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.