|
|
Post by dem on Apr 26, 2016 6:00:39 GMT
Andrew Darlington - A Saucerful Of Secrets: 14 Stories Of Fantasy, Warped Sci-Fi & Perverse Horror (Parallel Universe, 2016) Cover illustration: Vincent ChongThe Strange Laudanum Dream of Branwell Brontë
London Bridge is Falling Down, Falling Down
Thuesday to Fryday
The Door to Anywhere
Beast of the Baskervilles
Derek Edge and the Saucerful of Secrets
Refuge
The Non-Expanding Universe
Gender-Shock
Big Bad John
Terminator Zero and the Dream Demons
A Grotesque Romance
This World Holds Space Enough
And the Earth Has No EndBlurb: Andrew Darlington has had masses of material published in all manner of strange and obscure places, magazines, websites, anthologies and books. He's also worked as a Stand-Up Poet on the ‘Alternative Cabaret Circuit’, and has interviewed very many people from the worlds of Literature, SF-Fantasy, Art and Rock-Music for a variety of publications (a selection of favourite interviews collected into the ‘Headpress’ book ‘I WAS ELVIS PRESLEY’S BASTARD LOVE-CHILD’). His latest music biography is ‘DON'T CALL ME nigger, WHITEY: SLY STONE & BLACK POWER’ (Leaky Boot Press).The Kitchen Sink Gothic anthology is not without its bizarre moments, and perhaps the most unconventional story of all is Derek And The Sunspots. Derek is back in this latest genre bending début (?) collection from Andrew Darlington, and this time he's brought along all his friends. There will be strangeness. The Strange Laudanum Dream of Branwell Brontë: (DS Davidson [ed.], Tigershark #3, 2014). "I witnessed my own death. I am but thirty years old. And I know the very day when approaching death will quench life's feeble ember."Our hero heads through the snow for The Black Bull and another night on the booze. But what's this? Loitering on the path, a metal spacecraft and a a human-size, talking bee from another dimension. The bee is perfectly civil. It explains that his are an inquisitive race who delve beyond record history to seek out "uncomfortable truths." Unfortunately, this has not met with the approval of the Slithy Toves, lizard-like creatures who act as an intergalactic secret police. After the briefest guided tour of the craft, the bee-man ushers Branwell into a parallel world where he, and not his talented sisters wrote Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It is even inscribed on his headstone. It has all been an enlightening experience for Branwell, but the adventure takes a turn for the terrifying when the pair are set upon by an armed lizard. London Bridge is Falling Down, Falling Down: Last days of Queen Victoria's reign. The Capital's most deprived districts come under attack from a plague of genetically enhanced six-legged rats, venomous frogs, ferocious foxes and cockroaches "the size of your fist." Who is responsible for this outrage? In their desperation, Her Majesty's Government reanimate Professor James Moriarty as a last resort. The criminal mastermind has been fitted with an electro-magnetic heart to be switched off by Sir Frederick Trouton immediately he proves uncooperative (shades of Robert Lory's classic Dracula Returns). Moriarty duly traces the culprit to Bedlam, where Dr. Conrad Van Herder, MAD FOREIGN VIVISECTIONIST, social-Darwinist, misguided ecologist, etc., is manufacturing abominations in a bid to cleanse an over-populated world of it's "weaklings." Begins with a grisly attack on a tosher working the mudflats beneath Blackfriars Bridge and includes enough horrific vignettes to qualify as a superior When Animals Attack! entry.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Apr 27, 2016 12:05:50 GMT
A love story. Yorkshire setting. Not to be confused with Wuthering Heights.
Thuesday to Fryday: "I didn't grow up bad. I had to learn it." Derek Edge - trust me, it's him: I've read the next story - and childhood sweetheart are reunited at Ousegate on eve of a huge England First rally. Derek and Lucia ran away from home for a few hours when they were ten. Her parents, strict Catholics, disapproved and transferred Lucia and sister to a Convent School in Hull. Our man has carried a torch for her throughout his life. With his wife dead and daughter emigrated, Derek is desperate for a reunion - and gets one via Faceb**k. Even after all these years, Lucia is still unmistakeably his Lucia, save that she has renounced Religion and now devotes her energies to Politics. She confirms they are soul mates, or, at least, their darker sides are bound by a passion so strong it can inflict injury and death through sheer force of will.
"But we never even had sex."
"Only in my imagination .... We fucked each other in the head. Sometimes we still do. Time and space are only something your mind creates, only boundaries your mind makes."
At which point, the charismatic England First candidate's motorcade arrives in town ....
Come December, there will be at least two, very different Parallel Universe publications fighting it out for the coveted 'Dem's recommended original collection of 2016' career death blow. Carry on like this, and A Saucerful Of Secrets will make it a third. Early days yet, mind.
|
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Apr 27, 2016 13:17:20 GMT
WUTHERING HEIGHTS is not a love story. It is better described as a hate story.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Apr 28, 2016 18:13:52 GMT
WUTHERING HEIGHTS is not a love story. It is better described as a hate story. As you wish. The Door to Anywhere: (Jon Harvey [ed.] Worlds Of The Unknown #1, 2014). Derek Edge, twelve, saves a rat from the jaws of Jingle, the next door neighbour's cat. 'Hank,' as Derek names him, is not as other rats. For one thing he's clothed, for another, he communicates by manipulating the needle of Derek's record player when it reaches an appropriate lyric in a pop song. Hank and fellow ratoids hail from another dimension, accessible via a portal in the attic. Problem is, Mr. Zill, the lodger, has developed a taste for their flesh, and has six of Hank's pals caged and awaiting the chopping block. Derek and the bravest little alien rodent in Cottingham launch a desperate rescue attempt. Beast of the Baskervilles: (DS Davidson [ed.], Tigershark #5, 2014). His teenage daughter, Sheena, vanished from a lay-by on the outskirts of Princetown, abducted by person or thing unknown. Tatem cannot account for his movements in the time he was away from the car, the first of his now regular blackouts. Wife Carmen, unable to forgive his perceived negligence - or worse - has gone back to her parents. Now Tatem and pal Holly book rooms in The Baskerville Arms, determined to find answers. Is Tatem a werewolf, or does the small community house a resident pervert? Closest so far to an early, pre-mindless sadism, Pan Horror story. Pop culture references include Fifty Shades Of Grey, Deliverance, Kindle, "Who's your favourite screen Holmes?" Terrific hostile pub/ surly landlord scene. My concern was this volume would prove too much of a challenge for me, but for now I'm in bookstasy. |
|
|
|
Post by dem on May 19, 2016 18:52:31 GMT
Holy Bron Fane on LSD. What goes on here?
Derek Edge and the Saucerful of Secrets: "Yes, yes, we've done that temporal conundrum bit. We've read the Sci-fi, we've seen The Twilight Zone."
En route to Blackpool for the weekend, Derek and Gordon, a fellow Sci-Fi head, are trapped inside a transparent dome encasing The Happy Muncher motorway service station. Teaming up with Callistro, a young Asian woman, the two misfits and unlikely action heroine find themselves in deadly conflict with a spider-like "creature-saurus," hook-handed aliens and a pair of obstinate Time Police officers from a 'sixties (?) SF comic strip. Can the trio survive the sticky web in the basement? Is The Happy Muncher doomed to collide with the Sun? Will Gordon and Callistro find time to have it off in a broom cupboard? Bizarre perhaps, but exciting and the romantic content is lovely.
Dedicated to comic strip legends Sydney Jordan, Frank S. Pepper and David R. Motton. Pop culture references include Flash Gordon, The Fly, Deliverance (again), various psychedelic rock bands, and a copy of Knave magazine.
Big Bad John: During a tour of North Yorkshire, Danny Fisher, a struggling artist, stops off at a remote pub, The Big Bad John for a pint. He learns from a leaflet that the pub is named after a local equivalent of Big-Foot. Driving back to the B&B, Danny hits - or is hit by - a huge, hairy man-beast. Fortunately for him, the landlord knows how to handle the situation.
