Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

Weekend at Can-Con

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Chris Marrs and I enjoyed a great visit with Can-Con, the Canadian Sci-Fi & Fantasy Convention, in beautiful Ottawa last weekend. ONE OF US was up for an Aurora Award for Best Novel, and while it didn’t win, we had a great time connecting with Canada’s speculative fiction writing community.

Here are the winners–check them out!

• Best Novel: Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield, ChiZine Publications
• Best YA Novel: Cross Fire: An Exo Novel by Fonda Lee, Scholastic Press
• Best Short Fiction: “Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach” by Kelly Robson, Tor.com Publications
• Best Graphic Novel: It Never Rains by Kari Maaren, Webcomic
• Best Poem/Song: Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld by Sarah Tolmie, On Spec issue 107 vol 28.4
• Best Related Work: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien and Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Uncanny Magazine
• Best Visual Presentation: Deadpool 2, written and produced by Ryan Reynolds, Twentieth Century Fox
• Best Artist: Samantha M. Beiko, covers for Laksa Media
• Best Fan Writing and Publication: She Wrote It But…Revisiting Joanna Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing” 35 Years Later, Krista D. Ball
• Best Fan Organizational: Derek Künsken and Marie Bilodeau, co-chairs, Can*Con, Ottawa
• Best Fan Related Work: Edward Willett, The Worldshapers (Podcast)

IN THE TALL GRASS (2019)

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Based on a novella co-authored by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill, Netflix’s IN THE TALL GRASS (2019) has some good visuals and direction but overall feels overstretched for its premise. It’s gotten a good panning by critics and many viewers, who said the longer it goes on the weaker it gets, but I found the opposite to be true. Overall, it’s a cheap thrill, and I was good with that as a viewer, as I hadn’t expected much more.

The story begins with a brother (Cal) and sister (Becky) driving cross country when they stop near a seemingly abandoned church near a vast field of tall grass. They hear a boy crying for help in the grass, and when they go to help, they find themselves lost as well and unable to get out, as the field appears to be a living, constantly shifting maze. Later, they come across a family that is also lost, as well as Becky’s boyfriend, and together they must try to find a way to escape.

The film plays with some interesting concepts–an ancient stone that appears to house the field’s intelligence, time loops, and more, but the mythology behind the field isn’t really explored, though it’s possibly the most intriguing element. The interpersonal relationships are far less interesting and come to the fore as the story goes on, sometimes dominating at odd times, when the characters should be far more focused on survival against a common enemy. The film feels repetitive and struggling with its necessary runtime. On the plus side, King and Hill complement each other well; you can almost dissect who wrote what characters (I’m curious now to read the novella the film is based on). The grass itself is cool and makes a claustrophobic, malevolent setting. The visuals are great. And the ending, while not super strong, does pay off.

Overall, I found IN THE TALL GRASS a worthwhile watch, not very strong, but strong enough to be enjoyable.

CROOKED GOD MACHINE by Autumn Christian

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Autumn Christian’s existential-dystopian nightmare CROOKED GOD MACHINE is unflinching in its dark portrayal of a planet oppressed by an insane God. It’s as if David Lynch said no fiction could outweird ERASHERHEAD, and Christian said, hold my beer.

The result is something bizarro, something horror, something philosophical and religious. When I started reading it, I snagged on the weird elements and wondered whether my willing suspension of disbelief was up for the investment, but the story keeps turning up the weird volume until by the end it goes well beyond 11, and it wasn’t long before I was thoroughly hooked on this bleak drug.

So here’s the story. Charles is a good man hoping to love and be loved in a world ruled by a God intent on punishing his subjects and soon ending it. Monsters roam the woods, vast machines wreak Biblical havoc in scheduled plagues, Hell shuttles round up people to send below based on quotas, and God screams from the TV all day when a show isn’t on promoting implants that keep the body active while the brain passes into a decade-long sleep. As the world slowly ends all around him, Charles sets out to resist and finally confront God based on secret knowledge that this was all not what was intended by the original creators.

The story is titillating in its uncompromising weirdness and destruction of sanity, but it’s pretty bleak, though a counterpoint to nihilism is expressed as hope even if it’s undeserved. While Christian’s world is clearly insane and seemingly random, there’s a strange internal logic to the story that ties it together and infuses it with meaning. The result is a dark and titillating read that’s strangely fun. My only big criticism is the story would benefit from editing, as there are numerous typos, missing words, etc. that might distract some readers.

