Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Samalio Pardulus

 

Samalio PardulusSamalio Pardulus by Otto Julius Bierbaum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The word "transgressive" is a trite over-used, particularly in academia, where it seems anything is okay to write a thesis on, so long as it's "transgressive". In all honesty, the word is losing its meaning, losing its sting. In my experience, I've seen this phrase used anachronistically in historical and literary theses, in particular. We've made the word blase, boring, even, in the 21st-Century, and imposed it on many texts and circumstances that don't really deserve the word.

Then along comes Otto Julius Bierbaum's Samalio Pardulus. Given that it was first published in 1908, before the horrors of World War I stripped away all innocence (now THAT is a transgressive event if there ever was one!), this work is a prime example of why the word was invented in the first place. Another word that has lost all meaning nowadays, "blasphemous," also describes this work quite well. The corruption of the Christ and Madonna figures in Samalio Pardulus own artwork, along with his un-natural love for his beautiful sister, qualify the work as both blasphemous and transgressive. As with all such "good" examples of such works, the ugly, the evil, and the dark are not only portrayed, but eventually they corrupt those who would have earlier fought against such things (as part of the moral order and how things "ought to be") so much that the erstwhile innocents not only accept the morbid drippings that fall from Pardulus' table, they practically feast on them, in the end. As Messer Giacomo, the initial art-teacher for Pardulus, states "Art is the worst snare of evil". This story sets out to prove that and does so, quite convincingly.

Alfred Kubin's art, always a welcome addition to any book, in my opinion, serves to provide dark glimpses into the scenes and artworks described in the tale. These were not added until the 1911 edition, well before the war, but with a sort of mood that makes one wonder how prescient Kubin was about what was to come in a mere three years. While reading and admiring the art, I thought of the toleplaying game Never Going Home in which the horrors of World War I unleash hell on Earth. This work feels like an initial foray, a peek into what was to come, lurking in the interstices of "good" society.

This is well worth your read. And with the inexpensive, simple, and beautiful editions that Wakefield Press provides (again and again and again), you should feel like you're stealing it when you buy it. You may lose a piece of your innocence.

And that's the perfect mood for this book.



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Monday, March 25, 2024

Sky ov Crimson Flame by Dunjon Magic

 


First off, thank you to Thorin Thompson for this little magnetic wonder. For those not in the know, the musical genre known as "Dungeon Synth" is, well, just what it says it is: Synthesizer music about and for dungeons. You don't have to play Dungeon Crawl Classics or Dungeons & Dragons to enjoy it, but it helps.Truth be told, you've probably heard this genre before and didn't even know you were listening to it. I would consider the opening lines to Ozzy Osbourne's "Mister Crowley" to be proto-dungeon synth. And if you've watched any really bad late-'70s or '80s fantasy, science fiction, or horror movies, you've probably unwittingly heard the genre before. Why "really bad"? Well, the technology for music back then isn't what it is now. If you're a Generation-X nerd like me, this is the sort of thing you wish you could have played on that cheap Casio-tone your mom bought to practice church hymns on because your family couldn't afford a real piano. But you only wished you could reach the heights and depths of Dungeon Synth. Simply put, you could not. The technology wasn't quite there unless your name rhymed with Ron Rarpenter and had a movie-level budget to buy all the best synths.

Thanfully, technology has progressed and become more affordable to the masses. Queue in mid-90's Black Metal and the need for creepy, melodic intros to more raw, powerful music. This is where the Dungeon Synth movement really began to take hold. I don't have the time or the wherewithal to trace the history of Dungeon Synth. Others have done this (I strongly recommend this reddit post on the subject). 

So what do we have here? Thorin has created a soundtrack for his Sky ov Crimson Flame adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics (free quick-start rules are here!). It's as creepy as you would expect (I mean, look at that cover!) with an air of menacing mystery. Would I play this in the background while running Sky ov Crimson Flame? Of course. Would I play this in the background while running any weird or eerie dungeon crawling adventure? Absolutely. Would I just listen to the awesome music for the sake of listening to the awesome music? I'm doing that right now! Strongly recommended for your macabre moods!

And I would strongly recommend picking this up. Don't worry, non-cassette-player-owners. You can get the digital download over on Bandcamp. What are you waiting for?

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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Dhalgren

 

DhalgrenDhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The older I grow, the more I realize that my childhood might have been exceptional. Not exceptionally good, mind you, just an exception to what the "normal" American child experiences. I was raised as an Air Force brat. Born in Germany, lived in The Philippines, Italy, England, and all over the US (Texas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wyoming). Since the commencement of "adulting," I've lived in Pennsylvania, California, Utah, and Wisconsin. This shiftiness, especially in the first eighteen years of life, led to forming and cutting friendships and love in rapid order. I have no idea what it's like to have a "hometown". That just doesn't exist for me. I keep contact with a select few people I knew as a child. And even though I've lived in Wisconsin for nearly thirty years now, I still feel like a wanderer on this planet.

