Ex Libris: Lucius Shepard's The Beast of the Heartland and Other Stories

I wonder if other readers feel the way I do, that I've come to a certain milestone when my favorite writers-- those whose books had changed my reading life-- pass on. I suppose I'm just feeling my age especially after I heard of Lucius Shepard's death this year.

I read his story collection The Jaguar Hunter first: strangely enough, I had no idea what to expect based on the recommendations I read-- except that he was a great writer. And maybe that was a good thing because when I did start reading him, I realized that he wasn't just writing speculative fiction, it was great Fiction that had the punch of several quick open-palm slams to the face, chest, and groin that would send you reeling to your knees but with tears of joy in your eyes.

His prose was a wonderful combination of hard-hitting, hardbitten, almost-practical realism with flashes of literary turn of phrases (what would be termed magical realism). His stories were mostly genre, sometimes with twists that would leave you gasping for breath, but otherwise were genre-less for the oh-so human characterizations of his protagonists.

So yes, I think that regardless of what I say or do from this point onward, I think I will always remain a fanboy of Shepard's work.

That's why in commemoration of the man, I dug out my still-to-be-read collection of his works and started reading his other story collection, The Beast of the Heartland and Other Stories. (On a side note, it took me a long while scouring the bargain bins for a copy of this collection. I once missed out buying the UK edition of this book, Barnacle Bill the Spacer and Other Stories, at the local Fully-Booked and I've always regretted it because it matches the third collection I have of his, The Ends of the Earth. But I digress.)

Regardless of how I felt about each story in this collection, every beginning of his stories was a wonder. That is, I would always think a few words into the story, "I wonder what this will be about." And why not, when you have such wonderful opening lines to begin with. To wit, from "Barnacle Bill the Spacer":

"The way things happen, not the great movements of time but the ordinary things that make us what we are, the savage accidents of our births, the simple lusts that because of whimsy or a challenge to one's pride become transformed into complex tragedies of love, the heartless operations of change, the wild sweetness of other souls that intersect the orbits of our lives, travel along the same course for a while, then angle off into oblivion, leaving no formal shape for us to consider, no easily comprehensible pattern from which we may derive enlightenment..."

Or, from "A Little Night Music":

"'Dead men can't play jazz.'"

Fascinating, no? Makes you want to read more.

Each story in the collection varies in genre: drugged-surreal religious horror in "A Little Night Music"; a post-apocalyptic tale "Human History" that seems to be the ancestor of Cormac McCarthy's The Road; the very noir "Sports in America" that calls up Raymond Chandler but reminds me of Patricia Highsmith as well; and a story about a boxer on the decline that seems to be ripped out of the pages of GQ or Esquire, "The Beast of the Heartland."

So yeah, I'm in like Flynn, regardless of how each story ends. Thus, rather than letting me blather on and on how wonderful this collection is, it's better if I'll sign off. Heaven knows if you don't think that I think the man was a great writer, then nothing I write will convince you.

Get thee to a bookstore and buy it! (Four paws out of four.)

The Cheap Stuff

This should teach me to buy cheap. Lesson learned I guess.

Over the holidays I bought a 9" Polaroid tablet via Lazada because of the cheap price tag on it: Php 4,149 (US$93.29). For a small tablet I could use primarily as a comic book/ebook reader. Not bad, right?

Unfortunately, I didn't do a physical check of the unit before I bought it-- not even to check at the shops that were selling the product. So when I got the tablet, suffice to say I was pretty disappointed. The Android OS was slow, the touch screen glass wasn't that responsive and could be easily scratched, and the casing was made of plastic so it felt light-- and cheap.

But I made do with it, and at least it was lightweight enough for me to carry around. Unfortunately, one time I knocked my bag which had the tablet against a jeepney handle while I was commuting and-- boom! I later discovered when I got home that the impact had cracked the surface.

Bloody effin cheap stuff. Ah well...

Ex Libris: Warren Ellis' Gun Machine

In the City of Fiction, there is a street that runs two-way. One heads toward the suburb of Comics while the other goes to the bohemian district of the Novel. On this street, there are writers who live in the suburbs: these comic book writers have made a name for themselves in their field like Mark Millar, Matt Fraction, Gail Simone, Garth Ennis, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morrison.

But there are also a few comic book writers who commute and are currently working in the Novel district.* Most notable among those are Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey, Peter David, and Alan Moore dipping his pen onto the pages of the fray. And then, of course, there's Warren Ellis.

I enjoyed Ellis' first novel, Crooked Little Vein, and though he topped that book to the brim with fascinating ideas like the way he did with his comic books, I thought the shift from comic books to books had lessened the sharpness of his writing. His protagonist Michael McGill--though while interesting-- didn't have the weight of his other characters like Spider Jerusalem, Elijah Snow or Jenny Sparks. It was all firework showers but no big bang of the gonzo reporting in the future of Transmetropolitan, the "archaeologists of the impossible" in Planetary, or the worldwide spanning rescue organization in the Global Frequency.

Gun Machine fortunately shows Ellis settling into his role as a novelist by limiting himself to a handful of particular concepts. Here, NYPD detective John Tallow finds a mystery when his partner is killed by a wacko with a gun in a dilapidated apartment. Though Tallow takes down the shooter, a stray shot reveals the contents of the unit next door: a veritable shrine of guns filling the apartment from floor to ceiling, all of the weapons linked to a decade's worth of unsolved murders in the city.

