Weird Fiction discussion
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Okay, I rate the first story, "The Red Leer" (1979), four stars. But I'm a sucker for a good werewolf story.Classic Weird 5
New Weird 2
Horror 9
Fantasy 1
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 0
Basically, even an Iowan should know better than to mess with Indian burial mounds.
The only Weird element ties in to the origin of the person buried in the mound. This is a good, solid start to the collection: an exciting story that's not hard to follow, but one that saves higher notes for later.
I'll wait until April to read further so that all who are interested can acquire a copy of this fun collection. By the way, the entire story collection is not really 562 text pages long. You have to discount the David Drake bibliography at the end. That section is 54 pages, all devoted to a list of what Drake wrote up through 2012. It consists of roughly ten works per page. That means over 500 writings for Drake, and that's only through 2012. He hasn't stopped writing yet. That's some amazing production! The point is the 28 stories only take up some 508 pages. That's an average of just 18 pages per story.
I couldn't help myself. The first story was so good, I went ahead and read the second. Besides, I wanted to be sure the first being so good wasn't an anomaly. The second story, titled "A Land of Romance" (2005), is actually the newest story in the collection. Classic Weird 0
New Weird 6
Horror 2
Fantasy 9
Science Fiction 4
Alternate History 0
In Fantasy writing much is made of the bridge that transitions people from this world into the fantasy world. From C. S. Lewis's wardrobe to Harry Potter's Platform 9 and a Half at King's Cross Station to Alice's rabbit hole, every fantasy world must be entered across a barrier.
In this story, we have two barriers. The first was a piece of cake to cross. Howard, upon invitation, simply got into a pneumatic tube from his place of work and rode to Mr. Strange's mansion. The bridge into the next world from there was as difficult to cross as the first was easy.
The entire story was really about that next world and the price that had to be paid for the crossing into it. I've never seen the like, or an entire story made from this one facet of a fantasy trope. It was absolutely fascinating, unpredictable, and even terrifying. Four instead of five stars for making us leave the second world too soon too many sites unseen. A novel could easily have been made about this world. I so wanted more.
It is easy to see how much this story relies on fantasy conventions, but it does more. One of the principal characters, Wally, a facilitator, insists he's doing science not magic, which brings SF into the story, however unconvincing the science may be. Crossing worlds, when it's done, is also a huge New Weird trope. Crossing is not done really in Perdido Station. Mieville simply places us in that world the entire book. But crossing worlds is a big part of VanderMeer's Annihilation as the team walks four days from the border, also to reach Crouch's Wayward Pines, and so on for so many of the works on our bookshelf. This aspect of the story and its cross-genre dressing definitely places it in the New Weird spectrum.
I find your analysis in this thread interesting.On a related note, determining the alternate history quotient of a story is worthwhile. A few years ago I read a parallel universe story which was a pretty good horror story. The story appeared in a Years Best Horror anthology.
An alternate timeline can be worse than our own if you think about it.
The next story, "Smokie Joe" (1977), is one with the classic fantasy trope of taking on the Devil. Now the standard fantasy plot is one in which a protagonist who wants something makes a deal with the Devil (obligating his soul) in order to attain it. The Devil keeps his end of the bargain. The protagonist then tries to get out of his by outsmarting the Devil. Most stories end happily, so the protagonist usually succeeds. So far, so standard.Taking on the Devil is also a long standing classic Weird trope, though never New Weird. Many of the old Weird Tales magazines of yore included such stories. But to be Weird, there had to be a seriously unexpected twist, or bending of the fantasy trope. I won't go into all the ways this was done, but Weird Tales printed these types of stories, not the standard fantasy type stories.
Drake's take on the bargaining Devil trope is similarly twisted. For one thing, Drake doesn't like how nice the Devil is always portrayed in the Fantasy and even classic Weird stories. This is the Devil, right? Just because he is trying to win a soul, why would the Devil become nice about it all of a sudden?
Throw in a mobster up against it because of a rivalry with a fellow mobster and you have a nasty, desperate crook ready to win at any cost. But are there things even a hardened mobster might balk at? This is the story to test those boundaries. Drake takes his version down alleys I've never seen a Devil bargaining for your soul classic story go.
Clever and original as the plot may be, I have to go with a 3-star rating on this one. Its sordidness made me uncomfortable.
Classic Weird 6
New Weird 0
Horror 6
Fantasy 6
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 0
Man, can Drake write! The story starts out with four principal characters at a table. Drake spends a perfectly written paragraph on each character outlining their stakes and motivations before plunging into the action with paragraph five. The structure is not obvious. But it's there nonetheless. And it's just right.
The next story, "Awakening" (1975), was the only story written and sold by Drake while he was serving a year long tour of duty in Vietnam. The story is really good so far as it goes(view spoiler). Unfortunately, the story is far too short: only four pages. It stops at the point it just becomes interesting.Classic Weird 7
New Weird 0
Horror 4
Fantasy 5
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 0
I've seen this premise in some classic weird stories. In fact, the story strikes me as something Ray Bradbury could have written though he would have gone further with it and had a theme or point in telling it. This is a quick, interesting read.
The next story, "Denkirch" (1967), was Drake's first published story. It featured in an August Derleth anthology, Travellers by Night. This is the first story in the Drake collection I really didn't care for. As Drake correctly asserts in his introductory notes, it could have been printed in a 1920s issue of Weird Tales. If it had though, it would have moved faster and had more going on than this atmospheric clunker.Classic Weird 10
New Weird 0
Horror 4
Fantasy 3
Science Fiction 8
Alternate History 0
The next story is "Dragon, The Book" (1999). Drake wrote it at Andre Norton's request for one of her Catfantastic anthologies (she wanted more male writers for her series). Classic Weird 0
New Weird 0
Horror 0
Fantasy 10
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 0
Besides a strong liking for Manly Wade Wellman's work, I share with Drake a profound respect for Andre Norton from having grown up reading her brand of SF and (less often) her fantasy. As with Drake, her work was my gateway to speculative fiction as a whole. It was important to Drake to write a story Norton would respect and appreciate. What we have here is a short story of pure Nortonesque fantasy. I'm glad Norton was kind enough to tell Drake she really liked his story, a gesture that meant a lot to Drake.
Check out Drake's first sentence here: "Through the forest's bare branches glittered stars as cold as shattered hope; there was no moon." It's so powerful, almost like poetry. There's alliteration pairs, "bare"-"branches", and near alliteration, "shattered"-"stars", "glittered"-"cold", which sets off the last word "hope" by itself for emphasis. Then there's the imagery reinforcing the lack of hope by the lack of a moon. What a set up for a story!
The entire story is ostensibly about an intense rivalry which becomes a battle between two wizards, but is really more about the relationship between a wizard and his cat familiar. It's a fun, well-told story with lots of atmosphere.
The next story, titled "The False Prophet" (1989), is one of two novellas in the collection. Set in an alternate history Rome it is not at all like any of the other stories in the collection so far.Classic Weird 5
New Weird 0
Horror 0
Fantasy 5
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 10
The above rankings are the same I would give to a Robert E. Howard story starring Conan. Ten because it's historical, but one that could never actually have happened, so alternate. Five because there's a strong fantasy element. And five for classic weird because Weird Tales printed these even though they were sort of out of genre with their other offerings.
This story read a lot like one of Howard's, only the setting was in a Rome of sorts. The hero was not a barbarian, but rather a Roman soldier named Vettius. The novella was probably taken from his book, Vettius and His Friends, and was interesting enough that I might venture reading the entire book some day.
Vettius is guarding a Roman Prefect. A merchant enters the palace advocating for his philosopher friend who is interviewing for the position of tutor to the Prefect's children, but is undermined by a false prophet the philosopher opposes. This gets Vettius involved in trying to determine just what this prophet's game is. The more Vettius discovers the less there is to like.
It's a rich, complicated story that really demands a lot in terms of attention to details from the reader, but the payoff is worth it.
The next two stories in the collection were fairly short alternative history in the Robert E. Howard not the Turtledove sense. The first was spectacular--I give it a full five--and featured Vettius and Dama, two Roman characters we met last story. They are traveling, stop at a way station, and ask an innkeeper they get on the wrong side of, the shortest way to their destination. It turns out it that might not have been the best way. "The Shortest Way" (1974) is the best story though, especially in terms of horror. so far in the collection.Classic Weird 6
New Weird 0
Horror 8
Fantasy 4
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 10
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The next story, "Lord of the Depths" (1971), was an early Drake story and not really to my liking. Drake says the story "is a more or less conscious copy of 'Queen of the Black Coast,'" by Robert E. Howard. If so, what we have here must be a pale imitation. The protagonist is Antiopas, a ship captain, and he faces a grim sea menace, but everything is narrated and explained out of order with nothing to suggest much in terms of stakes for any character. It's a mess of a story.
Classic Weird 5
New Weird 0
Horror 6
Fantasy 4
Science Fiction 0
Alternate History 8
Weird Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
Vettius and His Friends (other topics)Travellers by Night (other topics)
The book does contain 28 stories. That's one for almost every day of the month of April, probably the way I'll read this book. For fun, besides brief spoiler-light to spoiler-free comments on the stories I am going to rate each story's genre quotient, not quality but rather quantity (purely my opinion) with the following scale:
Classic Weird
New Weird
Horror
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Alternate History.
For example, if I were to rate last month's Annihilation by VanderMeer, it would be something like
Classic Weird 6
New Weird 9
Horror 7
Fantasy 5
Science Fiction 4
Alternate History 0
The 6 in Classic Weird was for its Lovecraftian components in the suggestion of alien invasion from another dimension constantly in the background. The messages being written on the walls and the feeling of this being a different-but-similar world to ours but with accepted different life forms is very New Weird. The mysterious deaths the investigators suffered is certainly horror. The abilities of the entities in this world seemed supernatural, but not necessarily. Maybe they were just unexplained. Hence the 5 rating. Their wasn't any overtly future science events in the novel, but the suggestion of alien invasion is present. The Southern Reach organization and its capabilities in particular makes me want to place this book on the SF spectrum. There was no alternate history (I think of Turtledove for my definition) to consider here.
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