Fantastic Metropolis

When I was asked to create this list for Fantastic Metropolis, I thought about all of the great works of fiction that came out in 2001 that I had the pleasure of reading. Many of the ones that would make my list are already well known to readers of speculative fiction—Jeff VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen, Jonathan Carroll’s The Wooden Sea, Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen, China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, Richard Bowe’s My Life in Speculative Fiction, Tim Powers’ Declare, Ray Vukevich’s Meet Me In the Moon Room, Paul DiFillipo’s Strange Trades, Dennis Danvers’ The Watch, etc. Since you probably know of all of these books, I thought I would use the allotted space to name a few obscure titles published by independent presses that I thought were equally as good, if not as well known. Before I begin, I also want to mention Bill Sheehan’s At the Foot of the Story Tree, a non-fiction study of the works of Peter Straub. This is a very informative and interesting read even if you are not a huge Straub fan.

Sisyphus 9 to 5, Harrison Bell

This hilarious short novel from Obani Press, out of Cleveland, tells the tale of the travails of the mythic character, Sisyphus, forced to roll a rock up a hill for eternity, and what happens when he finally gets fed up and escapes the underworld for our own reality. He shows up in a small town in New Jersey where he takes a job selling women’s shoes at a shopping mall. The book is wonderfully slow and droll, interspersed with the protagonist’s philosophical musings and some of the greatest sex scenes in all of literature.

The Stone Remembers, Mank Gosse

It is a known fact that the flat stones used to make lithographic prints absorb the ink of a certain picture evenly at an even rate, so that the picture literally sinks into the stone and remains at a certain level. When the barometer is low in rainy weather, old pictures have a tendency to rise again to the surface of the stone. Old timers in the field of lithography say that “the stone is remembering.” It has been noted that with some very old stones that date back to the 18th century still in use in France, one can, on an overcast day, see an original Daumier appear as if from nowhere. Enter a young art student, Mank Gosse, who acquires an old stone and discovers one day when the stone remembers, his own portrait. The novel becomes a historical detective story as the protagonist traces the origins of the stone in an attempt to discover himself somewhere in the past. This metaphysical thriller is published by Peach Tree Press out of Commack Long Island, New York. (I have to warn you that my trade paperback copy of this book literally fell apart with one reading it was so poorly put together).

Death of a Ghost, Wu Cheng En (trans. Jon Bao Xhing)

Here is a real find. World Wide Press out of Brooklyn, New York has, for the last few years, been publishing new translations of classics from around the globe. This year saw the issue of a new version of the Sufi classic, Farid Ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, translated by Liv Padani, and the never before translated Death of a Ghost by the 16th century Chinese author of The Monkey, Wu Cheng En. This novel is brief and chilling. A man, whose wife has recently died, fails to mourn for her in the appropriate manner. Since she does not have his wailing voice to keep her spirit centered in that treacherous time period, the Bardo describes before one enters the afterlife, she loses her way on the path to salvation and is forced to remain on earth. She haunts his house, interrupting his dalliance with a new mistress. Eventually he plans to have her destroyed after learning from a local wizard that this is possible. What follows is an all out war between life and death, wherein the ideas of good and evil get twisted and frayed. When you get to the scene with the crossing of the bridge at night and the rooster make sure there is someone you trust at home with you. You’ll never forget the ending of this one.

The Box in the Attic, Russell Craden

As in Death of a Ghost, this novel begins with a man who has recently lost his wife. One day after he resurfaces from his mourning, he decides to clean his entire house, which he has neglected for too long. While putting some things away in the attic, he finds a small wooden box that he has never seen before. He determines it must have belonged to his wife, because he finds it in a corner where she kept her old clothes and sewing material. Upon opening the box, he discovers a yellow ball, the size of a large orange, nestled in a depression in the velvet lining. While he is wondering what it is, it rises into the air to eye level and begins spinning. In his attempt to find out where this ball is from and how his wife acquired it, the widower must reassess his marriage and life. Besides disclosing a great conspiracy, this novel is an amazing meditation on how much or little we can ever truly know about someone else—no matter how long or intimate a relationship we share with them. Craden’s earlier novel, Colossus of Roads, is also well worth checking out. He self-publishes his work under the imprint Rameau House out of Richmond Virginia.

Ahab’s Island, Tessa Ferano

Ahab’s Island is a rather crudely drawn graphic novel (think Gary Panter minus the drawing talent) about Melville’s famous character. Apparently he survives his fateful ride in the maw of Moby Dick and lands on an island in the South Pacific where he becomes the monomaniacal ruler of a band of monkeys. There is a nice twist here in that Ahab tells his own tale of survival to the young Melville who has jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands during his Typee days. Members of the native tribe he is staying with take him to the island to meet the mad man of the monkeys. According to Ferano’s story this is how Melville gets the idea to later write Moby Dick. Ahab and his monkeys obviously owe a great debt to the film, Aguirre, The Wrath of God and its final scene. The story here is very compelling, especially the Jonah and the whale inspired interlude at the start of the old man’s monologue, if the production values are lacking. Why some pages of this book are in full color and others are not is a mystery, but it is very worthwhile checking out. You can purchase this by sending a money order to Cashmere Comics. Their address appears monthly in the latter pages of The Comics Journal.