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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 11, 2020 11:50:35 GMT
May Sinclair - The Nature of the Evidence (Fortune, May 1923). Barrister Edward Marston is made a widower when his beloved wife Rosamund dies young. In happier times, Rosamund had told her husband that she would want him to remarry in such a situation, but only to "the right woman". Edward remarries, but only because it's "a physical necessity", and his new wife (a divorcee) seems happy enough with the arrangement - Rosamund's ghost, however, is not and finds all sorts of ways to stop the marriage being consummated. Quite a light story really, verging on the comical, though I can imagine the ending raising a few eyebrows at the time it was first published. May Sinclair is one of those authors who I've only read a few times and never felt the need to seek out more from - this story hasn't really changed that, but I liked it well enough after the previous string of disappointments.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 11, 2020 21:19:45 GMT
Marjorie Bowen - The Bishop of Hell (The Blue Magazine, Sept 1925). One I've read before a couple of times and not my favourite of Bowen's (that would probably be Kecksies), mainly because it seems to be trying to mimic the gothic style from a hundred years before it was written, which makes it a bit of a struggle for me to get through. "Lurid" is the word that springs to mind, as debauched 18th C. libertine (once an ordained clergyman) eventually gets his comeuppance at the hands of wronged husband. Nothing supernatural happens until the final page, by which point it seems a bit superfluous. A good story though, if you don't mind the faux gothic style.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 14, 2020 10:07:48 GMT
Greye La Spina - The Antimaccasar (Weird Tales, May 1949). Lucy's workmate, Cora, fails to return from her vacation in rural Pennsylvania, so Lucy heads off alone to try to solve the mystery. Lucy tracks Cora's movements to a farmhouse offering room and board (and weaving lessons) to vacationers, where every night she can hear a sick child crying out for her mother to feed her. The main problem with this story is that all the good stuff happens off-stage, and it all comes across as a bit twee.
Sophie Wenzel Ellis - The White Lady (Strange Tales, Jan 1933). One for the "Plants Hate You" thread, the "White Lady" is a weird plant resembling a woman, created by Andre through "careful cross-breedings that have developed the most humanlike traits found throughout plant life". Andre's wife-to-be, Brynhild, doesn't like it - and the feeling is mutual. An OK story of its type, but the ending is a bit too pat.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 15, 2020 14:56:53 GMT
G.G. Pendarves - The Laughing Thing (Weird Tales, May 1929). Hard-headed/cold-hearted millionaire businessman Jason Drewe moves himself and Tony, his 8 year old son, into the house that he bought from the dying Eldred Werne. Werne had wanted more for the house and the extensive woodlands around it, but was desperate - and Drewe hadn't got to be in his position in life by being nice to people. Werne tells Drewe that after he dies he will "come back" to extract "a more satisfactory price" from him...
I liked this one - it's not really anything special in terms of its plot or style, but it has a proper horror story ending.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 15, 2020 15:06:15 GMT
G.G. Pendarves - The Laughing Thing ( Weird Tales, May 1929). Hard-headed/cold-hearted millionaire businessman Jason Drewe moves himself and Tony, his 8 year old son, into the house that he bought from the dying Eldred Werne. Werne had wanted more for the house and the extensive woodlands around it, but was desperate - and Drewe hadn't got to be in his position in life by being nice to people. Werne tells Drewe that after he dies he will "come back" to extract "a more satisfactory price" from him... I liked this one - it's not really anything special in terms of its plot or style, but it has a proper horror story ending. I'm looking forward to this one. My two favorite Pendarves stories, "The Eighth Green Man" and "The Withered Heart," also have suitably dark endings.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 15, 2020 15:10:50 GMT
Greye La Spina - The Antimaccasar ( Weird Tales, May 1949). Lucy's workmate, Cora, fails to return from her vacation in rural Pennsylvania, so Lucy heads off alone to try to solve the mystery. Lucy tracks Cora's movements to a farmhouse offering room and board (and weaving lessons) to vacationers, where every night she can hear a sick child crying out for her mother to feed her. The main problem with this story is that all the good stuff happens off-stage, and it all comes across as a bit twee. "The Antimacassar" is interesting for its low-key approach and unusual vampire, but I prefer some of La Spina's not-so-twee stories--particularly "The Devil's Pool" and "The Gargoyle."
