Worlds Of Strangeness

[dem bones]

Nigel Taylor Golem II

Got stuck into Nigel's latest compilation of skewed sci/horror-fantasies over the weekend, and consider my life much enriched for the experience.

'Doc' Clancy - Cult Of The Shark God: Rehoboth Beach beach, 1962. Mutants masquerading as a hip surf band abduct three jitterbugging bikini girls for sacrificial purposes. El Sereno, the famous masked Mexican wrestler, is onto the caper, but how can a square hope to scupper Los Sharkataques' ghastly designs?

Maharg Swerdna - The Mummy From Blood's Tomb: Moneybags "Doctor" Leon Valery, overnight Egyptologist and violator of tombs, learns rather more than he'd have wished about the embalming process ....

Graham Andrews - Shell Suit: "Tell me, Mr. Lucas - do you believe that a dead person's property becomes invested with the spirit of that dead person?" It doesn't pay to get shirty with Won Hung Lo, tailor to the late He-who-I-dare-not-name, formidable leader of a Dragon Tong. Very Frederic Brown in Nasty mood.

[Nigel Taylor] - Borderland: In the twenty-second century, time travel is punishable by death, but Novak is prepared to risk all in pursuit of immortality!

Difficult to synopsise the 'Micronicles' without giving too much away, but to give some idea;

The Stranger - Golem II: A little boy's heroic attempt to permanently incapacitate Frankenstein's monster.

'Doc' Clancy - This Bender Earth: Three-fingered extra-terrestrial enjoys jolly night out in New Mexico.

The Stranger - Through Other Eyes: Professor Kensington travels the globe seeking archaeological traces of Cyclops.

To be continued:

[dem bones]

Ferrell Rosser - Black Lagoon: An epic 32 pager, accounting for 47.058823529412% (approx) of entire issue. Saga of the Gill-man retold as a borderline Spicy Romance. Summer, 1949. Ambitious young scientist Jane Stone blags a place on Dr. John Fairland's crack team for an expedition up the Amazon. A week into the expedition and Jane catches her first glimpse of an aquatic something pursuing their steam-boat. Over the coming days, an unlikely romance blossoms between big-boned Jane and the scandalously well-endowed green, scaly Gill-man (or 'mega-amphibian, as she classifies him). Alas, the course of true love-lust never did run smooth and there are those among the party - notably sleazy geologist Dr. Ed Winson and woman-hating botanist Dr. Joseph Lang - who would do them both harm, primarily to cover up their string of increasingly violent crimes.

Also: The Invisible Made Visible: A celebration of Richard Gordon's work on Fiend Without A Face and the wonders of stop-motion animation in general. An enthused review of Graham Andrews' novel The Stopgap Spaceman (FeedARead, 2018) - you can read a 2 page extract here. Homage to Harryhausen: That rarest of abominations - a pretty poem even dems can understand/ appreciate/ read without throwing up, etc.

Reminder to Advent Calendar gang - WOS WELCOMES SUBMISSIONS! contact nigeltaylor131AToutlook.com (substitute AT with @ )


Very recommended!

[dem bones]

Friend Nigel's Worlds of Strangeness #4 is available now via an am*z*n near you. Includes original strange fiction by Richard Toogood, 'Doc' Clancy, Graham 'Shell Suit' Andrews and, of course, the Stranger himself. Hope to have more details circa midweek.

Nigel Taylor

[dem bones]

Arrived today in package with the Weird Tales March 1925 reprint. Somehow that seems entirely right.

Nigel Taylor [ed.] - Worlds of Strangeness #4 (August, 2021)

Nigel Taylor

Editorial: The Stranger Speaks
"Doc" Clancy - The Curse Club
Graham Andrews - Brain Waive
The Stranger - A Farce in Metropolis
[Nigel Taylor] - Micronicles #10: An Imperfect Murder
Richard Toogood - By The Light of the Worm Moon
[Nigel Taylor] - Micronicles #11: The Last Trainspotter
It's a Strange Strange Strange World
The Stranger investigates: A Noteworthy Comic Strip
[Nigel Taylor] - Micronicles #12: Dysmorphia

Available from;

am*z*n.uk

am*z*n

[dem bones]

Made more of a start on WOS #4 than intended - I've only one novella and the article on a certain horror comic strip to go.