Shifting perspective, Ellis reveals these killings were done by a prolific serial killer named The Hunter who has let himself be hired by a group of people to take down anyone that stands in their path. The Hunter is another interesting creation by Ellis: the killer perceives Manhattan through two different times, the current age and a pre-New York wilderness. Moreover, The Hunter believes that if he somehow completes his shrine, he would be able to supernaturally return the city back to its Eden-like state.  

The good news is that with Gun Machine, Ellis has created a fascinating, sometimes amusing, detective thriller, a "cat-and-mouse" chase as Tallow tries to find The Hunter through the Ellis-weird streets of New York City. He even manages to introduce an endearingly weird pair of CSI characters to act as the story's score card. But unlike Crooked Little Vein which switched back-and-forth between the Weird Americana (reminiscent of Planetary) and snappy political commentary (natch, Transmetropolitan) so fast you would have gotten whiplash, Ellis keeps the plot together this time and brings it all the way to a nice, proper end.

The bad news is that, like Crooked Little Vein, this story still felt slight such that I didn't feel totally involved in the story. Essentially, I get the feeling that Ellis' novel-writing skills isn't all there yet. Maybe that's the problem with comic book writers-turned-novelists. In comic books, there's really no chance for the writer's voice to be heard. And that's okay-- because for comic books, it's the artist's skill that recreates the narrative in the reader's mind.

However, in novels, it's the writer's voice that delivers the narrative. Think of a number of characters' voices in comic books-- say, Jerusalem Spider of Transmetropolitan or Yorick Brown of Y the Last Man. These aren't the voices of the writers but of the creations themselves. In novels, the writer's voice or the voice of the narrative is distinct from those of the characters.

But despite the two novel-misses so far, Ellis still remains hands-down one of the best idea man/writer in the business regardless of the medium (i.e. comics or books). You can actually see how much he's improved his skills from one book to the next and that's why I'm still game to try out his next book.

Your mileage may vary. (Two paws out of four.)



*Yes, I know there are novelists who have tried their skill writing comic books, like Joe Hill, Clive Barker, and Chris Roberson. Likewise, most of these writers still go back and forth this street writing comic books and/or novels. Bear with me on this metaphor.

My Dreaming, Imagination, and Self

I think there is a kind of delicious irony in that if we Filipinos do take part in a grand journey to Mars, this would be the first time that we Filipinos would be colonizers rather than the colonizees.

Who, me, a futurist?

That was my reaction when I read my interview with GMA-7 on the idea of Filipinos going to Mars. Heavenssake, I never thought myself as a futurist, only a guy who has an opinion on everything (though I only mention it if asked).

Ironically, I'm somewhat amused by the whole idea because if there's one thing I can say about myself, I've never actually had a dream for myself. Is that so strange? That someone who seems to have a wild (or at least varied) imagination would be so... unimaginative about oneself? Probably, though I've heard that some writers-- at least the ones who write such imaginative fare-- can be quite ordinary in real life. See exhibit A: James Thurber and his supposed alter ego, Walter Mitty.

I had this particular fact about myself thrown right in my face during an HR seminar three years ago, when the one conducting it asked us to imagine what our future would be like in 10-15 years. Thinking about it then, I remember feeling at a loss. It's only later that I realized: I couldn't imagine myself in the future because even way back then, when I was in high school or college, I couldn't imagine myself as anything... but myself.

See, that's the thing: I couldn't imagine myself as a doctor or a lawyer or even a psychologist-- though at different times of my life, I aspired to be those things. But what I held on then-- and what I hold on to now-- is though I couldn't imagine myself as anything, I always knew who I was and who I was would always hold true then... and now. You could say I was a diabolical version of Walter Mitty: full of intense drama but always unaffected by it.

That's not to say I'm an open book about myself. I still discover different-- sometimes surprising-- realizations about myself. However, I would eventually realize that these discoveries-- after some careful thought-- are actually facets of my personality that I've already accepted about myself. So yeah: surprise, 0; me, 1.    

So if ever you get to meet me outside the online world, ask me about a lot of things, but don't ask me about myself. Trust me, you'll get more about me when you do that.

PAID POST: Grammarly Keeps You Original

It may be strange for me to admit that I can do paid posts. But then again, if it's a good product, why not? And to be honest, I like the idea that there are anti-plagiarism services like these keeping us writers and those who write honest. Think about it: it would be easy to avoid doing a Sotto if some staff writers had done their job properly. (YOU JUST HAD ONE JOB, DAMMIT.)

So: yes, I've tried out and would recommend Grammarly's plagiarism checker-- free of charge, which is always nice-- because it's never a good thing to be a Senator of the Republic and be caught plagiarizing from bloggers in today's Internet Age. Just. No. Seriously.

What, you don't think the Internet is watching what you say? If you don't, then you have another think coming.

Ex Libris: Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World

When I traveled to the US for the first time several years ago, I had the strangest realization. Moving from one state to another, I felt that US as a country-- for all of its traditions and age-- was still a young one.

