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Scar City
‘One of the best British post-war writers of horror and the weird.’
– Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual
Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction.
Scar City is one of the final collections put together before his death in 2013 – with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense, haunting and often painful stories from a master of the short form.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS ROYLE
– Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual
Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction.
Scar City is one of the final collections put together before his death in 2013 – with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense, haunting and often painful stories from a master of the short form.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS ROYLE
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2015
17 people are currently reading
251 people want to read
About the author
Joel Lane
128 books58 followersJoel Lane was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and anthology editor. He received the World Fantasy Award in 2013 and the British Fantasy Award twice.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 22, 2020
Oh, the bleakness...
April 6, 2021
This collection – the last to be assembled before the author's death in 2013 – is harsher and more brutal than anything else I have read by Lane. I'd also say it is less thematically coherent, though the style remains very distinctive due to Lane's frequent use of motifs.
Scar City was reissued this year by Influx Press, along with Lane's debut collection, The Earth Wire, from 1994. There's something uncanny about jumping from one to the other: the writing is familiar, the stories' concepts and concerns persist, but the landscape is altered. What's more, the first story, 'Those Who Remember', seems to have been written with this in mind, like it's speaking to someone who's arrived in the present day straight from the 90s. 'Everything had changed except the people... Local industry was dying then; it was dead now.' It's replete with violence and filled with the usual quotable lines ('the death of religion has left us all to create our own rituals'). While it's made up of a cruel, menacing set of scenes, I thought it was excellent.
I also loved 'This Night Last Woman' (dark tale of a one night stand with much unspoken, again the undercurrent of violence); 'Keep the Night' (powerful nighttime ambience, funny in parts, very true); 'The Long Shift' (eerie, effective, great atmosphere, reminded me of how Christopher Priest's 'The Sorting Out' made me feel); and 'Among the Leaves' (enigmatic, beautiful descriptions, redolent of autumn).
There are softer moments to be found in stories like 'This Blue Shade', though the endings are often unforgiving. Some feature untypical characters: a well-off Chelsea couple in 'A Faraway City' (the plot, which ends up being about the brutalisation of trafficked sex workers, is odd, perhaps slightly misjudged); a man and woman having an affair at a work conference in 'Feels Like Underground'. 'Upon a Granite Wind' is a step into full-on fantasy fiction. 'Internal Colonies' is so horrible it just left me feeling dirty.
Sometimes, it's necessary to know the provenance of the story to understand its context: for example, the uncharacteristically plot-driven 'By Night He Could Not See' was originally published in a crime fiction magazine, and the baffling (to me) 'My Voice is Dead' was part of A Season in Carcosa, an anthology inspired by Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.
Like everything else by Lane, Scar City is worth reading. I don't think it's the best introduction to his work, though – newcomers might be put off by the sheer brutality and coldness of the stories collected here – and I'd suggest starting with The Earth Wire.
More about my love of Lane’s work in this piece I wrote for Sublime Horror: The fiction of Joel Lane – ‘To read Lane is to enter into an unforgettable, beautifully ambiguous landscape’
TinyLetter | Linktree
Scar City was reissued this year by Influx Press, along with Lane's debut collection, The Earth Wire, from 1994. There's something uncanny about jumping from one to the other: the writing is familiar, the stories' concepts and concerns persist, but the landscape is altered. What's more, the first story, 'Those Who Remember', seems to have been written with this in mind, like it's speaking to someone who's arrived in the present day straight from the 90s. 'Everything had changed except the people... Local industry was dying then; it was dead now.' It's replete with violence and filled with the usual quotable lines ('the death of religion has left us all to create our own rituals'). While it's made up of a cruel, menacing set of scenes, I thought it was excellent.
I also loved 'This Night Last Woman' (dark tale of a one night stand with much unspoken, again the undercurrent of violence); 'Keep the Night' (powerful nighttime ambience, funny in parts, very true); 'The Long Shift' (eerie, effective, great atmosphere, reminded me of how Christopher Priest's 'The Sorting Out' made me feel); and 'Among the Leaves' (enigmatic, beautiful descriptions, redolent of autumn).
There are softer moments to be found in stories like 'This Blue Shade', though the endings are often unforgiving. Some feature untypical characters: a well-off Chelsea couple in 'A Faraway City' (the plot, which ends up being about the brutalisation of trafficked sex workers, is odd, perhaps slightly misjudged); a man and woman having an affair at a work conference in 'Feels Like Underground'. 'Upon a Granite Wind' is a step into full-on fantasy fiction. 'Internal Colonies' is so horrible it just left me feeling dirty.
Sometimes, it's necessary to know the provenance of the story to understand its context: for example, the uncharacteristically plot-driven 'By Night He Could Not See' was originally published in a crime fiction magazine, and the baffling (to me) 'My Voice is Dead' was part of A Season in Carcosa, an anthology inspired by Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.
Like everything else by Lane, Scar City is worth reading. I don't think it's the best introduction to his work, though – newcomers might be put off by the sheer brutality and coldness of the stories collected here – and I'd suggest starting with The Earth Wire.
More about my love of Lane’s work in this piece I wrote for Sublime Horror: The fiction of Joel Lane – ‘To read Lane is to enter into an unforgettable, beautifully ambiguous landscape’
TinyLetter | Linktree
September 6, 2022
I had a lot of reservations with Where Furnaces Burn, and was a little wary about this collection. But many of the stories are vintage Joel Lane.
In "Those Who Remember", Lane keeps us guessing about the nature of the narrator's mysterious rendezvous. Small dark details add to the increasingly ominous picture. The final ritual and implications are unexpected, cryptic, and powerful. I would type in the final paragraph as yet another example of Lane's distinctive prose, but you should really read the story yourself.
The events in "In This Blue Shade" only seem to have tenuous connections, and Lane again eschews condescending explanations. Our understanding of the narrator evolves significantly in a few pages; a fleeting but oddly tender queer encounter is only part of the complex picture. A few striking images recur in his journey, which ends:
"A Faraway City" begins with a woman's bad dreams, and discovering unsettling details about her husband, connected with the dreams. An opening sequence that would not be out of place in a Brian Evenson story. But where Evenson might have nudged expertly into some kind of abstract paranoiac territory, Lane keeps us grounded in the real world. The woman's motivations become murkier, as her journey continues into much darker places.
I don't think the components of "The Willow Pattern" work that well together. But "Echoland" is a nice snapshot of '80s-90s indie rock lives, as the troubled characters search for a supernatural portal into a darkly alluring city. (Haven't we all been tempted by these escapades, even though the destination never turns out the way it should?) Another lovely ending:
"This Night Last Woman" is one of Lane's more solidly realist pieces (first appeared in Birmingham Noir, makes sense). His treatment of the pub pickup and one-night-stand is nuanced and compassionate, but I don't think the ending works that well. "Birds of Prey" is another bleak realist piece about a queer affair in the 80s that spirals into darkness. I'm guessing Lane probably has some connection with music scenes; his sketches of musicians and gigs are realistic and sympathetic. We're not told outright what happened with the protagonist and his sometime lover, but we fear the worst with the ominous hints.
"Making Babies": another of Lane's fables about troubled marriages. This nudges gently into supernatural territory, for disturbing effect.
A few less distinguished (but perfectly competent and enjoyable) stories follow, including a Carcosa piece that had many beautiful moments, but IMO the very Lane-esque ending didn't quite work. Then a strong, bleak trio! The harsh suburban cruelty and animal abuse of "Internal Colonies" is harrowing. In "Among the Leaves", we follow two women as they traverse bleak landscapes and lives (and deaths). "The Grief of Seagulls" is a tender, elegiac tale of memory and desire that could easily have failed catastrophically, but Lane's restrained approach and avoidance of explanations make it all work. A very characteristic ending:
I have reservations about "Feels Like Underground", with its corporate conference nightmares. But when disturbing sexual trysts lead to ruminations of "A spreadsheet. A spread sheet.", I have to burst out laughing.
"Upon a Granite Wind", dedicated to Robert E. Howard (!), recasts the sword/sorcery tropes of noble heroes and evil monsters into a fable about dysfunctional governments and constructive collective action. It's maybe more didactic than Lane's usual, but clearly comes from his leftist political sympathies, which I also share.
"Rituals" (only 8 pages) is a confluence of so many of Lane's themes: post-industrial landscapes, random (and not so random) violence, organized crime, chance queer sexual encounters, uncanny events that can't just be coincidences. Findlay's descent and (we presume) comeuppance is left open-ended, and all the more satisfying.
"Behind the Curtain" is the most depressing story about that you'll ever read, period. Whew. An appropriate close to the collection.
3.5 stars, close to Earth Wire.
Revisiting some old favorites August 2022. After slogging through a novel often touted as a queer horror classic of the '90s, I needed a queer horror pallet cleanser.
I'm really enjoying the favorites from my first reading, maybe even more than I remember. ("Willow pattern" is probably the only dip in quality.) Lane almost never overstates the details, and I'm catching tidbits that I misread the first time around. For example in "Echoland", Moth is the name of the band, not one of the characters. So what does that say about the "Moth and Matt" motif here, versus the Moth and Matt (both characters) in the earlier story "In the Brightness of My Day"? I don't know. But there are many such mysteries in Lane's fiction.
"The Grief of Seagulls" is so beautiful and sad on this reread. Lane seems to effortlessly interweave so many of his themes: commentary on harsh economic realities, callous capitalism and horrific industrial disasters, tender queer encounters, supernatural intrusions, and cryptic rituals and characters with inscrutable motivations. The closing paragraph (see above for quote) says it all.
Of the stories that didn't make an impression the first time, "The Long Shift" is the standout and might be elevated to my favorites list. Sure, the setup is probably too lengthy. But I empathized with the narrator and his plight, and got very nervous about his dubious quest. The turnaround at the end is disturbing and painful.
In "Those Who Remember", Lane keeps us guessing about the nature of the narrator's mysterious rendezvous. Small dark details add to the increasingly ominous picture. The final ritual and implications are unexpected, cryptic, and powerful. I would type in the final paragraph as yet another example of Lane's distinctive prose, but you should really read the story yourself.
The events in "In This Blue Shade" only seem to have tenuous connections, and Lane again eschews condescending explanations. Our understanding of the narrator evolves significantly in a few pages; a fleeting but oddly tender queer encounter is only part of the complex picture. A few striking images recur in his journey, which ends:
As he stumbled onward, a branch lashed out and cut his hand. He passed another tree and felt it slash his cheek. All the trees had razors, he realised. How many more did he have to get past? He suspected he wouldn't reach the light. But there was only one way to find out.
"A Faraway City" begins with a woman's bad dreams, and discovering unsettling details about her husband, connected with the dreams. An opening sequence that would not be out of place in a Brian Evenson story. But where Evenson might have nudged expertly into some kind of abstract paranoiac territory, Lane keeps us grounded in the real world. The woman's motivations become murkier, as her journey continues into much darker places.
I don't think the components of "The Willow Pattern" work that well together. But "Echoland" is a nice snapshot of '80s-90s indie rock lives, as the troubled characters search for a supernatural portal into a darkly alluring city. (Haven't we all been tempted by these escapades, even though the destination never turns out the way it should?) Another lovely ending:
She touched the fabric. It tore, and some of it came away on her hand. The gap reminded her of the portal by which they'd come here. Staring at the silvery net, she saw movement within it; a silent community of tiny spiders.
"This Night Last Woman" is one of Lane's more solidly realist pieces (first appeared in Birmingham Noir, makes sense). His treatment of the pub pickup and one-night-stand is nuanced and compassionate, but I don't think the ending works that well. "Birds of Prey" is another bleak realist piece about a queer affair in the 80s that spirals into darkness. I'm guessing Lane probably has some connection with music scenes; his sketches of musicians and gigs are realistic and sympathetic. We're not told outright what happened with the protagonist and his sometime lover, but we fear the worst with the ominous hints.
"Making Babies": another of Lane's fables about troubled marriages. This nudges gently into supernatural territory, for disturbing effect.
A few less distinguished (but perfectly competent and enjoyable) stories follow, including a Carcosa piece that had many beautiful moments, but IMO the very Lane-esque ending didn't quite work. Then a strong, bleak trio! The harsh suburban cruelty and animal abuse of "Internal Colonies" is harrowing. In "Among the Leaves", we follow two women as they traverse bleak landscapes and lives (and deaths). "The Grief of Seagulls" is a tender, elegiac tale of memory and desire that could easily have failed catastrophically, but Lane's restrained approach and avoidance of explanations make it all work. A very characteristic ending:
He and a younger man were walking towards the harbor. As they passed me, deep in conversation, I avoided catching the old man's eye. I didn't want to interrupt his work. Or make him think I was jealous. Or, to be honest, know him.
I have reservations about "Feels Like Underground", with its corporate conference nightmares. But when disturbing sexual trysts lead to ruminations of "A spreadsheet. A spread sheet.", I have to burst out laughing.
"Upon a Granite Wind", dedicated to Robert E. Howard (!), recasts the sword/sorcery tropes of noble heroes and evil monsters into a fable about dysfunctional governments and constructive collective action. It's maybe more didactic than Lane's usual, but clearly comes from his leftist political sympathies, which I also share.
"Rituals" (only 8 pages) is a confluence of so many of Lane's themes: post-industrial landscapes, random (and not so random) violence, organized crime, chance queer sexual encounters, uncanny events that can't just be coincidences. Findlay's descent and (we presume) comeuppance is left open-ended, and all the more satisfying.
"Behind the Curtain" is the most depressing story about that you'll ever read, period. Whew. An appropriate close to the collection.
3.5 stars, close to Earth Wire.
Revisiting some old favorites August 2022. After slogging through a novel often touted as a queer horror classic of the '90s, I needed a queer horror pallet cleanser.
I'm really enjoying the favorites from my first reading, maybe even more than I remember. ("Willow pattern" is probably the only dip in quality.) Lane almost never overstates the details, and I'm catching tidbits that I misread the first time around. For example in "Echoland", Moth is the name of the band, not one of the characters. So what does that say about the "Moth and Matt" motif here, versus the Moth and Matt (both characters) in the earlier story "In the Brightness of My Day"? I don't know. But there are many such mysteries in Lane's fiction.
"The Grief of Seagulls" is so beautiful and sad on this reread. Lane seems to effortlessly interweave so many of his themes: commentary on harsh economic realities, callous capitalism and horrific industrial disasters, tender queer encounters, supernatural intrusions, and cryptic rituals and characters with inscrutable motivations. The closing paragraph (see above for quote) says it all.
