Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
GUD Reviews: Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca
Midnight Picnic
by Nick Antosca
Word Riot Press, 2009
Paperback, 182 pages
ISBN: 0977934330 (Amazon.com)
9780977934331 (Book Depository)
$15.95 / £9.72
Midnight Picnic is GUD contributor Nick Antosca's second novel, but is written with such assurance and skill that it might more easily be his twenty-second. On the first page, Antosca draws the reader in to unwilling protagonist Bram's world, which is about to get uncannily strange.
Bram's living a mundane, drab existence over a bar called Moms until the night he comes home tired and accidentally runs over the bar's dog, Baby. His attempts to succour the injured animal show him to be basically decent, but ineffectual. He wants to do the right thing, yet gives up when it becomes too difficult. This is the issue Bram will have to face up to as the story continues.
The skeleton of a young boy is found, and his spirit makes a connection with Bram that takes him on a nightmare journey into the land of the dead. Here, he learns far more about himself--and the dead and living--than he ever thought possible. However, at heart, Midnight Picnic is not a ghost story. It's a tale of redemption and the healing effects of time.
The central premise is that, given time to reflect, we can all come to a realisation of where we have gone wrong in our lives. No matter how despicable our crimes, redemption is possible, but it comes not from outside, but from the person themselves, from their changed relationship with themselves and the other dead. It's a powerful message in a book that refuses to label anyone as evil.
Only Adam is depicted as incapable of this process, perhaps because he died too young. For him, time to reflect has only bred hatred; he is locked into childish ideas of right, wrong, and punisment.
All Antosca's characters are vividly realised, from Bram's lost soul of an on-off girlfriend to the old man who lives in the woods, and has, in the past, done whatever it took to stay hidden there. Before vengeance comes for him, he seems to have already learnt his lesson, telling another intruder on his solitude, "I wouldn't do anything to you...".
This book is relatively short, but the reader needn't feel short-changed. There's a complete story here, one that compels as well as entertains. It's fascinating to travel with Bram and Adam into the lands of the dead, a place into which the living often stray, unawares, a land that's depicted as chillingly as the dead landscape of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
An excellent book to read on Halloween, with your head under the covers and a heavy flashlight handy.
Nick Antosca's story 'Soon You Will be Gone and Possibly Eaten' appears in GUD Issue 3.
Original review, pics, comments:
http://ping.fm/BpCUa
by Nick Antosca
Word Riot Press, 2009
Paperback, 182 pages
ISBN: 0977934330 (Amazon.com)
9780977934331 (Book Depository)
$15.95 / £9.72
Midnight Picnic is GUD contributor Nick Antosca's second novel, but is written with such assurance and skill that it might more easily be his twenty-second. On the first page, Antosca draws the reader in to unwilling protagonist Bram's world, which is about to get uncannily strange.
Bram's living a mundane, drab existence over a bar called Moms until the night he comes home tired and accidentally runs over the bar's dog, Baby. His attempts to succour the injured animal show him to be basically decent, but ineffectual. He wants to do the right thing, yet gives up when it becomes too difficult. This is the issue Bram will have to face up to as the story continues.
The skeleton of a young boy is found, and his spirit makes a connection with Bram that takes him on a nightmare journey into the land of the dead. Here, he learns far more about himself--and the dead and living--than he ever thought possible. However, at heart, Midnight Picnic is not a ghost story. It's a tale of redemption and the healing effects of time.
The central premise is that, given time to reflect, we can all come to a realisation of where we have gone wrong in our lives. No matter how despicable our crimes, redemption is possible, but it comes not from outside, but from the person themselves, from their changed relationship with themselves and the other dead. It's a powerful message in a book that refuses to label anyone as evil.
Only Adam is depicted as incapable of this process, perhaps because he died too young. For him, time to reflect has only bred hatred; he is locked into childish ideas of right, wrong, and punisment.
All Antosca's characters are vividly realised, from Bram's lost soul of an on-off girlfriend to the old man who lives in the woods, and has, in the past, done whatever it took to stay hidden there. Before vengeance comes for him, he seems to have already learnt his lesson, telling another intruder on his solitude, "I wouldn't do anything to you...".
This book is relatively short, but the reader needn't feel short-changed. There's a complete story here, one that compels as well as entertains. It's fascinating to travel with Bram and Adam into the lands of the dead, a place into which the living often stray, unawares, a land that's depicted as chillingly as the dead landscape of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
An excellent book to read on Halloween, with your head under the covers and a heavy flashlight handy.
Nick Antosca's story 'Soon You Will be Gone and Possibly Eaten' appears in GUD Issue 3.
Original review, pics, comments:
http://ping.fm/BpCUa
Monday, October 12, 2009
Banned Books Week: Thoughts from Lisa Grabenstetter
GUD contributor Lisa Grabenstetter writes: The American Library Association's 'Banned Books Week' was September 26th through October 3rd this year. As you can see, I'm a little late coming to it. Nevertheless, I think it an important topic to arrive at--no matter how tardily.
The vast majority of banned books are children's books, and they're challenged for the very fact of being written for children. Somewhere, somewhen, some people came up with the idea that children's brains are infinitely malleable. Yet, furthermore, every single impression worked into a child is unchanging and indelible. That's right. You, reader, who were afraid at age five that flying skull monsters would come out of the toilet to eat you every time you flushed*: you still leave the door unlocked for a swift getaway. We know it. Time, age, experience? They are nothing to the fact that you read about toilet monsters once!
This is how many book banners would appear to think.
So, permanently scarred by The Toilet Monster Compendium, you are now lobbying to get it removed from your local library. It is simply not enough that you advise all of your friends not to read it, and tell them not to let their children read it. Not enough that you let nary a copy cross the threshold of your own home. No, you must prevent all those innocents who may ever want to check it out from your local library from doing so, too!
Banning alone, though, is an ineffective strategy. It may cover all those who have no other recourse but to borrow the book from the library, but it leaves all other options for acquiring the book wide open. How will you prevent impressionable children (or their well-meaning relatives) buying The Toilet Monster Compendium? Or borrowing it from a friend? How about that big-budget Hollywood adaptation with Crispin Glover in the title role? Worse, controversy is a more surefire way to make a book (or movie, or picture) skyrocket in popularity.
So what is a budding mind-controller to do?
Find a group of people who can be led into being equally offended by The Toilet Monster Compendium, and gain their support. Even if none of them have ever read it, and the reason they're offended has absolutely nothing to do with the reasons you're still terrified of brightly-gleaming porcelain, this can be an effective strategy. Not only will you be more likely to get the book banned, due to sheer force of numbers, but the involvement of more people means you can cover more fronts. While you're campaigning to get Toilet Monster removed from the public library, someone else can be working on the second-grade curriculum, and the local bookstores. You can hold midnight book-burnings in protest, gaining media attention and encouraging other branches of the group to challenge the book as well.
A friend of mine actually removed his kid from the religious school she was attending over a scenario quite similar to this. Now, he was of the religion this school represented... hence having his child attend in the first place. But then the school voted to unilaterally ban the book The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights) by Phillip Pullman from school grounds. They sent home notices with students, warning parents not to allow their children to read the book or see the movie. When my friend asked the principal whether he had ever read the book himself, the principal responded that he had not. He was having it banned because of a protest within his religion against the book, timed to coincide with the release of the movie, and due to some anti-religious content they had told him the book contained. My friend asked around, and found that none of the school's deciding board had read the book: they'd written the notice and instated the ban entirely on the word of some other members of their religion. My friend did the logical thing: he bought several dozen copies of the book, and handed them to those in charge. When they upheld the ban, he pulled his daughter out and sent her to a secular school. Also, he took her to see a movie.
But there you go! Look how much trouble my friend had to go through to try and defend a book he loved from the ignorance of an entire elementary school. Adhere your Toilet Monster-banning agenda to that of a populous group like a religion, and otherwise rational people will avoid the book like the plague--out of sheer laziness. Probably the only human trait that can trump curiosity.