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 16, 2020 10:30:27 GMT
Lady Eleanor Smith - Candlelight (The Story-Teller, March 1931). Some toffs with "complicated" but dull love lives get together for dinner at a country house. They find a gypsy girl lurking in the garden shrubbery and insist that she tells them their fortunes, which she does with amazing accuracy. The set-up seems to promise a Dr Terror sort of scenario, but unfortunately the pay-off is more like DH Lawrence.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 17, 2020 11:15:30 GMT
Jessie Douglas Kerruish - The Wonderful Tune ( At Dead of Night, ed. Christine Campbell Thomson, 1931). Among a group of travelers staying overnight at an inn in the Swiss Alps is a famous Norwegian violinist. He offers to entertain his fellow-guests with some old folk tunes from his homeland, traditionally supposed to be based on the music of the Huldra Folk or Elf-Kind. There is one particular tune that he once heard as a child, while out alone in the countryside searching for a strayed sheep on a dark and windy night. That tune had an irresistible effect on him at the time, inducing an ecstatic state in which he was compelled to dance. However, he has never been able to play the tune himself in its entirety, as it only seems to exist as disconnected fragments in his memory - perhaps the similarity of his current surroundings to those he was in when he first heard it will help him piece it together for the first time? I really liked this story - I've got a bit of a thing for Norse folklore anyway, but even without that it just works really well as straight-out supernatural horror (and with a little bit of dark humour thrown in as well). For me, definitely the high point of Queens of the Abyss so far.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 19, 2020 10:15:36 GMT
Margaret St. Clair - Island of the Hands (Weird Tales, Sept 1952). Definitely "weird", more like fantasy, probably Sci-Fi - I'm not entirely sure. Plane crashes on mysterious island (possibly on another planet) where there are these Giant Hands (an alien machine?) that can literally create whatever you imagine, exactly as you imagined it. There's an interesting idea in there (reminded me of PKD), but the story itself is a bit naff.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 19, 2020 15:06:26 GMT
Margaret St. Clair - Island of the Hands ( Weird Tales, Sept 1952). Definitely "weird", more like fantasy, probably Sci-Fi - I'm not entirely sure. Plane crashes on mysterious island (possibly on another planet) where there are these Giant Hands (an alien machine?) that can literally create whatever you imagine, exactly as you imagined it. There's an interesting idea in there (reminded me of PKD), but the story itself is a bit naff. A while back I went to some length to track down a print copy of "Island of the Hands." I'd seen it on J. F. Gonzalez's list of "top thirteen obscure shockers from the pulps and beyond" in The Book of Lists: Horror, edited by Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley. I eventually found the story in an Ace Double, Message from the Eocene / Three Worlds of Futurity ( Message from the Eocone is a St. Clair short novel I recall as being terrible, while Three Worlds of Futurity is a St. Clair anthology short story collection). With all that buildup, I was somewhat disappointed in the story itself. St. Clair's fiction is often deeply strange. I love some of her stories, particularly "Brenda." Other works by her leave me perplexed--not so much at what's happening in them as what ideas she's trying to get across. She also wrote several novels, two of which influenced Gary Gygax's development of Dungeons & Dragons: Sign of the Labrys and The Shadow People. They're both bizarre and unpleasant in a fascinating sort of way; The Shadow People, in particular, has a queasy sort of appeal. The Bantam edition of Sign of the Labrys features an infamous back cover blurb: WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!
ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!!
Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel. Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites…
FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!! I've never seen any reports about what St. Clair thought of that.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 19, 2020 15:28:07 GMT
I've never seen any reports about what St. Clair thought of that. She may, after all, have written it herself.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 19, 2020 15:31:56 GMT
OMGss Cauldron Brewer, that blurb on the St Clair novel is jaw-dropping. However I've been re-reading a couple of Stewart Farrar's Wicca-themed supernatural thrillers from the mid-Seventies and there's an awful lot of that "women are closer to the primitive than men... the moon-pulls," etc blather in those. And a lot of it came from Farrar's mistress, then soon to be wife, Wiccan High Priestess Janet Farrar (a very "salty" character revered in certain circles). It all just seems so archaic but all the stuff about Senator K. Harris who is Joe Biden's running mate over here in the current electoral snarl (sorry to mention politics) is a reminder that a lot of people here in the US still think this way.
I've been curious to take a swipe at Sign of the Labrys for various reasons since I learnt of its existence some years ago,but still haven't found the right time to take the plunge.
cheers, Hel
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 19, 2020 15:44:33 GMT
OMGss Cauldron Brewer, that blurb on the St Clair novel is jaw-dropping. However I've been re-reading a couple of Stewart Farrar's Wicca-themed supernatural thrillers from the mid-Seventies and there's an awful lot of that "women are closer to the primitive than men... the moon-pulls," etc blather in those. And a lot of it came from Farrar's mistress, then soon to be wife, Wiccan High Priestess Janet Farrar (a very "salty" character revered in certain circles). It all just seems so archaic but all the stuff about Senator K. Harris who is Joe Biden's running mate over here in the current electoral snarl (sorry to mention politics) is a reminder that a lot of people here in the US still think this way. St. Clair was a Wiccan, from what I read, though most of her work doesn't feature quite so many exclamation points. Here in Delaware we once had a politician who ran a television advertisement in which she proclaimed, "I'm not a witch" (while wearing black clothes and standing in front of a dark, smoky background). I might've liked her better if she were a witch.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 19, 2020 18:13:36 GMT
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 19, 2020 20:41:27 GMT
The last two from Queens of the Abyss -
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The Unwanted (Weird Tales, Jan 1951). A US census taker has problems working out how many children (if any) an old one-armed mountain man and his wife have. Interesting concept, OK story.
Leonora Carrington - The Seventh Horse (VVV #2-3, 1943). Surrealistic, probably symbolizing something or other, but I have no idea what.
Personal favourites: Edith Nesbit, G.G. Pendarves, Jessie Douglas Kerruish.
WTF? moments: Frances Hodgson Burnett, Margaret St. Clair, Leonora Carrington.
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