The Stranger - A Farce in Metropolis: Benito Ciccolini, respected businessman and ruthless mobster, curses the day Superman showed up in Metropolis and transformed it into a crime-free Shangri-la. To revive faith in his evil empire, Ciccolini masterminds a six-pronged assault on the city's major banks, figuring even the flying creep in the nancy boy costume can't protect multiple targets at the same time. On the eve of the operation, a breakthrough. Mr. Ciccolini learns from his snout, an alcoholic pavement artist, that a man left a suit of cloths and a pair of glasses in the phone booth. The wino swears they're genuine X-ray specs! Ciccolini simply has to have them! Where are they now? That journalist fellow, Clark Kent, picked them up!

Will Clark have to leave Metropolis - and Lois, the love of his life - to protect his identity? Will crime again flourish on the streets of the city? Do X-ray specs actually work? This pulsating playlet is where to find out!

Richard Toogood - By The Light of the Worm Moon: Bloody adventures of swordsman Tantrum 'the Red Anger' Ruah, as recorded by his loyal servitor, including the rout of a tusked, club-wielding troop of Skrownjers, the interrogation of a horribly tortured gargoyle, and a nerve-shredding bridge crossing to a ruined land. Episode culminates in a face off with Vermisteron, the suicidal worm God, and an against-the-odds massacre of his minions. Have read and enjoyed several of Richard's articles, but this is the first time I've sampled his fiction. Relentlessly violent Sword & Sorcery, not for namby pambies. Sample passage; " .... And still he ploughed his way inexorably on, hacking and chopping to left and right, until it seemed to me as if the ranks of his enemies were sucked and funnelled into the spout of an insatiable meat grinder."

Graham Andrews - Brain Waive: "Variation on a theme by Frederic Brown." Absent minded Lionel Wester meticulously plans the murder of stingy Uncle Silas. Wester takes every eventuality into consideration until there is not the remotest possibility of discovery.

For those new to these Worlds of Strangeness, the micronicles are - usually humorous - exercises in fantasy/ SF/ horror/ and/ or murder flash fiction. To date, there's not been one I didn't like.

Nigel Taylor - An Imperfect Murder: Miles Smith plots the demise of the Nobel prize winning scientist who bedded his wife.

Nigel Taylor - Dysmorphia: A wise old hermit's patience finally snaps when a fourth woman in succession visits his cave seeking advice on committing painless suicide as a facial disfigurement has made life unendurable.

Nigel Taylor - The Last Trainspotter: That most mocked of hobbyists discovers a new obsession.

More to follow

[dem bones]

"Doc" Clancy - The Curse Club: The staking of Polidori and rending of his bodyguards by person or thing unknown threatens to end a period of sustained peace between the worldly Chicago underworld and that of the dark world, as populated by vampires, were-creatures, reanimated mummies and a Frankenstein's-monster-a-like. The magicians of Terre Haute's Silver Sabremen Lodge form uneasy alliance with those of Polidori's surviving network to seek out the perpetrators of this game-changing gangland hit. All roads lead to the proprietor of the Curse Club, an Egypto-archaeologist turned concert promoter, who seeks an end all co-existence between the special ones and the world of men. Time for the monsters to join forces and take over what is rightfully theirs! "The Master comes from Memphis soon. Join with us or perish," the Professor advises tonight's star performer, rockabilly legend Eliphas Levi, the man with the beautiful ghost girl in his guitar. Can it be that Levi is again to encounter his adversary of multiple reincarnations past? 'Action packed' doesn't do this one justice, ditto bizarre. I think The Curse Club may even qualify as outré Mummy fiction. Not for nothing is this magazine Worlds of Strangeness.

You can find out a little more about the Silver Sabremen of Lodge 336, El Sereno, the masked wrestler, Rock Brennan, Paranormal Detective and June Hart, guns and garters movie star at DocClancy.com.