Of the stories that didn't make an impression the first time, "The Long Shift" is the standout and might be elevated to my favorites list. Sure, the setup is probably too lengthy. But I empathized with the narrator and his plight, and got very nervous about his dubious quest. The turnaround at the end is disturbing and painful.
Want to read
October 28, 2015Contents:
009 - Publisher’s Note and Bibliographic Data
013 - Foreword by Alexander Zelenyj: Echoes from the Place We Met
017 = "Those Who Remember"
027 - "In This Blue Shade"
035 - "A Far Away City"
047 - "The Willow Pattern"
057 - "Echoland"
067 - "This Night Last Woman"
075 - "Birds of Prey"
085 - "The Last Gallery"
093 - "Making Babies"
101 - "Keep the Night"
109 - "My Voice Is Dead"
121 - "A Hairline Cut"
125 - "The Long Shift"
135 - "Internal Colonies"
143 - "Among the Leaves"
151 - "The Grief of Seagulls"
157 - "By Night He Could Not See"
167 - "Feels Like Underground" (with Chris Morgan)
185 - "Upon a Granite Wind"
193 - "Winter Song"
199 - "Rituals"
207 - "Behind the Curtain"
215 -Essay by Nina Allan: Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane’s Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost
009 - Publisher’s Note and Bibliographic Data
013 - Foreword by Alexander Zelenyj: Echoes from the Place We Met
017 = "Those Who Remember"
027 - "In This Blue Shade"
035 - "A Far Away City"
047 - "The Willow Pattern"
057 - "Echoland"
067 - "This Night Last Woman"
075 - "Birds of Prey"
085 - "The Last Gallery"
093 - "Making Babies"
101 - "Keep the Night"
109 - "My Voice Is Dead"
121 - "A Hairline Cut"
125 - "The Long Shift"
135 - "Internal Colonies"
143 - "Among the Leaves"
151 - "The Grief of Seagulls"
157 - "By Night He Could Not See"
167 - "Feels Like Underground" (with Chris Morgan)
185 - "Upon a Granite Wind"
193 - "Winter Song"
199 - "Rituals"
207 - "Behind the Curtain"
215 -Essay by Nina Allan: Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane’s Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost
November 29, 2015
Originally published at Risingshadow.
Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the best and most talented authors of horror fiction and weird fiction. It's sad that he died, because he wrote excellent and memorable stories that were praised by critics and readers alike. Nobody can deny how much his stories influenced and impressed those who read them, because they were exceptionally good. He will be missed.
Scar City is an intriguing glimpse into Joel Lane's short fiction. All of stories in this collection demonstrate the versatile nature of the author's dark imagination and writing skills. They're perfect stories for those who love uncanny fiction, because they contain intense storytelling, good characterisation and roughness. There's plenty of depth and style in them.
If you're not familiar with Joel Lane and his stories, Scar City is an excellent starting point. It features all of the author's trademarks and gives readers an opportunity to get themselves acquainted with his writing style. If you're a fan of throught-provoking and beautifully written speculative fiction, Scar City will impress you. It hooks you from the start and draws you into a world that it at once familiar yet utterly strange and threatening in certain ways.
Scar City contains the following stories:
- Those Who Remember
- In This Blue Shade
- A Faraway City
- The Willow Pattern
- Echoland
- This Night Last Woman
- Birds of Prey
- The Last Gallery
- Making Babies
- Keep the Night
- My Voice Is Dead
- A Hairline Cut
- The Long Shift
- Internal Colonies
- Among the Leaves
- The Grief of Seagulls
- By Night He Could Not See
- Feels Like Underground (with Chris Morgan)
- Upon a Granite Wind
- Winter Song
- Rituals
- Behind the Curtain
This short story collection also contains a foreword by Alexander Zelenyj ("Echoes from the Place We Met") and an essay by Nina Allan ("Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane's Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost").
Many of these stories have been published in various anthologies and periodicals, but three of them are presumably previously unpublished and appear here for the first time (the editor hasn't been able to find information about their previous appearances). I had personally read a couple of the stories prior to reading this collection.
These stories echo the melancholia, loneliness and suffering of our fellow human beings. They reflect the state of our modern society and give a disturbing glimpse into urban decay from a slightly different perspective. There's something deeply intimate and sharp about them that will touch many readers.
All of these stories are excellent and demonstrate different kinds of brutalities that have - both mentally and physically - scarred the characters. The brutalies have had an impact on the characters' lives and many of them struggle to cope with themselves and their feelings.
Here's a bit more information about the stories and my thoughts about them:
Those Who Remember:
- In this story, Gary comes home and searches for his old acquaintace, Dean. He asks Dean to kill two men who beat him senseless.
- An excellent and stunningly brutal story with an amazing ending.
In This Blue Shade:
- An intriguing story about Lee who's dealing with his lover's death.
- A well written story with excellent characterisation.
A Faraway City:
- A fascinatingly disturbing story about Kathy who sees bad and weird dreams. She finds out something about the man she lives with and begins to investigate things.
- This story is a fine example of intriguing storytelling.
- This story was previously published in "Where Are We Going?" (edited by Allen Ashley).
The Willow Pattern:
- A story about a gay man who hears that his ex-lover, Richard, has died. He reminisces about Richard and wonders about his death.
- A beautifully written story that will impress readers.
Echoland:
- A beautifully written story in which the characters are intrigued by Echoland, a world behind our world.
- It was fascinating for me to read about what the author wrote about Echoland, because the descriptions were fascinatingly unsettling.
- This is one of the best and most memorable stories in this collection. I can guarantee that you'll be thinking about the contents of this story for a long time when you've finished reading it.
This Night Last Woman:
- In this story, a man meets a woman in a pub and takes her home with him. Later, the man finds out something disturbing about her.
- An interesting story with a good ending.
Birds of Prey:
- A beautifully written story about Paul who meets a man who plays fiddle in a band.
- This is one of the most intriguing stories in this collection.
The Last Gallery:
- A story about Sean, Carol and self-harm.
- An excellent story with a good and approriately weird ending.
Making Babies:
- In this story, Wendy and Mike stay together because of their baby.
- An excellent and brutal story about an open relationship.
Keep the Night:
- A story about a man who's attended a wedding. He boards a train and finds himself in Milton Keynes.
- A fascinating and well written story with an intriguingly weird feel to it.
- This is an amazing story with an excellent ending.
My Voice Is Dead:
- A fascinating story about Stephen who has terminal cancer. He finds an internet website, Yellow Sign, and becomes fascinated by Carcosa. He wants to find Carcosa, because he has only a little time left to live.
- This story has been inspired by Robert W. Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'.
- This is one of the best stories in this collection, because it has seducing weirdness and otherworldliness that sets it apart from other stories.
A Hairline Cut:
- A story about Gary and Alan who are on their way to meet Gary's parents. Gary isn't pleased with Alan, but tries to put up with him.
- A short, but very effective and wonderfully weird story.
The Long Shift:
- In this story, Jim plans on killing his boss who made him and other people redundant.
- A sharp and interesting glimpse into work life and what may happen when people are pushed too far.
- The ending is amazing.
Internal Colonies:
- A story about two brothers who are left alone for the weekend. The older brother and his friends decide to do dog training at night and invite the younger brother with them.
- A memorable story with brilliantly disturbing scenes.
Among the Leaves:
- Kay visits an old friend of hers, Janet. Janet tells Kay about her brother's death and her decision to move elsewhere.
- This beautifully written and unsettling story has a deep emotional impact on the reader.
