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Spiritus Ex Machina: Dark Tales of Creation
Art and science were not always pitted against each other: they were once perceived as two sides of the same great and terrible coin. Spiritus Ex Machina, the debut collection from author LC von Hessen, explores this duality of creation in 14 stories, following an introduction by Michael Cisco (The Divinity Student, Antisocieties, Weird Fiction: A Genre Study).
Within this collection, painters, photographers, dancers, doctors, scholars, engineers, occultists, bureaucrats, plutocrats, restaurateurs, pro-dommes, mad scientists, and various hapless folk all become embroiled in the Unknowable. From 18th-century French salon to contemporary Brooklyn apartment, from traveling carnival to libertine nightclub to body-horror laboratory, explore the dark side of the creative urge among phantasmic machines, dubiously ethical biomedical experiments, unsettling art installations, and a discomforting array of Uncanny Valley denizens. Become a human worm, traverse the dreams of an automaton, perform necromancy through antique film reels, join a secret society in the bowels of a Gilded Age factory – and remember to never, ever trust a face.
Within this collection, painters, photographers, dancers, doctors, scholars, engineers, occultists, bureaucrats, plutocrats, restaurateurs, pro-dommes, mad scientists, and various hapless folk all become embroiled in the Unknowable. From 18th-century French salon to contemporary Brooklyn apartment, from traveling carnival to libertine nightclub to body-horror laboratory, explore the dark side of the creative urge among phantasmic machines, dubiously ethical biomedical experiments, unsettling art installations, and a discomforting array of Uncanny Valley denizens. Become a human worm, traverse the dreams of an automaton, perform necromancy through antique film reels, join a secret society in the bowels of a Gilded Age factory – and remember to never, ever trust a face.
- GenresShort StoriesHorror
244 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2024
3 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
L.C. von Hessen
26 books33 followersLC von Hessen has written stories featured in anthologies such as Pickman's Gallery, Machinations & Mesmerism, and Nox Pareidolia.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 17, 2024
And the hits just keep on coming for Grimscribe Press. What a fantastic example of modern weird fiction. LC von Hessen has delivered an interesting and diverse set of stories that comment on the human experience in a way that is unlike anything I've ever read. They have taken the baton from weird fiction writers of the past, notably Lovecraft and Ligotti, and ran with it onto a path that is wholly and uniquely theirs. At times I found myself delighted, disgusted, horrified, and in total wonderment, and many times I found myself all of these things at once. I was little more than aware of von Hessen's work before reading this book, I will admit, but now the worm has turned, and I find myself a lifelong devotee. Check this out now!
Favorite stories include: The Spectral Golem, The Contagion, The Obscurantist, Wormspace, Roscoe's Malefic Delights, and The Double Blind
Favorite stories include: The Spectral Golem, The Contagion, The Obscurantist, Wormspace, Roscoe's Malefic Delights, and The Double Blind
January 4, 2025
(I've already given this book a 3-star rating on Amazon although the true rating would have been 2.5 stars; this is why I'm giving a 2-star rating here.)
The expected entourage of automata, masks, mannequins and other simulacra so predictably and thoroughly populates this collection's first half that their all too familiar appearances tend to flatten any possible evocation of the truly uncanny. Neither the lewd and macabre choreography in an abandoned warehouse nor a birthing scene that should be simultaneously erotic and horrific can elevate "Efface" above a desperate attempt to continually outdo itself in literary approximations of oneiroid psychosis. "This Night I Will Have My Revenge . . ." is cluttered with even more desperate attempts to disturb in a simultaneously sensual and sinister way, from the Byronesque yet dwarfish antagonist to the florid yet ultimately familiar descriptions of human forms reduced to abject waxworks. Contrast these overwrought stories with Ligotti's absolute classic of weird fiction, "Dream of a Manikin", which uses not only plenty of effectively outré imagery but also the careful development and manipulation of narrative to demonstrate the fine line that separates human identity and "manikinhood"; it's also worth noting that this story was from his debut collection.
Though not suffering as much from failures of mature restraint and subtle craft, Hessen's more pointedly old-fashioned tales in the collection's first half do not achieve anything in their reworking of the fin-de-siècle aesthetic that authors such as Brendan Connell, Quentin S. Crisp, and D.P. Watt have not already exemplified; particularly "The Infernal Machine", "The Spectral Golem" and "Heirloom", while all competently written, don't come anywhere near the rare vertex of perversion and sophistication where the aforementioned authors have displayed their remarkable contributions to this stylistic niche.
The collection's art-themed section, The Liminal Gallery, displays noticeably fresher and stronger writing, however. "The Medium and the Message" extends the already considerable significance of Robert Pickman in the history of weird fiction characters, with Hessen decently feigning a sense of historical realism. The narrative is framed as an academic paper on a posthumously discovered Pickman piece but gradually reveals the writer to have a much more personal relation to the artist and his art.
"The Obscurantist", while not as ambitious as its immediate predecessor, succeeds by a similar attention to detail and narrative development that is lacking in many of the other stories here. While "The Medium . . ." impressed by virtue of its intricately developed pseudo-history, this piece creates poignancy from its abundance of psychological detail, portraying a lonely young creator of military figurines who becomes fixated on a very minor performer from TV's black-and-white days. I nearly dismissed this story as a lovingly written yet probably slight portrait of hauntological sentimentality until the protagonist is invited by a somewhat annoying neighbor to have a look at his vintage film media. The grim epiphany that occurs during this meeting is worth a thousand stories of psychotic puppets and sadistic mannequins.
The author should put in some overtime hours at The Abject Laboratory because the stories in this closing section don't seem as realized as they should be. "Wormspace" really deserves what I would imagine to be an "abstract-sensory" approach, splicing clinically detailed scenes of the transformative process with more psychologically detailed flashbacks of the realizations that led to the protagonist's conclusive abandonment of human consensus reality. Instead the narrative suffers from too much cute, snarky dialogue that flattens the effects of what should have been a viscerally disturbing piece.
Going by the title alone, I thought that "Roscoe's Malefic Delights" would be a throwback to vintage Ligotti, replete with playfully perverse characters, sardonic humor, and plenty of purple prose (basically the days when he seemed to be too adoring of Nabokov's stylistic excesses). I wasn't wrong but this gastronomical horror story leans so much on its characters' antics and eccentricities that the Grand Guignol-style ending comes off emptily and left me wondering why the author hadn't spent more time developing the significance of the titular character and his shady business.
While it's not a factor in my rating, I did expect to see more focus on the portrayal of alternative sexual identities; it's there but probably not enough for people who are looking for particularly intentional queer horror. Along with more frequent use of grim and grimy urban horror atmospheres than the played-out retro-horror tropes, a greater emphasis on LGBTQ+ relations to the genre could help to distinguish Hessen's future fiction.
And as for their Instagram post about this review, it is only another example of the behavior that seems to have become increasingly common among authors who are active on social media; particularly the apparent inability to distinguish actual haters from honestly critical readers is a telltale trait. Whether casual or professional, the primary purpose of book reviewing is to give potential readers an opinion which, when compared and contrasted with others, can help them to make informed purchases; the glorification or mortification of a given author's ego is secondary at best.
The expected entourage of automata, masks, mannequins and other simulacra so predictably and thoroughly populates this collection's first half that their all too familiar appearances tend to flatten any possible evocation of the truly uncanny. Neither the lewd and macabre choreography in an abandoned warehouse nor a birthing scene that should be simultaneously erotic and horrific can elevate "Efface" above a desperate attempt to continually outdo itself in literary approximations of oneiroid psychosis. "This Night I Will Have My Revenge . . ." is cluttered with even more desperate attempts to disturb in a simultaneously sensual and sinister way, from the Byronesque yet dwarfish antagonist to the florid yet ultimately familiar descriptions of human forms reduced to abject waxworks. Contrast these overwrought stories with Ligotti's absolute classic of weird fiction, "Dream of a Manikin", which uses not only plenty of effectively outré imagery but also the careful development and manipulation of narrative to demonstrate the fine line that separates human identity and "manikinhood"; it's also worth noting that this story was from his debut collection.
Though not suffering as much from failures of mature restraint and subtle craft, Hessen's more pointedly old-fashioned tales in the collection's first half do not achieve anything in their reworking of the fin-de-siècle aesthetic that authors such as Brendan Connell, Quentin S. Crisp, and D.P. Watt have not already exemplified; particularly "The Infernal Machine", "The Spectral Golem" and "Heirloom", while all competently written, don't come anywhere near the rare vertex of perversion and sophistication where the aforementioned authors have displayed their remarkable contributions to this stylistic niche.
The collection's art-themed section, The Liminal Gallery, displays noticeably fresher and stronger writing, however. "The Medium and the Message" extends the already considerable significance of Robert Pickman in the history of weird fiction characters, with Hessen decently feigning a sense of historical realism. The narrative is framed as an academic paper on a posthumously discovered Pickman piece but gradually reveals the writer to have a much more personal relation to the artist and his art.
"The Obscurantist", while not as ambitious as its immediate predecessor, succeeds by a similar attention to detail and narrative development that is lacking in many of the other stories here. While "The Medium . . ." impressed by virtue of its intricately developed pseudo-history, this piece creates poignancy from its abundance of psychological detail, portraying a lonely young creator of military figurines who becomes fixated on a very minor performer from TV's black-and-white days. I nearly dismissed this story as a lovingly written yet probably slight portrait of hauntological sentimentality until the protagonist is invited by a somewhat annoying neighbor to have a look at his vintage film media. The grim epiphany that occurs during this meeting is worth a thousand stories of psychotic puppets and sadistic mannequins.
The author should put in some overtime hours at The Abject Laboratory because the stories in this closing section don't seem as realized as they should be. "Wormspace" really deserves what I would imagine to be an "abstract-sensory" approach, splicing clinically detailed scenes of the transformative process with more psychologically detailed flashbacks of the realizations that led to the protagonist's conclusive abandonment of human consensus reality. Instead the narrative suffers from too much cute, snarky dialogue that flattens the effects of what should have been a viscerally disturbing piece.
Going by the title alone, I thought that "Roscoe's Malefic Delights" would be a throwback to vintage Ligotti, replete with playfully perverse characters, sardonic humor, and plenty of purple prose (basically the days when he seemed to be too adoring of Nabokov's stylistic excesses). I wasn't wrong but this gastronomical horror story leans so much on its characters' antics and eccentricities that the Grand Guignol-style ending comes off emptily and left me wondering why the author hadn't spent more time developing the significance of the titular character and his shady business.
While it's not a factor in my rating, I did expect to see more focus on the portrayal of alternative sexual identities; it's there but probably not enough for people who are looking for particularly intentional queer horror. Along with more frequent use of grim and grimy urban horror atmospheres than the played-out retro-horror tropes, a greater emphasis on LGBTQ+ relations to the genre could help to distinguish Hessen's future fiction.
And as for their Instagram post about this review, it is only another example of the behavior that seems to have become increasingly common among authors who are active on social media; particularly the apparent inability to distinguish actual haters from honestly critical readers is a telltale trait. Whether casual or professional, the primary purpose of book reviewing is to give potential readers an opinion which, when compared and contrasted with others, can help them to make informed purchases; the glorification or mortification of a given author's ego is secondary at best.
April 19, 2025
By turns wondrous and horrifying, I enjoyed this collection from von Hessen, and will be on the lookout for more of their work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews