William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland and Other Novels

 Originally posted at SFF Masterworks in July 2010.

Although barely a century separates us from William Hope Hodgson's most famous work, The House on the Borderland, out of all of the authors that appear in the Fantasy Masterworks series, his collection of four novels, The House on the Borderland and Other Novels (comprised of The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' (1907), The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909) and The Night Land (1912)), is perhaps, with the possible exception of E.R. Eddison's novels, the most distant in terms of narrative style from today's dominant forms out of any of the other books that appears in this series.  It is not fantasy in the sense of a constructed 'world' setting, nor is it strictly horror, and it certainly does not resemble any of the proto-SF works of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.  Instead, Hodgson's works seem to occupy a transitional stage between the 1860s "sensational novels" and each of the three main strands of speculative fiction today.  American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft cited Hodgson as being one of his main influences and for those familiar with Lovecraft's oeuvre, a close reading of Hodgson's works will show that there are indeed several similarities between the two authors.

Hodgson did not start writing until he was almost 30, in 1906.  However, between then and his death at the age of 40 in 1918 at Ypres in World War I, he produced several stories, such as The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' or The Ghost Pirates, that referenced his time as a sailor during his youth and early adulthood.  Although Hodgson never was a bestselling author, his stories were well-received during his lifetime and in the near-century since his death, his works have repeatedly gone back into print.  He is renowned for his atmospheric tales, even though his writing may appear to be a bit archaic for some readers today.

The first novel in this omnibus, The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', is a horror novel that takes as its central conceit that it is the true account, written in 1757, of events that took place years before.  Told in first-person PoV by a passenger on the 'Glen Carrig," the story begins as a sort of shipwreck account before veering off into the horrific.  Hodgson here uses deliberately archaic language in an attempt to capture the feel of the 18th century shipwreck tales, such as Robinson Crusoe, with mixed results.  There is no dialogue to speak of; the narrator reports other characters' conversations as indirect summations of much longer conversations.  Below is a paragraph that describes the first of the monstrous creatures that the shipwreck survivors encounter on a weed-filled island:

A little later, there came to my ears the noise of a very great splash amid the weed; but though I stared with intentness, I could nowhere discern aught as likely to be the cause thereof.  And then, suddenly, between me and the moon, there drove up from out of that great waste a vast bulk, flinging huge masses of weed in all directions.  It seemed to be no more than a hundred fathoms distant, and, against the moon, I saw the outline of it most clearly - a mighty devilfish.  Then it had fallen back once more with a prodigious splash, and so the quiet fell again, finding me sore afraid, and no little bewildered that so monstrous a creature could leap with such agility.  And then (in my fright I had let the boat come near to the edge of the weed) there came a subtle stir opposite to our starboard bow, and something slid down into the water.  I swayed upon the oar to turn the boat's head outward, and with the same movement leant forward and sideways to peer, bringing my face near to the boat's rail.  In the same instant, I found myself looking down into a white demoniac face, human save that the mouth and nose had greatly the appearance of a beak.  The thing was gripping at the side of the boat with two flickering hands - gripping the bare, smooth outer surface, in a way that woke in my mind a sudden memory of the great devilfish which had clung to the side of the wreck we had passed in the previous dawn.  I saw the face come up towards me, and one misshapen hand fluttered almost to my throat, and there came a sudden, hateful reek in my nostrils - foul and abominable.  Then, I came into possession of my faculties, and drew back with great haste and a wild cry of fear.  And then I had the steering-oar by the middle, and was smiting downward with the loom over the side of the boat; but the thing was gone from my sight.  I remember shouting out to the bo'sun and to the men to awake, and then the bo'sun had me by the shoulder, was calling in my ear to know what dire thing had come about.  And that, I cried out that I did not know, and, presently, being somewhat calmer, I told them of the thing that I had seen; but even as I told of it, there seemed to be no truth in it, so that they were all at a loss to know whether I had fallen asleep, or that I had indeed seen a devil.

And presently the dawn was upon us.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is replete with passages such as this.  The long, dense paragraphs, full of clauses and asides, can be a bit wearisome to read after a short while.  However, Hodgson for the most part manages to imbue this narrative with a sense of foreboding doom, as the narrator and the other survivors have nightly visits from the island's inhabitants to confront.  Although the description-heavy passages may be something that today's readers are unaccustomed to reading, once the rhythm of the narrative has been ascertained, the story itself moves at a brisk pace, with every few pages being devoted to outlining another horrific threat to the shipwreck survivors.

Hodgson's second novel, The House on the Borderland, is a much more accomplished novel.  Here, the story begins in 1877 in the Irish village of Kraighten, where two visitors, exploring the ruins of a quite singular house, discover the moldering diary of its previous owner.  In it, they find hints that a dark evil has existed somewhere beyond the borderland of life and of reality.

The House on the Borderland utilizes a double narrative approach, similar to that favored by many other horror writers of the past century (in this, I am especially reminded of Caitlín Kiernan's 2009 novel, The Red Tree, which utilizes a similar approach to outlining an incomprehensible evil).  Here, Hodgson's narrative is not filled with archaicisms.  Instead, it is a tale of intrepid exploration by the diary writer into the causes of the maladies that are occurring at this particular house.  Although creatures of this Evil are seen and described, the source of this Evil is never directly seen or described by the narrator.  Throughout this short novel, the tension keeps building and building, until finally the narrator succumbs to it...and the diary breaks off before the horrific end can be revealed.

