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Psychedelia Gothique
With sixteen journeys into terror (including the odd detour into a different sort of madness) Psychedelia Gothique adds a mind-altering dimension to the gothic tradition, opening the gates of perception, to demonstrate that fear is closer to the surface of our everyday reality than most of us ever suspect. All you need to do is shift your perceptions, just a little bit.
In addition to award-nominated stories like "Fourth Person Singular" and "Memory Games," Psychedelia Gothique contains six never-before-published tales, including "Masks of Flesh" and "Touching the Screams.
In addition to award-nominated stories like "Fourth Person Singular" and "Memory Games," Psychedelia Gothique contains six never-before-published tales, including "Masks of Flesh" and "Touching the Screams.
218 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2013
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148 people want to read
About the author
Dale L. Sproule
16 books37 followersDALE L. SPROULE
Author of the Gods of the New Wilderness Series:
I'm getting excited! Book Two Crossing The Carnivorous Forest releases July 30.
Book One, Remapping the Human Template is free from all online retailers until book two appears.
Find out more on his author page: https://www.godsofthenewwilderness.com.
In the late 90’s Dale co-published/edited the celebrated journal, TransVersions – Literature of the Fantastic, with Sally McBride.
As D. L. Sproule, Dale has also published two short story collections: Psychedelia Gothique and Psychedelia Noir. He has over 60 published stories and dozens of non-fiction articles for venues ranging from Books in Canada to Rue Morgue.
Check out his blog at https://medium.com/@DLSproule, his author page at https://www.facebook.com/TheHumanTemp... and his personal website at https://dalelsproule.com
Author of the Gods of the New Wilderness Series:
I'm getting excited! Book Two Crossing The Carnivorous Forest releases July 30.
Book One, Remapping the Human Template is free from all online retailers until book two appears.
Find out more on his author page: https://www.godsofthenewwilderness.com.
In the late 90’s Dale co-published/edited the celebrated journal, TransVersions – Literature of the Fantastic, with Sally McBride.
As D. L. Sproule, Dale has also published two short story collections: Psychedelia Gothique and Psychedelia Noir. He has over 60 published stories and dozens of non-fiction articles for venues ranging from Books in Canada to Rue Morgue.
Check out his blog at https://medium.com/@DLSproule, his author page at https://www.facebook.com/TheHumanTemp... and his personal website at https://dalelsproule.com
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 8, 2018
PSYCHEDELIA GOTHIQUE - an anthology by Dale L. Sproule
A fellow Canadian, I've come across Dale L. Sproule through the wonderful writing world of Wattpad. I've enjoyed his work, he's enjoyed mine. It's a great time to be alive.
"Psychedelia Gothique," as the name might suggest, is an anthology of weird, genre-blending horror (but not just horror!). I have to say, this might be one of the best anthologies I've read. Up there with Stephen King's "Night Shift." Not a bad story in the whole batch.
The whole time I was reading this collection, I kept asking myself, "Why isn't this man more well-known?" All I can come up with in response is: "Because life just ain't fair."
Onto the stories:
01. Nice Day for a Trip - Post-apocalyptic, weird-gonzo perfection
02. Fourth Person Singular - Smartly written, unnerving horror (for me, that says a lot!) about a tortured family
03. Labour Relations - Hilarious gonzo crime, quite capable of utterly destroying the fourth wall
04. Lifestreams - Dreamlike, psychedelic, and weird. An episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits... on drugs
05. Metropenance - A scattered glimpse into the mind of a religious psychotic who's been given something else to dwell on
06. Showdown in Kitschtown - Weird-gonzo fun about what those tacky ornaments are probably doing when you're not around
07. The Onion Test - Like Clive Barker and Hunter S. Thompson making weird monkey love while Cannibal Corpse blasts in the background
08. Memory Games - Another lost Twilight Zone/Outer Limits episode. I'm not surprised this story was nominated for an Aurora Award
09. Flushed - Just plain bizarre. Short, snappy, and sweet
10. Corrosive Agents - Love can be very toxic, given the right (wrong?) set of circumstances
11. Exposure - One dreamy mindfuck after another
12. Razorwings - As if Clive Barker dropped the poetry, and wrote a worthy successor to Cabal
13. White on White - A masterfully blended blizzard of ideas (which I don't wish to give away). Reads like Stephen King's old pseudonym, Richard Bachman (both of whom I'm a big fan of)
14. Bad Copies - This one does it all: horror, comedy, sci-fi (which seems more and more prescient)
15. Touching the Screams - The horrors of the Future YouTube Church
16. Masks of Flesh - An alien invasion on acid. Who's the real villain in all this? My personal favourite of the batch
A fellow Canadian, I've come across Dale L. Sproule through the wonderful writing world of Wattpad. I've enjoyed his work, he's enjoyed mine. It's a great time to be alive.