The Grief of Seagulls:
- A beautifully written story about Callum who misses his lover, Andrew, who died in the fire on the Piper Alpha rig. Callum meets an old man who has something to tell him.
- This heartbreaking story is one of the best stories in this collection. I was very impressed by this story.
By Night He Could Not See:
- A story about Jason who reads about a death of a woman. He thinks that he may know the dead woman.
- An interesting and well written story.
Feels Like Underground (with Chris Morgan):
- A story about Mark and Kathy who attend a conference. They're both married, but they're having an affair with each other.
- An interesting and gripping story about adultery and conference life.
- I loved the ending of this story.
Upon a Granite Wind:
- This story is dedicated to Robert E. Howard.
- I think that the best way to describe this story is to say that if Robert E. Howard were alive today and wrote modern weird fiction, he would probably come up with something like this.
Winter Song:
- An interesting story about winter and a protagonist that is brutally honest in his opinions.
- This story has a fascinating feel of darkness and dark fantasy.
Rituals:
- In this story, the protagonist experiences something that shakes his life.
- This story is not an easy story, because it's filled with different elements connected to death and sex, but it's a powerful and thought-provoking story.
- This is one of the most memorable stories I've read this year.
Behind the Curtain:
- A brilliant story about a man who has a yearning to satisfy his need. He goes out in search of what he needs.
- This is a refreshingly different kind of a vampire story.
- This is an excellent final story.
Here are a few extra words about some of the stories:
"Those Who Remember" is a brilliant short story about Gary and his devious plans to avenge what was done to him. When you reach the end of this story, you'll be shocked and surprised by what the author reveals about Gary. This brutal story is simply amazing, because it's something different and the ending is excellent.
"In This Blue Shade" is an excellent story about Lee, who's dealing with his lover's death. The author writes well about Lee's private life and loneliness. It was interesting to read how Lee tried to find comfort to his loneliness by having sexual encounters with rent boys.
"The Willow Pattern" is one of the best stories about relationships I've read to date, because the protagonist thinks about his ex-lover and what kind of a relationship they had with each other. The author writes fluently about the relationship between the protagonist and his boyfriend. This story has an excellent and memorable ending.
"Keep the Night" is a fascinating story about a man who attended a wedding and boarded a train. The man ends up in Milton Keynes and tries to find a way to spend the night before the morning train arrives. This story features a nightmarishly effective scene in which the man watches - or rather witnesses - a brutal performance being acted in a caravan by a couple. It's difficult to forget this scene, because it's an intense and brutal scene.
In "Internal Colonies", the author writes fascinatingly about two brothers who are left alone for the weekend. This story contains scenes which are difficult to forget, because the author combines brutality with adolescence and innocence in a thought-provoking way.
"Among the Leaves" is one of the best and most memorable stories in this collection, because it's a beautifully written story about a traumatised woman whose brother has died. The author writes about Janet's life and her emotional state in a heartbreakingly unsettling way.
"The Grief of Seagulls" is an excellent example of how to try write beautifully and touchingly about love, sorrow and loneliness. In this beautifully written story, Callum gets an opportunity to meet his dead lover, Andrew, for one night of passion. The author's way of writing about sorrow is touching, because he writes well about how much Callum misses Andrew.
"Behind the Curtain" is one of the most original and twisted vampire stories I've read to date, because it has an intriguingly disturbing feel of urban decay to it that I found compelling. The protagonist, who seems to be into cruising, searches for a vampire to satisfy his sexual needs. This story features excellent prose and sharp dialogue.
Nina Allan's informative essay "Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane's Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost" deserves a special mention, because it gives insight into the author's works. It's an excellent essay that deserves to be read.
I was impressed by the characterisation, because it was excellent and realistic. It was a pleasure to read these stories, because all of the characters were portrayed as real people who had to deal with their own problems, tragedies and sorrows. There was nothing artificial about them, their lives or feelings. All of them could easily be real people.
Joel Lane's prose is striking, beautiful, poetic and observant. When you read these stories, you'll be amazed by his writing skills, because some of his descriptions are stunningly beautiful and atmospheric. He easily lures readers into his strange stories by writing about different and difficult things.
One of the things why I love this collection is the author's ability to combine beauty, sadness, melancholy and brutality in an effective way. He's one of the few authors whose stories encompass a broad range of human emotions. He writes stories in which brutality and human emotions co-exist and in which bad things may happen to people.
The author reveals all the hurt and pain of the characters to his readers. He lets readers see how much the characters are hurting and what they do to ease the pain and how they face tragedies. He packs a lot of raw emotion into his short stories. His characters have been through a lot and some of them have experienced strange and threatening things. Disturbing things happen to many of his characters and they also do certain things that are not pretty or normal. They're all vulnerable in their own way.
When you read these stories you'll notice that the author's characters are fascinatingly realistic and have depth. They're human beings who have experienced something that has shocked them or changed their lives. Whether that something is homophobia, a lover's death or something else, the characters have to deal with what they've experienced or they may lose their way. Some of them bear scars on their skin as marks of what happened to them while others have hidden inner scars that deeply affect them.
Joel Lane has a keen eye for details and he dares to explore bleak and unhappy happenings in a fresh and exciting way. His stories are marked by realism, intelligence, freshness, sadness, brutality and originality.
One of the best things about this collection is that Joel Lane doesn't shy away from sex and sexuality. He writes boldly and unflinchingly about different forms of sexuality and especially about homosexuality. He explores infatuation, love and lust in an excellent way and writes realistically about the characters' feelings towards each other. It's great that he hasn't held anything back, but has written what really goes on between people.
In my opinion, speculative fiction is an excellent tool to address difficult themes and issues, because speculative fiction gives authors plenty of freedom to explore people's lives and personal relationships in a deep way. In this collection, Joel Lane writes fluently and realistically about gay men, their lives and their relationships.
Speculative fiction and especially weird fiction is very effective when it's based on what happens or may happen in our everyday life. When you add a bit of slipstream, dark fantasy and weirdness to everyday events, the result is often amazing, as it is in this collection. Reading this kind of fiction is not easy, but it's very rewarding.
There's something in these stories that reminds me a bit of Alexander Zelenyj's stories. Joel Lane and Alexander Zelenyj have a few things in common as authors, because both of them write beautifully and touchingly about loss and sadness. In my opinion, these stories are also slightly reminiscent of certain stories by Nina Allan and Christopher Barzak.
Joel Lane's Scar City is a stunning and impressive tour-de-force of dark imagination, weirdness and harsh realism that cuts deeply into the reader's mind. Scar City may well be the best and finest short story collection of the year, because it's boldly different from other collections and contains excellent stories. I highly recommend it to readers who are fascinated by dark stories, good prose and realistic characterisation. If you want quality from your speculative fiction, you won't be disappointed by this collection.
Highly recommended!
Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the best and most talented authors of horror fiction and weird fiction. It's sad that he died, because he wrote excellent and memorable stories that were praised by critics and readers alike. Nobody can deny how much his stories influenced and impressed those who read them, because they were exceptionally good. He will be missed.
Scar City is an intriguing glimpse into Joel Lane's short fiction. All of stories in this collection demonstrate the versatile nature of the author's dark imagination and writing skills. They're perfect stories for those who love uncanny fiction, because they contain intense storytelling, good characterisation and roughness. There's plenty of depth and style in them.
