Favourite Comics: Monocyte

If that cover doesn't already give it away; Monocyte is a genuine oddity.

(And then you haven't even seen the back yet...***)

Monocyte by Menton3, also known as Menton Matthews, is a self-contained four-issue miniseries, with existential themes and with a dark sci-fi/fantasy story coated in a thick veneer of occult-looking mythology.

Yes. That does sound pretty great.

In art ranging from the passable to the absolutely fucking stellar it details a world suffering under the rule of 2 warring races;  the Antedeluvians and the Olignostics, both immortal, having negated the pull of death itself via magic and science, respectively.

In a vision, a Marquis of the Antedeluvians is made aware that something, or someone, is coming.

He goes to the opposing faction to find out where this vision came from and what it entails only to find out that they don't know either.

Speaking to the Antedeluvian council makes it clear that the vision did not come from either them or their opponents. Which then begs the question...

Where did it come from?

And then...  The third party stands revealed.

It came as an announcement from the angel Lord Azrael, Death himself, of the coming of an immortal necromancer, Monocyte, come to reassert the natural state of things, to bring about an end to the immortality of the factions.

And thus our story begins.

That last is page 15 out of a comfortable 140, so you can rest assured I haven't given much of anything away yet.

-----

One shouldn't go into this one expecting a normal comic, oh no, this is indeed a weird one, to be approached on its own terms, patiently and laboriously.
Apparently there's been music created to be listened to alongside reading the comic but I'm not too enticed by that sort of gimmick. It wasn't included in my copy at any rate.

-----

One of my favourite panels out of a horde of them.

"Meet me by nature, then die by the same."

-----

***

for your delectation; cover and back to the oversized hardcover:

Not weird at all, no.

Still, the comic is quite memorable and remains one of my personal favourites... even if I still can't quite tell where exactly it ends...

Oh, to read.

This is what I'd be reading if I wasn't so tired right now;

Finally continue with Paradise Lost book 3, you know, for those posts that I'm *ahem* super dedicated to *ahem*.

Grendel, because it's about time I read another Fantasy Masterwork, and this one is steeped in existentialism and likely to get me going, and it's also one of the shorter ones, if not the shortest Masterwork out there.

Conspiracy Against the Human race because it's so compelling.

And re-reading Monocyte because it's so bleakly beautiful.

Fear and Hope.

It looks intriguing, I know.

I'll have some more on that last one soon.

Elm Haven Extras

I'm finishing up the last thing of Summer of Night that I still needed to do; that stunningly long introduction, and I just hit this little bit:

Which adds two little bits of short fiction to the Elm Haven universe that I was previously unaware of. Which is interesting enough on its own, but what's also of interest here is of course Dan Simmons' Writing Well blog, mentioned just above this bit, and which I'd already studied the first few posts of back when I made a half-hearted attempt at being a writer myself. It's well worth reading if you're serious about writing, though, as with all things Dan Simmons, it can be a bit ponderous and a mite bit too pleased with itself.

So, Simmons states these stories should be read after Summer of Night, but, as I've already posited my own chronology earlier, these two should fit somewhere within that. And I'm not sure where to put them.
To be safe, putting them past A Winter Haunting would be best, but I'm kind of married to the idea that that novel should be the absolute last, the one that closes it all out, the one with the most retrospective a gaze out of all the Elm Haven novels. So I'll put these, purely for myself, after Darwin's Blade and before A Winter Haunting. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.

And about that 'you may not like that'... I remember reading The Happiest Little Dead Boy in the World after I'd read the hugely enjoyable Otherland Quartet, by Tad Williams, and I agree; These works stand separately and will feel different. People change, and that change will inevitably clash with your shared experience. It can be hard to see these people, these characters you've come to love, act different that what you'd expect or even would want them to act.
Here, for instance, in the Elm Haven universe, I'm not sure I would want to see how Jim Harlen is like, all grown up, his views on women solidified and put into practice. Might not be a fun thing to see.

Ah, well. With my reading pace, these short stories are well a ways off still.

Summer of Night

Summer of Night is Dan Simmons' stab at the ubiquitous celebration-of-childhood novel, where alongside the splendours of childhood, the author can harp on at will about the loss of innocence, a theme ravenously sought after by the reading world at large (because everybody's got at least one: the reading of fiction is about self-identifying or escapism after all). In this novel the loss of innocence is mostly represented by a supernatural presence, which makes this besides one of the best coming of age (practically, yes) novels I've ever read, also one of the best horror novels I've ever read. Which is pretty much what I've come to expect from Dan Simmons. He's one of my favourite writers for a reason, you know.

We have about seven main kid-characters, of which Duane is the most intelligent one. He's hard working, conscientious, overweight, supportive and responsible, he never stops fighting and is definitely my favourite of the bunch. Second up is is Mike O' Rourke, who is very alike to Duane in most respects except that Mike has some form of dyslexia, which has set him back some, and he is catholic, which is rather important to the story.
Then we have Dale Stewart and his younger brother Lawrence, who together with Kevin Grumbacher are the more regular kids. Except that Kevin's the rich kid, Lawrence is the never-back-down fighter, and Dale himself, revealed in the introduction, is mostly everything concerning a young Dan Simmons' and his road to a writer's aspirations, making this an almost autobiographical novel.
Then we still haven Jim Harlen, who is the foul-mouth, though that's internalized mostly, and then you have Cordie Cooke, who is the bad-ass outcast dumpster girl with a gun and violent dogs.

It's a great book and left me feeling very satisfied, but things didn't start out that way: the first half, (or the first quarter at least) felt a little trudgy, a little slow, and a little overwritten, with too much repeating of the same words within consecutive sentences, and sometimes even within the one. This is nitpicking, I confess, but if you're gonna call Hemingway one of your idols you need to abide by his rules, after all. (Was it Hemmingway or was it that other one, I can't remember.)

The scene-setting is labourious, and as I said, can get a little trudgy, but when the ball starts rolling it rolls hard. Simmons also manages to tug on the heart strings quite a bit. I thought I was prepared, having glanced at the ridiculously lengthy introduction (22 pages in small print) before reading the novel, and having paid heed to the warning shots, fired early on. But when the first casualty fell I discovered I had placed my bets wrong, and in return Simmons gifted me with one of the most hideous murders I've ever seen dealt to a kid character. Said death made all the worse, because of all the sympathy and promise so well built up.

He also manages to weave his literary chops into the narrative, mainly due to the character of Duane, the aspiring writer, but also by pulling a deft trick or two himself.

And like in the Terror, the theme of Catholicism rears its head. In that novel the theme is brought home through use of the Eucharist, the act where one receives the consecrated bread on the tongue. This act is made crucial to the narrative, built up slowly and subtly throughout the whole novel to pound the reader in the face when flashback and foreshadowing merge into a horrifying climax.
Here we have something more subtle. A sexual awakening stifled by an undead priest as a metaphor for religion stifling natural sexual urges. Lovely touch, that.

And for those who wonder how kids can still be kids after all the pure, unadulterated horror they've been put through, Simmons will show you how, and I'll tell you beforehand that he can end his novel with heart-breaking, tear-inducing nostalgia. Which for me is all the more special, because I, being very much a loner, even as a child, have never had a childhood like this, never hung out with a group of friends, unless it was on the playground at school, and despite that I still felt it all: every beautiful moment that comes with being a kid..

-----

Last day of school,

endless minutes, endless seconds,

interminable suspended breath

before the reign, the peace, the possibilities,

the everything of Summer.

Portent of doom;

Wail of wind and wail of woe.

Storm and hidden death.

First days of Summer,

Be a child, enjoy it all.

Innocence. Fervour.

Reverence. Friendship.

Unholy happenings,

precursor of evil.

Grey twilight and Summer Dark.

Rot and decay, the hell on wheels.

A chase into fields and the murder of love.

Investigations on the one end,

rich and timeless exhilaration

of the no-holds-barred feast

that is childhood on the other.

Summer's last transcendent joy

before everything devolves

irrevocably into blackest terror.

More death and the burrowing

of horrible shadow creatures.

Jesus Christ, fucking murder.

I mean, wow, that was some

unwarranted, despairingly, totally

over the top brutal ending, for a

character who couldn't have

deserved it less. All the fight in

the world won't stop the reaping.

Machetes, axes and guns in the night.

High on adrenaline and euphoria

and terror. Confirmation, there is a

human element. Kill the live ones,

and the dead will follow.

The Arena of learning transformed,
a nest of monsters,
horror.

Kids, undaunted, past all terror, past
all horror, remain children yet.

Nostalgia. Heart-breaking nostalgia

Intermezzo, in Modo Merda

Everything is horrible, life is the worst! Here, take this picture, it might help!

Oh, and, as I realize I've been remiss in my sharing, here is another picture or two of our new resident, the common quadruped scallywaggus, not her real name but it's not as if she listens to that one either...

In a few words, because seriously, the medication is wreaking havoc on my days right now:

Boundless energy. Lovable. Very friendly. Alert and very clever.

The Elm Haven Novels

Summer of Night, together with its Moebius-strip 'sequel' novel A Winter Haunting, and its chronological sequel, Children of the Night, and the subsequent Fires of Eden and Darwin's Blade form together Dan Simmons' so-called Seasons of Night / Seasons of Fear/ Elm Haven series.

A Winter Haunting actually closes out the novels in their chronological order, but apparently offers up a different way of viewing Summer of Night by solely focusing on character Dale Stewart, who, 40 years down the line revisits his childhood home, but who has forgotten or misremembered the events of Summer of Night. A Winter Haunting allows readers to have a different view on the events of Summer of Night by its close.
But I confess I find this a mite bit problematic, since Dale Stewart isn't actually Summer of Night's sole main character, and there are other books that also tie into this universe.
As an experiment it's intriguing of course, but it's one that is slightly undercut by the existence of the other novels, specifically,  Children of the Night, which follows one of the other main-est characters of Summer around as he deals with yet another supernatural threat, this time in a different country and some few years down the line.

Fires of Eden has this same character pop up again some few years further along and in a smaller role this time, and he is also out-staged by yet another character from Summer who has a more central role. This novel might not be supernatural, as is the next one; Darwin's blade, which is a more thriller-type of novel but which also has one of the central characters from Summer in a leading role.

Dan Simmons frowns on using the same characters over multiple books, but Summer of Night was such an autobiographical novel that some of these couldn't help but pop up again in other works.

As these aren't all horror novels, Seasons of Night and Fear are out for naming consideration, and I'd rather call these the Elm Haven universe novels, or just the Elm Haven series, despite the fact that only two of these, first and last, take place in Elm Haven.

Pegana and the Eternal Return

I found myself a little at a loss before beginning the Fantasy Masterwork Write-up (the extra-special one :) for Time and the Gods. There's just so much one can talk about with this collection. There's over a hundred stories after all.
But, halfway through The Gods of Pegana short stories I struck on an idea that I had already touched upon on the blog, pointing back to an earlier personal post; Time as a flat Circle, and looking at Time and the Gods I found that I could continue on here in that same theme: The concept of Eternal Return.

Circe in front of a circular mirror.

Did Richard Carr, the cover designer for this Fantasy Masterwork, know what he was doing here whe he selected this picture, I wonder?

If so: absolutely brilliant, my man.

Dunsany apparently read Nietzsche's philosophy while writing The Gods of Pegana, and if you read it with some attention you'll recognize that he actively worked Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophy into his god-mythology.

 Or well, if there are gods, is it then in fact nihilism?
Hah, sorry about that; it's my religious upbringing rearing its head once more.

Either way, it's important to note that this is Nietszsche's pre-determinism which has central stage here, as is evinced by the Dreams of A prophet short story. Time as fixed and cyclical, not: time as endlessly recurring but different in sequence.

Anyway, without further ado:


The Mythology

Our compressed mythology, which consists mainly of metaphor built on metaphor, goes as follows:

Before the beginning, before Time, before all, there were Fate and Chance. Until, of these two, one strode out of the mist and declared existence through the First, who is MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
It was He who was ordered to make the Gods, for that is what the game will be about. And then on this one's bidding MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI made the Gods. Alongside the Gods is created Skarl the Drummer, who lulls MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep with his drumming.
And while their creator sleeps, the Gods, at first in silence, play games, and in the first they create the spheres that move in patterns or not at all, and it is in the second game that Beasts are created, and in the third Men, and it is with their creation that the Gods begin to speak.
  It is Kib, who is the first of the gods, and who is the bringer of Life itself, who created beasts and he also made mortal man.
  Second to him is Sish, the god of entropy who has Time as his hound, until the age when Time will remember Himself and will turn on his masters The Gods.
  Then there is Mung who is the third, the God of Death, who is ever relentless, and ever unmoved. Mung knows where the souls of those that died go.
  And there is Slid whose soul is in the Sea, and who is in all the waters.
  There is also Limpang-Tung, the god of youth and mindless mirth, who names himself lesser than the Gods, but who nonetheless is the painter of the sky and lord of the winds, the dweller in the mountains.
 There is also Yoharneth-Lahai, the sleep-giver, the one who brings peace through little dreams.
 There is also Roon, the never-still God of Going, who is the God of momentum and movement, and it is his spirit that stirs all things. For His opposite, Roon declared there to be 1000 sedentary house gods, who sit before the hearth and mind the things of home. These gods be lesser than men and serve them and the Gods. Once, some of them rebelled but the Gods proved greater.
 There is also Dorozhand, who is the gazer at the end, and the god of Destiny and the one who sets in motion all the moving things; He is the beginner, for a purpose of his own.
There is the God who was once the God of outright mirth, but who is now just Hoodrazai, the God silent and alone, ever since he overheard the sleep-whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, and the secret meaning that they conveyed.
There is also a Thing, which doesn't howl, and which doesn't breathe and which is neither God nor beast. IT is called Trogool and IT sits on the rocks of the rim at the edge of the universe where IT turns, one by one, the pages of a great book. The pages are black and white, and days pass as they are turned. Trogool will turn these pages until IT will come to the final page whereon is written MAI DOON IZAHN, which means The End Forever, and all will come to an END.

Mythology continued in THE END

The meaning of existence

In the mists before all, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide who gets to decree the forthcoming 'game'. The winner of this lot-casting is unknown, giving the whole of existence the conceit to be both pre-ordained or to be a consequence of pure random chance, effectively rendering it meaningless. But the act of this game before time itself also makes it clear that even if Fate is the one to give meaning to the universe, it isn't much of a meaning at all.
For the game before time, its outcome truly determined by these two, could just as well have been won by Chance.

There are multiple ways to figure out who the winner is in the game before time.
Mung, the God of death has some of the most interesting passages that'll help with this:

'Alas, that I took this road, for had I gone by any other way then had I not met with Mung.'

And Mung said: 'Had it been possible for thee to go by any other way then had the Scheme of Things been otherwise and the gods had been other gods. When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forgets to rest and and makes again new gods it maybe be that They will send thee again into the Worlds; and then thou mayest choose an other way, and so not meet with Mung.'

Besides implying that the winner of The Game Before All is in fact Fate, it also seems to adhere to the Time as a Flat Circle theory, time as predetermined and recurring. And which would also rule out Chance as the victor of the game before time.

However.

Time and the Gods' The Dreams of A Prophet further also talks about this; where a prophet describes his vision of Fate and Chance in a time when the entirety of existence has already played out. In this vision Fate says to Chance: "Let us play our old game again." and then everything happens again exactly as it had happened before.

This occuring again exactly as it happened before is of course Nietschze's concept of the Eternal Return

The ideas hinted at throughout the Gods of Pegana point to fate not as meaningful, but predetermined, and cyclical. Pointless in its repetition. Or, not pointless, and instead; fateful.
As in learning and loving one's own fate. Amor Fati.


Pegana and the whole of creation

Pegana is the place in the middle of all, where the Gods sit in the middle of Time; because Time is equal unending before it, and unending after it. There is below Pegana, what is above it, and beyond it, what lies before. Meaning, there is nothing outside of Pegana.

 In truth, this there was('nt) before the creation of anything outside of Pegana, at that point these things were true, as it was the whole of time encompassing the whole of creation. At that moment it is/was the absolute focal point. 

After this, Pegana is in every way the center of the universe. It is Dunsany's Heaven-allegory, employing occasional lofty 'downward-gazing upon creation', and the use of mists, implying popular depiction of ethereal planes.
There are vales, and mountains whereon the Gods sit, with MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI resting in the highest place of Pegana above Them.
There is a highway between the worlds, on which light travels, and this might be the same as the river of Silence on which Yoharneth-Lahai travels when he brings his dreams to Man.
At the ending of the universe lies the rim, which is a mass of rocks which the Gods did not use in their creating, and beyond the rim lies only the Silence, and the old, dead days.


MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI

Is the First of the Gods, and might be interpreted as being the fabric of existence itself. Forever dormant, dreaming, until the end, when his awakening will herald the end of all the gods... Unless (p556):

For none shall know of MANA who hath rested for so long, whether he be a harsh or a merciful god. it may be that he shall have mercy, and that these things shall be.

Skarl the Drummer

The first one who is talked about is Skarl the Drummer, who seems to stand apart from the Gods.

Skarl the Drummer drums MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep, and an interesting metafictional/physical concept is introduced which implies that it could be that, indeed, all that existence is, is the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI given form by the drumming of Skarl the drummer.

Should Skarl the Drummer ever cease his drumming, MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will waken and, in his laughter will end the Gods, which indeed, makes them but dreams in a sense, regardless of their actuality during the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, to go away into oblivion upon the awakening of that dreamer.

See also the Yoharneth-Lahai quote p549:

Whether the dreams and the fancies of Yoharenth-Lahai be false and the Thing that are done in the the Day be real, or the Things that are done in the Day be false and the dreams and the fancies of Yoharneth-Lahai be true, none knoweth saving only MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who hath not spoken.

Dunsany explicitly connects Yoharneth-Lahai with MANA-YOOD-SAHAI and furthermore, emphasizes the last part of the sentence.


Time and Sish 

"Before Sish is Kib, and behind him goeth Mung."

Before Entropy there must be life, and following upon entropy's heels there must be death.

Also, Time is the hound of Sish, because time is inextricably linked to the process of entropy.
Time, as hound, will serve for as long as there are gods, but when even the gods go away or vanish, then even entropy will hold no longer sway over time. If there's nothing to break down there can be no entropy. This is why Death and Time will kill each other in mutual extinction. The ending excludes the process. Nothing will decay, will break down, because there will be nothing to break down. Time will be void and nonexistent, as will be death. Unless we're thinking about death as a different concept. But we're not.


Zodrak

And there, according to Imbaun the prophet, the most reliable of all prophets, if such can be reliable in any way at all, is yet another god, a god who was once a man, and who, thinking to do good, brought love, wealth and wisdom into the worlds.
His name is Zodrak, and he brought, while bringing these, unhappiness into the worlds.
But look upon him gently, because before He was a god He was a man and a sheperd, and he could not have known.


Dorozhand

Dorozhand is actually the divine name of Fate itself. The same Fate who in my interpretation (not by personal preference) is the one who won the game before the Beginning itself. All the rest of the Gods fear something about Dorozhand and it is said that both the destinies of men and those of Gods are under his purview.

It is stated verbatim that it is Dorozhand's goal, for the completion of which, the rest of creation is in play (p555):

The reason and purpose of the Worlds is that there should be Life upon the Worlds, and life is the instrument of Dorozhand wherewith he would achieve his end.

This goal is unknown. But is said that when it will be achieved or when it will be found, that then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will be wakened by Kib, the god of life. And either THE END of all will be, or... (see MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI above).

OR, by pretty much the same reasoning; Dorozhand is Chance, which would explain why Hoodrazai, previously known as The Mirthful God, has become the silent and aloof God, since hearing the revelatory dream whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who after all, created the Gods by order of either Fate or Chance, He is burdened by the knowledge that life is utterly without meaning and that "The Game" will be everlasting, in pointless, unceasing eternity (for Dorozhand has no true goal...) and there will in fact be no END.
Or Hoodrazai knows that all will return endlessly, again and again, endlessly recurring, exactly as before.

Either way, Hoodrazai is symbolic for those of us who are crippled by existential depression.

THE END

There isn't actually any one clear way that events will happen at THE END. I've compiled here what I found. And apart from the possibilities already written above, in the Dorozhand section, the most un-self-contradictory way this might happen is:

The mythology continued:

When Dorozhand achieves his end and when also Trogool will come to his final page, then Kib will touch reverently the hand of MANA YOOD-SUSHAI, and Skarl will stop drumming and the dream of Gods will end. 