"Psychedelia Gothique," as the name might suggest, is an anthology of weird, genre-blending horror (but not just horror!). I have to say, this might be one of the best anthologies I've read. Up there with Stephen King's "Night Shift." Not a bad story in the whole batch.
The whole time I was reading this collection, I kept asking myself, "Why isn't this man more well-known?" All I can come up with in response is: "Because life just ain't fair."
Onto the stories:
01. Nice Day for a Trip - Post-apocalyptic, weird-gonzo perfection
02. Fourth Person Singular - Smartly written, unnerving horror (for me, that says a lot!) about a tortured family
03. Labour Relations - Hilarious gonzo crime, quite capable of utterly destroying the fourth wall
04. Lifestreams - Dreamlike, psychedelic, and weird. An episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits... on drugs
05. Metropenance - A scattered glimpse into the mind of a religious psychotic who's been given something else to dwell on
06. Showdown in Kitschtown - Weird-gonzo fun about what those tacky ornaments are probably doing when you're not around
07. The Onion Test - Like Clive Barker and Hunter S. Thompson making weird monkey love while Cannibal Corpse blasts in the background
08. Memory Games - Another lost Twilight Zone/Outer Limits episode. I'm not surprised this story was nominated for an Aurora Award
09. Flushed - Just plain bizarre. Short, snappy, and sweet
10. Corrosive Agents - Love can be very toxic, given the right (wrong?) set of circumstances
11. Exposure - One dreamy mindfuck after another
12. Razorwings - As if Clive Barker dropped the poetry, and wrote a worthy successor to Cabal
13. White on White - A masterfully blended blizzard of ideas (which I don't wish to give away). Reads like Stephen King's old pseudonym, Richard Bachman (both of whom I'm a big fan of)
14. Bad Copies - This one does it all: horror, comedy, sci-fi (which seems more and more prescient)
15. Touching the Screams - The horrors of the Future YouTube Church
16. Masks of Flesh - An alien invasion on acid. Who's the real villain in all this? My personal favourite of the batch
December 5, 2014
Every collection of short stories has some that work and others that don’t for any given reader, and this volume was no different. More of the stories didn’t work for me than did, but when I was able to connect with one it hit with an impressive impact. As a whole, this was a respectable but inconsistent body of work, and to review it I’m going to focus on the broad problems I saw with the stories as well as on the individual stories that resonated with me.
The stories that didn’t work for me tended to have the same two problems: first, the turn from mundane to fantastical happened so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to savor the building sense of dread; second, the horror elements tended to spin out of control so quickly I couldn’t really keep a coherent image in my head of just what was going on.
It’s not easy to write something that creates a fundamental sense of dread, and often the author managed to do so. When he didn’t, though, it was because the world in the story would go from normal to nightmarish faster than flipping a light switch. In addition, there was rarely a ‘why’ that explained the reasons for what was happening. This made what were abrupt transitions particularly jarring.
I usually got the sense that the bad stuff was happening simply because it did. There was no real explanation for me to latch onto, and I have trouble buying into something if I don’t know the why. There are a lot of readers that specifically seek out the kind of horror stories that lack explanations because they find the fear of the unknown particularly engaging. I do as well, but with such fast transitions from normal to surreal, I didn’t have the time to anticipate the dreadful thing that was coming.
The best way I can put it: I often felt more like I’d accidentally cut my finger while cooking instead of being tied to a chair while someone chopped each digit off in succession, and with this kind of inexplicable, anticipatory horror, that’s what really sells it. Some of the stories that were guilty of this: “The Onion Test,” “Lifestreams,” and “Corrosive Agents.” Although the stories didn’t click with me, “White on White” and “Exposure” did better jobs of building up to the finale.
The second problem, the lack of coherence once the fantastical elements took charge, is largely attributable to the author’s diction and use of language. The sentences become fast and frantic but use words that aren’t common in everyday speech. I consider myself a (somewhat) literate person, but there were quite a few instances where I had a choice of either grabbing a dictionary or forging ahead.
I always chose to forge ahead, and as a result I could never quite form a mental image to accompany the text. Given a little more space, or simpler descriptions, I think the writing would have been more compelling and would have drawn me much deeper into the worlds than it did. Short stories are notoriously difficult to write well, and I think the author’s focus on magazine publication forced him into such small word counts that his talent didn’t have time to shine through.
There were, however, some truly unsettling and engaging stories in this collection worth discussing.
The first was “Fourth Person Singular,” which was a horror story more in the crazed-psychopath-for-a-father sense than it was because of anything fantastical. It was a straightforward, simple idea that lasted just long enough to unsettle me. Part of what made it work was there was nothing supernatural, just a gradual build to the payoff the reader knew was coming.
“Memory Games” was a fantastic entry and a perfect example of how the ‘why’ of a situation can pull me in. In short, shape shifting monsters disguise themselves as humans, angels, and other such things to try and breed with humans. The downside is that the birth is fatal (in a pretty horrific way for the human).
But rather than focus on this, the story deals with one woman and her lover, a mix of uncertainty and desire. On the one hand, she can’t be sure he’s not one of the monsters; on the other hand, she has a strong desire to have one person in the world she feels safe being with. Part of what makes this story so good is that it uses horror to magnify the issues that might already exist in a relationship, which makes the main character’s dilemma entirely relatable. Also, the fantastical elements were simply background material rather than the focus, which is where this author shines.
My absolute favorite story, however, was “Razorwings.” The author describes the genre as splatterfairy, a spinoff of splatterpunk, and it’s an apt description. The imps in this are fey creatures that jump into human hosts to survive then feed the human souls to an imp king. I’m not going to say too much about this one other than it was fantastic. Sproule did a great job selling just how horrific what the imps did to humans was, as well as how awful it was being an imp. The final confrontation ran away from the writer and lost some coherence, but the overall delivery was spot on.
“Masks of Flesh” and “Touching the Screams” were solid post-apocalyptic stories, but that’s not a genre I really jump on most of the time. Both were interesting, but there was nothing in either that grabbed me.
Overall, this is a decent collection of short stories, but there are some real gems in there worth reading through. I think the author shines better when he gives himself some breathing room to write, and it’s clear he has the talent to produce high quality work. If I rated each story, I would have been giving everything from a 2/5 to a 5/5. The collection as a whole, however, measures up to 3/5.
The stories that didn’t work for me tended to have the same two problems: first, the turn from mundane to fantastical happened so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to savor the building sense of dread; second, the horror elements tended to spin out of control so quickly I couldn’t really keep a coherent image in my head of just what was going on.
It’s not easy to write something that creates a fundamental sense of dread, and often the author managed to do so. When he didn’t, though, it was because the world in the story would go from normal to nightmarish faster than flipping a light switch. In addition, there was rarely a ‘why’ that explained the reasons for what was happening. This made what were abrupt transitions particularly jarring.
I usually got the sense that the bad stuff was happening simply because it did. There was no real explanation for me to latch onto, and I have trouble buying into something if I don’t know the why. There are a lot of readers that specifically seek out the kind of horror stories that lack explanations because they find the fear of the unknown particularly engaging. I do as well, but with such fast transitions from normal to surreal, I didn’t have the time to anticipate the dreadful thing that was coming.
The best way I can put it: I often felt more like I’d accidentally cut my finger while cooking instead of being tied to a chair while someone chopped each digit off in succession, and with this kind of inexplicable, anticipatory horror, that’s what really sells it. Some of the stories that were guilty of this: “The Onion Test,” “Lifestreams,” and “Corrosive Agents.” Although the stories didn’t click with me, “White on White” and “Exposure” did better jobs of building up to the finale.
The second problem, the lack of coherence once the fantastical elements took charge, is largely attributable to the author’s diction and use of language. The sentences become fast and frantic but use words that aren’t common in everyday speech. I consider myself a (somewhat) literate person, but there were quite a few instances where I had a choice of either grabbing a dictionary or forging ahead.
I always chose to forge ahead, and as a result I could never quite form a mental image to accompany the text. Given a little more space, or simpler descriptions, I think the writing would have been more compelling and would have drawn me much deeper into the worlds than it did. Short stories are notoriously difficult to write well, and I think the author’s focus on magazine publication forced him into such small word counts that his talent didn’t have time to shine through.
There were, however, some truly unsettling and engaging stories in this collection worth discussing.
The first was “Fourth Person Singular,” which was a horror story more in the crazed-psychopath-for-a-father sense than it was because of anything fantastical. It was a straightforward, simple idea that lasted just long enough to unsettle me. Part of what made it work was there was nothing supernatural, just a gradual build to the payoff the reader knew was coming.
“Memory Games” was a fantastic entry and a perfect example of how the ‘why’ of a situation can pull me in. In short, shape shifting monsters disguise themselves as humans, angels, and other such things to try and breed with humans. The downside is that the birth is fatal (in a pretty horrific way for the human).
