The Gorgon and other Beastly Tales by Tanith Lee

[cromagnonman]

The late Tanith Lee wrote a lot of books. More books probably than I can envisage even her most ardent fans ever wanting to read. Even when her brand of baroque fantasy went out of fashion in the 1990s it didn't seem to impact upon her prolificness. A casual perusal of the Fantastic Fiction site reveals more than thirty titles published since the year 2000 alone.

THE GORGON and other Beastly Tales dates from 1985 when her work was still very much in vogue. It was a time when no fantasy anthology or magazine was complete without a contribution of some sort from her. She appeared to have the period's entire compliment of middle aged male editor eating out of her hand: Lin Carter, Andrew Offutt, George Scithers, you name them. No one was more captivated and entranced by Lee's work though than Don Wolheim of DAW Books. He dutifully accepted everything she submitted to him for fourteen years straight. Now that's what you call a reliable patron.

THE GORGON and other Beastly Tales is a collection of eleven stories culled from various sources appearing over the preceding six years. It is also an utterly maddening curate's egg of a book. Where it excels it is scintillating and brilliant, but where it disappoints then - oh dear - it is narcissistically self-absorbed and plumbs some pretty abyssmal depths.

The collection kicks off with the title story. This tells the tale of an English traveller who becomes obsessed with visiting a certain Greek island despite the local superstition that it is inhabited by a mythological monster. Once there he is astounded to find himself confronted by a mysterious masked woman.
"The Gorgon" is the story which won Lee a World Fantasy Award although I can't understand why. Its a pretty unremarkable story by my estimation and, what's more, despite its mythological overture it isn't actually a fantasy at all. This book does feature a couple of stories well deserving of winning such an award but "The Gorgon" isn't one of them.

The next story, "Anna Medea" also has a mythological sub-text but is a much stronger and more entertaining tale. A businessman becomes convinced that the new governess who has successfully tamed his feral children is a werewolf. This is a delicious black comedy. Lee possessed a wonderfully sardonic brand of humour and this story exercises it to telling effect.

Humour is sadly lacking in the next dismal tale called "Meow", in which a mentally fragile young woman develops an unnatural affinity for her clowder of possessive cats.

"The Hunting of Death: The Unicorn" is one of three stories in the book not to have been published previously, but unlike the others its not hard to see why in this case. Despite one great imaginative flourish this is essentially a rambling, often incoherent, exercise in pretentiousness. Part religious allegory, part vague riff on the nature of existence, part unfathomable nonsense, it concerns an entity called Lasephun who we follow through several reincarnations but whose fate in each is bound up with that of the unicorn. My interpretation of the tale is that Lasephun is a Christ figure who, in his other incarnations, is also his own tempting Satan as well as his own betraying Judas. The story, with heavy religious symbolism, is divided up into three distinct sections. The middle section which concerns a privileged girl called Sephaina and her encounter with a demon is pretty darn good and strong enough to stand on its own merits. But the rest of the rambling narrative is opaque in the extreme. Its inclusion seems both an exercise in vanity on Lee's part and an unnecessary indulgence by Wolheim.

The final story for discussion for now, "Magritte's Secret Agent", is even worse, believe it or not. If anyone makes the mistake of reading the stories in sequence then this is the point where they most likely give the book up. This is the infuriating story of an intensely irritating shop assistant who develops an unfathomable obsession with a vegetative young man whom she encounters one day when his brusque mother wheels him into the lingerie department where she works. Over the course of the story she contrives ever more convoluted ways to inveigle herself into the pair's secluded lives. The reason for the young man's condition isn't actually a bad one although I've seen it done elsewhere with far more panache and far less pretentiousness. The real problem with the story is the narrator. Its impossible to sympathise with someone who comes across as an unhinged stalker. If such pandering to the neuroses and compulsions of self-absorbed young girls is indicative of the path Lee was considering taking her career down then its small wonder so many of her readers deserted her.

Fortunately it is at this point, with the book having reached a creative nadir, that things finally start to pick up.
As I hope to demonstrate next time.
             

[helrunar]

Hi Cromagnonman, 

Tanith Lee wrote scripts for two of the better episodes of one of my personal favorite Britcult sci fi series, Blake's 7.  The second of the episodes, "Sand," involved a very novel idea--vampire sand that feeds off human emotions.  The story was written as a showcase for Jacqueline Pearce whose portrayal of Servalan was, for me, the highlight of the series, so it's not surprising that I think so highly of this one.  The other episode was for the first series and again has a very novel concept, which is all I will say about it here.

I don't know if Lee wrote other work for television.  The Jacqueline Pearce story did feature some very witty bits of dialogue.

H.

[cromagnonman]

Sept 16, 2016 20:08:53 GMT helrunar said:

Hi Cromagnonman, 

Tanith Lee wrote scripts for two of the better episodes of one of my personal favorite Britcult sci fi series, Blake's 7.  The second of the episodes, "Sand," involved a very novel idea--vampire sand that feeds off human emotions.  The story was written as a showcase for Jacqueline Pearce whose portrayal of Servalan was, for me, the highlight of the series, so it's not surprising that I think so highly of this one.  The other episode was for the first series and again has a very novel concept, which is all I will say about it here.

I don't know if Lee wrote other work for television.  The Jacqueline Pearce story did feature some very witty bits of dialogue.

H.


Hi Helrunar

I do vaguely remember the episode "Sand" but the other one, "Sarcophagus", escapes me utterly. Thing is the BBC has always appeared to be painfully embarrassed by any SF/Fantasy show it has ever produced and rarely repeats any of them: (antiques shows and cooking programmes are another matter entirely). So even though I used to watch Blake's 7 avidly I don't think I've seen a single episode since the original transmissions.

What I do remember most about it, with affectionate nostalgia, is the fact that it was made on such a shoestring budget that when Blue Peter demonstrated how to make a Liberator teleport bracelet out of the cardboard middle from a sellotape roll and sticky back plastic it looked better than the ones they used on the show. 

[Michael Connolly]

Sept 17, 2016 9:05:32 GMT cromagnonman said:

Sept 16, 2016 20:08:53 GMT helrunar said:

Hi Cromagnonman, 

Tanith Lee wrote scripts for two of the better episodes of one of my personal favorite Britcult sci fi series, Blake's 7.  The second of the episodes, "Sand," involved a very novel idea--vampire sand that feeds off human emotions.  The story was written as a showcase for Jacqueline Pearce whose portrayal of Servalan was, for me, the highlight of the series, so it's not surprising that I think so highly of this one.  The other episode was for the first series and again has a very novel concept, which is all I will say about it here.

I don't know if Lee wrote other work for television.  The Jacqueline Pearce story did feature some very witty bits of dialogue.

H.


Hi Helrunar

I do vaguely remember the episode "Sand" but the other one, "Sarcophagus", escapes me utterly. Thing is the BBC has always appeared to be painfully embarrassed by any SF/Fantasy show it has ever produced and rarely repeats any of them: (antiques shows and cooking programmes are another matter entirely). So even though I used to watch Blake's 7 avidly I don't think I've seen a single episode since the original transmissions.

What I do remember most about it, with affectionate nostalgia, is the fact that it was made on such a shoestring budget that when Blue Peter demonstrated how to make a Liberator teleport bracelet out of the cardboard middle from a sellotape roll and sticky back plastic it looked better than the ones they used on the show. 

A newspaper review said that the special effects for Blake's 7 were by Rod Hull and Emu.

[cromagnonman]

To borrow a footballing cliche THE GORGON and other Beastly Tales is very much a book of two halves. The majority of its failures are consigned to the first half while all of its triumphs are to be found in the second.

"Monkey's Stagger" is not one of these triumphs however. Originally published in a gaming magazine Lee was perhaps too concerned with trying to cater to an unfamiliar audience to succeed in crafting a satisfactory story. On a distant planet an inept hero called Edmund is challenged by a demon to find the titular monkey's stagger within the space of an hour or be torn limb from limb. The solution - which involves a play on words - is as contrived and laboured as the attempt at colonial satire.

It is with the next story "Sirriamnis" that the collection belatedly blossoms into thrilling and exuberant life and finally delivers us the Tanith Lee that the book was bought for. In a household in ancient Greece an elderly slave fights to save his master from a succubus. This is an absolute belter of a story that plays to all of Lee's strengths as a writer: lush eroticism, evocative atmosphere, powerful symbolism, and features an image of such stark horror it will sear itself onto the back of your eyelids. In some ways it is a story which invites comparison with Catherine Moore's masterpiece "Shambleau", but this creature's singular and graphic method of vampirism is one which would have had Moore blushing all the way down to her subcutaneous tissue.

If anything the next story "Because Our Skins Are Finer" is even better. A grim seal hunter in possession of a unique pelt is visited one night in his isolated croft by a strange wet woman with large black eyes who offers him anything he might ask for in exchange for it. This is another stupendous excursion into the realm of surreal eroticism where Lee brooked few rivals. It also features some wonderfully evocative imagery and no one who reads it will soon forget the undersea city of smoking coral, or the sunken Viking ship with its skeletal master still crouched in the prow, a torc of gold glimmering around his bone throat. This is storytelling of an elite variety which exhibits the awesome depth and richness of Lee's imagination.

