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The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things
The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things offers stories about the ancient mysteries of Palmyra and Jerusalem, the music of Stonehenge and of the fabulously rare record Goat Songs, the uncanny in performances of Milton’s Comus and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and the wondrous influences of a Sancreed Tarot and of a toy cockatrice.
All the stories were originally selected for anthologies or journals. ‘Vain Shadows Flee’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2016 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing), and ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’ was translated into Spanish by María Pilar San Roman in an award-winning anthology.
This new edition includes all of the short stories in the original Zagava volume, and adds nine briefer stories or vignettes written around the same time.
Contents:
‘To the Eternal One’, ‘Stained Medium’, ‘The Key to Jerusalem’, ‘Bellman’s Map’, ‘Listening to Stonehenge’, ‘Hark to the Rooks’, ‘Goat Songs’, ‘Mr Bel’s Shop’, ‘Zabulo’, ‘The Secret Characters’, ‘In Cypress Shades’, ‘The Mask of the Dead Mammilius’, ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’, ‘Qx’, ‘The Scarlet Door’, ‘The Clerks of the Invisible’, ‘Vain Shadows Flee’, ‘The Man Who Made the Yellow God’, ‘The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things’, ‘Moss Queen’, ‘As Blank As the Days Yet To Be’, ‘Acknowledgements’.
All the stories were originally selected for anthologies or journals. ‘Vain Shadows Flee’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2016 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing), and ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’ was translated into Spanish by María Pilar San Roman in an award-winning anthology.
This new edition includes all of the short stories in the original Zagava volume, and adds nine briefer stories or vignettes written around the same time.
Contents:
‘To the Eternal One’, ‘Stained Medium’, ‘The Key to Jerusalem’, ‘Bellman’s Map’, ‘Listening to Stonehenge’, ‘Hark to the Rooks’, ‘Goat Songs’, ‘Mr Bel’s Shop’, ‘Zabulo’, ‘The Secret Characters’, ‘In Cypress Shades’, ‘The Mask of the Dead Mammilius’, ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’, ‘Qx’, ‘The Scarlet Door’, ‘The Clerks of the Invisible’, ‘Vain Shadows Flee’, ‘The Man Who Made the Yellow God’, ‘The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things’, ‘Moss Queen’, ‘As Blank As the Days Yet To Be’, ‘Acknowledgements’.
226 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2018
3 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Mark Valentine
270 books137 followersMark Valentine is an English author, biographer and editor.
Valentine’s short stories have been published by a number of small presses and in anthologies since the 1980s, and the exploits of his series character, "The Connoisseur", an occult detective, were published as The Collected Connoisseur in 2010.
As a biographer, Valentine has published a life of Arthur Machen in 1985 (Seren Press), and a study of Sarban, Time, A Falconer (Tartarus Press), is published in 2010. He has also written numerous articles for the Book and Magazine Collector magazine, and introductions for various books, including editions of work by Walter de la Mare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Saki, J. Meade Falkner and others.
Valentine also edits Wormwood (Tartarus Press), a journal dedicated to fantastic, supernatural and decadent literature, and has also edited anthologies, including The Werewolf Pack (Wordsworth, 2008) and The Black Veil (Wordsworth, 2008).
Valentine’s short stories have been published by a number of small presses and in anthologies since the 1980s, and the exploits of his series character, "The Connoisseur", an occult detective, were published as The Collected Connoisseur in 2010.
As a biographer, Valentine has published a life of Arthur Machen in 1985 (Seren Press), and a study of Sarban, Time, A Falconer (Tartarus Press), is published in 2010. He has also written numerous articles for the Book and Magazine Collector magazine, and introductions for various books, including editions of work by Walter de la Mare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Saki, J. Meade Falkner and others.
Valentine also edits Wormwood (Tartarus Press), a journal dedicated to fantastic, supernatural and decadent literature, and has also edited anthologies, including The Werewolf Pack (Wordsworth, 2008) and The Black Veil (Wordsworth, 2008).
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 2, 2018
Obscure volumes and obscure records… leading those who quest for them into mystery (or Mystery) and transformation. Obscure films whose stars might be spokespersons for Planetary Intelligences (or simply for genuine Humanity – something that is, in this age, no less fantastic). Theatre directors who bring their plays to life… quite literally so. Fabulous beasts and forgotten gods. Hidden patches of landscape that retain their transparency, showing, to those who know where to look, a glimpse of higher worlds.