When 3 moons, not waxing or waning, will stand towards the north above the star of the abiding and when the seeking comet will stand still, then finally MANA YOOD SUSHAI will arise and slyly speak and then laugh witheringly at the Gods and they will then cease playing with spheres and beasts and man, and then the Gods will put those matters behind them and leave.
Or they will lie about their creating and then MANA YOOD SUSHAI will wave them away, like someone waving away an irksome matter.
Thunder will roar horribly among the worlds, and Mosahn the bird of doom will fly from Pegana's innermost vale and proclaim in a trumpet-voice that it is THE END. The hound Time will die when there is nothing to devour, or he will turn on his masters the Gods and Mung, the God of Death, will fight him and, killing him, will die also.
And then the Gods will have left and will have sailed away on Imrana, the river of Silence, in galleons of gold to a place far from Pegana, to where it is not known, and then they will be no more. Imrana will overflow its banks and Silence will fill creation.

There will be no worlds, nor will there be Gods. Skarl's work will be done and he will walk into the void so that at the end there will only be MANA YOOD SUSHAI because the Gods and all their works will have gone, and even Skarl the Drummer will be gone. MANA YOOD SUSHAI shall be alone.

But it may be that MANA YOOD SUSHAI will allow the old dead days to return from beyond the rim, for it is not known whether he is a harsh or a merciful God, and it is in this case  that the Gods will play their games once again. This will be the Eternal Return.

No Rest for the Wicked

'Thy life is long, Eternity is short.

So short that, shouldst thou die and Eternity should pass, and after the passing of Eternity thou shouldst live again, thou wouldst say: "I closed mine eyes but for an instant."

There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who art so much afraid of the Aeons that shall pass.'

The eternal return writ small.

Dunsany's Ode to Death

Ah, now for the hour of the mourning of many, and the pleasant garlands of flowers and the tears, and the moist, dark earth. Ah, for repose down underneath the grass, where the firm feet of the trees grip hold upon the world, where never shall come the wind that now blows through my bones, and the rain shall come warm and trickling, not driven by storm, where is the easeful falling asunder of bone from bone in the dark.

The Gods of Pegana, Yun-ilara

Together with mark Twain's 'Death is a valuable Gift' quote, from his Letters from the Earth, this is one of the most moving yearning for death poems/quotes I've ever read.
It is spoken by Yun-Ilara, the one who thought himself clever when he challenged Mung, the God of Death. Yun-Ilara now is nothing but a heap of bones, lying around the ruined base of a tower that he once built, and he is still undying, and from his bones still goes up a shrill voice, crying out for mercy.

Anticipation

The dog's coming tomorrow and I'm more than a little nervous.

This is her last day before she is welcomed into her new family. 

Saffy she's called and Saffy she'll be. It's a fine name and there's no need to complicate things and upset what'll already be a difficult and taxing day.

Fantasy Masterworks: Time and the Gods, Lord Dunsany

Fantasy masterwork nr 2; Time and the Gods collects 112 short stories in 6 short story collections. Written by Lord John Edward Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany, these collections quite rightly made the earliest cut of the Fantasy Masterworks, back when they were still being published under the initial Millennium imprint.

There's no reason to talk about this one too much (*manic laughter*) as anyone who's ever read Dunsany knows; he belongs to the greats, his work having had enormous influence on the genre as a whole and still being very readable now, over a hundred years later.

Style

Dunsany is another one of those few writers whose style and themes effortlessly evokes a gloriously mythic quality.

Many influences contributed to the creation of this style, but one of particular interest to me, and something which I had already noticed in his work before learning of it, was how much of an influence reading the King James Bible had on him. I've talked before how this style; the collage of epic pedantry present in the Bible, is one that has resonated with me most whenever an author employs it.

This ornate style doesn't stay the same throughout the book though, and in fact Dunsany changed his approach to whatever he was working on whenever he felt that he had exhausted the possibilities of a style or medium. And this is already very noticeable in the 6 short story collections in this Masterwork.


The Fantasy Masterwork

Dunsany's 6 short story collections are undisputed classics, both for their influence in the fantasy genre, and purely for their own dreamy lyricism.
But, it must be said, because of the aforementioned shifts in style, Time and The Gods (,the Gollancz Fantasy masterwork edition of) as a whole is a bit of an uneven work and could have done with a clearer divide in which works fitted in which universe. To wit: I've named them; the Books of Wonder, the Pegana Universe, and the Tales of Faery.

The first book in this collection; Time and the Gods, together with its last; The Gods of Pegana, form Dunsany's Pegana universe, a place of Gods, petty or not, and the men that worship them, willingly or not. These tales are clearly the most serious and are where Dunsany's the most in love with his world-building. Parabel and metaphor form an intriguing and deep narrative and occasionally serve to drive home a barb or two against organized religion.
Although it is the novel's last collection, The Gods of Pegana is more of a story cycle collecting 30 tales over the course of 50 pages. As their individual story threads tend to run one into the other, they are rather more inter-linked than the rest of the short story collections in this book and should be considered as one extended story. These should preferably also be read before beginning the Time and the Gods read.

Then you have the stories of The Sword of Welleran and A Dreamer's Tales, which are a collection of serious and occasionally quite beautiful Faery tales. And although there is on occasion made mention of several gods, named or not, and the ubiquitous entity 'Time', I never felt that these were the same characters as those from the realm of Pegana. But then it is my opinion that Dunsany was a bit careless about his continuity overall: Time switching from the Hound of the Gods, to their Swarthy servant with sword dripping red, to being the father of the gods in the House of the Sphinx (Book of Wonder).

