Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Page 14 of 82

Charles Beaumont

January 4, 2020 /

Nearly 30 years ago I bought the paperback copy collection with some of Charles Beaumont’s short stories. Published by Tor Books, The Howling Man‘s pages now are yellowed with age, and smells of dust and decaying paper. This book originally was published in hardcover by small press, Dark Harvest, and entitled Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories. It appeared nearly 30 years after Beaumont’s untimely death at the age of 37, from early-onset Alzheimers. What a cruel fate.

Last month I happened upon the Dark Harvest book in Lawrence Person’s book catalog, and bought it along plus a couple other older books, plus a much more recently published novel, the latter by Lewis Shiner. Re-reading Beaumont’s stories, now 30 years after the original publication, is both enjoyable and depressing. It’s enjoyable because the stories are brilliantly written, but depressing because almost all the writers who wrote introductions to the stories, are now dead as well. Most of those writers knew Beaumont personally: Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, Robert Bloch, William F. Nolan, Roger Corman, and more. Some of the people writing introductions are more famous than Beaumont, in large part because of Beaumont’s early death, so many years ago.

Beaumont wrote actively only for a short dozen or so years. He was a well-known writer in his lifetime, appearing in Playboy, writing teleplays for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, and writing movie scripts for Hollywood. Today, few people new to the SF field likely will have heard of him. I know of only other Beaumont book published in the past 30 years, and it appeared in 2000: A Touch of the Creature was published by Subterranean Press, limited to 1000 copies, and collected mostly unpublished and early tales. Maybe if I dig a bit on the internet I might find other books, likely equally limited to the small press if they exist.

Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories includes a lengthy introduction by editor Roger Anker, and brief note from Beaumont’s son, before leading off with a Ray Bradbury introduction to a truly eerie story, “Miss Gentibelle”. Could anyone dare to write one like this today? I think not.

There are 29 other stories in the book, 30 in all. These range from humorous to dark, science fiction to fantasy. All are tales of the imagination. Some are rooted in the mid-century, while others feel timeless.

A few years ago, a documentary was produced, called “The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man.”

Beaumont documentary

There’s also a Charles Beaumont memorial, also on YouTube.

Memorial

Hopefully Beaumont won’t be forgotten. Though I see Bradbury books often in bookstores, most of the other big-name authors whose names appear in this book have long since disappeared from the publishing world, remembered only by name, found only occasionally in used bookstores. The publishing world is a cruel one: tough to break into, and quickly to forget fame.

Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore

January 3, 2020 /

Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers. Although I have all his other books (aside from one) in paperback, the size and scope of his latest novel was such that when I saw a copy in the Beyer bookstore in Bergen, Norway while visiting last summer, I had to buy the hardcover edition. Besides, the British edition’s cover looked considerably more attractive than the American edition. I’m not sure what the cashier thought when I handed over the massive Murakami book in English along with the Norwegian edition of a Jørn Lier Horst mystery novel. I guess as long as money also is handed over, I could as well have been buying anything.

My two favorite Murakami books are 1Q84 and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Both are hefty books, to the point where I bought the former in the edition with three volumes instead a fat book with a spine likely to break under the stress. Killing Commendatore is no different, being nearly 700 pages long. I was concerned the trip back across the Atlantic would damage the book, but aside from a dent in the front cover, which might have been there from the start, it made the trip and subsequent reading without too much of a beating. Besides, it not like it’s a first edition.

While waiting for the translation from the Japanese edition, I read some reviews of the novel, which was a foolish action. Reviewers (and I’ve been there), present interesting views of the books they cover. Their opinions are at a different level from “mere” readers. In this case, I wanted to approach the book as a reader, as a fan of Murakami’s style and method. I enjoy his longer books the best, as he has a way with words, with setting, pace. His writing style eases you into the book, sort of like slipping into a warm bath. I don’t read Murakami with the intent to race to the end, but rather savor every moment of the journey.