It is a familiar formula now, but a century ago, this sort of writing went far beyond the previous generation's "sensational novels" with its descriptions of decay and malevolence.  The pacing is superb, as Hodgson does a slow build throughout this novel until it is time for the payoff, which proves to be well worth the time spent waiting to see what would ultimately occur to the diary writer.  It is easily the most accessible and perhaps most enduring of the four short novels collected in this single omnibus.

The third story, The Ghost Pirates, is the second nautical tale in this book.  In it, Hodgson relates the sad fates of a ship's crew as it encounters a ghostly ship intent on its destruction.  Unlike The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig,' The Ghost Pirates does not employ an epistolary, anachronistic narrative approach.  Much more than in his previous novels, Hodgson relies heavily on dialogue among the doomed ship's crew to convey the drama that is unfolding.  This is not to say that it is an entirely straightforward account.  Hodgson in his preface to this book refers to it as being the third part of a trilogy (with the two above-described books forming the first two parts), and there are indeed some "elemental kinships," as he put it, that unite these three tales on a thematic level.

The final story in this omnibus, The Night Land, is perhaps the most difficult to comprehend.  Although it is set in a Wellsian far-future where the universe has gone dark and cold and the remnants of humanity dwell in vast pyramid-like structures, the narrative and the vision behind the tale are quite archaic.  When reading this, I was struck, as I often am by pre-1914 works, by how there are none of the concerns that have worried writers and readers ever since World War I broke out.  There is no fear of human-caused annihilation; the universe may eventually grow dark and cold and creeping horrors may arise, but these feel somewhat removed from the internal fears of self-induced destruction.  And then there are some now-antiquated attitudes on gender relations, such as this short passage:

And I askt the Maid whether that she did be prepared; and she to be very white and wearied, and all besmirched with the dankness and growths upon the boulders and the hidden pools of the Gorge and the dripping of the waters; but yet did she be sound in her courage, and to show that she had all belief and abiding in me, and her judgement likewise to be with mine, in that her own Reason did approve.

And I took the bundle of her torn clothing from her, for it did be at her girdle, and like to trouble her movings; but she to refuse, very determined, in that I did be already over-burdened.  And I to be firm in my deciding, and to make her to yield the bundle, the which I hookt unto the "hold" of the Diskos, where it did be to mine hip.

And the Maid to be there, a little figure, and white in the face, and strangely angered, and her anger mixt with hidden acknowledgement that I did be her master, and half to be minded that she move not from where she did stand, and part to be reasonable and fearful of the hidden Beast; and in part also to thrill in her womanhood unto the man that did be so masterful unto her.  And all to pass in a little moment, and we to be to the Gorge side, and busied very eager to the climb.

For someone reading this in 2010, such talk and actions at best might seem to be amusing; at worst, deplorable.  In addition to this, there are references to an imagined "past" for this distant future that feels nothing like anything that has any relation to our shared recent past of mechanized warfare or of the Atomic Age and its developments.  In reading this, there is a sense of displacement, as if what is transpiring here upon the narrator's arrival near the end of time is but the horror of disassociation, as though the now-Present does not make much sense to the denizens of the now-distant Past.  This sense of alienation that runs throughout The Night Land partially preserves this novel from being cast off as being merely a pre-WWI oddity.  Nonetheless, the opaqueness of the prose and the less-developed characters made this the weakest of the four novels that I read in this omnibus.

So, is The House on the Borderland and Other Novels worthy of the title of "Fantasy Masterwork?"  Considering how influential Hodgson was on Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and other writers of the "weird" and horror narrative modes, I would have to conclude that yes, these stories, warts and all, are worthy of such an august distinction.  Even though time's passage may have aged the narratives and made them more difficult to process than it would have been for Hodgson's contemporary readers, there are still several strong elements in his stories that made most of these enjoyable tales to read.  In some ways, it is difficult, after reading this, to imagine Lovecraft achieving what he did with his horror fictions if he had not read Hodgson's works and developed his own takes on those tales.

Revisiting the Gollancz Masterworks lists, two years later

Almost two years ago, in late June 2009, I blogged about my plans to read and eventually review the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series of 50 books.  I have managed to read all of the books on that list and to review in some form 23 of them (24, if I want to count the half of the Viriconium stories that I reviewed earlier in 2009; do plan on combining those reviews with new material later this year).  Not too shabby, considering how I like to shift my reading about every so often.

Eleven months ago, I joined the SFF Masterworks group blog, partly so I could also tackle reading/reviewing at some point all of the Gollancz SF Masterworks list.  Currently, I have read 70 of the 89 titles released so far and have written reviews for 27 of them (not including two reviews of volumes not yet released in this format).  Not too shabby, although I do hope to finish reading the extant volumes by this time next year.

If you click on the SFF Masterworks link above, you'll see that I've either ported over several reviews I wrote in 2009-2010 for this blog or you'll encounter four new reviews that I have not yet ported over here in full.  Of particular interest might be the Le Guin review I wrote last weekend.  I hope to write 1-3 more reviews later this weekend.  Possible candidates include John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop, Philip K. Dick's The Penultimate Truth, and Joanna Russ' The Female Man.

How many books from these lists have you read?  Which are your favorites and/or want to see reviewed next?

Michael Moorcock, Gloriana

Originally posted in September 2010 at SFF Masterworks.

 Even after four centuries, the Elizabethan Age still carries magical memories for Anglo-Americans.  It was the age of Spenser (The Faerie Queene), Shakespeare (among others, A Midsummer Night's Dream), and Sidney (Astrophel and Stella).  In fact, it was Spenser's The Faerie Queene that gave Elizabeth I her nickname of Gloriana and it is Spenser's mixture of fairy tales, intrigue, and the golden age of the English Renaissance that has strongly influenced Michael Moorcock's 1978 novel, Gloriana; or the Unfulfill'd Queen.

Originally published in 1978 and revised in 2004, Gloriana perhaps may best be considered as a novel that was written to be a sort of dialogue with Spenser's epic poem.  Both Spenser and Moorcock present idealized forms of Queen Elizabeth I, but whereas Spenser's work primarily reads as a paean to the peace and prosperity of 1590s England, Moorcock's work is much more complex, both with its titular character and with its depiction of life in an alt-world Earth.

Gloriana opens with the Queen Gloriana ruling the vast empire of Albion, which stretches across most of Eurasia and is now expanding into the newly-discovered lands of Virginia, named after her.  Despite having had several lovers and illegitimate children, she is, like the real Queen Elizabeth I, unmarried and it is this and the matter of controlling her vast empire around which the action of the novel revolves.  The ruler of Arabia wants Gloriana to become his, so he in turn can plunge that pacific realm into a cleansing bout of war and destruction.  A courtier of his solicits the aid of Captain Arturus Quire to help him subvert Gloriana to this end.  Quire in turn is locked in a political battle with the old councilor Montfallcon, who had earlier served Gloriana's father Hern and who seeks to preserve her from becoming the despotic ruler Hern had become by the end of his reign.

Although at first glance the central plot seems to be that of political machinations, Gloriana is much more than the summation of its plot.  Moorcock here perhaps has written his best prose, with Quire in particular standing out.  Some readers familiar with Mervyn Peake's villainous Steerpike (Moorcock did dedicate this novel to the late Peake and his wife Maeve, both of whom Moorcock had befriended in his youth) will see traces of that ambitious character and his thirst for power and prestige in how Quire comports himself around Gloriana's other courtiers, especially Montfallcon.  But there is another trait in common with Peake's Gormenghast novels, that of utilizing atmospheric effects to intensify what is occurring in several important scenes.  Passages such as the one below, taken from Quire's first meeting with the Arabian courtier, are representative of how Moorcock imbues his scenes with vivid descriptions:

Quire nods.  He clears his throat.  Along the gallery now comes a scrawny, snag-tooth villain wearing leggings of rabbit fur, a torn quilted doublet, a horsehide cap pulled down about his ears.  He wears a sword from the guard of which some of the rust has been inexpertly scratched.  His gait is unsteady not so much form drink as, it would seem, from some natural indisposition.  His skin is blue, showing that he has just come in from the night, but his eyes burn.  "Captain Quire?"  It is as if he has been summoned, as if he anticipates some epiurean wickedness. (p. 18)

It is this combination of memorable description with intriguing characters such as the aforementioned Quire and Montfallcon, among others, that make Gloriana a gripping novel.  However, there is much more to this novel than just memorable characters and detailed, interesting descriptions.  It is Gloriana herself and her um, "interesting" situation that makes this novel worthy of debate thirty-two years after its initial publication.  Moorcock is not content to have Gloriana reign contentedly over her vast, peaceful realm.  Rather, he introduces questions of sexual politics to this story that are controversial for many.  Gloriana has a sexual dysfunction; she cannot orgasm, no matter how hard she tries with both clandestine lovers and with inanimate objects.  This sexual dysfunction plays a major role in the book, as it is the flaw through which Quire manages to arrange his machinations and against which Montfallcon rails, increasingly strident, throughout the novel.  The original ending (printed as an "alternate" Ch. 34 in my 2004 edition) is very disturbing for some, who saw it as a glorification of a heinous act, while Moorcock insists that it is more symbolic of a larger issue of sexualization of Self and of Gloriana's politics around which the novel revolves.  It certainly is a provocative scene, one that forces the reader to reconsider what she may have thought the novel to be about, but it certainly does not make it easy for the reviewer to discuss without straying from the realm of reviewing and into the world of literary critique.  Speaking solely for myself, the revised scene works better, as it clarifies Moorcock's intents without lessening the shocking realization contained within that concluding chapter.

Gloriana is much more than a simple fairy-tale rendition of an idealized Queen Elizabeth I and her court and world.  It is a well-written, engaging tale that will remind some readers of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.  Quire, Montfallcon, and Gloriana's characters are vivid, well-drawn, and they serve to drive the novel forward at a quick yet not too rapid pace.  Gloriana is much more than what it appears on the surface, as Moorcock's exploration of sexual politics and how intimately connected a ruler's personality can be with his/her realm make this a novel that will linger in the reader's thoughts long after the book is closed.  It is not without its controversies, as certain events could easily be read as a glorification of certain atrocities; ironic, considering the efforts Moorcock has done to combat those interpretations of the novel.  It certainly is one of Moorcock's best-written efforts and its depth is much greater than the norm for novels of this sort.  Gloriana is a "masterwork" in its prose, characterization, and thematic content and it will continue to be a moving work decades from now.

Five reviews from this Labor Day weekend

Posted five reviews so far the past three days on the SFF Masterworks blog:

Poul Anderson, Three Hearts & Three Lions - I have some rather snarky things to say about this book, so you may want to click on the link above and read it for yourself.

Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - Mostly enjoyed this early work of hers.

Michael Moorcock, Gloriana - problematic, but ultimately a good novel.

Walter Tevis, Mockingbird - one of the saddest dystopias that I have read.  Still a very good novel.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., Dark Benediction - collection of 1950s stories that presage his classic A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Recommended.


By week's end, I hope to have reviews of Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden, and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man on this blog and Brian Aldiss' Helliconia and the two volumes of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories on the SFF Masterworks blog.  Looks like I'm well on my way to my goal of having reviewed at least half of the books in both lists by Christmas time.

Four recent reviews of mine posted elsewhere

For those who haven't been following the SFF Masterworks blog, I recently added four reviews there over the past five days (links are also found embedded in the "Fantasy Masterworks" and "SF Masterworks" links to the right under "Recommended Reading."

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside

David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus


If you haven't already commented on them over there, I'd urge you to comment there and to visit that blog regularly over the next 3-4 months, as there'll be dozens more reviews from several other online reviewers in addition to myself.  Also, in the next week, there will be at least two new reviews from me, of Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra and George R. Stewart's Earth Abides.  Be sure to check out that blog for them and for others that should be going live in the next few weeks!

New group blog established for reviewing the Gollancz Fantasy and SF Masterworks series

Actually, this has been in the works for most of this month, but starting July 1, there will be a series of reviews over the next several months from a dozen or so online reviewers (including myself) that will cover the 130+ books on both lists, at a group blog called simply SFF Masterworks.  My first reviews will go live on Saturday, July 3, as I will cover William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland and Other Novels (Fantasy Masterworks #33) and James Blish's A Case of Conscience (SF Masterworks #30).  The Hodgson is already written (a 2100 word piece on the four novels included in this omnibus volume) and scheduled to go live at 12:04 AM on July 3, and I'll be writing the Blish review tonight and scheduling it for a few minutes afterwards.

There will be a variety of opinions and approaches to these books and I would hope regulars here will bookmark this group blog and/or add it to their RSS feeds, as it will be updated regularly.  In addition, I'll be editing the Fantasy Masterworks link in the Recommended Reading section of my links to include links to the reviews I have written, plus I will make regular Saturday posts linking to the reviews I've written (after all, I believe I said last year that my goal by the end of this year was to have read/reviewed all of the Fantasy Masterworks books.  I own them all and have only 3 left to read.  What I don't review there - that which has already been chosen - I'll review here a few months later, so there won't be any conflicts).

So...who's excited about having a one-stop resource for reviews of a series of books that one UK publisher at least thinks are among the SF/F best?

Fantasy Masterworks #1: Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life - they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all. (p. 14 US, p. 17 UK)

I have already reviewed at length the first two volumes of this US/UK omnibus (The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator), but for this series of short commentaries on the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series, I thought I'd focus a bit on a few minor points of interest to myself. In particular, I want to focus more on the ways that Wolfe's first two volumes appear to be influenced by the blind Argentine author/poet, Jorge Luis Borges, whose motifs have been cropping up lately in several authors' fictions that I've been reading.

The first possibly Borgesian element is that of Severian's purportedly eidetic memory. When re-reading this omnibus for the fourth time this week, I was struck by the surface similarity to Borges's Funes. Now while the two authors employ the use of near-perfect memory differently in their stories, it is interesting in how each author's character have similar quirks about them. But it wasn't until near the midpoint of The Shadow of the Torturer that explicit references to Borges' signature stories begin to appear.

Severian's visit to Ultan's Library, with its labyrinthine passages and seemingly infinite number of shelves, not to mention its blind curator, is a direct homage to Borges himself and to stories such as "The Library of Babel" and perhaps The Book of Sand. Severian's conversation with Ultan bears some passing resemblence as well to how Borges would often frame his stories. Perhaps at a later time I'll go into more detail in regards to Borges' stories, but this is not the time.

Later on, in The Claw of the Conciliator, the influences are even more apparent. The section concerning Father Inire's mirrors and the fish that appears in them, are taken directly from Borges' "The Fauna of Mirrors," with the fish being at the center (China Miéville was also influenced by this short fiction when writing The Tain). The metaphysical explanation behind the mirrors and its form of travel/reality mirror similar discussions in several of the stories found in Ficciónes.

Being a fan of both authors, re-reading each for those subtle little bits leads to the accretion of semantic layers with each successive reading of the text. Whether it be discovering the multitude of ties connecting the two authors (throwing out mentions of Dr. Talos' play, Baldanders, and the like) or noting the level of skill that went into crafting these passages, Wolfe's Shadow and Claw is not only worthy of being "a" Fantasy Masterwork, it perhaps is THE fantasy masterwork of the past century. Its layers add to the re-reading experience and each successive read, for me, has led to a deeper awareness and appreciation for what Wolfe accomplished with his masterpiece. His The Book of the New Sun novels are among the most important novels of the second half of the 20th century, regardless of whatever shallow genre classifications might be used.

Fantasy Masterworks #43: Geoff Ryman, WAS

Hell was full of the souls of children. They were made to sing merry school songs, chained to desks. They were drilled by tormenting demons in gray clothes with spectacles and fangs and rulers that beat wrists until hands dropped off.