I came to this realization because my first travels abroad were to Asia and Europe. In those countries, you could feel the history of the land in every step you take where the next corner held a castle or temple. (Well, except for Singapore, which felt relatively "new" but you could sense that its traditions were more than likely borrowed from its neighboring countries.) In the US, you could say their mythology flourished in the early days of its industrialization, before science and technology cleared away all ambiguity and mystery.

I make this point because if there's one subgenre I'm fascinated, it's the fantastical mirror of American history of the Old West, which some have tagged as "Weird West". (Digression: I say "mirror" here in the same sense that epic fantasy supposedly mirrors-- however distorted-- the European Medieval period with its kings and wars and dragons. It may be funny to say this but I actually gained a sense of history of other countries because of the fantasy genre, which mostly focuses on the European kind.)

Two examples of the Weird West subgenre that easily come to mind is Mark Sumner's Devil's Tower (which had magic coming into the world during the American Civil War) and Stephen King's Dark Tower series (which mashes up the Old West as a Byronic fantasy land with six-guns). Unfortunately, this American mythology rewritten into a type of Old West fantasy comes in few and far in between. Fortunately, now there's Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World, which makes a good try in envisioning a steampunkish/Weird West.

In The Half-Made World, there are two factions vying for the making of the newly-shaped Western lands. On one hand, there is the Line, a dark retelling of the industrialized American North circa the Civil War under the influence of dark gods of order in the shape of demonic train engines who lay tracks across the new territories. Though these gods offer their followers a science that drives the smoke-belching engines of the new age, the price of the new order leaves their worshipers nearly mad.

On the other hand, there are the Agents of the Gun, a cult-like loose group of outlaws and murderers (both men and women) who bear supernatural spirits in their totem-like guns. These guns bequeath their Agents powers, from strength and speed, fast healing and near-invulnerability (though they can be killed). These Agents sow chaos across the land in the cause of their singular independence from any authority-- and sometimes even from their own guns.    

As the story opens, a third faction has just been crushed by the Line and the Gun, a group of towns that called themselves the Red Republic and had gloriously refused to align themselves to either factions. In the dying days of the Republic, its famous general had been driven mad by the bombs of the Line just as he discovered a secret that could give either factions a power against each other-- or destroy both of them completely.

Into this story comes Doctor Liv Alverhuysen, a psychologist escaping the death of her husband and her sheltered life in the civilized cities of the East by treating the maddened victims of the war. Crossing her path is John Creedmore, an Agent sent to find the general, even as the forces of the Line go on the march.  

Like other works that have preceded his, Gilman creates a creative analogue of the American Old West mythology that envisions the clash of the anarchy and free spirit of the Wild West against the Age of Industrialization that had descended on the US. Moreover, Gilman plays no favorites among the two factions: Liv has equal chances of being killed by either the lone gunman Creedmore or by the low-level Line officer Lowry and the army he leads.

However, even the characters carry the externalized conflict of the Gun and the Line (i.e. order versus chaos) within them as Gilmore avoids the easy generalizations. Creedmore may be an old Agent, a feat worthy of the description for the simple reason that despite their powers, they are still too few against their enemies and they can still die. But Creedmore is disillusioned by the freedom given him by his demonic overlords and wants only to be free of their control. On the other hand, Lowry is a cog in a giant machine. But like Walter Mitty living in an Orwellian 1984-like society, he rationalizes away his drive for glory by going after Creedmore and Liv as simply "following orders".

But The Half-Made World isn't just about conceptualization and world-building as Gilman deftly writes a good story, juggling the main narrative with enough flashback scenes to flesh out the characters. He then brings up the level of drama to compensate for the slight drag in the chase scene partway through the book, giving us a look at how Creedmore and Lowry would act separate from their gods. Sometimes it seems like Gilman is rambling far too slow with his story but he ties the narrative back together again.

All in all, Gilman scores high points with this book, from the main idea to the story. Though he fills in the external background of Eastern cities in rough sketches, he more than makes it up by creating a stark picture of the new Western lands in the process of being born despite the ravages of war, easy violence, slavery, and ignorance. Likewise, he easily fields questions about the price of free will and the blind worship of gods (whether supernatural, scientific or philosophical) via the characters' expressions and actions.

A good read. (Three paws out of four.)   

UPDATE: Here's a more recent review by Kirkus of Weird West stories out in the wilds.

What Game of Thrones House do you belong to?

Because everyone needs a Games of Thrones House, right?

Seriously, I can't believe how a simple sigil made me assess myself so much. Makes me think that I've been overworking myself when I start to think in terms of branding. Argh.

Curious Cat Question: Unhand my Culture, Varlet!

After watching Quentin Tarrantino's "Django Unchained", I wondered what discussions had been set-off by Tarrantino's alt-history/revenge fantasy movie. After all, Tarrantino's a white guy doing a movie about blacks in American history; I'm sure this has to stick in someone's craw.

A quick google-check soon pointed me to director Spike Lee's criticism of the movie despite not having seen it, to wit (or tweet): 

American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them. 

(Quick survey question: Is an opinion justified if the person hasn't seen the movie or read the book? Let's also thrown in books like "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Twilight" into the discussion pot and let simmer for an hour.)

My first thought about this was: would it have made a difference to Spike Lee if a black man had directed the movie? Obviously, the fact that Tarrantino's white was be a sore point. But were there other factors that would make such cultural appropriation of black history in America by a white man despite the movie's satirical, almost absurdist viewpoint-- um, unappropriate? Or is the color of the skin enough?

Ask a question, find the answer. I like the point raised by this review, which wonders why is Tarrantino giving his white audience an "escape hatch" from the historical crimes with the 'Good White Man' as opposed to the more black-and-white "Inglorious Bastards". Would the movie have been better if it was more unforgiving? Given that Tarrantino didn't pull any punches with his anti-Nazi movie "Inglorious Bastards", it's pretty interesting he took this direction with "Django Unchained". 

Personally and after some long thought, I suppose my main problem with the movie is Tarrantino's basis for his alt-western: it's not based on actual history but rather on Movie History, with its obvious influences in spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation films. Think about it: if you're going to present a skewed version of history, maybe your perspective shouldn't be skewed enough to begin with, right? Tarrantino's use of Movie History as the lens to create his own skewed history unfortunately distorts whatever message he's trying to convey to the point that all the images come out looking like they're from Bizarro-World. 

Undoubtedly, questions like these interest me because of concerns raised about writing and cultural appropriation. I've read a bit of the blog Requires Only That You Hate and its intense hatred of Western appropriation, specifically by Paolo Bacigalupi. Here, I thought the parallelism of Tarrantino's situation especially apt: can someone (white, Westerner) not from a particular world (black, Asian) write about that world?

The answer I've heard in return is always: yes, but with respect and understanding. But who's going to judge? What is the standard of respect and understanding? After all, to skew an old saying, one's white man's burden is another white man's escape hatch, right? In Tarrantino's case, was he respectful of the material-- or the history? 

What do you think? 

Ex Libris: David Wong's John Dies at the End

What is horror? Is it the vision of a new monster? Is it something sneaking up behind you? Or is it blood and guts strewn all over the floor? Obviously, this question has been answered quite a few times already but I get the feeling that David Wong, author of John Dies at the End and pseudonym for Cracked.com's editor-in-chief Jason Pargin, is trying to answer this question for today's Internet generation.

Why the Internet generation? Not surprisingly, it was the Internet that made this book popular. John Dies at the End first started as a continuing story that Pargin wrote online, which gained a multitude of fans. It was later picked up by small publisher Permuted Press before going mainstream as a hardcover (and with additional material) via Thomas Dunne and even an upcoming movie.

Given its online audience, the story is shaped by its online expectations: episodic chapters that go for the jugular with short, sharp, shocks of horror laced with scathing slacker humor. This horror story mirrors the Internet cradle it was born in, i.e. our real world unaware of another world that's just a thin slice of reality away. The narrative itself also shows its Internet influence with its meta-fictional approach, the protagonist (also named David Wong) talking directly first to the reader and then to a skeptical reporter trying to determine whether he's just being fed a line or a revelation in the ultimate of headcase conspiracies.

To sum up the story, the protagonists David and his friend John discover a new type of drug, dubbed "soy sauce", that turns the brain into a fuel-injected engine and enables its users to create home-made bombs, slow down time, and solve mathematical equations on the fly. Unfortunately, the drug-- which is nearly alive-- also allows the users to perceive the things we don't allow see: the monsters that inhabit the interstices of our reality. Likewise, the drug eventually turns its users into a dimensional portal for these monsters from their homeworld and into our own, killing the users (or subsuming them) in the process. Lastly, the drug is so powerful that once you partake of it, the effects never really go away.  

Despite its episodic nature, David Wong (the author) does try to fill in the mythology of his tale that shows influences that are either Lovecraftian in nature or plain and simple paranoidal nutjobbery. These range from the shadowy beings that haunt the characters to the omnipotent horror (with a mentality and sense of humor of a 5-year old) named Korrok waiting in the next dimension to take over ours.

Likewise, I also have to remark that though David and John are the primary protagonists of the tale, it felt like John was more of an internet cypher for David, a foil who gets him into trouble rather than a solid character of his own (the Internet personified, hmmm?).

So, going back to our original question, we ask: does today's horror work? Only if you grew up with a sense of humor more attuned to lols from 9Gag or 4chan. In this case, David Wong's (the author) sense of horror is similar to Internet humor in the same way that Internet humor is like a quick upper cut to the chin before anyone notices. Now this isn't a bad thing altogether but it does get to be droll at times it happens over and over again. At the most, John Dies at the End promises to be an entertaining read, something to read before the movie comes out. (Rating: 3 paws out of 4.)

A Wrap-up of What I Read in 2012

Remember what I said about 2011 being a terrible year because my reading rate had gone down? Well, this past year was even worse. For 2012, I didn't even read half of the number of books I read last year.

Count 'em, I only read 18 books this year.

18 BOOKS.

18 BOOKS.

What the hell happened last year?

Okay, there was January when I lost my job when Megaupload shut down. Fortunately, I managed to get a job a week later for an online gambling company. But due to a heavy/complicated job load, work politics, and moving into a new place on my own, I found I had less time to relax-- including time to read.

So yeah, I read only 18 books-- and 2 of them I dropped a third of the way because I wasn't really getting into them. This is pretty good, given that I dropped 5 books from my 2011 reading list.

(Let me clarify this one: as I've gotten older, my patience for reading books I don't like has gotten shorter. But I give them a lot of chances, figuring that I'm not in the right mood and I'll just put it aside for the moment for another-- easier-to-read-- book. And there are other books I really like despite some obvious flaws and I continue to hold on to 'em and reading them off-and-on for years. So yeah, if I give up on a book, then that book's given up for lost. But I digress.)

So what did I read the past year? It's a mixture of genre (fantasy, SF, horror) and literary reading as usual. Some of these are a mix of both or even new subgenres, like Western-horror. But all of these still fall into the category of speculative fiction, i.e. the element of strangeness is a prominent factor in the story.

The list is as follows:

1. Bestial, William D. Carl 
2. Blood Bound, P.C. Hodgell 
3. Geist, Philippa Ballantine* 
4. The Crippled God, Steven Erikson 
5. Not Flesh nor Feathers, Cherie Priest 
6. The Demon and the City, Liz Williams 
7. The Thorn and the Blossom, Theodora Goss 
8. Ready Player One, Ernest Cline 
9. Blackout, Mira Grant 
10. The Black Lung Captain, Chris Wooding 
11. MM9, Hiroshi Yamamoto 
12. The Fallen Blade, Jon Courtenay Grimwood 
13. Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas* 
14. Dust of the Damned, Peter Brandvold 
15. This Dark Earth, John Hornor Jacobs 
16. Zone One, Colson Whitehead
17. Double Dead, Chuck Wendig
18. Hart and Boot, Tim Pratt

Looking at this list, I suppose this is what happens when Life happens. Between reading a book and earning a living, we all know the choice we have to make, right? And it's not like I didn't get to read some great books last year.

For example, Colson Whitehead's Zone One was a fantastic literary take on zombies while P.C. Hodgell's Blood Bound reminded me how much I loved picking up this little-known fantasy series so many years ago. There's Theodora Goss new quirky love story The Thorn and the Blossom, and I discovered a new author I found I liked, Chuck Wendig, after reading Double Dead.

And Tim Pratt's old story collection, Hart and Boot, reminded me that, dammit, some books may want you to read incredible stories but Pratt's stories make you want to write incredible stories like he does. (Yes, you can quote me on that.)

So yeah, I fret that I'm not reading as much as I used to. I could probably read fewer books like what Michael Bourne states for a greater appreciation of what I'm reading. But I read for a different reason. I don't read to compete against myself or the world; I read so much (and buy so many books) because I want to discover great stories as much as I can while I still live on this earth. 

That's not a bad goal in life, right? It doesn't harm anyone, it's ecologically-friendly, and it makes me happy. So yeah, I think we're off to a good start this year if I resolve to read more books again. 

Writing at the Edge of the World

(Image taken from here)

So this December 2012 was supposed to be the end of the world. As far as I'm seeing, either this reality is the old world that survived or a new one that's taken its place. 

Coming back after 5 months of enforced absence from blogging, I see evidence of my old world here in this blog. It's like coming back home after a disaster has struck and all you see of your house are broken windows, scattered chairs and tables, and all your precious things lying askew. 

In a sense, blogging again after so long is like coming home after the end of the world. And, like the saying goes, you realize that you can't really go home again. In the aftermath of such an event, you have to make another one to replace the one that was lost. 

I'm exaggerating, yes, but isn't the act of writing a form of creation as well? Every time I write, I create a world where my words can ground itself, a setting where my writing can place itself. In this case, for the past decade, this blog had been my universe where I created worlds. 

Maybe this is the reason why writing is hard for me: because every time I write-- whether it's a book review, an essay, in a literal sense with a short story, or even just ad copy and content-- I create worlds where the reader can "see" the context where my words have meaning.  

(Which makes me realize: what happens to universes whose creators have left? Or is that an all-too obvious metaphor? I digress.)

This blog has been my home for the past decade and I'm ashamed to leave it untended for so long due to time, work and other considerations like Life happening. Hopefully this time for the year 2013 (and the years after) I'll be able to stay longer. 

And if you've been a regular visitor to my place, I hope you'll come back to see new things I'll put in my blog and enjoy reading what I've written. As e.e. cummings wrote, "Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."  

Ex Libris: Bestial by William D. Carl

Werewolves can't get any respect. While the vampire gets discovered not once (Bram Stoker's Dracula), not twice (Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat), but thrice (Stephenie Meyer's Twilight), while their poor hick cousin of a monster, the zombie, is having a heyday, the werewolf isn't getting that much love. In fact, they can't even get a decent book out of the exchange.

Which is why William D. Carl's Bestial-- a vision of a werewolf apocalypse-- promises to give these furry monsters their own time to shine but turns out to be a terrible waste. No wonder werewolves don't get any love in today's vampire-drenched, zombie-overloaded pop culture.

What's not to like?  Bestial's initial chapter is decently crafted, the narrative flowing pretty quickly from a bank robbery that goes south with the initial spread of the so-called "werewolf" virus to the outbreak that takes down a whole city. However, the story soon follows its own downward spiral as the chapters alternate from the survivors' tale of the first day to the patient zero's own travails hidden in a medical office. 

Unfortunately,  Bestial's action sequences-- while gripping-- can't save this cliche of a story with its stock paper-thin characters, boring characterization and flimsy hand-waving science . Throw in a distorted timeline (the virus spreads so fast/slow depending on the writer's requirements for the story) and a interesting concept that doesn't go nowhere and you'll find yourself wondering why the hell you bought the book in the first place. 

