Jack Dann & Nick Gevers - Ghosts by Gaslight

[cauldronbrewer]

Jack Dann & Nick Gevers - Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and the Supernatural (Harper Voyager, 2011)

James Morrow - The Iron Shroud
Peter S. Beagle - Music, When Soft Voices Die
Terry Dowling - The Shaddowwes Box
Garth Nix - The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike
Gene Wolfe - Why I Was Hanged
Margo Lanagan - The Proving of Smollett Standforth
Sean Williams - The Jade Woman of the Luminous Star
Robert Silverberg - Smithers and the Ghosts of the Thar
John Langan - The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons
John Harwood - Face to Face
Richard Harland - Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism
Marly Youmans - The Grave Reflection
Theodora Goss - Christopher Raven
Lucius Shepard - Rose Street Attractors
Laird Barron - Blackwood’s Baby
Paul Park - Mysteries of the Old Quarter
Jeffrey Ford - The Summer Palace

Somebody gave me a copy of this book last year, and I managed to put off reading it until last week. I ended up enjoying it a good deal. Particular favorites included the stories by Morrow (mad scientist who traps souls in mechanical golems), Dowling (the opening of a sarcophagus in which a man was buried alive), Nix (a Holmes mystery--no, not that Holmes; his cousin, who has . . . issues), Langan (the balloons of the title are rather horrific), and Barron (a hunting tale that proudly bears the influence of the author whose name appears in the story's title).

Youman's story, which features Nathaniel Hawthorne as the narrator, includes a passage that I found interesting. One character tells Hawthorne, "'I am fond of reading . . . though sad to admit that I do not care much for stories." Hawthorne then tells the reader: "It always surprises me when people utter such sentiments."

Reading this reminded me of a time, years ago, when my mom and I were watching The X-Files at her mother's house. My grandmother came into the room, saw us watching TV, and said, "Is this a story? I don't like stories." It took me a moment to grasp that she meant she did not like fiction in any form. I was shocked then, and still am today, to realize that I was genetically related to someone who would think such a thing.