A person is told vociferously and often that, if they were only to read this book they will be offended--truly, deeply, heartrendingly offended. There is no possible way they could enjoy anything about this book... they will only be offended! Easy to just take that message away with them without going to the trouble of reading the book, or even just looking up relevant quotes in context. So when someone else asks them how they feel about the book, well... they are offended! Truly.
And there you have your strategy. Get people so pumped up that they will defend banning a book solely on hearsay.
Now, you might encounter some people who suggest to you that many things will happen to you in the course of your life. These people will tell you that a single book read as a child is usually pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and that if you really didn't like The Toilet Monster Compendium, you should move on and read other books--not try and prevent everyone reading the book ever again, for any reason. Humans change and develop, they will tell you, learning to measure the world and forming opinions based on a multitude of stimuli.
Basically, they are telling you that most people grow up.
So that is my take on book banning. Happy belated Banned Book Week, and may your quest for knowledge take you to many surprising, controversial, and fascinating places!
*The librarian at the school I attended in first grade told my class that, when she was our age, she had been afraid of monsters coming out of the toilet when she flushed. Thinking this was funny, I told my little sister the story when I got home. She took it seriously, and the fear of monsters (or monstrous ghosts) rising from the toilet when she flushed plagued her for years. Yet another of my siblings' childhood traumas that was actually my fault!
(Editor's note: And no books involved!)
Lisa Grabenstetter's artworks Writing the Harvest and The Catoblepas appeared in GUD Issue 4.
The vast majority of banned books are children's books, and they're challenged for the very fact of being written for children. Somewhere, somewhen, some people came up with the idea that children's brains are infinitely malleable. Yet, furthermore, every single impression worked into a child is unchanging and indelible. That's right. You, reader, who were afraid at age five that flying skull monsters would come out of the toilet to eat you every time you flushed*: you still leave the door unlocked for a swift getaway. We know it. Time, age, experience? They are nothing to the fact that you read about toilet monsters once!
This is how many book banners would appear to think.
So, permanently scarred by The Toilet Monster Compendium, you are now lobbying to get it removed from your local library. It is simply not enough that you advise all of your friends not to read it, and tell them not to let their children read it. Not enough that you let nary a copy cross the threshold of your own home. No, you must prevent all those innocents who may ever want to check it out from your local library from doing so, too!
Banning alone, though, is an ineffective strategy. It may cover all those who have no other recourse but to borrow the book from the library, but it leaves all other options for acquiring the book wide open. How will you prevent impressionable children (or their well-meaning relatives) buying The Toilet Monster Compendium? Or borrowing it from a friend? How about that big-budget Hollywood adaptation with Crispin Glover in the title role? Worse, controversy is a more surefire way to make a book (or movie, or picture) skyrocket in popularity.
So what is a budding mind-controller to do?
Find a group of people who can be led into being equally offended by The Toilet Monster Compendium, and gain their support. Even if none of them have ever read it, and the reason they're offended has absolutely nothing to do with the reasons you're still terrified of brightly-gleaming porcelain, this can be an effective strategy. Not only will you be more likely to get the book banned, due to sheer force of numbers, but the involvement of more people means you can cover more fronts. While you're campaigning to get Toilet Monster removed from the public library, someone else can be working on the second-grade curriculum, and the local bookstores. You can hold midnight book-burnings in protest, gaining media attention and encouraging other branches of the group to challenge the book as well.
A friend of mine actually removed his kid from the religious school she was attending over a scenario quite similar to this. Now, he was of the religion this school represented... hence having his child attend in the first place. But then the school voted to unilaterally ban the book The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights) by Phillip Pullman from school grounds. They sent home notices with students, warning parents not to allow their children to read the book or see the movie. When my friend asked the principal whether he had ever read the book himself, the principal responded that he had not. He was having it banned because of a protest within his religion against the book, timed to coincide with the release of the movie, and due to some anti-religious content they had told him the book contained. My friend asked around, and found that none of the school's deciding board had read the book: they'd written the notice and instated the ban entirely on the word of some other members of their religion. My friend did the logical thing: he bought several dozen copies of the book, and handed them to those in charge. When they upheld the ban, he pulled his daughter out and sent her to a secular school. Also, he took her to see a movie.
