The Revelation By Bentley Little

The Revelation
By Bentley Little
Copyright 1990

Dead babies can’t take things off of shelves
Dead babies can’t take care of themselves

- Alice Cooper

The Revelation was Bentley Little’s first published novel and won the Bram Stoker Award for first novel in 1990.

From Wikipedia:

The novel (as many of Little's works do) deals with a series of unexplained events in a small town in Arizona. A church is defaced with goat's blood, the pastor and his family disappear, and several townspeople begin having terrifying visions of deformed infants. Eventually, an unknown force begins to attack and murder several of the townspeople.

Gordon, the main protagonist, discovers that his wife is pregnant and begins to fear for her safety and that of the unborn child. Soon, a seemingly unbalanced evangelical preacher named Brother Elias comes to the town to preach about the end times. Widely ignored at first, he gradually gains a following of people as more and more bizarre events unfold in the town.

As the terror mounts, Elias convinces Gordon, the sheriff, and the new pastor to join him in his quest to stop Satan from raising an army of deformed infants. It seems that the devil has the power to corrupt the unborn into horrible servants of darkness, and over the centuries hundreds of these stillborn children have been buried in the hills surrounding the town.

Elias reveals he is not human, but an earthly servant of God whose role it is to stop Satan from assembling his army. He further explains that he has done this several times over the millennia. The four men face off against the incarnation of the devil, who has taken the form of the missing pastor. They succeed in stopping him, though Elias knows that the battle is never truly over and begins wandering away to make preparations for the next battle.

The Revelation is an outstanding first effort for a writer and compares favorably to Robert McCammon’s Baal as a good first effort.

The book closely resembled plots of many early 1970s slasher films. This book could have easily served as source material for Mario Bava or Dario Argento. Much of it is crudely violent. The descriptions of the killer babies are crude. But it’s a crude that works for Little. It has served him well over the years in later work.

It does have a few weaknesses in the characters which is to be expected from a first novel. The sheriff is quick to embrace the supernatural explanation of what is happening to his town. Little’s sheriff is not all that different than the stereotypical small town sheriff. He is level-headed. He takes things as he sees them. Yet his arrival at his conclusion required no hard convincing. It required no dramatic epiphany. His conclusion was necessary to advance the plot and Little took the easy way out.

I liked the ambiguity of Brother Elias. Was he good? Was he evil? Was he a nut? We really don’t get a read on him until the climax when the group must go out and make their stand against evil. But through the book, he acts very much as an antagonist. His preaching causes civil unrest. He shows up at the most inopportune times to disrupt. Little was magnificent in his development of this character.

Little consistently writes well-paced fiction and The Revelation is no exception. Little gets down to the business of establishing his main characters early. The trigger for the action arrives within the first few pages as well when the church is desecrated and the minister and his family disappear. This is how young novelists usually go about their business and Little is no different. From there, Little keeps the action moving nicely and provides a climax that is just the right length for a novel like this. Little is definitely plot driven.

The Revelation was a good way to pass the time with some raw, basic horror. There’s nothing new here. No twist on established tropes. No outstanding characters. Just plot driven horror. It’s not bad and it’s a great outstanding first effort.

The Hunter from the Woods By Robert McCammon

The Hunter from the Woods
By Robert McCammon
Copyright 2011

What is a lycanthrope in the eyes of God?

These stories all occur before or after the action in the McCammon novel, The Wolf's Hour.

The Great White Way
A young Mikhail is working as an animal keeper in a gypsy circus. He is having an affair with the girlfriend of the circus’ professional wrestler. She tries to set him up for a fall after he speaks to another woman. Mikhail has the last laugh.

The first story starts to fill in the backstory of Mikhail, still a youth freshly escaped from the fate that met his fellow werewolves. I loved the narrative voice combined with sparse dialogue.

The Man from London
A spy from London infiltrates a remote Russian village in search of a man that is believed to have extraordinary abilities that will help the British cause. He finds a filthy youth living in a church, surrounded by his own filth. He is disgusted by young Mikhail and the time he wasted in searching him out. However, when he tries to escape Russia, he finds that Mikhail does indeed live up to his billing.

As a stand-alone short story, this was a bit thin. However, it fills in another space in Mikhail’s backstory.

Sea Chase
Michael Gallatin is aboard a freighter in the days leading up to World War II. He is posing as a deck hand to protect a Nazi defector and his family aboard the ship. A Nazi ship is in pursuit and eventually catches up to them. Michael and the captain combine their efforts to lead their nearly crippled ship to safety while defeating the Nazis.

This was everything a short story with an established character should be. It can’t quite stand on its own because McCammon is assuming you know Gallatin’s backstory. However, the plot and the other characters work incredibly well and the story is inventive and exciting.

The Wolf and the Eagle
While flying from the desert battlefront to Cairo, Michael Gallatin’s plane is shot down during an aerial battle. His shoulder is badly injured and he is in the middle of nowhere. He is soon taken prisoner by the German aviator who shot down his plane. The enemies soon find common cause when they are hunted by desert warriors who know no side in the conflict and kill indiscriminately. They also face a common foe called thirst. Finally, coming upon a village of desert marauders, Gallatin hatches a plan to get water that will require the men to cooperate.

Not much of the werewolf trope in this story, but a good story nonetheless. It was not hard to see where it was going with the enemies having to combine forces to survive. What is remarkable is the portrayal of the German aviator as a great warrior and a decent human being. That characterization along with great storytelling make The Wolf and the Eagle another worthy entry in the life story of Michael Gallatin.

The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs
Michael Gallatin’s new assignment is the oldest of the old spy assignments. Make his way into Berlin to seduce a magazine photographer who has been quite adept at identifying members of the German resistance and having them killed. Gallatin meets her and the two are instantaneously taken with each other. Michael finds himself falling for her hard, despite what she is. Eventually word comes down that he’s the man to do it and it has to be done now. Michael dispenses with his usual means of disposing of people to do something different for this woman.

This was quite a long story and was mostly a love story. No werewolves were present until the end when Michael had to make his final escape. It was quite well told and, while we knew that McCammon could produce some decent erotica, we learn that he writes the stuff on par with Jacqueline Suzanne and Judith Krantz.

Death of a Hunter
It’s 1953 and Michael is living in his remote Scottish estate as a recluse. His last job involved learning more about Chinese operations in Singapore and he was photographed as a wolf. The Chinese have made it a point to capture him alive or dead – but preferably alive. When they arrive, he, at an advanced age, finds his toughest opponents yet.

This story was short and sad. All that we know about Michael – his tragic childhood, his warrior background, his proud lycathtropic heritage comes to an end. I felt the end of Michael Gallatin like I’ve felt the end of few characters. I did not realize how much this book added to how deeply I felt about him until I got to the end.

Comes the Blind Fury By John Saul

Comes the Blind Fury
By John Saul
Copyright 1980

A century ago, a young, blind girl walks along a path near her home. Familiar with the path, she is comfortable and happy making her way near a sheer bluff. But soon come the other kids to tease and taunt her because she is blind. She panics and stumbles over the bluff to her death. In her plummet to the beach below, she swears revenge.

One hundred years later, Michelle Pendleton moves to Paradise Point from Boston. Eager to enjoy small town life and make new friends, Amanda welcomes the move. Her father, Dr. Cal Pendleton, is there to take over the practice of the aging town doctor.

While moving in, Michelle finds an old china doll in a closet. She names the doll Amanda. She soon learns from her new friends that a little girl named Amanda once lived in her house and died after falling from the bluff. Amanda’s grave is quite well known in the town as his her mother’s whose stone has quite the cryptic inscription.

Michelle’s mother soon gives birth to Michelle’s new sister and events turn for Michelle. She is adopted and becomes painfully aware that her parents now have a biological daughter of their own. One day, she is at a picnic on the beach with several friends when a girl starts teasing her about being adopted. Michelle runs away, but trips on the bluff and falls. She is badly injured.

After a while, her physical injuries heal, but she maintains that she needs a cane to walk. She starts dressing in all black. Soon, she is an outcast and the kids routinely make fun of her. She seems not to care. After all, she has a new friend in Amanda who comes to show her things.

Soon, kids around Paradise Cove begin dying. Those who torment Michelle seem to die in unfortunate accidents or are outright murdered. The only person present when these deaths occur is Michelle. Soon, the past and the present converge, brought about by a vengeful spirit and a vengeful human bent on visiting his family curse upon a man he feels wronged him.