If you're not familiar with Joel Lane and his stories, Scar City is an excellent starting point. It features all of the author's trademarks and gives readers an opportunity to get themselves acquainted with his writing style. If you're a fan of throught-provoking and beautifully written speculative fiction, Scar City will impress you. It hooks you from the start and draws you into a world that it at once familiar yet utterly strange and threatening in certain ways.
Scar City contains the following stories:
- Those Who Remember
- In This Blue Shade
- A Faraway City
- The Willow Pattern
- Echoland
- This Night Last Woman
- Birds of Prey
- The Last Gallery
- Making Babies
- Keep the Night
- My Voice Is Dead
- A Hairline Cut
- The Long Shift
- Internal Colonies
- Among the Leaves
- The Grief of Seagulls
- By Night He Could Not See
- Feels Like Underground (with Chris Morgan)
- Upon a Granite Wind
- Winter Song
- Rituals
- Behind the Curtain
This short story collection also contains a foreword by Alexander Zelenyj ("Echoes from the Place We Met") and an essay by Nina Allan ("Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane's Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost").
Many of these stories have been published in various anthologies and periodicals, but three of them are presumably previously unpublished and appear here for the first time (the editor hasn't been able to find information about their previous appearances). I had personally read a couple of the stories prior to reading this collection.
These stories echo the melancholia, loneliness and suffering of our fellow human beings. They reflect the state of our modern society and give a disturbing glimpse into urban decay from a slightly different perspective. There's something deeply intimate and sharp about them that will touch many readers.
All of these stories are excellent and demonstrate different kinds of brutalities that have - both mentally and physically - scarred the characters. The brutalies have had an impact on the characters' lives and many of them struggle to cope with themselves and their feelings.
Here's a bit more information about the stories and my thoughts about them:
Those Who Remember:
- In this story, Gary comes home and searches for his old acquaintace, Dean. He asks Dean to kill two men who beat him senseless.
- An excellent and stunningly brutal story with an amazing ending.
In This Blue Shade:
- An intriguing story about Lee who's dealing with his lover's death.
- A well written story with excellent characterisation.
A Faraway City:
- A fascinatingly disturbing story about Kathy who sees bad and weird dreams. She finds out something about the man she lives with and begins to investigate things.
- This story is a fine example of intriguing storytelling.
- This story was previously published in "Where Are We Going?" (edited by Allen Ashley).
The Willow Pattern:
- A story about a gay man who hears that his ex-lover, Richard, has died. He reminisces about Richard and wonders about his death.
- A beautifully written story that will impress readers.
Echoland:
- A beautifully written story in which the characters are intrigued by Echoland, a world behind our world.
- It was fascinating for me to read about what the author wrote about Echoland, because the descriptions were fascinatingly unsettling.
- This is one of the best and most memorable stories in this collection. I can guarantee that you'll be thinking about the contents of this story for a long time when you've finished reading it.
This Night Last Woman:
- In this story, a man meets a woman in a pub and takes her home with him. Later, the man finds out something disturbing about her.
- An interesting story with a good ending.
Birds of Prey:
- A beautifully written story about Paul who meets a man who plays fiddle in a band.
- This is one of the most intriguing stories in this collection.
The Last Gallery:
- A story about Sean, Carol and self-harm.
- An excellent story with a good and approriately weird ending.
Making Babies:
- In this story, Wendy and Mike stay together because of their baby.
- An excellent and brutal story about an open relationship.
Keep the Night:
- A story about a man who's attended a wedding. He boards a train and finds himself in Milton Keynes.
- A fascinating and well written story with an intriguingly weird feel to it.
- This is an amazing story with an excellent ending.
My Voice Is Dead:
- A fascinating story about Stephen who has terminal cancer. He finds an internet website, Yellow Sign, and becomes fascinated by Carcosa. He wants to find Carcosa, because he has only a little time left to live.
- This story has been inspired by Robert W. Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'.
- This is one of the best stories in this collection, because it has seducing weirdness and otherworldliness that sets it apart from other stories.
A Hairline Cut:
- A story about Gary and Alan who are on their way to meet Gary's parents. Gary isn't pleased with Alan, but tries to put up with him.
- A short, but very effective and wonderfully weird story.
The Long Shift:
- In this story, Jim plans on killing his boss who made him and other people redundant.
- A sharp and interesting glimpse into work life and what may happen when people are pushed too far.
- The ending is amazing.
Internal Colonies:
- A story about two brothers who are left alone for the weekend. The older brother and his friends decide to do dog training at night and invite the younger brother with them.
- A memorable story with brilliantly disturbing scenes.
Among the Leaves:
- Kay visits an old friend of hers, Janet. Janet tells Kay about her brother's death and her decision to move elsewhere.
- This beautifully written and unsettling story has a deep emotional impact on the reader.
The Grief of Seagulls:
- A beautifully written story about Callum who misses his lover, Andrew, who died in the fire on the Piper Alpha rig. Callum meets an old man who has something to tell him.
- This heartbreaking story is one of the best stories in this collection. I was very impressed by this story.
By Night He Could Not See:
- A story about Jason who reads about a death of a woman. He thinks that he may know the dead woman.
- An interesting and well written story.
Feels Like Underground (with Chris Morgan):
- A story about Mark and Kathy who attend a conference. They're both married, but they're having an affair with each other.
- An interesting and gripping story about adultery and conference life.
- I loved the ending of this story.
Upon a Granite Wind:
- This story is dedicated to Robert E. Howard.
- I think that the best way to describe this story is to say that if Robert E. Howard were alive today and wrote modern weird fiction, he would probably come up with something like this.
Winter Song:
- An interesting story about winter and a protagonist that is brutally honest in his opinions.
- This story has a fascinating feel of darkness and dark fantasy.
Rituals:
- In this story, the protagonist experiences something that shakes his life.
- This story is not an easy story, because it's filled with different elements connected to death and sex, but it's a powerful and thought-provoking story.
- This is one of the most memorable stories I've read this year.
Behind the Curtain:
- A brilliant story about a man who has a yearning to satisfy his need. He goes out in search of what he needs.
- This is a refreshingly different kind of a vampire story.
- This is an excellent final story.
Here are a few extra words about some of the stories:
"Those Who Remember" is a brilliant short story about Gary and his devious plans to avenge what was done to him. When you reach the end of this story, you'll be shocked and surprised by what the author reveals about Gary. This brutal story is simply amazing, because it's something different and the ending is excellent.
"In This Blue Shade" is an excellent story about Lee, who's dealing with his lover's death. The author writes well about Lee's private life and loneliness. It was interesting to read how Lee tried to find comfort to his loneliness by having sexual encounters with rent boys.
"The Willow Pattern" is one of the best stories about relationships I've read to date, because the protagonist thinks about his ex-lover and what kind of a relationship they had with each other. The author writes fluently about the relationship between the protagonist and his boyfriend. This story has an excellent and memorable ending.
"Keep the Night" is a fascinating story about a man who attended a wedding and boarded a train. The man ends up in Milton Keynes and tries to find a way to spend the night before the morning train arrives. This story features a nightmarishly effective scene in which the man watches - or rather witnesses - a brutal performance being acted in a caravan by a couple. It's difficult to forget this scene, because it's an intense and brutal scene.
In "Internal Colonies", the author writes fascinatingly about two brothers who are left alone for the weekend. This story contains scenes which are difficult to forget, because the author combines brutality with adolescence and innocence in a thought-provoking way.
"Among the Leaves" is one of the best and most memorable stories in this collection, because it's a beautifully written story about a traumatised woman whose brother has died. The author writes about Janet's life and her emotional state in a heartbreakingly unsettling way.
"The Grief of Seagulls" is an excellent example of how to try write beautifully and touchingly about love, sorrow and loneliness. In this beautifully written story, Callum gets an opportunity to meet his dead lover, Andrew, for one night of passion. The author's way of writing about sorrow is touching, because he writes well about how much Callum misses Andrew.
"Behind the Curtain" is one of the most original and twisted vampire stories I've read to date, because it has an intriguingly disturbing feel of urban decay to it that I found compelling. The protagonist, who seems to be into cruising, searches for a vampire to satisfy his sexual needs. This story features excellent prose and sharp dialogue.
Nina Allan's informative essay "Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane's Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost" deserves a special mention, because it gives insight into the author's works. It's an excellent essay that deserves to be read.
I was impressed by the characterisation, because it was excellent and realistic. It was a pleasure to read these stories, because all of the characters were portrayed as real people who had to deal with their own problems, tragedies and sorrows. There was nothing artificial about them, their lives or feelings. All of them could easily be real people.
Joel Lane's prose is striking, beautiful, poetic and observant. When you read these stories, you'll be amazed by his writing skills, because some of his descriptions are stunningly beautiful and atmospheric. He easily lures readers into his strange stories by writing about different and difficult things.
One of the things why I love this collection is the author's ability to combine beauty, sadness, melancholy and brutality in an effective way. He's one of the few authors whose stories encompass a broad range of human emotions. He writes stories in which brutality and human emotions co-exist and in which bad things may happen to people.
The author reveals all the hurt and pain of the characters to his readers. He lets readers see how much the characters are hurting and what they do to ease the pain and how they face tragedies. He packs a lot of raw emotion into his short stories. His characters have been through a lot and some of them have experienced strange and threatening things. Disturbing things happen to many of his characters and they also do certain things that are not pretty or normal. They're all vulnerable in their own way.
When you read these stories you'll notice that the author's characters are fascinatingly realistic and have depth. They're human beings who have experienced something that has shocked them or changed their lives. Whether that something is homophobia, a lover's death or something else, the characters have to deal with what they've experienced or they may lose their way. Some of them bear scars on their skin as marks of what happened to them while others have hidden inner scars that deeply affect them.
Joel Lane has a keen eye for details and he dares to explore bleak and unhappy happenings in a fresh and exciting way. His stories are marked by realism, intelligence, freshness, sadness, brutality and originality.
One of the best things about this collection is that Joel Lane doesn't shy away from sex and sexuality. He writes boldly and unflinchingly about different forms of sexuality and especially about homosexuality. He explores infatuation, love and lust in an excellent way and writes realistically about the characters' feelings towards each other. It's great that he hasn't held anything back, but has written what really goes on between people.
In my opinion, speculative fiction is an excellent tool to address difficult themes and issues, because speculative fiction gives authors plenty of freedom to explore people's lives and personal relationships in a deep way. In this collection, Joel Lane writes fluently and realistically about gay men, their lives and their relationships.
Speculative fiction and especially weird fiction is very effective when it's based on what happens or may happen in our everyday life. When you add a bit of slipstream, dark fantasy and weirdness to everyday events, the result is often amazing, as it is in this collection. Reading this kind of fiction is not easy, but it's very rewarding.
There's something in these stories that reminds me a bit of Alexander Zelenyj's stories. Joel Lane and Alexander Zelenyj have a few things in common as authors, because both of them write beautifully and touchingly about loss and sadness. In my opinion, these stories are also slightly reminiscent of certain stories by Nina Allan and Christopher Barzak.
Joel Lane's Scar City is a stunning and impressive tour-de-force of dark imagination, weirdness and harsh realism that cuts deeply into the reader's mind. Scar City may well be the best and finest short story collection of the year, because it's boldly different from other collections and contains excellent stories. I highly recommend it to readers who are fascinated by dark stories, good prose and realistic characterisation. If you want quality from your speculative fiction, you won't be disappointed by this collection.
Highly recommended!
December 4, 2020
This collection of stories contains some of the bleakest writing I've ever read, there is a reoccurring theme of wastelands which is used in some very inventive ways. From lands on the brink of death to an aging vampire everything is starting to decay and when writing about something mundane Lane manages to create a haunting quality that leaves you with chills. Lane gives nothing away in his tales, you can guess how it is going to end but I can guarantee you'll be wrong there is no way you can match Lane's imagination.
A few favourites in this collection, "This Night Last Woman" an odd title but a wonderfully dark story with lots of twist and turns. "Those Who Remember" is the best of the bunch, the first one in the book and a great introduction of what you've got ahead of you. "Feels Like Underground" has a real Hammer Horror feel to it, a sinister building which almost feels alive with unknown events happening in the background.
This is the first work I've read of Joel Lane and I can tell what an incredible talent he had, it is very difficult to find another writer to compare him too, so all I can say is give this epic collection a go.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
A few favourites in this collection, "This Night Last Woman" an odd title but a wonderfully dark story with lots of twist and turns. "Those Who Remember" is the best of the bunch, the first one in the book and a great introduction of what you've got ahead of you. "Feels Like Underground" has a real Hammer Horror feel to it, a sinister building which almost feels alive with unknown events happening in the background.
This is the first work I've read of Joel Lane and I can tell what an incredible talent he had, it is very difficult to find another writer to compare him too, so all I can say is give this epic collection a go.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
November 26, 2015
Grim, bleak, poignant - a really powerful collection of stories, mostly about people trying to escape to somewhere else, and succeeding, only to find things even worse there than they were where they started off from. Lane's prose is a flensing knife - it'll strip you of your skin.
February 23, 2024
In the literary spheres of Joel Lane, nothing is merely a bad dream and the nightmares never cease. There is no reassurance or consolation. Just a violent and biting reality that slaps you across the face and uproots a few teeth.
These are short tales of violence and grit on the streets of various towns in the West Midlands. Mainly Birmingham, and spanning to the Black Country.
Tales of knuckles splitting open like peonies, dissociation, unreality, of fists breaking faces, spitting blood, abusive relationships, addiction and detachment, abysmal mental ill-health, and intimidating landscapes.
This is the first Joel Lane I have read and already decided to order more. Extremely raw and visceral. As writer Nicholas Royle states in the introduction, 'Sometimes I think that if my life were to fall apart, I might move to Birmingham and spend the rest of my days walking around its outlying districts reading Joel's stories'.
Lane had a powerfully acerbic grit to his descriptive writing of the places and faces around him:
'The empty playground just inside the park gates was like a negative for the park's colour print'.
'...a long bus ride out through council estates that were like a child's construction kit, most of the pieces having being trodden on or lost'.
'Winter felt like an absence, not a season at all'.
'The pale clouds that had bleached the view in the morning were stained with yellow as the hidden sun went down, trapping the city in a bell jar of its own light pollution'.
Phenomenal stuff and highly recommend.
These are short tales of violence and grit on the streets of various towns in the West Midlands. Mainly Birmingham, and spanning to the Black Country.
Tales of knuckles splitting open like peonies, dissociation, unreality, of fists breaking faces, spitting blood, abusive relationships, addiction and detachment, abysmal mental ill-health, and intimidating landscapes.
This is the first Joel Lane I have read and already decided to order more. Extremely raw and visceral. As writer Nicholas Royle states in the introduction, 'Sometimes I think that if my life were to fall apart, I might move to Birmingham and spend the rest of my days walking around its outlying districts reading Joel's stories'.
Lane had a powerfully acerbic grit to his descriptive writing of the places and faces around him:
'The empty playground just inside the park gates was like a negative for the park's colour print'.
'...a long bus ride out through council estates that were like a child's construction kit, most of the pieces having being trodden on or lost'.
'Winter felt like an absence, not a season at all'.
'The pale clouds that had bleached the view in the morning were stained with yellow as the hidden sun went down, trapping the city in a bell jar of its own light pollution'.
Phenomenal stuff and highly recommend.
January 24, 2021
This, perhaps coupled with the previous work, is an almost unbearable coda of the whole book. It is typical in that it contains many brilliant darkly poetic phrases that might stay with you more powerfully and longer than you’d might otherwise wish. It also contains the odd rare simile that doesn’t quite work like: “The breath trailed from my mouth like an apology for ectoplasm.” It has it own trademark reference to scars, too, here on the protagonist’s inside arm, as, even, there was a “scarred roadway” in the hybrid ‘Upon A Granite Wind’ work earlier, a scared roadway that IS this book?
This final work outdoes even the darkness of vampires by stealing their thunder, our world now being darker than theirs, I guess.
The season of blood and snow is upon us.
“…a pain that, no matter what we did, would never hurt enough.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
This final work outdoes even the darkness of vampires by stealing their thunder, our world now being darker than theirs, I guess.
The season of blood and snow is upon us.
“…a pain that, no matter what we did, would never hurt enough.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
March 24, 2020
(4.5 stars)
Joel lane was--and through his work, still is--the unofficial critic and poet of the UK's urban decay. His stories represent the union of visionary imagination and social conscience, a coexistence of qualities which indicate his balanced engagement with collective life and inner experience.
"Keep the Night" gives a meta-performative turn to the rampant sex and violence of city life, by following a lost train-rider's accidental attendance of what seems to be an S&M meat puppet show.
"Feels like Underground", with its richly and often humorously-described, faux-gothic setting of a German hotel, portrays an act of minor infidelity at a business conference which at first only suggests the surface of far deeper infidelities between the company and its lower-level clients; "the real party", as it's seductively referred to many times.The pervasive imagery of dripping wax takes on a marvelously lurid transformation at the story's end, as intensely surreal a vision of the pornographic nature of corporate power as anything imagined by Ballard.
"The Long Shift" shows one of Lane's more active characters plotting revenge on a scumbag boss. He discovers quickly, by an accumulation of details, that his presence has been expected and that, as the title implies, an employee can never really leave the workplace in a world so insidiously structured as ours. Some readers might be tempted to give this story the generic tag of late, Ligottian corporate horror, but the emotional investment in his characters' inner lives justifies a consideration of Lane's corporate horror on its own terms.
The excellently-placed closer, "Behind the Curtain", tolls not only a deathly note of civilized humanity's exhaustion but also that of horror literature's most belabored figures. Lane's keen awareness of how cheaply postmodernist this story could have been is sharply reflected in the brutally honest dialogue and a sardonically deflated sense of eroticism.
Joel Lane's blend of visionary imagination, political intelligence, and moral integrity makes him a unique literary figure bridging the antiquated perspectives of weird fiction and the hypercritical perspectives of postmodernism. Now if only I could sacrifice a legion of bestsellers to resurrect him so that we can see what more he would have produced....
Joel lane was--and through his work, still is--the unofficial critic and poet of the UK's urban decay. His stories represent the union of visionary imagination and social conscience, a coexistence of qualities which indicate his balanced engagement with collective life and inner experience.
"Keep the Night" gives a meta-performative turn to the rampant sex and violence of city life, by following a lost train-rider's accidental attendance of what seems to be an S&M meat puppet show.
"Feels like Underground", with its richly and often humorously-described, faux-gothic setting of a German hotel, portrays an act of minor infidelity at a business conference which at first only suggests the surface of far deeper infidelities between the company and its lower-level clients; "the real party", as it's seductively referred to many times.The pervasive imagery of dripping wax takes on a marvelously lurid transformation at the story's end, as intensely surreal a vision of the pornographic nature of corporate power as anything imagined by Ballard.
"The Long Shift" shows one of Lane's more active characters plotting revenge on a scumbag boss. He discovers quickly, by an accumulation of details, that his presence has been expected and that, as the title implies, an employee can never really leave the workplace in a world so insidiously structured as ours. Some readers might be tempted to give this story the generic tag of late, Ligottian corporate horror, but the emotional investment in his characters' inner lives justifies a consideration of Lane's corporate horror on its own terms.
The excellently-placed closer, "Behind the Curtain", tolls not only a deathly note of civilized humanity's exhaustion but also that of horror literature's most belabored figures. Lane's keen awareness of how cheaply postmodernist this story could have been is sharply reflected in the brutally honest dialogue and a sardonically deflated sense of eroticism.
Joel Lane's blend of visionary imagination, political intelligence, and moral integrity makes him a unique literary figure bridging the antiquated perspectives of weird fiction and the hypercritical perspectives of postmodernism. Now if only I could sacrifice a legion of bestsellers to resurrect him so that we can see what more he would have produced....
April 25, 2019
I'm gradually nearing the end of having read everything Joel Lane wrote and that's a sobering thought. Whilst his stories are bleak, fractured dissections of characters inhabiting equally bleak and fractured worlds, there is also an indisputable charm in a Lane story: an admiration of how less is more, of the sly sense of humour which undercuts some of the tragedy, with an appreciation of the horror Lane depicts which is rendered from broken society and inner demons rather than any outwardly - superficial - supernatural elements. I won't list each story - or even my favourites - but many here are very good and only a few I felt were weaker by comparison. Special mention too for Nina Allan's essay on Lane's novels, bringing her usual perceptive insight to bear on Lane's oeuvre. Recommended.
December 22, 2018
Beautiful and brutal. This was my introduction to the writing of Joel Lane. Uniquely grim stuff. Looking forward to reading more.
April 6, 2022
This is my first foray into the world of the late Joel Lane, an author who seems to have influenced a number of contemporary horror writers. His world is a land of run down housing estates, ugly industrial units and factories, constructed of concrete, brick and tarmac. This bleak landscape is mostly found around the suburbs of Birmingham and the Black Country and is populated by a cast of characters who have apparently also been abandoned by society. The writing is bleak and depressing at times but there are glimpses of black humour and there is also quite a bit of sex but this tends to be quite sordid and devoid of love or passion. Although there are a few ghosts, a serial killer and a vampire, Lane tends to steer away from the usual tropes of the horror genre and his writing can maybe be described as ‘urban nightmares’. There is the rock band who try to find the mystical land of ‘Echoland’, the title of one of their songs, through the consumption of drink and drugs. The terminal patient who is lured online to mythical place to finally end his life and the young man trying to make a rail journey home from a wedding and ending up in the nightmare that is Milton Keynes.
The story that resonated with me most because it was set in my hometown of Aberdeen was ‘The Grief of Seagulls’, a ghost story based loosely around the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster of 1989. The tale name checks pubs, clubs and places I am familiar with, although maybe the local geography was a bit off times. However my main reason for being drawn to this story was the fact that at the time I was a Police Officer in Grampian Police and a couple of months before the disaster I took up a new role in the then named Identification Bureau (now more commonly referred to as the Crime Scene Examination Unit) and worked as part of the body identification team assigned to this incident. Therefore it brought back a lot of memories of my time working within that team.
At 22 stories I found that this collection was a bit too much to digest and at times the stories seemed to meld into one another but I may go back and read some of them again. It has however whetted my appetite to explore Lane’s catalogue further and I can understand why his writing style is such an influence on other writers.
The story that resonated with me most because it was set in my hometown of Aberdeen was ‘The Grief of Seagulls’, a ghost story based loosely around the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster of 1989. The tale name checks pubs, clubs and places I am familiar with, although maybe the local geography was a bit off times. However my main reason for being drawn to this story was the fact that at the time I was a Police Officer in Grampian Police and a couple of months before the disaster I took up a new role in the then named Identification Bureau (now more commonly referred to as the Crime Scene Examination Unit) and worked as part of the body identification team assigned to this incident. Therefore it brought back a lot of memories of my time working within that team.
At 22 stories I found that this collection was a bit too much to digest and at times the stories seemed to meld into one another but I may go back and read some of them again. It has however whetted my appetite to explore Lane’s catalogue further and I can understand why his writing style is such an influence on other writers.
July 2, 2025
3.5/4
This was a hard one to rate, could do away with about 5 of the stories here and the book would have maintained a consistent high standard, but as it stands there are a few duds.
When Lane is at his best for me he carves out a place amongst the likes of Michael Cisco and Thomas Ligotti; the terror that is syphoned out of the mundanity of modern life. The grey, utilitarian corporate sectors. The ravenous consumer culture in capitalist societies.
Certain philosophical concepts seem to serve as the backbone to the ideas expressed in many of these stories, for example: Derrida's concept of hauntology and lost futures. Echos of Mark Fisher's work on British politics from the time of Thatcher to the Iraq war as well as the electronic music subgenres that had their cultural peak during the 90s to the mid-early 2000s and the cultural significance of nightlife and clubs for working class people, who this collection largely offers a lens to.
When it's all working Lane shows some great writing, highlight pieces in here for me were:
- In this Blue Shade
-Echoland
-My Voice is Dead
-A Hairline Crack
-Internal Colonies
-By Night He Could Not See
-Feels Like Underground
-Rituals
This was a hard one to rate, could do away with about 5 of the stories here and the book would have maintained a consistent high standard, but as it stands there are a few duds.
When Lane is at his best for me he carves out a place amongst the likes of Michael Cisco and Thomas Ligotti; the terror that is syphoned out of the mundanity of modern life. The grey, utilitarian corporate sectors. The ravenous consumer culture in capitalist societies.
Certain philosophical concepts seem to serve as the backbone to the ideas expressed in many of these stories, for example: Derrida's concept of hauntology and lost futures. Echos of Mark Fisher's work on British politics from the time of Thatcher to the Iraq war as well as the electronic music subgenres that had their cultural peak during the 90s to the mid-early 2000s and the cultural significance of nightlife and clubs for working class people, who this collection largely offers a lens to.
When it's all working Lane shows some great writing, highlight pieces in here for me were:
- In this Blue Shade
-Echoland
-My Voice is Dead
-A Hairline Crack
-Internal Colonies
-By Night He Could Not See
-Feels Like Underground
-Rituals
September 20, 2024
Gay traumatized people in their personal urban British hells with/out their resolutions or happy endings, this author just can't stop being awesome
Read
June 5, 2025Grim. DNF.
August 18, 2024
Short stories can often feel a bit too ambiguous to me. You start out with a cool concept, get invested, and then the writer leaves the ending quite open.
I’m not a big fan of this.
Joel Lane is no exception to the aforementioned ambiguity, and it becomes especially glaring in a book that is a collection of short stories.
But the urban horror in this book is so good, that I ate this book up either way. Lane really knows how to paint a picture using words, and the picture is always bleak, cold and depressing. Stuff of beauty.
I enjoy the idea of someone hating living in Birmingham so much that you just start writing really bombastic urban horror.
I’m not a big fan of this.
Joel Lane is no exception to the aforementioned ambiguity, and it becomes especially glaring in a book that is a collection of short stories.
But the urban horror in this book is so good, that I ate this book up either way. Lane really knows how to paint a picture using words, and the picture is always bleak, cold and depressing. Stuff of beauty.
I enjoy the idea of someone hating living in Birmingham so much that you just start writing really bombastic urban horror.
June 7, 2025
This is one of my favorite books by a favorite author (please see one of many laudatory obituaries at: https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=1389) who died ridiculously young at barely 51. It is the last collection of short stories he prepared before his death. Joel Lane's award-winning stories have been widely praised, notably by other masters of weird fiction such as M. John Harrison, Graham Joyce, and Ramsey Campbell. His tales also regularly appeared in the "best of" annual anthologies of Ellen Datlow, Karl Edward Wagner, and Stephen Jones.
For me Joel Lane was one of the reasons I read so many anthologies of 'horror' stories back in the 1990's and early 2000's. His stories were more than genre pieces they used the fantastic or the macabre to tell truths, to see truths, that other more conventional writers didn't or couldn't. Of course describing his stories as horror is to them an injustice. What Lane could see was not otherworldly ghosts or spectres but the real horror that lurked just beneath the surface of his times. His writing is very much a response to the Tony Blair years. Blair was an adroit politician but one of such shallowness that he makes Ronald Reagan appear to have the prescience of a Joseph de Maistre. This may, for some, date his stories because the reality he describes may appear to be yesterday's but like an M.R. James his stories will be seen to have resonance and depth beyond their setting.
A great writer and one who should be much better known.
For me Joel Lane was one of the reasons I read so many anthologies of 'horror' stories back in the 1990's and early 2000's. His stories were more than genre pieces they used the fantastic or the macabre to tell truths, to see truths, that other more conventional writers didn't or couldn't. Of course describing his stories as horror is to them an injustice. What Lane could see was not otherworldly ghosts or spectres but the real horror that lurked just beneath the surface of his times. His writing is very much a response to the Tony Blair years. Blair was an adroit politician but one of such shallowness that he makes Ronald Reagan appear to have the prescience of a Joseph de Maistre. This may, for some, date his stories because the reality he describes may appear to be yesterday's but like an M.R. James his stories will be seen to have resonance and depth beyond their setting.
A great writer and one who should be much better known.
December 11, 2023
I had a hard time emotionally connecting with these stories, there was just this vast distance between me and Lane's words. I just couldn't get into it, no matter how hard I tried.
November 13, 2020
Scar City is a collection of dark urban fantasy short stories which are intense and often quite depressing and weird. The stories are revolved around troubled people and difficult circumstances. I really enjoyed his writing style as he fragilely covered each subject matter. These are difficult stories with the charaters trying to make sense of and cope with their daily lives.
My favourites were - The Greif of Seagulls, Those Who Remember, The Willow Pattern, Echoland and Making Babies. I highly recommend this collection for anyone who enjoys the grim and bleak but written with charm they will linger with you long after finishing it. I'll definitely come back to these stories and can't wait to see what "The Earth Wire" has to offer.
My favourites were - The Greif of Seagulls, Those Who Remember, The Willow Pattern, Echoland and Making Babies. I highly recommend this collection for anyone who enjoys the grim and bleak but written with charm they will linger with you long after finishing it. I'll definitely come back to these stories and can't wait to see what "The Earth Wire" has to offer.
October 29, 2025
Brilliant stories that follow the looking digital rot of an age beyond the factory space and into the 404-scape of the self.
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