Its sobering to reflect that this coming monday would have been Tanith Lee's 69th birthday. One could pay her memory no greater due than to read either "Sirriamnis" or "Because Our Skins Are Finer". I find it hard to believe that she could have ever written anything better. And Tanith Lee at her best is about as good as fantasy can get.

[mcannon]

[/quote]A newspaper review said that the special effects for Blake's 7 were by Rod Hull and Emu.[/quote]


Apropos of nothing... Rod Hull was the first celebrity I ever saw in the flesh. While he was British, he spent quite a few years working on television here in Australia. Prior to developing his "Emu" act, he was best know for playing the role of "Constable Clot" on "Kaper Kops", a Keystone Cops-like segment on afternoon television in the early-mid '60s. He made an appearance in character at a local school fete in suburban Sydney in 1964, and I recall my five year old self being fascinated to see that he had bright red hair - this was a decade before the introduction of colour TV.

errr... I'm not sure that I can actually link this to Tanith Lee in any meaningful way......

Mark

[helrunar]

Sorry, for some reason I thought Lee had penned the excellent first series episode "Duel."  I don't think this is a case of failing, faded memory banks--for some reason, I really thought I had seen it credited to her.  I've actually never seen the episode "Sarcophagus" though I own all the DVDs.

I have no idea who Rod Hull and Emu are or were (I'm American).  But I remember reading in an article or book about the series that some important prop on the main Liberator flight deck set was made by gluing together serving trays from the BBC cafeteria.

H.

[cromagnonman]

Sept 19, 2016 0:54:29 GMT helrunar said:

Sorry, for some reason I thought Lee had penned the excellent first series episode "Duel."  I don't think this is a case of failing, faded memory banks--for some reason, I really thought I had seen it credited to her.  I've actually never seen the episode "Sarcophagus" though I own all the DVDs.

I have no idea who Rod Hull and Emu are or were (I'm American).  But I remember reading in an article or book about the series that some important prop on the main Liberator flight deck set was made by gluing together serving trays from the BBC cafeteria.

H.

That rings all too true to me. But if Thunderbirds could get away with having a lemon squeezer spray painted grey in Thunderbird 1's launch bay then I don't see why the Liberator should be any more grandiose.
The majority of British tv of the period was still being made to a post war cash strapped ethos of improvise/make-do-and-mend. Or done on the cheap if you prefer. It is what lends programmes like Blake's 7 much of their charm.

Again I'm working from very hazy recollections here but wasn't the entire first series of Blake's 7 written by creator Terry Nation? At his insistence. This always seemed like a hubristic exercise in self-delusion to me, because although Nation was a writer capable of coming up with good ideas he had a very limited ability to develop them. The reason the episode "Duel" stands out in the memory to me is because he ripped it off wholesale from the Star Trek episode "Arena".

Trust me: ignorance of Rod Hull and Emu is in no way an instance of cultural deprivation.

[Michael Connolly]

Rod Hull died after he fell off his roof when he was trying to fix his tv aerial. Why didn't he send Emu to do it?

Too soon?

[dem]

Sept 15, 2016 22:32:04 GMT cromagnonman said:

Humour is sadly lacking in the next dismal tale called "Meow", in which a mentally fragile young woman develops an unnatural affinity for her clowder of possessive cats.

Don't have Gorgon ... or any other Tanith Lee collection, but recently reread Meow and thought it worked well in the context of Charles L. Grant's "quiet horror" selection, Shadows 4. It seems even D.A.W. may not have been quite so keen on this one as he was prepared to farm it out. The editor begins his brief introduction, "A short while ago, Donald A. Wollheim sent me this story without warning ..."

[jamesdoig]

I've only got two Tanith Lee books, but they're both crackers:





Never tried a novel, though.

[helrunar]

Hi Cromagnonman,

I actually find the "done on the cheap" stuff much more charming--and in some cases, genuinely moving and touching--than the "buckets of gloss" approach that came in during the 1990s.

I actually thought Nation did some good writing for Blake.  And yes, he wrote all the episodes for the first series.  The one about Project Avalon was one of the best shows in the entire thing and Nation wrote that.  IMDB said he wrote a total of 19 episodes so I think he must have done a couple for series 2 as well, but I'd have to check one of my B7 books.

A 1972 TV film, The Incredible Robert Baldick, written by Terry Nation, was meant to be a pilot for a series and I thought that had a memorable sense of flair about it.  I only was able to see it thanks to a friend who found a copy of it somewhere or other.  It's too bad this kind of material isn't repeated more often on a regular channel.  There is obviously an audience for it, and not just old fogies.

I think Tanith Lee must have become a friend of Jacqueline Pearce's.  I have a CD of Jacqueline doing interviews and short radio monologues and Tanith wrote something for her to do on that.  It was a fan produced thing.

Best wishes,

H.

[cromagnonman]

From the giddy heights of the preceding two stories its back down to earth - quite literally, albeit temporarily - with the next one "Quatt-Sup". This is a silly little innocuous space filler of a tale of the sort that Steve Ditko and Stan Lee used to churn out for the monster mags back in the day, and which used to get regurgitated in things like Sinister Tales. A close encounter of the fourth kind doesn't pan out the way either the alien or the abductee hope. A cute if instantly forgettable effort.

The next story "Draco Draco" finds Lee with her tongue still rooted firmly in her cheek, although this time it is in the service of a far more substantial and enjoyable tale. In the years following the decampment of the Roman legions from Britain a cynical old apothecary finds himself forced into an unwelcome alliance with a vainglorious barbarian called Caiy. When the pair of them subsequently encounter a dragon Caiy makes a vow to kill it despite the apothecary's protests that such a feat is impossible.
Caiy is an affectionate cariacature of the sort of simple minded hero that Lee made her name with in novels like THE STORM LORD. The apothecary is a mouthpiece for the more mature Lee's critical commentary on such characters and the various tropes of the genre.
This is an excellent, if rueful, tale which just falls on the right side of parody.

The book concludes with a flourish of pure Tanith Lee magic in the story entitled "La Reine Blanche".  The young widow of a decrepit king is incarcerated alone in a tower where she is visited by a raven that brings with it a tale of obsessive and mutually destructive love.
This is one of Lee's signature brand of twisted fairy tales which are always a joy to read and this one is no exception. It owes something to Cinderella but to say any more would be to risk spoiling it. Suffice to say that it is stupendously clever and inventive and brilliantly executed. And it comes complete with some quite sumptuous passages of writing:

"When the raven had finished his meal, he arranged his feathers. His eyes were black, and his beak like a black dagger. He was altogether so black, the white queen imagined he must be as black inside as out, even his bones and blood of ebony and ink."

Lee was rarely better than when working with the warp and weft of fable which she had the singular ability to weave into something poignantly adult and memorable.

All in all a magnificent way to end a book and to send the reader off in search of others.  

[peeedeel]

Indeed. And then we  have Tanith Lee’s author’s note from WOLF TOWER:



“When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I’m writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what’s already there in front of me. That said, it won’t be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one.


“Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all these places than here.”



She is greatly missed.

[cromagnonman]

Sept 20, 2016 14:36:12 GMT helrunar said:

Hi Cromagnonman,

I actually find the "done on the cheap" stuff much more charming--and in some cases, genuinely moving and touching--than the "buckets of gloss" approach that came in during the 1990s.

I actually thought Nation did some good writing for Blake.  And yes, he wrote all the episodes for the first series.  The one about Project Avalon was one of the best shows in the entire thing and Nation wrote that.  IMDB said he wrote a total of 19 episodes so I think he must have done a couple for series 2 as well, but I'd have to check one of my B7 books.

A 1972 TV film, The Incredible Robert Baldick, written by Terry Nation, was meant to be a pilot for a series and I thought that had a memorable sense of flair about it.  I only was able to see it thanks to a friend who found a copy of it somewhere or other.  It's too bad this kind of material isn't repeated more often on a regular channel.  There is obviously an audience for it, and not just old fogies.

I think Tanith Lee must have become a friend of Jacqueline Pearce's.  I have a CD of Jacqueline doing interviews and short radio monologues and Tanith wrote something for her to do on that.  It was a fan produced thing.

Best wishes,

H

Hi H

Yes, I've a fondness for that old cheap and cheerful approach to programme making myself. It certainly had the benefit of making directors and production staff think creatively, which can only be a good thing. Even on something as proportionately well funded as Star Trek the iconic transporter was a cash saving expediency. And that one worked out well didn't it.

I have heard of that film you mention but I've never seen it. Frankly I'm astounded to learn that it still exists, considering the BBC's enthusiasm for junking all its programmes of that period.

For me Survivors always constituted Nation's finest achievement. (The original I stress, not that godawful remake with
Julie [kiss-of-death-to-everything-she-appears-in] Graham).