I tried to distance myself from the reviews as I read the book; not all of them were favorable. The main characters, a portrait painter betrayed by his wife, suffers a sort of breakdown. He decides to leave his life behind, sets out on an aimless journey across Japan. Eventually he settles into a situation where he house-sits for a friend, whose dead father’s house sits empty. The father, a (fictional) famous Japanese painter, looms over the narrative. By chance the protagonist is also pulled back into portrait painting, after trying to quit. He also slips into a strange sideways world, as is so often the case in Murakami’s novels. There’s also a great deal of sex, more so that in Murakami’s other novels.

While not on the same level (in my opinion) as 1Q84 or The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, this book comes close. Having caught up to all his books, I find it difficult that I now must wait until he completes his next one, and his translators complete their arduous task of turning it into English.

A trail too far

January 1, 2020 /

I may never set foot on the Appalachian Trail, but this 2,000 plus mile trail across the Eastern states has fascinated me since I heard about it a few years ago. Like millions of Americans I had no idea this trail or others like the PCT or CDT even existed; I knew of Appalachia, but thought this was only part of West Virginia, not that it rain from Georgia to Maine. The closest I’ve been to the AT is when I visited Harper’s Ferry in 1998. I didn’t know about the AT back then, and I have no idea where the trail went, or even if I touched part of it as I hiked along the river just outside the town.

After I herd about the AT, I knew the trail existed, somewhere. The exact location was one I never looked into, as it’s so far away from Texas. Even two and three years ago, while in Georgia for a company retreat, I didn’t know that an hour drive from where we were staying, was the southernmost end of the Appalachian Trail: Springer Mountain. The approach to Springer Mountain, from Amicalola Falls, might even be a day trip, even in February, if the weather cooperated.

When I read some hiker blogs in 2019 and learned how close I had been to Springer Mountain, I wondered if I’d ever get a chance to return to that area. Having started hiking and backpacking again in 2018, a new world was opening up to me, one where I slowly started to realize how far away Texas is from legendary hiking paths. By car, Springer Mountain is around 1,066 miles, and Mount Katahdin over 2,000 miles, nearly the same length as the entire AT. Even planning any section hike would require coordination with airline flights, shuttle services, and locating outfitters where I could buy at the very least gas canisters for a backpacking stove. Not to mention the cost. Both time and money are hard currencies required to get the trail.

Instead of planning any trips, I’ve started accumulating a small and random library of books about the AT. There’s the humorous entry of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Mostly funny, there are occasional illuminating moments. Bryson only hiked a third of the AT, but then the vast majority of thru-hikers tend to drop out anyway. For inspiration, Jennifer Pharr Davis’ Becoming Odyssa is invaluable. Here’s a young woman, just out of college, setting out across a vast stretch of America all on her own. For harsh reality, David Miller’s Awol on the Appalachian Trail reads like a depressing catalog of woes and pains, yet despite all his troubles, his still made it all the way. His book reads more like a warning than an inspiration. Miller also stayed mostly in shelters, huts, hostels, and motels, and I’d be tempted to tent, at least until the first experience of having to set up the tent in a rainstorm.

It’s a wonder to read about the blisters, lost toenails, sprained ankles, dehydration, nasty people, snakes on the trail, the threats of bear and moose encounters, the chances of tumbling down rocks and mountainsides, the heat, the cold, the bugs, the chance of drowning when fording rivers, the possibility of violence, the chance of getting lost, and more. And yet, ever year more and more people attempt to thru-hike or section hike this trail. On the flip side, the hikers who wear rose-colored glasses talk about trail-magic, friendly drivers, and how the trail becomes a part of you (inevitable, I suppose, if you spend half a year on it).

Would I hike it if I could? You bet. But I’m not the kind of person who throws himself into things without planning. I think it would take me at least two years to accumulate hiking knowledge before I’d make any such attempt. And I’d likely not attempt a thru-hike. For one, I cannot envision spending five to six months on the trail. At most, I’d split the hike into two, starting from the south each time. Even better might be to take four years, carving the trail into manageable sections.

Having read these books as well as a few online hiker diaries, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the people who attempt the AT. I’ll continue to read about the trail, but now look more for tips and ideas, not stories about daily miles and struggles. If I ever get a chance to visit Atlanta again, maybe I’ll bring a daypack and try to walk from Amicalola Falls to Springer Mountain. I suspect that if I ever set foot on the AT, I’ll want to keep walking.

Brad Linaweaver’s Clownface

December 31, 2019 /

This is a book I’ve long wanted, but for one reason or another, never seemed to find the right opportunity. Published in 1999 by J.Neil Schulman’s Pulpless.com, Inc. ( a strange name for a publishing company), I might have held back from buying it as I once considered trying to publish my own collection of Brad Linaweaver stories. Despite having zero book publishing experience, I always wanted to try to publish the complete store stories of either Linweaver or Michael Shea.

I’d read many of Linaweaver’s stories in their original settings, either magazines of anthologies. I considered him a friend, and we spoke often via phone, email, or the occasional old-fashioned letter. I own or owned almost all his other books – novels like Moon of Ice and The Land Beyond Summer, and the libertarian anthology, Free Space. At one point I owned all the Doom novelizations, but I think they went out during one of my infrequent book purges, which happens when I run out space and need to move some of the books. When I learned of his death in August of 2019, I felt I needed this book. The fact that publisher Schulman died earlier that same month is a strange coincidence.

Clocking in at nearly 600 pages, with 43 stories and an introduction from writer Victor Koman, the first thing that strikes you is the cover. Garish, over the top, it’s probably fitting at some level, since Linaweaver was a huge fan of the B-movie genre. There are just over forty stories in the book. As I don’t have a complete bibliography, I don’t know if these are all his stories. Given that it appeared 20 years ago, perhaps he wrote more stories since then, although I think his focus shifted to movies and his Mondo Cult publications.

I won’t attempt to review each of the 40 plus stories. I’ve done this with shorter collections in various other publications, where editors have complained about a lack of themes in how I group the stories covered in those short reviews. I’ve always found it difficult to review anthologies or collections. Often one writes a sentence or fragment of a sentence about or story, a paragraph about another, and forget to mention one or two more. Those collections generally average a dozen or so entries. A book with nearly four times that number would make for a long essay, and a worn-out reviewer (and reader).

The great thing about Linaweaver was his enthusiasm for everything. He advocated ceaseless for everything he liked, from writers to movies, and yes, even himself. It’s a situation all writers find themselves forced into: selling themselves to the paying audience, the reader. He did garner some great reviews in his time, even a Nebula nomination and mention in some of the year’s best anthologies. This collection, while it’s still available, is one I think many SF (and horror/fantasy) fans would like, although perhaps tastes have changed enough since 1999 to prove me wrong. Maybe Linaweaver stories are now more of the guilty pleasure kind, forays into politically incorrect tales that likely as not would end up getting people cancelled.

Each story comes with an introduction by the author, which I’ve tended to enjoy as much as the stories themselves. These small notes give us insights into the author’s mind as he wrote them, or tried to get them published. My one regret is that I didn’t get a chance to tell Linaweaver in person how much I enjoyed the book.

Speaks the Nightbird

December 31, 2019 /

I used to read Robert McCammon’s books in the 1990s. Maybe not all of them, but the vast majority. I have the Dark Harvest editions of Swan Song and They Thirst, several paperbacks, and the hardback editions of Boy’s Life and Mine, his two “last” novels. At least, until he resurfaced with Speaks the Nightbird, a hefty book set in 1699 South Carolina, published in 2002, a decade after Gone South.

I picked up Speaks the Nightbird by chance in a used bookstore a couple of years ago. I didn’t even know he was back in the business. It sat, unread, until I glanced through it this month and then read it cover to cover over one weekend, all 726 pages.

There are sequels, but all apparently published by small presses, either Subterranean Press or Cemetery Dance. These fetch a hefty price on the secondary market, especially the second volume in his series with protagonist Matthew Corbett. It’s great to see McCammon back as a writer. I just wish the regular publishers would pick up his books and print them again. This is superb historical fiction, and it baffles the mind that not a single major publisher is aware of the potential there.

Two more departed souls

December 31, 2019 /

In August two more people I knew died. Both were writers: J. Neil Schulman and Brad Linaweaver. Although I knew Neil, we butted heads a couple of times over the years. However Brad was a friend, and once again I’m shaken by the unexpected death of someone who died far too young. I started to write an appreciation of Brad, but the task proved difficult. He was a friend, a mentor, a spark. It’s still weird to think they’re both gone.