But there you go! Look how much trouble my friend had to go through to try and defend a book he loved from the ignorance of an entire elementary school. Adhere your Toilet Monster-banning agenda to that of a populous group like a religion, and otherwise rational people will avoid the book like the plague--out of sheer laziness. Probably the only human trait that can trump curiosity.
A person is told vociferously and often that, if they were only to read this book they will be offended--truly, deeply, heartrendingly offended. There is no possible way they could enjoy anything about this book... they will only be offended! Easy to just take that message away with them without going to the trouble of reading the book, or even just looking up relevant quotes in context. So when someone else asks them how they feel about the book, well... they are offended! Truly.
And there you have your strategy. Get people so pumped up that they will defend banning a book solely on hearsay.
Now, you might encounter some people who suggest to you that many things will happen to you in the course of your life. These people will tell you that a single book read as a child is usually pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and that if you really didn't like The Toilet Monster Compendium, you should move on and read other books--not try and prevent everyone reading the book ever again, for any reason. Humans change and develop, they will tell you, learning to measure the world and forming opinions based on a multitude of stimuli.
Basically, they are telling you that most people grow up.
So that is my take on book banning. Happy belated Banned Book Week, and may your quest for knowledge take you to many surprising, controversial, and fascinating places!
*The librarian at the school I attended in first grade told my class that, when she was our age, she had been afraid of monsters coming out of the toilet when she flushed. Thinking this was funny, I told my little sister the story when I got home. She took it seriously, and the fear of monsters (or monstrous ghosts) rising from the toilet when she flushed plagued her for years. Yet another of my siblings' childhood traumas that was actually my fault!
(Editor's note: And no books involved!)
Lisa Grabenstetter's artworks Writing the Harvest and The Catoblepas appeared in GUD Issue 4.
Monday, October 5, 2009
More GUD Love (and some miscounting)
GUD has just nominated Ian McHugh's Stiletto (Issue 4) for an Aurealis Award. You may remember Kirstyn McDermott's Painlessness (Issue 2) won the Best Horror Short story for 2008. Ian's story has been nominated in the Science Fiction category, and we think it stands a good chance :).
This seems therefore like a good time to share with you more of the love that's out there for our eclectic genre/literary magazine.
In Gardner Dozois's 'The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection'*, GUD received two Honorable Mentions. At first, when we thought we'd got one, we were as happy as clams. When it emerged we had two, we were as happy as...well, a whole bed of clams. It's tough for a small, relatively-young magazine to get its name out there, and we're grateful for all the great help we get.
(In our defence, the Dozois anthology got Blaikie's forename wrong, listing him as 'Moal'.)
The Honorable Mentions were for Neal Blaikie's Offworld Friends are Best (Issue 2) and Night Bird Soaring by T.L. Morganfield (Issue 3). Night Bird Soaring is still in the running for Nebula recommendations, and so is available to read in full, free, here on our site, by kind permission of the author.
Then, when details of Ellen Datlow's long-awaited anthology Best Horror of the Year Volume 1 came out, we are delighted to see we had three Honorable Mentions.
Except once again we were doing ourselves down. We didn't have three. We had six. We really must pay more attention when the love's being dished out.
Ellen Datlow singled out for Honorable Mention:
* Think Fast by Michael Greenhut (Issue 3)
* The Festival of Colour by Paul Richard Haines (Issue 2)
* Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Stage IV by Samantha Henderson (Issue 2)
* Painlessness by Kirstyn McDermott (Issue 2)
* Dolls by Kristin Ong Muslim (Issue 2)
* Closer in my Heart to Thee by Jeffrey Somers (Issue 2)
Sometimes it's interesting to go back and look at the staff comments on stories that went on to be singled out for praise. I see that on Painlessness I wrote, "Well. At last, a decent story. I'd begun to give up hope." Kaolin, on the other hand, had this to say, "I love where it goes, what it does, but FUCK. Intense. I was squirming through bits of it." Sal thought the story "awesome" when he chose it for his issue. And so it is!
