleak statement like this?
Is it because it's easier to dismiss these ideas because as they're in a tv-show they stem from a visual point of view, and are thereby easier to dismiss?

In an out, make way make way for the very next scene, of deep dialogue and the strumming of snares and then to firing of guns, and action, make way make way make way?

There's no real opportunity to let these things sink in because we are given no time to soak them up. There's always something next and though the tv doesn't pause, the ideas do. and when they do, they fade away in the general clamour of sensory stimulation.

It is in part because, In the written word, in books, these ideas are insidious and they reverberate around without pause and maybe an alleviating pressure is somewhat necessary. The methodical writer can also not think of these themes without giving every aspect of the theme a look, and in turn they become a part of the whole, inextricable.

Or maybe these tales, taking a hypothetical caveman, who still has hope, who views a possible coming loss of his family. simply must be in harsh contrast to the modern caveman, squatting drunk in his cave , who has already been forced to face the terrible bleakness head-on, who has already lost his hope and has already hit the flat wall of reality and who has to go on living, despite having already have had the worst happen to him; the loss of his family, the loss of  love.

When Rustin thinks he connects to his daughter at the end of Season 1. The love returns. and he becomes a new man, barely recognizable from how we have seen him thus far.

-----

The answer to nihilism, going by these three interpretations, is love. A panacea to the bleak introspection to the fate of all life.

But, inescapably, through time or other unforeseen calamities, love will inevitably fall away and we'll all end up staring at the dark doorway once again, without surcease, until we ourselves step through it.

Review: Southern Cross volume 1

I finished Southern Cross volume 1.

I didn't enjoy it...

Feeling a little annoyed before starting this post I looked around and read some other reviews online and found while everyone is either squarely in the middle or unabashadly praising cloonan's writing, any praising of the art is decidedly cautious.

Okay then...

First about the writing;
I didn't find so much to praise here. The characters are unsympathetic and have half-arsed backstories consisting mostly of pointless accesories to give a veneer of depth where there really is none to be found.

The story though, I why I picked it up, because of my proclivities for mythological tales, is at the very least interesting; galactic mystery and horror gets my vote any time ever since those terrifying days when I first saw the Event Horizon.
any slight glimpse we get of the horror or supernatural occurences is really quite restricted. and oddly abstract. And I don't mean the good abstract as in Nameless either. no this is just hamfisted stuff.
It's also an ongoing comic and there's no resolution to the massive clifhanger there at the end.

Also, don't you just hate when writers cut a storyline short for the finale, while at the same time introducing a new character that will be super relevant for the next season on arc.
And they present that unknown new character like: TADAAAAA. Here he is! Cool huh?
Aaaand we have no idea why we should even care.

But the story is at least bare-bones servicable.
Here's my actual problem with Southern Cross, and for a comic it's a big one.

I find its art utterly horrendous...

I know, art doesn't make a comic. art is subjective after all and regardless of my views, any one piece will have its proponents and defenders.

But here everyone's face is a caricature. A bad one at that. The posing is off, everything feels stiff and emotionless.
Because of this I just couldn't connect with any single person. Belanger, the artist, is just bad with faces. Bad guys are caricatures of evil smirks and leers. While the should-be trustworth ones are pictures of stoic determination.

Look at this shit and tell me you like it.

No, You don't.

Liar.

Honestly, they remind me of the Red Knight comic during its worst art days.

All pantomime and no subtlety.

Language is dutch, if you're wondering.

The colours are washed out and extremely restricted (Southern Cross's colours are, at least the Red Knight has got its act together...sometimes) . In the age of comics like Saga and Fear Agent this comic can only be a let-down.

I, of course, understand that this is a decision the creators made. to give some visual equivalent to the cold dark loneliness of space. To summon up a feeling akin to that of  watching the original Alien movies. Claustrophobic tension onboard a grimy space-liner.

But in the end, everything falls flat and it just didn't work for me.

You shouldn't promote something because you back the writer or because you want to see more like it. You should promote something because it is legitimately good. and this really, really, really is not good. As such. call it bad and don't give it another chance.

If you want epic space horror with a female protagonist go read Garth Ennis' Caliban. At least that one will not dissappoint.

You'd think this is yet another cover using symbolism.
Spoilers: It ain't.

Our protagonist.

You've seen nothing yet. This is but the start of the madness.

So yes, that was Caliban. It's a done story, so you can't go much wrong with giving it a go.
Horror. Space. Lady protagonist. Gore and bad-ass bitches. What more do you need?
Better in every way than Southern Cross...

As of now I have the option of purchasing volume 2 when it comes out and I'm not sure what I'll do as of yet. the story seemed as if it could be on the turning point of actually becoming engaging. Or it could  mean that the first volume would only serve as a prologue to the entire series (which could be positive as well but more likely points to something really broken from the start). The mythology could be getting better...
On the other hand; the writing wasn't great and I'd have to suffer through another batch of bad art.

Hmmm what to do, what to do?

I wish there was a sequel to Caliban.