There was a race of dwarves in Hell. They wore black leather harnesses, just like in certain L.A. bars. They had interesting deformities that took the better part of a day to create in makeup, and they flayed people alive. They sang and danced as they worked, like a Disney movie played backward. At the climax, Hell was harrowed by a visiting priest, and Mortimer escaped in a blaze of fire, out into the real world, an eternal spirit, to kill again and again in a chain of sequels. Mort was the wounded spirit of the eternal hatred of children. (p. 284)

Geoff Ryman's WAS is perhaps the black sheep of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks list. Unlike every other book that was republished under this banner, WAS contains no overt or even subvert "fantastical" elements to it. Instead, it is more a story about how fantasies can shape people's lives. But even that barely gets at the heart of this rather "mundane" tale.

WAS contains three main threads. The first is set in Manhattan, Kansas in the 1880s and revolves around Dorothy Gael, presumably the main influence for Frank Baum's original Oz stories. While there is a Toto and an Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, Dorothy does not lead a happy life. Orphaned at the age of five and condemned to a life of harsh mistreatment at the hands of her aunt and uncle, Dorothy becomes a painful figure to read. I had to stop reading at times because it was getting too close to my professional life (working with abused and troubled male teens), because Ryman did an excellent job of showing how such abused children often will flee into an imagined world in which they yearn for a release from the toils and trammels of everyday existence (not life, as for some, "life" has "died" when the traumas began). The climactic part of this thread is when Baum comes to meet Dorothy and he takes her misery and her almost-crushed hopes and he spins something from that to give back to her to cherish.

The second thread concerns Jonathan, a horror actor and The Wizard of Oz aficionado who is now dying of advanced AIDS. Jonathan himself comes from a troubled background and he finds himself wanting to know in his dying days just what can be found over the rainbow, whether or not Baum's Dorothy has a basis in real life. While his thread is not as painful to read as the Dorothy Gael one, there are certain uncomfortable moments about how Jonathan's own fantasies are both sustaining him and driving him deeper into a form of madness.

The third and unifying thread belongs to Bill, Jonathan's therapist, who also happens to have encountered someone else with a deep connection to the world of Oz. Bill's cheerful approach to life, tested many times (as seen in one important flashback), serves to bind the threads together in a way that illustrates how fantasizing can be a consoling and healing process. His thread, although by far the shortest of the three, serves to balance out the raw emotions of the other two threads and to help fashion an ending that while true to the notion that fantasies are not "real," appears to provide some form of reconciliation between Desire and Reality.

Is WAS worthy of being called a "Fantasy Masterwork?" Only in the most broad, vaguest sense. In many ways (the author's afterward is pretty explicit about this), the book was written to showcase the perceived conflicts between fantasizing and everyday reality and how the former can have deleterious (and occasionally meloriating) effects on the latter. Yet despite the author's attempt to wrest interpretation duties from the reader, I found the book to be engaging and thoughtful on several levels. The three threads did mesh well at the end, even if the first half was hard to follow the connections at times. The characterizations hit a little too close to home for me, but I do not regret having read such painful passages. But for me, this book does not sit well next to the genre fictions surrounding it on the Gollancz list. It is at least near a masterwork in terms of prose, chacterization, and thematic development, but the themes just seem to be at such odds with those contained in the other 49 books of the Fantasy Masterworks list that I am uncertain if many genre-mostly readers will warm to this novel as much as I did.

Fantasy Masterworks #41: John Gardner, Grendel

"Man," he said, then left a long pause, letting scorn build up in the cave like the venom in his breath. "I can see you understand them. Counters, measurers, theory-makers.

All pigs eat cheese.
Old Snaggle is a pig.
If Snaggle is sick and refuses to eat, try cheese.

Games, games, games!" He snorted fire. "They only think they think. No total vision, total system, merely shemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than bridges and, say, spiderwebs. But they rush across chasms on spiderwebs, and sometimes they make it, and that, they think, settles that! I could tell you a thousand tiresome stories of their absurdity. They'd map out roads through Hell with their crackpot theories, their here-to-the-moon-and-back lists of paltry facts. Insanity - the simplest insanity ever devised! Simple facts in isolation, and facts to connect them - ands and buts - are the sine qua non of all their glorious achievement. But there are no such facts. Connectedness is the essence of everything. It doesn't stop them, of course. They build the whole world out of teeth deprived of bodies to chew or be chewed on.

"They sense that, of course, from time to time; have uneasy feelings that all they live by is nonsense. They have dim apprehensions that such propositions as 'God does not exist' are somewhat dubious at least in comparison with statements like 'All carnivorous cows eat meat.' That's where the Shaper saves them. Provides an illusion of reality - puts together all their facts with a gluey whine of connectedness. Mere tripe, believe me. Mere sleight-of-wits. He knows no more than they do about total reality - less, if anything: works with the same old clutter of atoms, the givens of his time and place and tongue. But he spins it all together with harp runs and hoots, and they think what they think is alive, think Heaven loves them. It keeps them going - for what that's worth. As for myself, I can hardly bear to look." (pp. 65-66)

The above quote, where a dragon is conversing with the young monster Grendel about the delusions of Men, serves to represent a good portion of what John Gardner's short 1971 novel, Grendel, purports to cover. Told in a first-person point of view, this novel plays off of the events of the epic poem Beowulf in such a way as to create a story that has a deep resonance beyond that related to the poem itself.