In all these journeyings, I've come to appreciate places for their unique mood, style, atmosphere, amusements, and shortcomings. When I visit a new place, I like to soak up the ambience and get to know the place. Cities, in particular, have personalities, I've found. My favorites are Oxford (UK), Vienna (Austria), and Madison, Wisconsin (US).

I've also met some strange characters in my life's wanderings. When I was young, I had more time and freedom to get to know individuals who lived out of the mainstream of society. Freaks, geeks, punks, goths, metalheads, gangsters, ex-soldiers, mystics, chronic alcoholics and drug abusers, the chronically mentaly ill, the homeless, other wanderers. The list can go on and on. I find humans endlessly fascinating and endlessly frustrating. I have a love/hate relationship with the human race. For the record: mostly, I love 'em!

I find that my experiences have everything to do with Dhalgren. Everything.

I'll be honest, I was shocked at how much I related to many of the characters in this book. Because I knew them. Some I still know. I won't name names, but the carnival of personalities in this work are almost all people I've met. It's an ugly bunch, with a lot of deviance from social norms. These are "my people".

But the real main character in this story is not the protagonist, who has forgotten his name and is simply called Kid throughout. The main charachter in this story is the city, Bellona.

Like any city, this work of psychogeographical semi-apocalyptic fiction is not particularly "linear". In fact, the last section's typeset is intentionally non-linear, with "asides" that contrast sharply with the other text in its immediate vicinity, a choppy fluidity between space and time-lines, and an aggressively experimental layout. Much like a city. In fact, I'd say this is one of the greatest works of psychogeography I've read to date.

And why "semi-apocalyptic"? Before I answer, let me point out that my Dad, an avid and voracious reader of science fiction (I owe that addiction to him), had this book on his bedside shelf for many months. I don't know if he ever finished it, but it eventually disappeared some time in the early '80s. So when I began the book, I was expecting all the regular tropes of science fiction, but something of a higher intellectual train than the pulps. Well, I was altogether wrong. Dhalgren is a semi-apocalyptic work, a story set in a city that has become a sort of pocket dimension, it's own entity, while still existing in a decidedly non-apocalyptic America. It's a place that time and space didn't forget, really, but a place that time and space set aside for its own little apocalypse. Something like "The Zone" in Roadside Picnic, or like what happened to the planet of Tekumel in the Empire of the Petal Throne universe.

In Bellona, things have become . . . disordered. Imagine that the late '60s and early '70s never ended, but that law and order were simply absent. It's not utter chaos - people still gather in groups, some in communes, some in gangs, some in ultra-luxurious compounds, some in . . . utter denial of the situation they are in (they try to maintain a "normal" lifestyle, despite the crumbling city and social order). Yes, there is violence, but there is also love and loyalty. As Depeche Mode used to say "People are People". And so it is in Bellona.

But Bellona is a jealous city. It doesn't let go so easily that one just walks away. Something undefined and strange compels many people to stay, though some do "escape" . . . if they avoid the forces that have been put in place to contain the decay of the city from escaping into the rest of the world. Well, it's not so mystical as it sounds, but as in many cities, people find it difficult, sometimes impossible (because of ideology, economics, or relationships) to leave.

Is the city alive? Maybe, maybe not.

Are the people who enter it under some kind of geas that doesn't allow them to leave? Possibly.

Will everyon who reads this work enjoy it? I doubt it.

Is Dhalgren a great work of experimental science fiction? Absolutely.

I'm glad I journeyed there. Though it was rough going, at times. Very rough going. I myself was, for a time, trapped against my will. But, as with many of the places I've seen in my life, I would return, if only for a visit.

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Monday, February 5, 2024

The House of the Moon

 


Benjamin Tweddell has a gently diabolical touch. Whether it is the claustrophobic-um-ecstatic The Veneration at Polwheveral Manor or the decadent apotheosis of A Crown of Dusk and Sorrow Tweddell's tone floats freely between the sacred and the obscene, from light to darkness and back again. The House of the Moon is no exception. Tweddell's literary chiarascuro, for lack of a better term, contrasts hopeful light and hopeless darkness as dissonant foils to one another, but also, behind it all, pieces of the same completeness, ends of a spectrum, rather than a stark duality. 

As with all of Mount Abraxas books, the production values are outstanding, but in this case, I think the publishing house has outdone itself. This is absolutely exquisite in form and execution. This little work is a treasure, especially with the deft hand of Luciana Lupe Basconcelos at the pen and brush. Her works are the gems on the crown here.