Even the finale of the survivors trying to escape the military quarantine of the city isn't enough to keep you going. In particular, even with so many deaths due to the outbreak, it's surprising to see all the major characters in Bestial survive. (After all, isn't that the whole point of horror stories? Why invest your interest in the characters if they're not going to get slaughtered later on?) 

There have been some great werewolf movies and books. (Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers comes to mind.) Sadly though, Bestial is not one of them. And with the number of terrible B-movies and badly-written small-press published books being made about the werewolf, why would people take this monster seriously? 

Ex Libris: John Hornor Jacobs' This Dark Earth

As most apocalypses go, the zombie apocalypse isn't rocket science. Yes, a little science makes it run a long way but the fact is, most zombie fiction involves the rising of the dead, everyday people turning into survivalists, lots of blood and munching (nomnomonom braaainzzz), etc.-- but that's basically it.

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead shaped the modern-day zombie template while Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (i.e. from slow to fast zombies) made some changes. But the zombie story has been generally set for some time now. 

Fortunately, some writers have been trying to shake things up the zombie story they want to write. Unfortunately, John Hornor Jacobs' This Dark Earth isn't one of them. In Jacobs' defense, he admits in his afterword that he came up with this book a little before the spate of current zombie fiction that moved this little subgenre from the indie/self-published horror vein to the mainstream bookshelves.

That's where rocket science comes in: Jacobs has come up with a well-written basic zombie apocalypse peopled with interesting characters. It doesn't really break the mold but at least he makes it an interesting tale to begin with. 

This is the only thing that makes you keep reading Jacobs' story. Otherwise, you'd see that This Dark Earth  suffers from a lack of direction and focus: it's too heart-felt to be a gore-fest, too scattered to be a character study, pulls its punches to be epic, but speaks too much about the supposed nature of humans to be mindless drivel.

This Dark Earth starts with Lucy and Knock-out's tale of surviving the zombie virus break-out and the resulting nuclear attack that shuts down most of the technology, to their set-up of Bridge City and the building of a post-zombie civilization, to the travails of Lucy's prodigy son Gus who tries to lead an attack on a slaver's camp, and the supposedly climactic battle. But honestly, where is this story really going?

If there's one thing that'll keep you reading This Dark Earth, it's Jacobs' versatile writing style, maneuvering the story from Lucy's 3rd-person perspectives to the first person viewpoint of Knock-out and Gus, to even a minor character of the engineer Broadsword.

So yes, you'll wonder where Jacobs is taking This Dark Earth-- but at least you'll stick around because he's a deft storyteller with an exciting story to tell.

Reaching out to the future

After a much-delayed pronouncement, it's alive and kicking!

Go read and find out what the future holds for us!

Endings and Beginnings

Wow. Has it been seven years already?

I remember when Dean Alfar made the announcement of the table of contents for the first volume of the Philippine Speculative Fiction collection. And now it's the other husband-and-wife team of Kate and Alex Osias who recently made their announcement of the 7th volume of PSF of those who made it for this year.

To wit, PSF7's table of contents has the following stories and writers:

1. All That We May See by Kenneth Yu
2. All the Best of Dark and Bright by Isabel Yap
3. Bastard Sword by Nikki Alfar
4. Chasers by Chris Mariano
5. East of the Sun by Dean Francis Alfar
6. Faith in Fiction by James Constantino Bautista
7. Mother of Monsters by Philip Corpuz
8. Never Land by Mo Francisco
9. Oblation by Paolo Chikiamco
10. Pet by Kristine Ong Muslim
11. Sarsarita Time by Melissa Sipin
12. The Call of the Chained God by Dariel Quiogue
13. The Changes by Benito Vergara
14. The Commute to Paradiso by Charles Tan
15. The Day Nostalgia Swept Over a Town by F. Jordan Carnice
16. Dragon's Orb by Vincent Michael Simbulan
17. The Likeness of God by Crystal Koo
18. The Little Things the Datu Did by Andrew Drilon
19. The Love Spell by Julian dela Cerna
20. The Nature of Apocalypse by Joseph Anthony Montecillo
21. The Scrap Collectors by Arlynn Despi
22. username: tanglaw by Eliza Victoria
23. What the Body Remembers by Tin Lao
24. What You See by Ian Rosales Casocot

Congratulations to those who made it to the roster! I wish I could have been part of this collection also but alas, I wasn't able to submit last year. Will try for this year. Hopefully, unless the world ends.

Of course there are endings (of the solicitation-open reading type) and endings (like the Apocalypse). That's why publishing maverick Adam David has raised a call for submissions because it's 2012 and if the Mayans are to believed, the curtain's ready to drop on this show we call The World:

This is a call for submissions for THURSDAY NEVER LOOKING BACK, an electronic anthology that seeks to gather, process, and perform these various end-of-the-world scenarios – and hopefully more (and more imaginative or realistic) and hopefully beyond – in the endlessly inventive media of language, line, and light: send in your essays, fictions, poetry, songs, komix, doodles, photographs, videos, and everything else in between to 12202012antho@gmail.com. Texts should be sent as RTFs, PDFs if needing special design conceits; images should be sent as JPGs or GIFs; audio files as links to MP3 downloads; and videos as links to YouTube or whatever file sharing service is convenient for you. In any language intelligible by contemporary civilisation! Or actually, even not!

The deadline for the first wave of submissions is April 30, 2012, with a mid-year soft launch of July 16, 2012, which is also when the call for the second wave of submissions will commence for the eventual hard launch on December 20, 2012, when we will bid the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun of the fourth world goodbye and say hi to the first of the fifth. A website will host the anthology as hypertext, with eBook formats for the Kindle, iPad, and Android a distinct possibility. This is the anthology for the end of the world as we know it! Be there or be spared!

So why not submit something before it all ends, right? You've got nothing to lose.

New stories for the New Year

From kyu:

PGS Online will be open to fiction submissions by Pinoy writers for reading and consideration from January 1, 2012 to April 30, 2012.

Here are the guidelines:

1. Word count: 1,500 up to 8,000 words.
2. Preferred genres: Science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, horror, and all subgenres falling under these.
3. Keep in mind that PGS caters not only to adult readers, but also to minors. This is not to say that profanity, gore, violence, and sex will not be accepted in a story, but make sure that such is integral to the story and not just for its own sake. Otherwise, PGS is open to any type of story treatment.
4. Payment is P500.00 for an accepted piece.
5. Please follow standard manuscript format for short story submissions.
6. Email submissions as rtf or doc attachments to pdofsf(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Am glad that PGS is now open to stories for submissions. This country can't have enough Philippine speculative fiction outlets as it is! (Especially one that's online.) One thing I have to say though is I definitely like PGS's no-fuss, no-muss site design. Kudos to Dom on that.

One thing I've recently discovered is that there are a number of people out there who are secret writers in their spare time. They like reading, they like writing stories... and that's it. They have no plans in getting their stories published, read and enjoyed by other people. I hope to change that. If ever I have a mission for 2012, it's to get people who like to write to take a chance and let others enjoy their works. I did this how many years ago and I've never regretted sending my first story to Dean's PSF volume 1.

As a short term goal, I'll take this open-submissions call as a sign that it's time for me to get back to writing stories again after my long hiatus.

What I'd read to pass the time in 2011

So another year is about to pass. I look at the number of books I've read for the year and there's a slight feel of self-disgust. Really? Finishing only 40 books in a year? That's terrible. And that includes a handful of books I started but I really couldn't finish for one reason or another. But more on that later.

In any case, here's the list of books I read in the past year:

1. Amanda Downum, The Drowning City, Orbit, January 12, 20011
2. Mira Grant, Feed, Orbit, January 24, 2011
3. Ari Marmell, Conqueror's Shadow, Spectra, January 24, 2011
4. Andy Remic, Hardcore, Solaris, February 13, 2011

5. Neal Asher, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Pan Macmillan, February 23, 2011

6. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (editors), Stories: All-New Tales, William Morrow, March 2, 2011
7. Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow, Prime Books, March 10, 2011

8. Chris Evans, A Darkness Forged in Fire, Pocket Books, March 23, 2011

9. Paul Kearney, Corvus, Solaris, April 1, 2011

10. Ian C, Esslemont, Return of the Crimson Guard, Tor, April 14

11. George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (editors), Warriors, Tor, April 16
12. Jonathan Barnes, The Somnambulist, Gollancz, April 17

13. Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (editors), Swords and Dark Magic, Harper Voyager, April 18

14. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (editors), The Year's Best Fantasy First Annual Collection, St. Martin's Press, April 19

15. Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman, A Walking Tour of the Shambles, American Fantasy, April 21

16. Jeff and Ann Vandermeer (editors), The New Weird, Tachyon Publications, May 7

17. John Shirley, Bleak History, Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, May 8

18. Scott Lynch, Red Seas under Red Skies, Gollancz, May 15
19. David Wellington, 13 Bullets, Three Rivers Press, May 20

20. James Lovegrove, The Age of Odin, Solaris, May 24

21. China Mieville, Kraken, Macmillan, June 4

22. Holly Phillips, The Engine's Child, Del Rey, June 8

23. M.K. Hobson, Native Star, Del Rey, June 26

24. Jesse Bullington, The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, Orbit, June 28
25. Jonathan Howard, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Anchor Books, July 2

26. Mira Grant, Deadline, Orbit, July 13

27. Emma Bull, Territory, Tor, July 15

28. George R.R. Martin, A Dance of Dragons, Tor, July 27

29. Mark Charan Newton, Nights at Villjamur, Orbit, July 30

30. Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Past the Size of Dreaming, Ace, August 21
31. George R.R. Martin (ed), Suicide Kings, Tor, August 30
32. Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven, Roc, September 19

33. Dean Francis Alfar, Salamanca, Ateneo Press, September 29

34. Karl de Mesa, News of the Shaman, Visprint, September 30

35. Jonathan Carroll, The Wooden Sea, Tor, October 28

36. Kage Baker, The Graveyard Game, Tor, November 4

37. Rachel Pollack, Temporary Agency, Tusk, November 4

38. Mike Resnick, The Return of Santiago, Tor, November 5

39. Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone, Bantam Spectra, November 6

40. Randall Garrett, Lord Darcy, Baen, December 31

There are a handful of books I that I didn't get to categorically finish (i.e. the works I italicized). I don't know; maybe they just didn't hit all the right chords in me when I was reading them. I would start reading them, put them down, pick them up, put them down-- and still no love in my heart, even if I jumped all the way to the ending to see what happened. So alas, I put them away one last time and moved on to other books. At my age, life is too short to keep enduring this.