Grendel has begun a twelve year-long war with the Danes; this is noted in a matter-of-fact way that serves more as a backdrop to the larger story that Gardner aimed to tell. Grendel's narration of events include not just his struggles against men (and ultimately, the unnamed Beowulf who slays him), but how the young monster relates to the world around him. In reading this story, I found myself in turns bemused and reflective, as Grendel and those around him, like the dragon above, muse on all sorts of things in life. There are many angles and schools of thought presented in the twelve chapters of this book, each representing a particular approach. This, combined with the sly references to the epic poem, made for an intriguing, enchanting tale that I certainly will be re-reading several times in the near future.

Is this book worthy of being called a "Masterwork?" Yes, as Gardner's prose is excellent, the story contains several layers of depth and meaning, and the character of Grendel is memorable. Even though it is almost 40 years old, the writing should be very accessible to most younger readers, as it does not feel "dated" at all and the ideas contained within the text are universal ones that humans have pondered for millennia.

Fantasy Masterworks #8: Robert E. Howard, The Conan Chronicles Volume I: The People of the Black Circle

Conan went up the stairs and halted at the door he knew well of old. It was fastened within, but his blade passed between the door and the jamb and lifted the bar. he stepped inside, closing the door after him, and faced the girl who had betrayed him to the police.

The wench was sitting cross-legged in her shift on her unkempt bed. She turned white and stared at him as if at a ghost. She had heard the cry from the stairs, and she saw the red stain on the poniard in his hand. But she was too filled with terror on her own account to waste any time lamenting the evident fate of her lover. She began to beg for her life, almost incoherent with terror. Conan did not reply; he merely stood and glared at her with his burning eyes, testing the edge of his poniard with a calloused thumb.

At last he crossed the chamber, while she cowered back against the wall, sobbing frantic pleas for mercy. Grasping her yellow locks with no gentle hand, he dragged her off the bed. Thrusting his blade back in its sheath, he tucked his squirming captive under his left arm, and strode to the window. Like most houses of that type, a ledge encircled each story, caused by the continuance of the window-ledges. Conan kicked the window open and stepped out on that narrow band. If any had been near or awake, they would have witnessed the bizarre sight of a man moving carefully along the ledge, carrying a kicking, half-naked wench under his arm. They would have been no more puzzled than the girl.

Reaching the spot he sought, Conan halted, gripping the wall with his free hand. Inside the building rose a sudden clamor, showing that the body had at last been discovered. His captive whimpered and twisted, renewing her importunities. Conan glanced down into the muck and slime of the alleys below; he listened briefly to the clamor inside and the pleas of the wench; then he dropped her with great accuracy into a cesspool. He enjoyed her kickings and flounderings and the concentrated venom of her profanity for a few seconds, and even alloed himself a low rumble of laughter. Then he lifted his head, listened to the growing tumult within the building and decided it was time for him to kill Nabonidus. (pp. 83-84)

Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, 21 tales written between 1932 and Howard's death by suicide in 1935, stand like a Colossus in the subgenre of sword and sorcery fantasy that followed. For his supporters, Howard's imagination burned like a meteor through the night sky, brilliant, dazzling, lasting all too brief of a time. Howard's detractors, however, deplore his seeming chauvinistic, capricious attitude toward women, and they would point to scenes such as the one quoted above as an example of how degrading this form of fantasy literature could be, not just toward women, but also toward the numerous real-world ethnic groups that Howard depicts in very slightly-altered form in his Conan the Cimmerian tales.

When I began reading this first volume of two (the other will arrive in a couple of weeks and I'll review it separately) on Friday, I had quite a few reservations. Oh, I had heard much about how vivid and "alive" Howard's tales were and that if read as simple adventure pieces, much enjoyment could be gained from them. But I was uneasy about learning of his casual references to "wenches" and his use of racial stereotypes. I feared that I might be in for a reading of a series of stories that, while certainly better-written than the imitative work, would possess the depth and meaning of a The Eye of Argon. After finishing this first volume, my reservations still remain.

Howard certainly had a flair for telling an action-packed, vividly-rendered tale in short story or novella form. His Hyperborean Age setting of an Earth tens of thousands of years ago that would serve as a clear mirror for the "distorted myths" that would follow, certainly allowed him much leeway in creating interesting backdrops for Conan's adventures. Depending on what the reader brings to the table, passages such as the long one I cited above can be thrilling, as the villains get their comeuppance in short order and Conan survives to fight for another day.

But for those like myself who have certain beliefs in regards to ethnicity and gender relations, Conan's tales present quite a few roadblocks to enjoying Howard's writing. The frequent mentions of naked or half-naked "wenches," many of them chained to slave masters or kings, serving mostly as props for Conan's enjoyment or as a weak-willed, weak-hearted damsel in distress for him to rescue, makes for a rather dated and sometimes repellent world-view that hopefully is fading into the past. I could not, as much as I tried, distance myself from my own views when reading these tales. While I could recognize Howard's ability to tell an exciting yarn, ultimately I was left thinking that most writers (John Norman being a notable exception) who have been influenced by Howard are at least writing tales that invert or subvert Howard's often-odious notions regarding race and gender.

Was this volume worthy of being called a "Fantasy Masterwork?" Despite my reactions to elements of his writing, Howard has had too much of an influence on too many writers over the past seventy-seven years for him not to be considered one. Whether or not one might enjoy his writings today depends on the type of baggage that the reader brings to the table. For myself, I can appreciate much of what he accomplished with these tales, but that I have reservations about some of his elements to enjoy them fully.