As with Tweddell's other work, a looming building looms large in this story. Here it is the titular House of the Moon, so-called by those who see beyond it's facade as an empty, if disquieting, Cavendish Hall. Julian Ashford moves to the estate of his recently-deceased mother and sees a mysterious, beautiful, yet sad young lady near the grounds of Cavendish Hall. He discovers, in time, the secrets of the House of the Moon, the identity of the young lady, and his mother's own connection to the strange edifice and its inhabitants. This is a moody and seemingly serene bit of poetic prose, until a certain point, where Julian's perceptions about the place and his place in the universe are shattered. To say more than that is to give too much away, but I end with one word of warning: be careful when looking up into the night sky and staring at that blackness between the stars. You may learn something about reality that you aren't ready yet to know. And rather than reality coming crashing down upon you, you will be lifted up and swallowed by it.



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Thursday, January 18, 2024

Beloved Chaos That Comes By Night

 


Make no mistake about it, one of my favorite Mount Abraxas authors is Jonathan Wood, whom I have never met, but whom I have made a mental picture of, without one shred of evidence. 

When I lived in England, I knew a man whose name I don't recall. He was a US Marine Vietnam Vet who had retired in England, not far from RAF Chicksands, where I lived at the time. He's got to be dead now, or if he is alive, his liver should be studied for the furtherment of medical science once he finally does give up the ghost. Yes, he did a drink a bit. I know, because I joined him on a few benders. Note: Kids, don't drink. I gave up drinking 35 years ago and it's one of the best things I've ever done. Anyway, this un-named alcoholic vet was slightly portly, dressed in nothing but sweats, and lived in a very dark little cottage "in the country". He was a jovial man, but he definitely had his demons. I don't know anything about his education, but he was eloquent, with a wide-ranging vocabulary, and he told the most sordid and morbid stories (did I mention he was a Vietnam Vet?) about his days in the military with such poesis that I could sit enwraptured, listening to him for hours (being lubricated by Southern Comfort probably helped). As I said, he was a joker, but he had a grim side to him born out of the horrors he had seen. 

This is how I picture Jonathan Wood. I'm certain that my assessment of the man falls well outside the realms of reality, just like the visions we make in our head of someone we've spoken to on the phone several times, but never met in person. But until I meet Mr. Wood, this is the image I will have.

That vision is a result of reading his writings. They are eloquently grim in the best of ways: poetic and hopeless, like being buried in diamonds that sparkle so beautifully, but they cut, oh, they cut.

Some of Wood's works err on the side of poetic brilliance, while others wallow in the mire. But there is a certain cognitively-dissonant hegelian synthesis that arises out of the seeming chaos.

Beloved Chaos That Comes by Night starts on the brilliant side, but devolves into, well, chaos, in the end. At the beginning one is buoyed up by the prospects of a young playwright who is honing his craft and, in the end, we see a hopelessly desparate man that has been bullied, used, and abused by others (and, one must add, as a result of his own desires) to the point of barely thinking of himself as human as all. This is a story of the potential for great gain diseased by the tragedy of great loss. It is about the warping of dreams into nightmare, a true horror story devoid of ghosts, but full of monsters of one's own (ignorant) making.


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Monday, January 1, 2024

The Graphologist and Other Stories

 


When Rhys Hughes is on a roll, nothing can stop him. Of the four stories in this short collection, two are good, two are outstanding, and the stand outs were not the ones I was expecting to shine. I went into "The Puppet Show" thinking, oh no, here we go with a Jon Padgett copycat. But this story twisted in unexpected ways and unfolded a unique tale of existential dread that proved every bit as effective as anything Padgett, Ligotti, etc., have produced, while remaining true to its own vision of cosmic horror. The second standout story, "The Filtered Ones," about ghost-pirates with a psychogeographic layer, flips from existential dread to enduring hope. Yes, I know, ghost-pirates. I was very skeptical going into this one, ready to be disappointed. But the story turned out to be a delight! The other two tales, "The Tipping Point" and "The Graphologist" are both good, but they are very much overshadowed by the greatness of "The Puppet Show" and "The Filtered Ones". Nothing disappoints, and Hughes excels here at taking the reader's expectations and fully flipping them on their head.Strongly recommended, especially for the two standout stories!



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Friday, December 22, 2023

Gameholecon 2023 Rogues Gallery

 Here is the Rogues Gallery of people I played at Gameholecon 2023, in no particular order:





My first game of Vaesen, which I quickly fell in love with, I played Father Art Nilson, a preacher (of rather liberal values). He took a rather "universal" approach to theology.



Once in a while I steal a real name. I did so for my Blade Runner RPG character. This name is that of an old friend from high school many, many years ago. Hopefully, he won't sue me. First time playing Blade Runner, which is, like Vaesen, a Free League publishing game with very similar mechanics. Lots of ethical grey areas in this game, which I like. 