But rather than focus on this, the story deals with one woman and her lover, a mix of uncertainty and desire. On the one hand, she can’t be sure he’s not one of the monsters; on the other hand, she has a strong desire to have one person in the world she feels safe being with. Part of what makes this story so good is that it uses horror to magnify the issues that might already exist in a relationship, which makes the main character’s dilemma entirely relatable. Also, the fantastical elements were simply background material rather than the focus, which is where this author shines.
My absolute favorite story, however, was “Razorwings.” The author describes the genre as splatterfairy, a spinoff of splatterpunk, and it’s an apt description. The imps in this are fey creatures that jump into human hosts to survive then feed the human souls to an imp king. I’m not going to say too much about this one other than it was fantastic. Sproule did a great job selling just how horrific what the imps did to humans was, as well as how awful it was being an imp. The final confrontation ran away from the writer and lost some coherence, but the overall delivery was spot on.
“Masks of Flesh” and “Touching the Screams” were solid post-apocalyptic stories, but that’s not a genre I really jump on most of the time. Both were interesting, but there was nothing in either that grabbed me.
Overall, this is a decent collection of short stories, but there are some real gems in there worth reading through. I think the author shines better when he gives himself some breathing room to write, and it’s clear he has the talent to produce high quality work. If I rated each story, I would have been giving everything from a 2/5 to a 5/5. The collection as a whole, however, measures up to 3/5.
December 10, 2013
Original review posted here.
Psychedlia Gothique by Dale L. Sproule is a collection of short stories spanning a number of years from his writing career. The stories cover a wide range of topics, themes, and formats, from dark urban fantasy/horror, to stories of more traditional horror and slasher elements, psychological horror, and even a horror themed poem that kicks off the whole collection. There’s a story in this book for almost everybody, and while some stories are more engaging and spoke to me more than others (as is the way with short story collections), all the stories in this book offer the reader something to identify with and enjoy.
I really enjoyed this collection as a whole. Sproule has a distinct knack for creeping into your psyche through clever use of setting and psychology in order to chill the reader. The stories are very skillfully created and written, offering a peep into a horrifying world, and then slamming the door on your face, forcing you to really think about what you just read while desperately wishing there was more.
Sproule also employs some pretty fantastic writing tricks to further bring you into his world – one case that sticks out to me specifically is in the story “Labour Relations”, and while I don’t think this story thematically relates to any other story in this book, Sproule uses the story to bring you in and out of the narrative, creating a non-traditional narrative that a lesser writer would have floundered with.
Themes of paranoia are really what draws all these stories together however, the characters you’re following not knowing their place in the world exactly, and therefore don’t know how to navigate it effectively, and despite the fact that some of Sproule’s protagonists are the complete opposite of what one would consider a good person, you can still identify with at least a part of them – sometimes just their last vestiges of humanity.
The thing I liked least about this selection of short stories actually had nothing to do with the stories themselves; At the beginning of each work there’s an introduction by the author explaining various things, but mostly it came down to publication history and whether or not the story won any awards, etc. Except for one story “Exposure” (where the story felt extremely personal), the introductions were needless, and on more than one occasion, they came off as Sproule boasting about where the story had been published and if it won any awards. While I understand the excitement and pride Sproule felt when his stories had been accepted for publication, the sentiments came off as boasting, and that actually really detracted from the overall book. I really wish the book hadn’t included those introductions, because I’m a firm believer in a story speaking for itself – either the introductions were needless (as they were in this case), or they have to explain the story itself in order for it to make sense (thankfully, not the case with this book).
Another aspect of the book I didn’t like was the title, and the Sproule’s reasoning behind the title (which he explains ad nauseum in another introduction – there’s just too many intros in this book). The stories themselves are not psychedelic or even very Gothic for that matter – what they are are a selection of stories heavily rooted in psychological terror rather than your normal blood and guts horror. Sproule writes this style very well and each story left me wanting more, and not wanting to be ripped out of the world that he had just introduced me to. However, the title and the reasoning behind it felt off, and once again came off as a bit self-important, same with his introduction to “Razorwings” where he details how he came up with the idea of “splatterfairy”. Which really doubly rings contrite as a name for this genre already exists as urban fantasy.
Having said those two things, this is a really solid selection of short horror stories (except for the aforementioned “Labour Relations”), and a great read for anybody interested in short horror fiction.
Psychedlia Gothique by Dale L. Sproule is a collection of short stories spanning a number of years from his writing career. The stories cover a wide range of topics, themes, and formats, from dark urban fantasy/horror, to stories of more traditional horror and slasher elements, psychological horror, and even a horror themed poem that kicks off the whole collection. There’s a story in this book for almost everybody, and while some stories are more engaging and spoke to me more than others (as is the way with short story collections), all the stories in this book offer the reader something to identify with and enjoy.