And for the remainder you have The Book of Wonder and the Last Book of Wonder which are for the most part most clearly indicative of one of those shifts in Dunsany's style and his views on his work. Unlike both the Pegana stories and the Faery tales, these are more self-deprecating, more aware of themselves, and occasionally even outright mock the serious narratives of the previous collections.


Time and the Gods
Time and the Gods, the second collection, here put first (foolishly), was published in 1906, and builds on the mythology in the Gods of Pegana short story collection, which was released the year before.
Though the stories here proceed from the same basis, of Gods and the men who worship them, there's less tolerance of what was once so reverently created, those stories and themes once paid such dear homage to. There's a wistfulness here, a slight mockery that wasn't present yet in the Pegana tales. An attitude of small-mindedness where before was only awe and a sense of being separate from these beings and this mythology so far beyond ourselves.
The vignette-style of the Gods of Pegana has also vanished almost completely, with the longest story of the collection; The Journey of the King, comfortably taking up over 30 pages.


The Sword of Welleran (1908)
Contains among others, the (arguably) first ever sword and sorcery story; the Fortress Unvanquishable, save for Sacnoth. If that wasn't enough, also present is titular The Sword of Welleran, which, with its portrayal of an 'almost' sentient sword, delivering victory through bloody and horrific slaughter, likely influenced the creation of Sword and Sorcery's most famous anti-hero: Elric of Melniboné. It's also notable for shifting the focus from the divinely inspired narratives to one of a more human frame.


A Dreamer's Tales
In A Dreamer's Tales, published in 1910, we find many a memorable and influential tale. For instance; Idle Days on the Yann which directly inspired Lovecraft to write his Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
It also has the sad but triumphant melancholy of one the best Dunsany short stories, and my absolute personal favourite; Blagdaross, which is an anthropomorphic tale of a bunch of discarded objects left in a waste disposal park which regale one another each with a tale of how they ended up there. From an old wine cork, to a piece of rope, to the wooden rocking horse Blagdaross itself, the short recountings start out ordinary and whimsical but soon touch on profound themes of human darkness and loss. (Fun in-universe note: the House-God of Broken things is called Jabim. I enjoy lumping this particular tale in with the Pegana universe.)
The Unhappy Body reads like the lament of a creative soul, wishing he had more time in which to release his creativity.


The Book of Wonder
For the Book of Wonder Dunsany changed his work methods, and experimented a bit with his storytelling.
During the original short story publications Dunsany contracted Sidney Sime, a fantastical artist using monochromatic colours and frequently employing satire, to illustrate every collection, but of these it is the Book of Wonder that is the odd one out. Published in 1912, where before the art was created to suit the story, here Dunsany wrote stories to suit the art. Apparently Sime had complained that his editors did not offer him suitable subjects to work his art around, so Dunsany, in the hopes of adding some extra mystique to both his writing and Sime's art, wrote his tales inspired by them. Which led to some pleasingly memorable tales, such as The House of the Sphinx, a mystifying tale which offers up the possibility of reading the story in several ways; as dream, analogy, parable or just as a straight-up fantasy.
But is also leads to the side-effect that these 14 tales are even more than usual, very unrestrained in their imagination; a detrimental effect, as if Dunsany cobbled together a short tale by flinging anything together that he could come up with, leaving them more inconsequential, and unmemorable than previous tales.
A great many of the stories present in this one and in the following Book of Wonder are exercises in infinitely delayed gratification, with their plot and resolution remaining unresolved as Dunsany almost coyly drops back the curtain that he previously had only barely lifted.
There's a lax attitude to his own work here, as if unconvinced of previously held convictions of merit on his own stories.


The Last Book of Wonder
From The (first) Book of Wonder to the Last Book of Wonder (initially published as Tales of Wonder), where Dunsany clearly was more energized as he found his original idea, of working from Siney Sime's artwork, paying off. The idealism returns, the love of the telling, the romance.

This is most readily apparent in A Story of Land and Sea, which is far and away Last's longest tale, tying back to the (first) Book of Wonder's The Loot of Loma. In the Last Book of Wonder, originally published as Tales of Wonder in 1916, Dunsany revisits many of the characters and settings he visited for his previous Wonder outing, most notably, Captain Shard and his merry crew of pirates from The Loot of Bombasharna, get the lengthy prequel story: A Story of Land and Sea; set in the time before the crew's retirement on the floating island. It's a tale that unlike most other tales in the collection is more focused on historical adventure rather than outright fantasy.
Many of the tales in this collection end whimsically humorously: for instance; How Plash-Goo came to the land of None's Desire is a darkly ironic tale of a giant developing an irrational hatred for a dwarf, the title only given meaningful relevance at the very last sentence.
The Long Porter's tale, ends with self deprecating sentiment. A tactic Dunsany frequently employs in these, the latest written tales; Something to take the wonder out of the narrative, an unhappy denouement. However Thirteen at Table is one the few that doesn't take the wind out of its own sails and is instead a pleasant little ghost story.

The Gods of Pegana
Paid for publication in 1905 by Lord Dunsany himself, The Gods of Pegana is the book that's readily the most interesting as it flat-out gives you a whole mythology; The Pegana universe. Written and published in 1905, and despite being chronologically the first of the short story collections in this book, it is in this collection at the very back (it should not have been), probably because it's a bit of an unusual one, and any modern mainstream reader should be forgiven for exiting immediately upon being confronted with a narrative of this nature. It is in effect a linked series of character vignettes of various metaphors and parables. The longer the book goes on the more you can see Dunsany's narrative style shifting from vignettes to the longer form of his later short stories.

Upon its completion I found a few questions lingered, most interestingly; who is the victor in the game before the Beginning, Where lies Pegana, and what does it look like, and: when and what exactly will be THE END?

Interesting Mementos

I've had these on my desktop for such a long time as they're both fascinating to me. But as I'm clearing a lot of the excess pictures, I'm just going to dump them on here now.

This is the (partial) body-paint job that led to the conception of the Lord God Wick.

Obviously, due to the nudity it's the face only. I do not have the rest of the photograph so don't ask.

I gather it was a private thing.

All rights obviously go to Clive Barker.

Please don't sue me.

And then here, Barker's own religious views, which I originally kept around for Cabal, then Weaveworld, then Next Testament, and which I just never ended up using.

As I said: I find the dude infinitely fascinating.

Here's a link to his official site where you can find his views on spirituality.

http://www.clivebarker.info/religion.html

In my opinion, well worth reading if you're into this stuff.

Witcher Goals

This one is pretty self-evident, n'est ce pas?

I have never played the Witcher 3.

I know.

I tried to play the first game way back when, and after playing for maybe an hour and getting hopelessly lost in the opening area, and not being used to the controls on the computer, getting log jammed by the combat system, and having a pretty piss-poor gaming pc in general, I just ended up quitting in frustration and mild relief in the recognition that this game really wasn't all it was cranked up to be, which meant that I didn't need to give it any more of my time.

Fast forward to rave-reviews of the Witcher 3 and glimpses of some stunning graphics with an incomparably immersive open world and gameplay involving swords and monsters and I figured that maybe, yeah, I should get this one. Oh, it's based on a series of books, you say?

Well I'll read those before I get to the game then.

 Fast forward some time again, with now the Game Of The Year Edition of the Witcher 3 out, so I end up buying it on an off day.

But still it languishes on the ps4 to-be-played shelf because I still haven't read the books and there's no real incentive is there? It's probably very good but so are other books and games.

Fast forward to... The Witcher is getting an honest to god television series... Meaning it's going to hit the mainstream, and meaning, for compulsive reasons, I won't be able to view it before I've at least read the books... Aaaaaand so here we are. It's the hipster gene, once again.

I've already begun reading book 1: the Last Wish, which seems to be a collection of stories within some sort of framing device that isn't quite clear yet.

It's easy to read and rather engrossing. I've forgotten how much fun reading a novel with a bad-ass male protagonist is. You'd think it would be logical, don't you, but as a dude I like reading about dudes. And the more capable, no-nonsense, and bad-ass the protagonist is, the better.

So, it's first this one then the other. Both are (somewhat) short story collections.

Then come the 5 'main' novels, the saga if you will, all about Geralt and Ciri. Don't know much about this yet and I aim to keep it such until I read them.

After that come these three.

Which will be, either read during or before I'm playing the game somewhere.

There's also the Seasons of Storms novel which should be out in english somewhere around now, and taking place somewhere in between the stories of the Last Wish, but as the Bookdepository is coy about which is which, and I definitely want the Orbit version so it neatly aligns with the rest of my trades, I'm holding of on that one and just diving in without regard or that particular one.

Could be it's the one that releases on the 6th of november, in which case; yay! A birthday present!

A gratuitous amount of pictures, you say? 

You're right, I respond, and here's another!

The only question is really how much time I'll be giving this here in the blog.

I've picked these to read mainly because of the compulsion thing, but I confess that I'd like to not worry about writing about a book when I'm reading a book, for a change.

I mean, at this point I'm about 5 months behind on Time and the Gods... 

There's certainly going to be a post or two when I finally hit the gaming side of things, but I'm an ideas guy rather than a plot and character one. I'll just have to see if something special comes up.

Lord Dunsany

SO.

I got stuck for a long while on the Fantasy Masterwork write-up for Time and the Gods, and for the longest time I was clueless as to why. I kept writing and writing, and after a while I just stopped because it wasn't going anywhere I wanted. Then I stopped writing altogether because of a whole bunch of personal reasons, and most of those I've even talked about here on the blog.

A few days ago, maybe just due to the medication I was ready to again delve into it, but even then I ended up butting my head against a wall until I decided to split up the parts of the text to see what the problem was. Which is a very tried and true tactic for the longer posts and which was long overdue for this one.

I then realized immediately that I had let myself go a bit on the 'Dunsany, the man' part of the write-up and that I just didn't want to delete it, even though I should've.
So, here, for your delectation, a mildly humorous and an occasionally (unwarranted) scathing look at several aspects of Dunsany's life.
It's very incomplete (and I might come back and edit) but I bet I've got some information in here that you won't even find on Wikipedia.

Dunsany: The man

Born in 1878 in London to nobility, with a silver spoon in his hand and with the world delivered to him on an easy platter, John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the eighteenth baron himself might be forgiven for not having had to work a day in his life, or for never having been given over to backbreaking labour in order to make ends meet, and to verily be ground out under the daily toil and struggle of putting food on the table, as that would inevitably have crushed the talent and zest of a true creator, a true original, and the accomplishments of a giant in the field might have been less than those of the smallest field-mouse. I mean, God forbid Lord Dunsany were to have been born burdened by the iron ball and chain of 'working-for-a-living', right?

Far be it from me to throw shade at one of the English language's premier artists but I do generally find that the cumulative wallop of soldier, globetrotter, big-game hunter, sportsman, literary giant, and playwright has always sounded far less bombastic and admirable when you find that these people have actually been born into wealth, status and fame and have had their life's roads, and all those murky avenues and dead-end alleys ahead of them, well cleared of the debris that clogs the routes of so many of us. Not a pothole in sight, not a shred of detritus to be blown by errant winds into the spokes of benign forward momentum.

But, credit where it is due, even given the most clear and perfect road to travel, not a lot of us would be able to match the many varied achievements of this noble Englander scion.
During his life he was to become one of the most recognizable and famous writers in the English speaking world.

Before he ever published his first story or play though, the then not-yet-Lord Edward Dunsany traversed the many pitfalls of childhood with English reserve. He went to school at Cheam and college at Eton, while shuttling between the supervision of his father in Castle Dunsany, and his mother in Dunstall priory, as they mostly lived seperate lives.

By 21 he graduated from military school in Sandhurst.
That same year he also inherited the title of Lord Dunsany after the death of his father, whereafter he was promptly commissioned in the Coldstream Guards at Gibraltar. It seemed to have been a leisurely posting as he was able to take long rides through the Spanish countryside.
After this though he was active in the Second Boer war in Africa in 1900, where he fought in the battles of Graspan and Modder river, but there are scarce mentions of his time here.

Cue comments of British imperialism laid low, and a past preferably forgotten, or at best looked at through the selective rose-coloured lens of fleeting wealth and glory. Though any glory that's held onto after the use of concentration camps, under whatever pretext, has shaded from rose-coloured into a distinctly darker shade of red. Concentration camps? Yes. Look it up.

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Mind you, as a Belgian, my native association with Leopold the second, should prompt me to leave some things well enough alone, and to just shut my waffle-hole.

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Mind you, the second; the current Brexit-situation? Where we leave the past alone around here, mindful of our hidden misdeeds, there's a current imperialist sentiment rising in Great Britain. Where the British government is desperately shoving out piece-meal patriotism in a bid to remind the general populace of a so-called 'better' time before their inclusion into the European Union, which was seen as a last-ditch effort to halt the UK's economic situation, which had been declining since World War 2, which though it was not the largest catalyst for the Empire's decline, serves to mark the clear beginning of the end for the British Empire, when Britain's major colonies of the time took the opportunity to rid themselves of the 'British yoke'. 

Before WW2 Britain was still riding high, which is why there's so much of this Pre-World War 2 and World War 2 war-movie veneration going on in the British media.

By 1901 Dunsany had retired from his African posting and had returned to Dunsany castle.
3 years later he married his wife, Beatrice Villiers, who went on to support him in all his interests, and who had a large role in his writing, frequently typing out whatever he dictated, amanuensis-style.

When he wrote himself, he wrote fast, never rewrote and never corrected and in 1903 he finally began to write the stories that made him a master of the fantastique. Though he would go on to write an enormous amount of fiction, he actually said himself that writing took up less than 10 percent of his adult life, and that he mostly occupied himself with sport and soldiering.

Most notable of the latter, are ever the heroic exploits of the true Patriot, defending his country and his fellow man: In 1916 Dunsany volunteered to defend his native soil, and was promptly shot in the head while driving from Dunsany Castle to Dublin when he and a fellow officer ran into an IRA-manned street barricade. Though the car itself ended up totally riddled, Dunsany and his companion managed to get clear without any damage. However, a ricochet hit Dunsany as he dodged for cover, and the bullet lodged itself in his nasal sinuses. He was taken prisoner and apologized to profusely before being rushed to a doctor. He was then put in a hospital and tenderly cared for until the IRA was pushed back.

Later in the war he spent time on the front, though he was refused forward positioning, and relegated to the terrifying tediousness of trench warfare, where he was valuable as both a trainer and, by merit of his burgeoning literary credits, for the creation of propaganda material.

Dunsany was a noted chess player and once played 7-year-reigning world champion raul Capablanca to a halt, and in 1924 won the championship of Ireland. He also invented an asymmetric version of chess where one does not use the so-called 'fairy' pieces, which is more than slightly ironic.

In World War 2 Dunsany joined the home guard, in which he witnessed the Battle of Brittain, much of which took place right over his head, and which he commemorated with a poem.

One thing I know which Milton never knew:

When Satan fell, hurled headlong to the shade

Of Hell eternal out of Heaven's blue,

I know the screaming wail his pinions made.

After the war Dunsany traveled extensively, just like he did his whole life, but now especially to North America where he found himself more famous than in his home country.

Alas, even the best and most influential of lives come to an end and in 1957 Lord Dunsany died from appendicitis, (or quietly in a nursing home if L. Sprague de Camp is to be believed. Whatever the source, generally it is agreed upon that) he became 79 years old.

Image out of Providence, because of course.

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During his long life, Dunsany wrote over a 100 works consisting of poetry, short stories, novels, plays, essays and even an autobiography or two. During his lifetime his plays were more popular than his writings were. He was involved in radio, television, cinema and theatre.

These achievements never would have come about if he hadn't, himself, payed for the publication of his first short story collection; The Gods of Pegana, in 1905. After this, he never had to pay for the publication of anything else he ever wrote.

Born with a silver spoon in his hand, but damn it all if he didn't earn the rest of the silverware as well.