This is Hayu, a servant whose name actually comes from the waking world ("Hey, you!"). This was for the excellent Dreamland RPG, which is in development now. The setting is H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands and, particularly, author/artist Jason Thompson's visionary graphic novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories. The system is very unique, utilizing word-cards as prompts to creating sentences that mold actions or even the environment itself. Also a first-time play for me (noticing a theme here?). I loved, loved, loved this game. The system is very different from any other RPG system I've played, and lends itself to really digging in on the creative side. I will definitley be buying and running this one when it comes out of development. I was blown away by it!


My second game of Vaesen was actually an introductory adventure, but I don't mind that I played "out of order," so to speak. Here I played Soren Neilgaard, a social media content creater. The overall mood in this session was VERY different from that first game of Vaesen, which speaks to the versatility of the setting, I think. In terms of play style, the game reminded me just a titch of Trail of Cthulhu, though it's far more stripped down than TOC. Simpler, faster, slicker. I really do like Vaesen a lot. Can't wait to play it again! Maybe there will be a session at Garycon next spring?



The character for my first session (yeah, yeah, I know) of Never Going Home was named after an author I know. This session was set in Serbia pre-World War I, before the machinations of the Black Hand which led to the war (and the subsequent breach in reality posited by the setting of Never Going Home. This was a heist story set on a train, but with long-lasting consequences. The game uses a simple system of skills, with playing cards as a part of the resolution system. I like the way it played, but loved the scenario. It's one I could see playing in any number of other systems, but it hews thematically quite closely to the setting paradigm of the game itself. Stripped to the bones, though, this scenario could easily port to other systems. I'm going to keep it in my back pocket for off-books games at stupid o'clock at cons. 




Every con I attend, I try to get into one of the You Too Can Cthulhu sessions. This was a "black letter" event, which means it was extra special. I believe almost the entire YTCC crew was involved in one way or another in this massive game. I think we had something like 16 PCs in this game? Something ridiculous like that. We were all gangsters, more or less, from Chicago who were trying to expand our family "business" in and around Kansas City or Saint Louis (I forget which now). Of course, this is a Call of Cthulhu session, so it's not a question of if things will go horribly wrong, just a question of when and how. Well, we found out. Another fantastic production by You Too Can Cthulhu. Here's a photo of the crew. These guys are amazing. If you've never played in one of their games, you must. Just make sure you leave a slot open for me!





This was NOT my first game of Empire of the Petal Throne. But it was, by all means, the best one I've played in yet. It was an open exploration, by tube car, of the planet of Tekumel. It was great playing a higher-level EPT character after having trudged through some requisite lower-level adventures over the years to really familiarize myself with the setting. The setting is . . . challenging for people who have notions about what fantasy should be. Tekumel is absolutely unique and rich. One must give onself up to the cultural norms of the planet, and they can seem rather strange at first. But once one allows oneself to dive in, there are few settings that can match it in grandeur. If you haven't played EPT, but remember seeing those old adds in Dragon Magazine so many years ago, maybe it's time you gave it a try?



Now, while I've played many, many games of Classic Traveller, this was my first game of Mongoose Traveller. The systems are really quite similar. Yeah, Mongoose Traveller does flesh things out a bit more and maybe provides a little more breadth in character creation, but at it's heart, I didn't see much difference betweeen it and the Classic Traveller I know and love. So, while it was my "first" time, it really wasn't. Though it WAS my first time playing a Vargr. We all played Vargr, in fact, which was pretty cool. This was a very Indiana Jones-style adventure. Set in a pyramid, even. I liked that none of us were good combatants. We were just a bunch of scientists and archaeologist. My character was, in fact, an expert in paleolinguistics. If you're familiar with Traveller, you'll know that the combat system is downright deadly. So when you get a bunch of nerds trying to use weapons . . . well, hijinks ensue. But we, through a couple turns of raw good luck, prevailed, defeating our rivals and preserving cultural integrity and good inter-planetary relations the whole time. 

One last thing. I've mentioned before how much of an influence Marc Miller has had on my life. He put on a couple of seminar sessions, one of which I attended. He said to us there "when you have a moment, stop by my booth, I've got something for you". So I did. And he did. I won't say what it was that he had for me, but let's just say Marc is as generous as he is intelligent. Here is a picture of me with one of my childhood heroes, one who turned out to be every bit as good as I pictured in my eleven year old mind back in the early '80s.


As always, I'm looking forward to my next Con experience at Garycon in the spring. I hear it's sold out! I guess the 50th anniversary of D&D will do that to a convention named after Gary Gygax. See you there!

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