If you think you might dig a strong fusion of bizarro and horror, check it out.

CREEPSHOW

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The Shudder series CREEPSHOW pulls together an anthology of horror tales. I’m caught up to the first four episodes (eight stories), and while overall it’s not as strong as I was hoping, it has some real gems, and I was happy to see the series creators pull stories from some of today’s greatest horror fiction authors.

For me, the challenge of this type of series is whether to follow the dark gotcha formula of the original comics, or use the dark justice themes and medium to create something fresh. The majority of the stories go the former route, creating spot-on CREEPSHOW stories that would have been brilliant in the original comics but in some cases felt a bit shallow and fell flat for me as a viewer of today.

For me, two of the stories really stand out. The first is THE MAN IN THE SUITCASE, in which a college student with low ambition winds up taking a suitcase home from the airport with a brutally contorted man stuffed inside. The thing is, if the man feels pain, he spits out golden coins, creating a moral choice: help the man, or milk him to get rich? The simple moral choice in the story skims both horror and dark humor, with a classic horror justice-style ending.

The absolute best story in the anthology so far for me, however, has to be Josh Malerman’s THE HOUSE OF THE HEAD. While the ending didn’t quite pay off for me, the story itself and how it’s told is extremely tense, weird, and creepy. In this story, a girl with an amazing dollhouse discovers a strange little severed head in the living room. The family of dolls in the house appear to react to the strangeness with dread and steadily mounting horror. The girl buys more dolls to try to help the doll family, but things just get worse. I found this story to be extremely titillating and clever while showing a fresh horror sensibility. I’d love to see more like it!

Looking forward to Thursday, when the next episode airs, with stories by Joe Hill and John Esposito. And especially looking forward to John Skipp’s story in the final episode.

THE TWISTED ONES by T. Kingfisher

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THE TWISTED ONES, by Ursula Vernon writing as T. Kingfisher, is an enjoyable horror story that hits all the right notes. While the payoff is lighter than I would have liked, the story is carried through by the premise’s mystery and the power of good writing.

Told in first person by a young woman nicknamed Mouse, the story begins with her father asking her to drive to rural North Carolina to clean up her grandmother’s house after she passed away. It turns out grandma, whom Mouse remembers as downright cruel, was also a hoarder. During the endless cleaning, she comes across her step-grandfather’s journal, in which he describes the “twisted ones” living nearby and their mysterious purpose. Mouse dismisses the writings as the product of dementia until she finds the strange stones herself, and soon she finds herself embroiled with another, darker world.

The setup is fantastic, the payoff not so much for this reader. When Mouse finally entered the other world, it unraveled more like dark fantasy than horror, and I never really felt like the protagonist was in danger. For me, the other world was more enjoyable in my imagination than as it was revealed. While the last act didn’t quite come through for me, however, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. The use of first-person narration is done perfectly, the relationship between Mouse and her dog is charming and authentic, we’re assured at the start of the story the dog comes through okay at the end (probably a smart narrative choice), the pacing in the first two acts is a perfect slow burn, the sense of mystery is great, and Mouse’s interaction with the growing creepiness unrolls realistically.

Overall, I found THE TWISTED ONES to be fresh, engaging dark fiction told around a simple premise.

PREACHER Season 4

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PREACHER Season 4 again failed to match the humorous whimsy and wonder of its first season, but with a hard stop to the series at the end of the fourth, it didn’t meander but instead came to a strongly coherent and powerful finish, complete with a bittersweet denouement.

In this season, Jesse wants to stop God and his agent, the Grail cult, from bringing about the apocalypse. He is in full command of his Genesis power but refuses to use it against God, whom he believes he can convince to not destroy the world if he proves his devotion. This leads Jesse on a spiritual journey of trying to do the right thing only to fail repeatedly, along with a visit to the afterlife where he is tempted. God is the season’s antagonist, demanding and cruel and narcissistic and otherwise the full-fledged Old Testament God, while we see Hitler representing Hell and Jesus representing Heaven in divine negotiations over who gets what souls when the world ends. In all the silliness and outrageousness, there is a genuine poignancy that comes through about the nature of humanity and its relationship to the divine.

Overall, I enjoyed PREACHER’s realization on the screen. I didn’t love it the way I did better shows like THE WIRE and GAME OF THRONES, but it was a fun ride, overall solid, and it ended as well as it began.