Swords in the Mist

December 31, 2019 /

Centipede Press continues it’s superb series of Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, with volume 3, Swords in the Mist. There are a half dozen stories in this book, illustrations, and some additional texts at the end, and an introduction by Tim Powers, another of my favorite authors. The wrap-around cover is again beyond amazing.

Silent as death

November 14, 2018 /

Two of my friends died this year, both from cancer. This sent me into a funk, and I stopped writing, stopping doing anything related to fiction or this blog. It all seems so trivial compared to those events.

I started working on a novel again last month, and have crossed the 30k mark. I still think about my two friends every day, bitter at the fate that awaits us all, a fate cruel and unyielding.

Swords Against Death

April 18, 2018 /

Swords Against Death

On April 6, 2018 Centipede Press released the second volume in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, Swords Against Death. The original edition appeared almost 50 years ago now, and I’m not sure when my 14th printing of the Ace paperback was published, but the hardcover volume assembled by Centipede Press is once again a wonder to behold, worth of the cover price.

The ten short stories gathered in this volume continue the adventures of two strange companions, heroes and anti-heroes both, in the fantasy lands of Nehwon, the streets of fabled Lankhmar, and beyond the veil of death.

The projected 8-volume set will be unveiled gradually, but so far the first and second volumes both have wrap-around dust-jackets with lettering on the spine only. This lettering consists of the book title, the author’s name, the publisher’s name, and the volume number. It also contains original artwork within, several of which I wish I had larger copies of hanging on my wall.

A few miscellaneous notes from Leiber appear at the end, and author Steve Rasnic Tem provides the introduction. The stories themselves, include some of Leiber’s best ones, such as the “Bazaar of the Bizarre,” “Theives’ House,” and “The Jewel in the Forest.” Although it’s been a few years since I last read this book, I remembered these three at once as I read through the table of contents. As to the others, if I have forgotten any of them, why that’s a benefit, as reading Leiber for the first time brings just as much wonderment as reading his stories for the 100th time.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

March 22, 2018 /

Michael Shea (1946-2014) remains one of my top five fantasy writers, along with Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and James P. Blaylock. I’d include Tim Powers there, and maybe shift Blaylock out of the mix in favor or a more traditional fantasy writer like Lord Dunsany or possibly Charles de Lint, but Powers, Blaylock, and de Lint stand slightly off to the side in terms of traditional fantasy. Powers is more science-fantasy, and de Lint’s urban fantasy doesn’t venture as much into the realm of the weird as the others listed. Blaylock lately has written a fair amount of Steampunk, but his other tales are infused with a subtle fantasy similar to Powers.

Shea, however, with his novels and short stories, is firmly in the fantasy camp, with a dash or horror in some of his short stories. His death came all-too-soon, with several novels still in the pipeline and his genius far from fully recognized.

I first encountered Michael Shea’s writings in 1986 or 1987 when I bought his unofficial sequel to Jack Vance’s Eyes of the Underworld. Although A Quest for Simbilis first appeared in 1974 under the DAW imprint, my first copy was the Grafton paperback edition published in 1985, which I bought in Oslo or Bergen at a book store or bus station; it was a long time ago and I don’t remember the exact details . At some point later in the US I found the DAW first edition from 1974 in a used book store. I think I laughed out loud with glee as this copy is in near pristine shape, and I own both these two editions and have read them both multiple times.

I already was a huge fan of Jack Vance by the time I read Shea’s novel, and the fact that I started looking for any Shea book after reading this one meant that he had that certain unique quality about fantasy writers that I enjoy—imagination and language, or style and panache. I bought every paperback I could find, and also the Arkham House collection, Polyphemus, which I have read multiple times. The titles roll off my tongue: In Yana, the Touch of Undying ; The Color Out of Time ; Nifft the Lean—all DAW books and each one its own treasure in my small library. Then many years with nothing aside from occasional novellas or slim collections published by small press publishers, until Baen Books published two Nifft sequels: The Mines of Behemoth and The A’rak. Whenever I could find his original short stories I bought the magazines, and at some point I lacked only two stories, to my great despair. Along came Centipede Press in 2008 and published a near complete and massive edition of Shea stories, The Autopsy and Others. Alas, the two stories I had been unable to locate were not included in this massive, 500+ page oversized edition.

I reviewed a couple of Shea books for Lawrence Person’s Nova Express, planned on writing more until that magazine silently vanished amid the Great Shift to the Internet in the early 2000s. Tor Books published The Extra, expanded from a short stories that originally appeared in the Arkham House collection. This was the first of a trilogy, but only the sequel appeared prior to Shea’s death, Assault on Sunrise. A third novel may or may exist. I don’t know. Other novels were hinted at in various publications.

In 2016 Hippocampus Press published a tribute to Shea, And Death Shall Have No Dominion. The cover reprints Michael Whelan’s brilliant painting for the DAW edition of Nifft the Lean. Four short stories are included, only one of them a reprint. A trove of poems fill the middle section, along with tributes from the people lucky enough to have met and known Shea. Although I admired his work and wrote about it in various places, I never met him, never had his sign any of my books. Once, I received an appreciative email from Shea via Person, publisher of Nova Express, regarding one of my reviews, but I never communicated with Shea. I figured maybe one day I’d go to a World Fantasy convention, where I’d meet Shea, and learn than reality isn’t the same as fiction. It’s weird to read all the tributes to the man, the writer, and realize that he’d probably have been better in person.

Why does Michael Shea’s fiction matter? I glanced through the opening pages of Nifft the Lean recently. This is a dangerous act, as one inevitably gets sucked right into the story. Consisting of four loosely connected novellas, episodes in Nifft’s life, these tales are narrated or written down by a third party. In the first story Nifft relates a tale to a companion as they are camped for the night amid the branches of a vast tree. In that sense, it’s a story within a story within a story. The prose is vivid yet spare, with humor infused in the strangest places, such as when Nifft fights a lizard guide to the Taker of Souls and attempt a “kick in the fork,” as Terry Pratchett’s characters in Discworld would say. Nifft’s advice to his companion regarding this technique? Don’t even think about it.

Shea’s fiction often has dwelled  in that intersection of fantasy and horror. Although he started out in 1974 with a semi-authorized sequel to a Jack Vance novel, Shea’s fiction already was a shade darker. His Nifft stories owes as much to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories as it does Vance, as Nifft rarely works alone, although his companions are not always the same. Yet both Leiber and Vance wrote mainly lighthearted tales, though some humor came across as mordant. Not so in Shea’s fiction, where the heroes venture into various pockets and sections of hell. Even his modern stories, such as “The Angel of Death” or “The Extra” (expanded into a novel), or “I, Said the Fly” contain more than a touch of dark weirdness.

I’m not much of a Lovecraft fan. Many years ago I wrote a Cthulhu mythos short story, although it was more a consequence of work and reading “Fat Face” than anything by Lovecraft. Shea had that affect, I think, as his Cthulhu stories blend the atmosphere of horror with modernity. I have yet to ride a bus without thinking about “The Horror on the #33,” but every such tale is equally memorable.

What I do find memorable in almost every story by Michael Shea is the densely rich prose. He shares this ability with Vance and Clark Ashton Smith. While some arcane or invented words fall flat in fiction, these three writers make it look easy.  Sadly, most of modern fantasy consists of books with swords or wands on their covers, and deal with wizards or Robin Hood-lookalikes battling evil kings or mages. The magical prose is lacking, the sense of wonder from the writing lacking. These books are churned out by the bucketful, while stories by writers like Shea, Vance, Smith, Leiber exist these mostly in the realm of the small press. In that sense, the golden age is long gone. The good news is that in the bibliography section in this book there are several stories listed that I haven’t yet read. Maybe one day a publisher will collect the rest of those stories in a companion to The Autopsy and Others, and include those two older pieces that were left out. In the meantime, we have books like this to remind us what we had, and what is gone.

« Older posts Newer posts »
amonsen - AT - gmail - DOT - com

© 2025 Anders Monsen

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

css.php