It's also wonderful to see the poetry in GUD receiving the attention it deserves--all too often it gets overlooked by the critics.
Remember: you can buy a single .pdf of any story, poem, art, comic, script, or report that appears in any issue of GUD Magazine. Or buy whole issues in either print or .pdf. Treat yourself today and find out what Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow think we're doing right!
* Published in the UK as 'The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 22'.
See original page for all the proper links and such: http://ping.fm/iJkwb :)
This seems therefore like a good time to share with you more of the love that's out there for our eclectic genre/literary magazine.
In Gardner Dozois's 'The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection'*, GUD received two Honorable Mentions. At first, when we thought we'd got one, we were as happy as clams. When it emerged we had two, we were as happy as...well, a whole bed of clams. It's tough for a small, relatively-young magazine to get its name out there, and we're grateful for all the great help we get.
(In our defence, the Dozois anthology got Blaikie's forename wrong, listing him as 'Moal'.)
The Honorable Mentions were for Neal Blaikie's Offworld Friends are Best (Issue 2) and Night Bird Soaring by T.L. Morganfield (Issue 3). Night Bird Soaring is still in the running for Nebula recommendations, and so is available to read in full, free, here on our site, by kind permission of the author.
Then, when details of Ellen Datlow's long-awaited anthology Best Horror of the Year Volume 1 came out, we are delighted to see we had three Honorable Mentions.
Except once again we were doing ourselves down. We didn't have three. We had six. We really must pay more attention when the love's being dished out.
Ellen Datlow singled out for Honorable Mention:
* Think Fast by Michael Greenhut (Issue 3)
* The Festival of Colour by Paul Richard Haines (Issue 2)
* Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Stage IV by Samantha Henderson (Issue 2)
* Painlessness by Kirstyn McDermott (Issue 2)
* Dolls by Kristin Ong Muslim (Issue 2)
* Closer in my Heart to Thee by Jeffrey Somers (Issue 2)
Sometimes it's interesting to go back and look at the staff comments on stories that went on to be singled out for praise. I see that on Painlessness I wrote, "Well. At last, a decent story. I'd begun to give up hope." Kaolin, on the other hand, had this to say, "I love where it goes, what it does, but FUCK. Intense. I was squirming through bits of it." Sal thought the story "awesome" when he chose it for his issue. And so it is!
It's also wonderful to see the poetry in GUD receiving the attention it deserves--all too often it gets overlooked by the critics.
Remember: you can buy a single .pdf of any story, poem, art, comic, script, or report that appears in any issue of GUD Magazine. Or buy whole issues in either print or .pdf. Treat yourself today and find out what Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow think we're doing right!
* Published in the UK as 'The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 22'.
See original page for all the proper links and such: http://ping.fm/iJkwb :)
Garbage Man by Joseph D'Lacey, reviewed by Debbie Moorhouse
After the success of Joseph D'Lacey's disturbing debut MEAT (reviewed by GUD here), his second novel, Garbage Man, was bound to come out to high expectations. So high, perhaps, that no book could live up to them.
The people living near the RefuSec Waste Management landfill don't pay it much attention. After all, they have their own problems to wrestle with--frustrated ambition, a damaged connection with the Earth, sexual deviancy. But is the landfill as indifferent? Or is it churning humanity's waste into a strange new form of life?
Garbage Man has strong plot elements--a mysterious, shaman-like figure called Mason Brand who communes with the local landfill, a young woman prepared to do anything to escape her "boring, boring, boring" life, another woman tormented by dreams of a "razor-baby" that endlessly searches, endlessly suffers, and is endlessly silent, and, brooding over all, the filth and waste of the dump.
D'Lacey is clearly determined to eschew the errors made by so many Horror novels that offer the mutilation and death of characters we know nothing about and care for less. Half of Garbage Man is dedicated to introducing its characters, to inviting the reader to learn their failings and their flaws, to sympathise with their attempts to overcome the sheer dull nastiness of their lives. Yet somehow it doesn't work. The characters don't come alive on the page.