I really enjoyed this collection as a whole. Sproule has a distinct knack for creeping into your psyche through clever use of setting and psychology in order to chill the reader. The stories are very skillfully created and written, offering a peep into a horrifying world, and then slamming the door on your face, forcing you to really think about what you just read while desperately wishing there was more.
Sproule also employs some pretty fantastic writing tricks to further bring you into his world – one case that sticks out to me specifically is in the story “Labour Relations”, and while I don’t think this story thematically relates to any other story in this book, Sproule uses the story to bring you in and out of the narrative, creating a non-traditional narrative that a lesser writer would have floundered with.
Themes of paranoia are really what draws all these stories together however, the characters you’re following not knowing their place in the world exactly, and therefore don’t know how to navigate it effectively, and despite the fact that some of Sproule’s protagonists are the complete opposite of what one would consider a good person, you can still identify with at least a part of them – sometimes just their last vestiges of humanity.
The thing I liked least about this selection of short stories actually had nothing to do with the stories themselves; At the beginning of each work there’s an introduction by the author explaining various things, but mostly it came down to publication history and whether or not the story won any awards, etc. Except for one story “Exposure” (where the story felt extremely personal), the introductions were needless, and on more than one occasion, they came off as Sproule boasting about where the story had been published and if it won any awards. While I understand the excitement and pride Sproule felt when his stories had been accepted for publication, the sentiments came off as boasting, and that actually really detracted from the overall book. I really wish the book hadn’t included those introductions, because I’m a firm believer in a story speaking for itself – either the introductions were needless (as they were in this case), or they have to explain the story itself in order for it to make sense (thankfully, not the case with this book).
Another aspect of the book I didn’t like was the title, and the Sproule’s reasoning behind the title (which he explains ad nauseum in another introduction – there’s just too many intros in this book). The stories themselves are not psychedelic or even very Gothic for that matter – what they are are a selection of stories heavily rooted in psychological terror rather than your normal blood and guts horror. Sproule writes this style very well and each story left me wanting more, and not wanting to be ripped out of the world that he had just introduced me to. However, the title and the reasoning behind it felt off, and once again came off as a bit self-important, same with his introduction to “Razorwings” where he details how he came up with the idea of “splatterfairy”. Which really doubly rings contrite as a name for this genre already exists as urban fantasy.
Having said those two things, this is a really solid selection of short horror stories (except for the aforementioned “Labour Relations”), and a great read for anybody interested in short horror fiction.
December 26, 2014
Its very hard to give a single rating to an anthology of stories to which I had such a range of responses.
It didn't start on a good note, I'm not a fan of the high-brow, overly contrived style of stories like 'Nice Day for a Trip'. Even 'Fourth Person Singular', which I quite enjoyed, has these overtones that I find artificial and frankly unnecessary.
And it kinda gets worse from there on out, a type of stilted horror that grates rather than frightens. During 'Exposure' I was really wondering what on earth the point of the cinematic timeline even was, other than to convolute and obscure a potentially interesting narrative.
It all changed for me around Razorwings. Not that Razorwings is in itself is anything amazingly different, its solid, engaging urban fantasy, but it read very differently to anything up until that point, and after that the stories just change.
'White on White' and 'Bad Copies' are novel ideas and well written. 'Touching the Screams' (my favourite) and 'Masks of Flesh' are really excellent stories; genuinely creepy, subtly esoteric, but written naturally and without any pretense.
I found myself wishing that *that* author had written the entire collection.
It didn't start on a good note, I'm not a fan of the high-brow, overly contrived style of stories like 'Nice Day for a Trip'. Even 'Fourth Person Singular', which I quite enjoyed, has these overtones that I find artificial and frankly unnecessary.
And it kinda gets worse from there on out, a type of stilted horror that grates rather than frightens. During 'Exposure' I was really wondering what on earth the point of the cinematic timeline even was, other than to convolute and obscure a potentially interesting narrative.
It all changed for me around Razorwings. Not that Razorwings is in itself is anything amazingly different, its solid, engaging urban fantasy, but it read very differently to anything up until that point, and after that the stories just change.
'White on White' and 'Bad Copies' are novel ideas and well written. 'Touching the Screams' (my favourite) and 'Masks of Flesh' are really excellent stories; genuinely creepy, subtly esoteric, but written naturally and without any pretense.
I found myself wishing that *that* author had written the entire collection.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews