Fantastic Metropolis

Books

• The Twist, Malignos, Frenzetta and Dead Girls, Richard Calder
  Of the four novels I read by Calder this year, I liked Malignos the best, most likely because I have a soft spot for twisted quest fantasy, but you really can’t go wrong with Calder’s frenzied, decadent take on genre tropes, whether he takes on the western (The Twist), sf (Dead Girls), fantasy (Malignos), or an admixture of sf and fantasy (Frenzetta).
• Weirdmonger, D.F. Lewis
  When it comes to modern weird fiction in the Lovecraftian sense of the term, D. F. Lewis and Thomas Ligotti are at the top of the heap. This collection is dense, labyrinthine, eerie, and utterly unique.
• The Ice Harvest, Scott Phillips
• Ravelling and Los Angeles, Peter Moore Smith
  Los Angeles, Smith’s most recent novel (just published, actually) is a gritty, surreal take on L.A. noir. Ravelling (which was nominated for an Edgar), Smith’s first novel, is ok, but suffers from serious narrative lag in places and is almost derailed by an overwrought and over the top antagionist.
• Game, Conrad Williams
  A tweaked, taut piece of weird noir. Excellent.
• The Brotherhood of Mutilation, Brian Evenson
  The protagonist loses a hand during an “infiltration.” After falling into a deep depression he is contacted by representatives of a religious order who believe he is uniquely qualified to take on their case. Where some writers would have gone into splatterland, Evenson uses controlled, minimalist prose to turn out a savage religious satire disguised as an existential detective story.
• The Nightmare Factory and My Work Is Not Yet Done, Thomas Ligotti
  I’d read The Nightmare Factory before, but went back through it this year. I’d not read My Work Is Not Yet Done and wasn’t entirely prepared for the shift in style. Having spent some time with it, I’ve found it’s grown on me quite a bit.
• Nemonymous 2 and 4
• Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan
• Sinai Tapestry, Edward Whittemore
• When Gravity Fails, George Alec Effinger
• The Heisenburg Mutation and Other Transformations, Steve Redwood
• Things That Never Were, Matthew Rossi
  It’s hard not to lapse into hyperbole when talking about Rossi’s stuff. Rossi takes ideas that most would bloat into a novel (Doc Holiday as the Fisher King, various conspiracies about the Great Old Ones, the idea that the colonization of North America was an attempt by the occultists of the day to get their hands on a vein of untapped spiritual energy, and so on…), condenses them into concise, intense essays and moves on. That Things… is his first collection… bloody hell.
  
• Veniss Underground and City of Saints & Madmen (Tor UK edition), Jeff VanderMeer
  I had the Cosmos edition, the one that just contained the four novellas. I liked it quite a bit, but the expanded edition changes everything. “The Strange Case of X,” a story that did nothing for me in the Cosmos Books edition, becomes the centrepiece of the collection, and the additional material… he hid a story in a squid bibliography, dammit! Never mind that the book as an object is a thing of beauty.
• Shriek: An Afterword, Jeff VanderMeer
  When this hits, I think jaws will drop. VanderMeer distills all the goodness of City of Saints & Madmen into the novel format. This should win over those that were put off or intimidated by the twists, turns, and footnotes of City of Saints & Madmen. For fans of Ambergris, some questions are answered, although for every answer another question pops up.
• Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
  I’ve always been a fan of the Bond movies, but never bothered with the books. Then I came across a comment from Richard Morgan, Richard Calder’s piece “The Dead Nancys”, a comment by someone, somewhere (sorry, I’m blanking on who and where) on the interrogation scene in Casino Royale, and a piece from The Guardian. A couple of weeks later I was in a used bookstore and happened upon a copy of Casino Royale for $1.99. I couldn’t pass it up. I’m glad I didn’t. And yes, the interrogation scene—ouch.
• Endgame, Samuel Beckett
• A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
• On The Road, Jack Kerouac
  Books I should have read before now.
• Swords Masters, Fritz Leiber
• The Drowned World and Crash, J.G. Ballard
  The Drowned World was interesting, but didn’t really grab me. Crash grabs you and won’t let go. It’s amazing how many times Ballard fits the words, “pubis,” “perinaeum,” “rictus,” and “mucosal” into a 220-odd page book. I borrowed the book from the library and found a lone pubic hair between pages 167 and 168. I don’t know if the person was using the pubic hair as a bookmark of sorts or if it as the result of something more sticky. I don’t really want to know, but it did strike me as entirely appropriate.
• Space War Blues, Richard A. Lupoff
  This was something of a gag gift from a friend who knows that I’m not a big fan of straight up sf. The novel itself… uh, let’s just say I can see why it took ten years to get published. The introductions by Harlan Ellison and Lupoff on why it took ten years to see publication are worth the price of admission.
• Batman: Broken City, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
  I love Azzarello’s 100 Bullets and was really looking forward to his take on Batman. Things got off to a good start with a borderline psychotic Batman beating the hell out of Killer Croc, then the story goes sideways as Azzarello gets bogged down trying to involve way too many bat-villains in the story.
• Gotham Central: In The Line Of Duty, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucks
  I’ve seen this described as “Homicide: Life on the Street set in Gotham.” Whoever said it was right on the money.
• Sleeper, Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips
  I’ve only caught the scattered issue of this super-powered espionage series, but what I’ve seen, I’ve liked a lot.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1, Alan Moore
  I read the comic then saw the movie. The comic was much, much better.

Shorts

• “Corpse Mouth, Spore Nose” and “Mansions of the Moon” in Secret Life, Jeff VanderMeer
• “Cold” in Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice, A.S. Byatt
• “Down to Boots” by D. F. Lewis, “Daoine Domhain” by Peter Tremayne, and “Only The End Of The World Again” by Neil Gaiman in Shadows Over Innsmouth, Stephen Jones, ed.
• “Screwnose” by Donald Sullivan in Whispers of Wickedness, Spring 2004
• “Milk and Ladders” by Rhys Hughes in Whispers of Wickedness, Summer 2004

Nonfiction

• The Oldest City: The Story of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Paul O’Neill
• The Job: Interviews With William S. Burroughs, Daniel Odier and William S. Burroughs
• Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997, Sylvere Lotringer, ed.
• The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World, Albert B. Friedman, Ed.
• The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor To Queen Elizabeth I, Benjamin Wooley
• The Elegant Universe: Superstings, Hdden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, Brian Greene
• Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places, 5th ed., Robert Young Pelton
  This edition was published just after U.S. forces moved into Iraq in 2003. I would imagine that the rankings have changed quite a bit in the past year o so. The most interesting thing about he book, aside from the survival information (which boils down to this—a little common sense goes a long way) are the section on “civilian contractors” (a.k.a. mercenaries) and the drug trade, which Pelton portrays as a monster of almost Lovecraftian proportions with tendrils poking into almost every aspect of life in some countries, and guess where the biggest market for coke and heroin can be found?—The next time you want a high, you might want to consider sticking to your local grow-op, locally occurring mushrooms, or locally produced chemical drugs. There is much in this book that should remind us in the West just how easy we have things.
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Steven Johnson
• Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10^th Dimension, Michio Kaku
• The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, Murray Gell-Mann
• An Underground Education, Richard Zacks
• Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ritchie Unterberger
• Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies, Russ Kick, ed.
• American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story, Cynthia True
  For familiar with Hicks’ work, this biography shows a different side of the man. For those who’ve never encountered Hicks, educate yourselves.

On the web

• Matt Rossi’s Once I Noticed I Was On Fire, I Decided To Relax and Enjoy the Fall and his columns at Howling Curmudgeons
• Claude Lalumière’s “Crossgenre noir: 50 Favourites”
• “2003: In the Dark Corner with a Drifter Named Loftus”, Jack O’Connell
• “The Dead Nancys”, Richard Calder
• “Gut Road”, Rhys Hughes
• Ed Gorman’s blog, Ed’s Place
• An Idiot’s Guide To Dreaming
  A wonderful blog that covers underground music, literature, and movies. Most of the posts are music related (often with an MP3 or two) and all are interesting and well-written.
• The Mumpisms
• Dead Angel
• Dusted Magazine
• The Brainwashed Brain
• fakejazz.com
• Splendid
• Delusions of Adequacy
• Foxy Digitalis

Neddal Ayad is a writer and musician based in St. John’s, Newfoundland.