Fantasy Masterworks #39: Evangeline Walton, The Mabinogion

That day Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, who thought he was going out to hunt, was in reality going out to be hunted, and by no beast or man of earth. (p. 15)

Myths are an absolute bitch to translate properly. Grounded in a particular milieu, myths rarely reveal their full power to those not raised in that particular culture's time and values. Yet a good translation can approximate the best qualities of the original, making for a powerful tale that carries the echoes of something deeper, wilder, and more mystical than what a present-day reader may behold.

I have only the tiniest trace of Welsh ancestry (being in most part Irish and Cherokee ancestry, I grew up with other legends), so while I had heard of the Welsh myth/story cycle called the Mabinogion, I was not familiar with its particulars. So in some senses, I am the ideal reader for American writer Evangeline Walton's adaptation of that story cycle, also entitled The Mabinogion. Originally published as four books (Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, and The Island of the Mighty) in the 1930s, Walton's books aimed to "modernize" the Welsh stories without (according to Walton, in a couple of her endnotes) adding or subtracting from the originals. However, these stories were not successful until they were republished in the 1970s, likely in response to J.R.R. Tolkien's popularization of fantasy stories.

Each of the four books is in turn broken down into parts that revolve around particular story events. In the first volume, Prince of Annwn, the young Prince Pwyll dominates the first thread, while in succeeding "branches", the reader encounters the wizard-prince Gwydion, the beautiful Rhiannon, and the doughty Branwen. In each of these stories, there are echoes of certain cultural clashes, such as the invasions by the Romans and (later) the Anglo-Saxons, or of the infiltration of Christian values into what originally were pagan myths. Walton does not attempt to whitewash these, but instead she went to great pains to keep these competing cultural values embedded within the stories. From what I can judge, being almost wholly ignorant of Welsh mythology, Walton attempted to do for that story cycle what John Steinbeck at the end of his life aimed to do for Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur: make the story "readable" for a "modern" audience while as retaining as much of essence of the original as possible.

Did Walton succeed? For me, I found myself paying very close attention to the stories. There were echoes of other cultures' mythologies in Pwyll's day-long duel with Havgan, whose strength waxes and wanes with the sun's rise and setting. Walton told stories such as this in clear, evocative language that was in turns direct and poetic, but never dull or obtuse. In reading this omnibus, I saw names and locales which I believe were later used by other fantasy writers, making me wonder if they had been influenced by Walton or if they too were tapping into the same mythological streams. Some might say these tales are very "Celtic," and I suppose that would be an aptly vague, almost meaningless title, except Walton's tales do not feel as though they are copies of greater works. Instead, she manages to infuse these stories with a vitality that makes for a very enjoyable read.

Is Walton's The Mabinogion worthy of being called a "Fantasy Masterwork?" In my opinion, yes. She relates powerful, timeless tales in clear language that might make many readers want to delve further into the original Welsh myths. The best translations inspire a curiosity as to how the original would be for the reader, and in this, Walton has succeeded with me.

About those Fantasy Masterworks reviews I'm planning

Shortly (as in the next 24 hours), I'm going to write my thoughts regarding Evangeline Walton's The Mabinogion. The format will be different from most of my reviews in that I will not be quoting as much (or at all, in some cases) and I will be trying to write 500-1000 words only, addressing the following topics:

1. The book's A/S/L - its age, style, and language/prose. If the book, say like Walton's, is an interpretation of older myths, I'll note that in the beginning.

2. The mechanics - what I noticed about the book's structure and my reactions to the story's/stories' mechanics.

3. Would I classify this work as a "Masterwork" - after all, I'm curious to see how many of these stories hold up over the years and if I could ever see myself including such novels in my own version of a must-read list.

So with these things being the focus of these shorter reviews, don't expect quite as much analysis, although I might permit myself to do so when merited (and since I've already reviewed most or all of the stories by Gene Wolfe and M. John Harrison that are included here, I'll just merely retool those for a shorter format later on, after I re-read them in 2009/2010). Hopefully, these brief reviews will spark some discussion and debate, as I'm certain I will not be praising all of these books (some of them I found to be quite empty and I highly doubt a re-read or two would change my opinion).

I have decided to do something almost suicidal

I have decided that over the next couple of years, I'm going to read (re-read in many cases) and write (for those I haven't before) at least some sort of capsule review for the 50 books in Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks series. Below is the list and highlighted in bold are the ones I've read, with italics for the ones I own but haven't yet read in full:

1. The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1: Shadow and Claw Gene Wolfe
2. Time and the Gods Lord Dunsany
3. The Worm Ouroboros E.R. Eddison
4. Tales of the Dying Earth Jack Vance
5. Little, Big John Crowley
6. The Chronicles of Amber Roger Zelazny
7. Viriconium M. John Harrison
8. The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle Robert E. Howard
9. The Land of Laughs Jonathan Carroll
10. The Complete Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
11. Lud-in-the-Mist Hope Mirrlees
12. The Book of the New Sun, Volume 2: Sword and Citadel Gene Wolfe
13. Fevre Dream George R. R. Martin
14. Beauty Sheri S. Tepper
15. The King of Elfland’s Daughter Lord Dunsany
16. The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon Robert E. Howard
17. Elric Michael Moorcock
18. The First Book of Lankhmar Fritz Leiber
19. Riddle-Master Patricia A. McKillip
20. Time and Again Jack Finney
21. Mistress of Mistresses E.R. Eddison
22. Gloriana or the Unfulfill’d Queen Michael Moorcock
23. The Well of the Unicorn Fletcher Pratt
24. The Second Book of Lankhmar Fritz Leiber
25. Voice of Our Shadow Jonathan Carroll
26. The Emperor of Dreams Clark Ashton Smith
27. Lyonesse I: Suldrun’s Garden Jack Vance
28. Peace Gene Wolfe
29. The Dragon Waiting John M. Ford
30. Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe Michael Moorcock
31. Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams C.L. Moore
32. The Broken Sword Poul Anderson
33. The House on the Borderland and Other Novels William Hope Hodgson
34. The Drawing of the Dark Tim Powers
35. Lyonesse II and III: The Green Pearl and Madouc Jack Vance
36. The History of Runestaff Michael Moorcock
37. A Voyage to Arcturus David Lindsay
38. Darker Than You Think Jack Williamson
39. The Mabinogion Evangeline Walton
40. Three Hearts & Three Lions Poul Anderson
41. Grendel John Gardner
42. The Iron Dragon’s Daughter Michael Swanwick
43. WAS Geoff Ryman
44. Song of Kali Dan Simmons
45. Replay Ken Grimwood
46. Sea Kings of Mars and Other Worldly Stories Leigh Brackett
47. The Anubis Gates Tim Powers
48. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld Patricia A. McKillip
49. Something Wicked This Way Comes Ray Bradbury
50. The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Rudyard Kipling

So...which ones on this list have you read? Which ones that I haven't read that you have would you most recommend to me and why?

Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

"In ages gone," the Sage had said, his eyes fixed on a low star, "a thousand spells were known to sorcery and the wizards effected their wills. Today, as Earth dies, a hundred spells remain to man's knowledge, and these have come to us through the ancient books...But there is one called Pandelume, who knows all the spells, all the incantations, cantraps, runes, and thaumaturgies that have ever wrenched and molded space..." He had fallen silent, lost in his thoughts. (p. 4)

There is something powerful about a ruin. Seeing grandeur cast down, witnessing the failing of a majestic vision, viewing a ruin inspires in many a mixture of wonder and contempt. Who could have created such majestic structures so long ago? What sort of folly befell this civilization for only broken, ivy-covered remnants remaining to serve notice of that culture's collapse? Does such a fate await our own?

Jack Vance in the four stories collected in his Tales from the Dying Earth takes these questions and fast-forwards things millions of years into the Earth's future, to a time in which the Earth's resources have been exhausted and its inhabitants live among the ruins of civilizations about which they know less than we do of the ancient Egyptians or Chinese. For them, Arthur C. Clarke's adage about advanced technology being scarcely distinguishable from magic in the eyes of those who cannot comprehend the technology being employed holds true.

The four stories in this omnibus, The Dying Earth (1950), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Cugel's Saga (1983), and Rhialto the Marvellous (1984), share little in common with one another except the same far-future setting and in the case of the middle two volumes, the protagonist called Cugel. While I knew going in that these stories were best viewed as being separate tales that perhaps ought to be considered separately, as a whole I found myself struggling at times with the stories.

So this little post will not be the in-depth, formal review that I have written so far for the classics this blog's readers have voted upon. Or rather, it'll be in-depth to the extent that I explore what it was about this volume that didn't appeal to me, as well as the few things that I did enjoy.

I've had this omnibus for almost five years now, but I never could get beyond the first pages of The Eyes of the Overworld before putting it down in favor of another book. The first volume's rather dated narrative approach (it feels like an odd inversion of the action/adventure stories in the stamp of an Edgar Rice Burroughs in its exotic-yet-somehow-familiar setting and the 1930s-style matinee adventure hero) was trying enough, despite at times Vance's prose rising above that rather pedestrian level. But there was something about Cugel at the time that just irritated me. While on this most recent read, where I sat down one afternoon and just forced myself to keep reading despite my attention waning at times, Cugel's banter seemed more palatable, it wasn't until the very end of The Eyes of the Overworld that I began to warm to Cugel's rakish charm.

Cugel's Saga, however, dashed that charitable feeling. At nearly 300 pages, it was by far the longest of the four tales, and I just felt as though the story dragged the entire time. While there were occasional sharp, witty exchanges between Cugel and those around him, on the whole the story just felt lifeless to me, as if it were just one more foray for Cugel, one more time into the breach, but with nothing of import to show for it. By the time I reached the final tale, Rhialto the Marvellous, I just was eager to finish the damn thing, as I was beginning to feel caught between trying to finish the omnibus so I could review the book the voters had voted upon, and just giving up again and crying "mea culpa" for having the book among the choices listed. In the end, I think I made the worse decision by pushing on, leaving me to writing something that was more akin to a confession that this tale didn't work for me and that at least part of the problem lay with my own past problems with a few elements early in the omnibus.

Will I try again in the future? Perhaps, since I hate the fact that I disengaged myself from processing this book about halfway through and that there is that suspicion that if I had tried just a bit harder, I could have wrung something from it other than the feeling that this collection was rather disjointed and that dying earth stories have been done better by those who followed Vance than by Vance himself. However, it'll be some time (likely a couple of years at least), but if I do try again, I'll at least try to accentuate the positive more than I did here.

Thankfully, the next couple of classics to be reviewed, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and Junot Díaz's 1997 story collection Drown, will be much easier to write about. Expect reviews of those in the next couple of days.