As you can see, there's not much diversity here; mostly fantasy, SF and horror. But then again, I read to escape in 2011, what with work and life. Maybe I'll get to improve this 2012.

Random Shots of a Reluctant Traveler#4: Prague

1. The Lord of Time and Space lives in Prague, hidden in plain sight. It ruled all the clocks in the world, and some in others.

2. What is a memorial if people don't understand what is being remembered?

3. The two agents walked away from the past and into the present, not knowing that the future was watching them carefully. In a three-way war that involves Time, there are no civilians and there are no innocents. In a war that involves Time, everyone must choose a side.

4. One day, he woke up to find a river outside his apartment window. In this city-- like the streets-- even the rivers snake silently through the night to find their place in the sun.
5. Evil doesn't last forever. Even the historical Black Duke's feared torture tower has become a tourist attraction in this city.

6. I hate zombie apocalypse stories. The way they keep showing up in different stories, they remind me so much of flash mobs in fiction.

7. I was surprised to find out someone had kept an old tool of my trade and stuck it in an exhibit. As they say, old executioners never die, they just become HR consultants.

8. I could never figure out what I invented. But adding the spikes to it made it look cool.

9. He was chagrined. In his world, portals had power. He was amazed that this world had so much of it but everyone seemed to ignore what they had.

10. Mario finally escaped his prison but found himself lost in the wide, wide world where everything seemed too real for him.

11. He looked at the bridge, where he had last seen her. He wished he had said all the things that was inside him, but had just expressed as a sigh.

12. For each lock, two hearts had come together and promised to stay with each other. One would wish it were enough.

13. Ah, young love-- or young hearts in love. They scrawl their promises to each other, laughing as they do, not afraid of the future but only hoping to stay in the present forever.

14. As the sun set on the city, he lit his last cigarette. He had to buy another pack before he went out again to hunt the monsters that roamed the night.

15. The future was laid out before him, a future of running, of hiding in a mediocre, grey world where no one knew him and he knew nobody. This was his city and all the cities that he would eventually visit were all his.

Random Shots of a Reluctant Traveler#3: Prague

They had warned me about losing my shadow on this trip. They said he would wander away. So I tied him down to me using my shoelaces.

It broke my heart to set them free. But what could I do? The monsters were never meant to live in such a small cage. I think they would be happy living in the sewers of the city.

The wedding was a simple affair and all the ghosts attended with such solemnity.

Shush, my darling. Don't move, don't say a word. If we stand still, nobody will notice us. Don't look at their sharp teeth or their glowing eyes; I will keep you safe in my arms.

As he stood there, weighed down by all the history that surrounded him, he thought of flying away from this, from time and age and the present.

Do ancient cannons have memories of forgotten wars and battles? Do they remember the smell of smoke, burnt skin, and gunpowder as they sleep the sleep of just?

L'esprit de escalier, they call it, the spirit of the stairs. But they are such unfortunate things, really, tormented by the saddest word one could find in any lexicon: "Wait..."

The House of the Illuminati looks unprepossessing; it does not look like the place the whole world stands balanced on.

Toys are just silent memorials to dead heroes.

Can you hear it? The laughter of ancient cats sounds strangely like running water.

I visited the toy shop of the old Doctor who lived up in the castle. His marionettes always look so lifelike.

He manned the walls of his heart vigilantly, until at last he became a ghost of his own making.

These things we leave behind to mark our passage-- would people in the future see them like they see this seal? Take pictures and move on with their lives?

When the fossil-like disease first spread throughout the houses of our city, the doctors recommended using nets to prevent it from spreading. But eventually our houses died, suffocated by the suffocating stone, and we had to move to other cities.

The fortress sighed; where they used to be martial glories of soldiers marching on its roads, now there was only the lazy trample of tourists. Old soldiers never die indeed.

He shivered. He could never get used to the breaches of his reality, where one world melted into another.

"Help me!", he cried out to the people, finally wandering out of the maze. And with the last of his strength gone, he faded away unnoticed.

At first I spent my days of imprisonment looking through the bars at the world passing me by. But then they decided that the sight of my incarceration was bad for business so they covered my cage with a bamboo fence imported from the Far East.

Random Shots of a Reluctant Traveler#2: Vienna

Sadly, the place they had met and had fallen in love looked even more beautiful in the daylight.

So far, none of the giant moles that had made the secret tunnels that ran underneath the city had yet been sighted.

"Trust me, literary immortality is overrated," he ranted as he lit another cigarette. "Literary immortality is a statue sitting in the middle of the fucking park, covered in bird shit and ignored by the general public who haven't read a single piece of your work."

"Oh, they know it," he said slyly, "but they just don't have time to read it."

There are monsters in our city and these are their fossilized bones.

When he was a child, he remembered the giant clock that loomed over the dining room, larger than he was tall and quite, quite old. Because of this, he was never really comfortable about eating in general.

Shhh. The street is sleeping quietly now. But sometimes it wakes and moves into the next corner looking for sunlight. (With apologies to China Mieville.)

A fossilized church, finally revealed to the public after years of careful uncovering from the stone that surrounded it.