Valentine’s stories are gentle and elegant, imbued with the sort of out-of-time quality even when they treat specific epoch, with their particular culture and interests. Their cumulative effect is that of re-enchantment, akin to that of Machen or Blackwood’s more spiritual pieces, showing that there is more to this world than is perceived by the eyes of modern urban man with his all but entirely desacralized outlook. They serve to „deepen the Mystery“, to butcher Bacon.
They are like a panacea to your usual cynical, relentlessly bleak weird fiction that dominates the field nowadays (even tho his characters don‘t always end where they‘d wish to be).
Valentine‘s stories often show definite influences of other authors, be it M.R. James, or Machen, or even his contemporaries like Reggie Oliver, but they are told in his own voice and informed by his unique vast erudition and esoteric interests. They are almost compulsively readable, free of any sense of aloofness in spite of their subject matters (one even encounters Valentine‘s almost chummy, very British tho eminently likeable, sense of humour).
Zagava‘s production is, as always, flawless. That, of course, means correspondingly high price tho I suspect that those who are already familiar with Valentine’s writing won’t have to think twice about their purchase.
Valentine’s stories are gentle and elegant, imbued with the sort of out-of-time quality even when they treat specific epoch, with their particular culture and interests. Their cumulative effect is that of re-enchantment, akin to that of Machen or Blackwood’s more spiritual pieces, showing that there is more to this world than is perceived by the eyes of modern urban man with his all but entirely desacralized outlook. They serve to „deepen the Mystery“, to butcher Bacon.
They are like a panacea to your usual cynical, relentlessly bleak weird fiction that dominates the field nowadays (even tho his characters don‘t always end where they‘d wish to be).
Valentine‘s stories often show definite influences of other authors, be it M.R. James, or Machen, or even his contemporaries like Reggie Oliver, but they are told in his own voice and informed by his unique vast erudition and esoteric interests. They are almost compulsively readable, free of any sense of aloofness in spite of their subject matters (one even encounters Valentine‘s almost chummy, very British tho eminently likeable, sense of humour).
Zagava‘s production is, as always, flawless. That, of course, means correspondingly high price tho I suspect that those who are already familiar with Valentine’s writing won’t have to think twice about their purchase.
March 24, 2018
Mark Valentine captures the true essence of mystery and imagination in his tales, and a delightful sense of wonder at the hidden secrecies he is writing about. He delves into bibliophiles collecting rare and hidden volumes, religious mysticism, Cockatrices and a hymn singing vagrant. All the tales in this collection were excellent and has a certain uncanny uneasiness over the narratives as they peer beyond the veil of everyday experiences.
The final part of the book is unpublished notes, dealing with Valentine’s ideas for stories, strange occurrences, weird historical facts, rummaging in antiquarian bookshops and of course thoughts and recommendations on books. For those who follow his excellent blog Wormwoodiana, this is pure bliss to read.
I really enjoy Valentines ability to take almost mundane people and events and look at them and contemplate on the strange circumstances in their lives. For Valentine, the mystery is the heart of the story, not the answer, but the ability to let your mind wander and ponder on the strangeness you have just read. Mark Valentine’s collection is a wonderful joy to read and showing that there is indeed an Uncertainty of All Earthly Things.
The final part of the book is unpublished notes, dealing with Valentine’s ideas for stories, strange occurrences, weird historical facts, rummaging in antiquarian bookshops and of course thoughts and recommendations on books. For those who follow his excellent blog Wormwoodiana, this is pure bliss to read.
I really enjoy Valentines ability to take almost mundane people and events and look at them and contemplate on the strange circumstances in their lives. For Valentine, the mystery is the heart of the story, not the answer, but the ability to let your mind wander and ponder on the strangeness you have just read. Mark Valentine’s collection is a wonderful joy to read and showing that there is indeed an Uncertainty of All Earthly Things.
January 27, 2026
Oh! So very, very good! Then again, it's Mark Valentine so I knew it would be. Absolutely loved it. Expanded thoughts to come after we are relieved upstairs of the siege by house painters at the end of this week.
January 27, 2021
“‘A person does not so much exist as embody a resonance of creation.’ This last phrase is striking and I link it to the proposal that ideas themselves — and images — have an independent existence and come to us rather than we to them:”
That, and the rest of the sentence I only quote above up to its colon, seems to be a ‘found’ ready-made for this whole book’s gestalt.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
That, and the rest of the sentence I only quote above up to its colon, seems to be a ‘found’ ready-made for this whole book’s gestalt.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
February 7, 2021
Delightfully cultivated and delicate treatments of the fantastic and ambiguous found in the midst of our daily rounds, but I feel that the stories are almost too short to properly convey the right feeling.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews