REQUIRED VIEWING: Hellboy 2

I just got in from seeing HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY with a couple of friends, and let me tell you folks....it's good. Very good. It's a visual feast.

More Smith, and Other Stuff

So, after completing last night's post, and checking some stuff online, I managed to find a halfway reasonably priced copy of ELEGANT NIGHTMARES on abebooks.com. And it's mine, MINE, I tell you! The next-cheapest is $60 and it's all uphill from there. Check your library system.

Done some more reading of Clark Ashton Smith's "Zothique" stories, dark and decadent tales of a dying Earth hundreds of thousands of years in the future, when civilization is falling apart and sorcery has been rediscovered.

ELEGANT NIGHTMARES, by Jack Sullivan

Wouldn't this be a great name for a blog? (I considered it for a while.) Sullivan's ELEGANT NIGHTMARES is a great critical overview of some of the essential ghost story writers for both the experience reader of supernatural fiction, and the neophyte just starting off on that fascinating and shadowy path.

I read this first many, many years ago. It was definitely before I went to college, probably while I was in high school. I remember jotting down all sorts of titles to hunt down, but had little luck until my mature years in finding them. Then again, many of the stories Sullivan discusses were, at the time, out of print and available only in libraries or absurdly expensive and absurdly rare editions.

Report from Monster Bash

OK, it's been over a week, but I've had a wild time since getting back. I was unable to blog from the con, as I couldn't hook up to the wireless connection in my far-flung hotel room (I was waaaay in the back), and then I was busy at work catching up on stuff, and then had an insanely busy weekend (book club, volunteer work, big burlesque show, and lunch with one of my best buds). So finally tonight I'm getting down to it.

Monster Bash, for those who don't know, is a yearly horror convention in the Pittsburgh PA area (this year in the suburb of Butler), with a focus on classic monster movies (not much for slasher and torture porn there, thank goodness). It also functions as a sort of family reunion for a circle of friends who interact throughout the year via the 'net.

"Xeethra" by Clark Ashton Smith

This short story is the first in the collection ZOTHIQUE, which was part of Ballantine's Adult Fantasy line, coming out in 1970. The story itself was first published in "Weird Tales" in 1936. I'm slowly working my way through ZOTHIQUE which may take a while, as a little CAS can go a long way.

Smith's Zothique is our own world, thousands of years in the future. Civilizations have risen and fallen, technology has been forgotten, and mankind is now dominated by sorcery and dark gods. Perfect for the D&C reader, eh? It's a ripe setting for Smith, who was one of the few American authors to successfully bring the European Decadent tradition to U.S. readers, and only quite a while after the Decadent movement sputtered out.

Quiet weekend

...as least for this blog. The heat's ungodly, I've been busy with work, and I've had other stuff to do as well, including occasional volunteer work. Next weekend is DC's gay pride festivities, and the week after that is Monster Bash in Pittsburgh, so I'll be busy but I'll try to post when I can. If I can manage it, I'll do some posting from the Bash.

So, what I've got going on...

TO WALK THE NIGHT by William Sloane

The Maila Nurmi-esque photo on the cover, and the lurid copy on the back, would make one think this was a story of some supernatural temptress. ("From those who inexplicably survived her loathesome evil comes this terrifying story of a time when men's souls and bodies were hideously tortured to sustain the life of a fiendish woman." Seriously, it says that on the back.) But TO WALK THE NIGHT (1937) is far different, an almost delicate and definitely tragic story that walks a line between horror and science fiction. And it's one of the few novels I've encountered that deal with spontaneous human combustion.

The story is told in flashbacks by Berkeley Jones (called "Bark" by his friends) to his best friend's father, who he often calls "Dad." Jerry Lister, the best friend, has committed suicide, and his wife had something to do with it.

In flashbacks, we hear the story of how Bark and Jerry go to a football game at their alma mater, and after the intense game, pay a visit on their friend Prof. LeNormand in the observatory. But when they arrive, the prof is dead, burning to death with no apparent cause. All the questioning and investigation turns up nothing, until the two go to visit the prof's widow, of whom they're shocked to learn, thinking he was never the marrying type. And thus we meet Selena.