This despite some solidly creepy writing, especially in the dream sequences.
"The knives enter the baby's body easily, as though it were made of fresh cake. They slide in deep. Deep enough to stay. The baby pauses, turns. Some of the longer knives have passed right through it. She sees the points poking downward from its chest as it screams. She can't hear the screaming. She only feels it, deep inside, her spirit being murdered by the baby's pain."
The first half of the book disappoints. There's almost too much introduction, too much following the characters around while they prepare, unwittingly, for their own annihilation. After a while, even the tormented baby loses its impact. If it's going to go on its agonizing search forever, the reader has to distance themselves, has to put up barriers to interminable, hopeless pain.
When the landfill comes unexpectedly, vehemently alive, the novel picks up as if this is what it's been waiting for. There are daring escapes across rooftops. There are people trapped in buildings, trembling as they await their fate. And there are some of the strangest monsters Horror has ever brought forth.
"She didn't know what it was. It had no name. It had five 'arms' which it used as legs. It was fashioned of junk and animal parts and filth. It dragged a long fat body and left a wet trail of excrement on her carpet. A long-bodied spider without enough legs to move properly...its eyes were the loops from the handles of scissors. Its teeth were the ends of dozens of knitting needles."
Gratifyingly, Garbage Man turns into an exciting, scary, highly-imaginative Horror novel about halfway through. It's worth reading the first part to get to the second. D'Lacey has the chops to scare and disgust the reader, whether they care about the characters or not.
The people living near the RefuSec Waste Management landfill don't pay it much attention. After all, they have their own problems to wrestle with--frustrated ambition, a damaged connection with the Earth, sexual deviancy. But is the landfill as indifferent? Or is it churning humanity's waste into a strange new form of life?
Garbage Man has strong plot elements--a mysterious, shaman-like figure called Mason Brand who communes with the local landfill, a young woman prepared to do anything to escape her "boring, boring, boring" life, another woman tormented by dreams of a "razor-baby" that endlessly searches, endlessly suffers, and is endlessly silent, and, brooding over all, the filth and waste of the dump.
D'Lacey is clearly determined to eschew the errors made by so many Horror novels that offer the mutilation and death of characters we know nothing about and care for less. Half of Garbage Man is dedicated to introducing its characters, to inviting the reader to learn their failings and their flaws, to sympathise with their attempts to overcome the sheer dull nastiness of their lives. Yet somehow it doesn't work. The characters don't come alive on the page.
This despite some solidly creepy writing, especially in the dream sequences.
"The knives enter the baby's body easily, as though it were made of fresh cake. They slide in deep. Deep enough to stay. The baby pauses, turns. Some of the longer knives have passed right through it. She sees the points poking downward from its chest as it screams. She can't hear the screaming. She only feels it, deep inside, her spirit being murdered by the baby's pain."
The first half of the book disappoints. There's almost too much introduction, too much following the characters around while they prepare, unwittingly, for their own annihilation. After a while, even the tormented baby loses its impact. If it's going to go on its agonizing search forever, the reader has to distance themselves, has to put up barriers to interminable, hopeless pain.
When the landfill comes unexpectedly, vehemently alive, the novel picks up as if this is what it's been waiting for. There are daring escapes across rooftops. There are people trapped in buildings, trembling as they await their fate. And there are some of the strangest monsters Horror has ever brought forth.
"She didn't know what it was. It had no name. It had five 'arms' which it used as legs. It was fashioned of junk and animal parts and filth. It dragged a long fat body and left a wet trail of excrement on her carpet. A long-bodied spider without enough legs to move properly...its eyes were the loops from the handles of scissors. Its teeth were the ends of dozens of knitting needles."
Gratifyingly, Garbage Man turns into an exciting, scary, highly-imaginative Horror novel about halfway through. It's worth reading the first part to get to the second. D'Lacey has the chops to scare and disgust the reader, whether they care about the characters or not.
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