Suitably inspired by such a dramatic conclusion to his holiday, Danny returns home to begin work on his masterpiece, The Last Neanderthal. General public and critic alike prefer his relatively undistinguished landscapes.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on May 23, 2016 19:30:26 GMT
A Grotesque Romance: (David Caddy [ed.], Tears In The Fence #62, September 2015). Several decades on from his mid-'sixties burn out, Hannibal Mytholmbridge, the celebrated pop artist, has enjoyed acclaim as an accomplished painter of erotic studies. What neither his fan base nor the critics are aware of is that for fifty years Hannibal's brush never once soiled canvas. Instead, wife, Leigh, and mistress/ favourite model Shelley-Collette, worked in tandem to create each successive Mytholmbridge "original." The arranged suited all three. With the great man gone to his maker, Leigh and Shelley-Collette unveil his final "masterpiece" before lucky Daryl Quist of The Art Times. There's no question Mytholmbridge put his all into this one.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on May 25, 2016 16:22:53 GMT
"It’s odd, my first-ever short story sale was to the New English Library anthology ‘Stopwatch’ in 1975....." Enlightening post by the author on his Eight Miles Higher blog: Back-Story: 'A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS' Refuge: The migrant's nightmare as experienced by Idris, scraping, scrapping and bribing his way from Africa to Italy. A harrowing ocean crossing - the overcrowded ship catches fire - costs him an arm, but it's all worth it when he's washed up in and strange and wonderful new world. A Sci-fi fairy story for our times, unlikely to see inclusion in a Daily Ma*l Book Of Short Stories selection any decade soon. |
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jun 3, 2016 8:53:41 GMT
The Non-Expanding Universe: (Trevor Denyer [ed.] Hellfire Crossroads: Horror Stories With A Heart #5, 2015). Ten-year-old Ayesha stabs Daddy David for hitting mummy, and legs it into the night. With nowhere to stay, she slips through the fence at the Blott, a scary wilderness contaminated by nuclear waste from the Barrow-in-Furness plant. Mum Priya, her brothers, and a penitent David, prevail upon Rackham, an alcoholic security guard to help them find their little girl. But it's the aged, disquieting Dern saves the day. Dern is one of six "watchers" guarding the terrible secret(s) of the Blott. David and Priya are soon party to the truth - very nearly at costs of their lives - before matters take an unlikely turn for the feel-good. Shades of Logan's Run, Zero Population Growth and Charles Beaumont's The Crooked Man about this next. Gender-Shock: ( Tigershark #2, 2015). It is THE FUTURE again. The "battle of the sexes" is long behind us. Androgyny is the New Order, and all deviants from this norm are despised as sexual perverts. Now wilfully vile Verella Cade has committed the ultimate heresy in raising her child, Peter, 10, an old school BOY, no nips, no tucks, no boob job. Society demands the Death Penalty, but first there is the formality of a show trial at the Palais de Justice. Initially, Sentrie Renato, lawyer, is righteously disgusted at the client's depravity. Why should he defend such a monster? What will it do for his career.While not the least bit racy, can't help but suspect that Linda Lovecraft would have appreciated Gender Shock.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jul 8, 2016 6:48:36 GMT
Terminator Zero and the Dream Demons: (Tony Lee [ed.], Premonitions: Causes For Alarm, Pigasus Press, 2008). "Now its 23.15 and I'm stood in front of a stranger's door in the wrong end of Highgate ... The area is Bohemian, alcoholic and sleaze-accented. A place where the dead bury the living."
Is an eternal parasite loose in London N6? Madly in lust with a strange Kampuchean girl he meets on an engagement in Venice, our narrator agrees to smuggle a statuette through customs on her behalf, his cut of the profit helping finance a video for ex-Clock DVA* frontman Adi Newton's latest musical extravaganza. The statuette, depicting Vishnu, the all pervading one, was stolen from a temple during the final days of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. On returning to North London he takes the icon to the designated address, and bursts in on the aftermath of a vicious murder. The going gets very strange thereafter.
The one story from the collection I've struggled with to date, possibly because it relates to an earlier work, Eternal Assassin, which, surprise, surprise, I've not read.
This World Holds Space Enough: So make that two stories I've struggled with.
No fault of the author but, alas, my "brain" is not equipped to comprehend advanced mathematical formula, so why Otto Czibarovsk's equation should have such evolution-altering, universe-expanding consequences is completely beyond me. That said, I enjoyed the various vignettes concerning the Dresden uprising, Czibarovsk's tough childhood in Spitalfields, Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic & Co.
I really am too dim for alt-history speculative fiction.
* Saw Clock DVA at the ICA in London headlining over They Must Be Russians back in the day. Free-form, LOUD, strobe lights, etc.
|
|
|
|
Post by severance on Jul 8, 2016 11:39:21 GMT
The one thing that always annoyed me about Clock Dva was Adi Newton's godawful vocals - decent music, hideous grating over the top of it.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jul 8, 2016 12:32:04 GMT
The one thing that always annoyed me about Clock Dva was Adi Newton's godawful vocals - decent music, hideous grating over the top of it. Must admit, I was there to see TMBR, who obliged with a typically shambolic set. The Russians MK I split on stage after the first number (famous non-hit Nagasaki's Children), whereupon leader Russ Russian completed the set with three new Soviets. Clock DVA were all menace and strobes, but my enduring memories of the night are Throbbing Gristle's Cosey dancing - very gracefully - to the Russians' VD anthem, Don't Try To Cure Yourself, and Genesis P. Orrige enjoying a nice cup of soup. |
|
|
|
Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 8, 2016 13:50:14 GMT
Thread hi-jack alert. An old bore writes - The They Must Be Russians I knew www.boredteenagers.co.uk/THEY%20MUST%20BE%20RUSSIANS.htmPossibly the unluckiest band in the world in that not only did that Clock DVA supporting post-punk bunch of chancers nick their name, some Northern bunch of mohicans ripped off their song Psychoanalysis on one of Crass's Bullshit Detector compilations (Mr Clarke (later of The Decadent Few)'s reaction providing the classic cliche 'red-faced and shouting'. Mick, Adrian and Neal were in the year above me at school, Guy in the same class for a short while - he mimed to Chris' Montez' Let's Dance in the Ramones style at an end of term concert. And now, back to Andrew Darlington... |
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jul 8, 2016 18:41:13 GMT
Thread hi-jack alert. An old bore writes - The They Must Be Russians I knew www.boredteenagers.co.uk/THEY%20MUST%20BE%20RUSSIANS.htmPossibly the unluckiest band in the world in that not only did that Clock DVA supporting post-punk bunch of chancers nick their name, some Northern bunch of mohicans ripped off their song Psychoanalysis on one of Crass's Bullshit Detector compilations (Mr Clarke (later of The Decadent Few)'s reaction providing the classic cliche 'red-faced and shouting'. Mick, Adrian and Neal were in the year above me at school, Guy in the same class for a short while - he mimed to Chris' Montez' Let's Dance in the Ramones style at an end of term concert. And now, back to Andrew Darlington... Thread re-hijack. A geriatric punk/ skid row Goth writes - The They Must Be Russians I knew. The "post-punk bunch of chancers" were formed early in 1978 when Martin X Russian (nee Lacey) and Russ Russian briefly left behind the joys of the Wealdstone FC's Elmslie End and surrounding pubs to study at Sheffield Uni. There they met and recruited Tony and Chris Russian, rehearsed, blagged gigs in student bar, etc, and slowly acquired some kind of cult status. Martin quit to concentrate on his long-running fanzine, NMX, celebrating a thriving local post-punk scene (Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, Clock DVA, Pulp, Artery, I'm So Hollow, etc). He continued to chronicle TMBR's glorious career on a gig-by-gig basis. The surviving Russians cut their début ep, Nagasaki's Children, in 1979, featuring two anti-war songs, a power-punk lust chant, and - years before The Toy Dolls - a drunken cover of Nellie The Elephant. Follow up 7" (produced by Cab Voltaire!) Don't Try To Cure yourself was denied the airplay it deserved partly due to the lyrics (Russ reading from a VD advice leaflet) but mostly because nobody in their right minds actually wanting to play/ listen to it. I bought the other They Must Be Russians' shared single under the impression it was by the Sheffield bunch. Can't remember Joe 9T's contribution, but I liked Psychoanalysis. Kind of strange that while you were friends with one They Must Be Russians, I was friends with their rivals. Hey, did I ever tell you about my wild nights with Martian Dance? |
|
|
|
Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 8, 2016 21:30:55 GMT
Andrew Darlington (and David A Riley) won't thank us for this but now we've started -
my brother had the joint single, purchased from Revolution Records at the bottom of Peascod Street under the piece of card with 'Support your local punk band !' written on it in felt tip. The Joe 9T theme was the theme from Joe 90 with amended lyrics. I believe you have mentioned Martian Dance a couple of (thousand) times. I did see them at least twice - once supporting Adam & the Ants at the Electric Ballroom , on May 22nd 1980, in the company of two of the Windsor TMBR - one of whom broke the news that Ian Curtis had hung himself. One band of that era I did see quite few times was Manufactured Romance (nee The Fourth Reich) and was quite surprised to see on the Punk77 forum that there was apparently quite a bit of aggravation between the two sets of fans (possibly a West/East London rivalry)
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jul 11, 2016 6:52:12 GMT
Andrew Darlington (and David A Riley) won't thank us for this but now we've started - my brother had the joint single, purchased from Revolution Records at the bottom of Peascod Street under the piece of card with 'Support your local punk band !' written on it in felt tip. The Joe 9T theme was the theme from Joe 90 with amended lyrics. I believe you have mentioned Martian Dance a couple of (thousand) times. I did see them at least twice - once supporting Adam & the Ants at the Electric Ballroom , on May 22nd 1980, in the company of two of the Windsor TMBR - one of whom broke the news that Ian Curtis had hung himself. One band of that era I did see quite few times was Manufactured Romance (nee The Fourth Reich) and was quite surprised to see on the Punk77 forum that there was apparently quite a bit of aggravation between the two sets of fans (possibly a West/East London rivalry) I've no idea what that was all about but N/W rivalry sounds plausible. MD inherited a lot of Pistols fans plus the Ants hardcore so the gigs were never low on aggression and songs like Biography Of Graham (chorus, "kick him in head, kick him in the head boy!") probably didn't help. There was also some unpleasantness with fans of Scottish punks, the Flowers, culminating in some poor sod having his throat slashed at the Moonlight club. The police stopped the trains so they could interview everyone on the station platform. It was all good training for the Birthday Party/ early Nick Cave & The Cavemen/ Bad Seeds gigs soon to come ("every scumbag in London was there" © Antonella Black, NME, atmosphere equivalent to the notoriously unwelcoming Cold Blow Lane End at the Old Den). Wire audiences could be a bit lively too. And then there was Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers/ The Only Ones minor riot at the Marquee ... By all accounts - well, Mick Mercer's - MD were awful on that Ants tour - it came too soon for them - and generally didn't perform well outside of London. I remember some graffiti in the 100 Club - "Martian Dance are good now" and, with one exception, whenever I saw them, they were, notably at the Lyceum where they blew head-liners Simple Minds and the days press darlings, Wasted Youth off stage. The one exception was the aforementioned Moonlight Club gig, but events in the audience likely contributed to that. I was in awe of their roadie, an absolute bear of a Hells Angel. Some idiot threw a glass or a bottle at Jerry Lamont and this guy climbs on stage, prowls along the front, GLARING at everyone in the world. No more bottles thrown after that! |
|