This is John Saul’s fourth novel and he employs what became his standard format for many of his books. Child wronged a hundred years ago seeks revenge by employing a child of today. The characters and circumstances are different, but, with a few exceptions, the same trope applies. Nonetheless, Saul has a way of telling a good story employing this framework again and again.

The story is much tighter than Saul’s earlier works. The evil is defined. The reason the past is important is part of the mystery that is brought nicely to fruition. The main character is two parts sympathetic, one part slacker. Saul did leave us with a taste of ambiguity that worked for the story. Did Michelle kill because she wanted to? Or did Amanda’s lust for revenge drive her to it.

All the usual Saul tropes are here. The weak, indecisive father. The ancient evil bent on revenge. The wife who has no idea what is going on around her. The small town cop who is friends with the family around which all the evil is transpiring. One could complain that Saul tells the same tale over and over again. Perhaps, but many great books are retellings of older books. Saul uses the same devices over and over again to tell decent stories. This is never going to earn him a spot in the pantheon of great horror writers who weave a different tale every time. But that does not make him any less fun to read and sometimes, it’s good to have fun while reading.

The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty

The Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty
Copyright 1971

The book. The movie. Both acclaimed in their respective media. Both are chilling. Both are fantastic.

From Wikipedia:
An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. After discovering a small statue of the demon Pazuzu (an actual ancient Assyrian demigod), a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil, which, unknown to the reader at this point, he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa.

Meanwhile, in Georgetown, a young girl named Regan MacNeil is living with her famous mother, actress Chris MacNeil, who is in Georgetown filming a movie. As Chris finishes her work on the film, Regan begins to become inexplicably ill. After a gradual series of poltergeist-like disturbances in their rented house, for which Chris attempts to find rational explanations, Regan begins to rapidly undergo disturbing psychological and physical changes: she refuses to eat or sleep, becomes withdrawn and frenetic, and increasingly aggressive and violent. Chris initially mistakes Regan's behavior as a result of repressed anger over her parents' divorce and absent father.

After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments, Regan's mother, an atheist, turns to a local Jesuit priest for help as Regan's personality becomes increasingly disturbed. Father Damien Karras, who is currently going through a crisis of faith coupled with the loss of his mother, agrees to see Regan as a psychiatrist, but initially resists the notion that it is an actual demonic possession. After a few meetings with the child, now completely inhabited by a diabolical personality, he turns to the local bishop for permission to perform an exorcism on the child.

The bishop with whom he consults does not believe Karras is qualified to perform the rites, and appoints the experienced Merrin—who has recently returned to the United States—to perform the exorcism, although he does allow the doubt-ridden Karras to assist him. The lengthy exorcism tests the priests both physically and spiritually. When Merrin, who had previously suffered cardiac arrhythmia, dies during the process, completion of the exorcism ultimately falls upon Father Karras. When he demands that the demonic spirit inhabit him instead of the innocent Regan, the demon seizes the opportunity to possess the priest. Karras heroically surrenders his own life in exchange for Regan's by jumping out of her bedroom window and falling to his death, regaining his faith in God as his last rites are read.

The name William Peter Blatty is not a household name like Stephen King. He did not produce a prolific amount of horror fiction or much fiction for that matter. But in delivering The Exorcist, Blatty wrote one of the absolute cornerstones of the horror genre and built upon the ground laid by writers like Ira Levin to put horror novels back on the shelves and inspire novelists to write horror after the genre was nearly dormant for more than a decade.

It’s hard to put a finger on just what makes The Exorcist so good because it does have a few problems. The dialogue is atrocious. Blatty has a tin ear for the spoken word. It was stilted, choppy, and sometimes painful to read. I know he was trying hard to develop the detective as a deliberate bumbler – Columbo before Columbo. But he tried too hard. It was difficult to read when he talked.

One of the plot devices Blatty employs – the desecration of the churches – is never fully utilized or developed. We are supposed to understand that Regan did this or that Pazuzu did it. But the link is never established. This could have taken the novel to whole new levels of terror. I wanted to see so much more done with this.


What is good is the development of Chris MacNeil as a mother. She is a famous actress and Blatty gives us just enough of this to make her interesting. What he does so much more thoroughly for the benefit of the reader is develop her as a mother with a seemingly unsolvable problem with her daughter. She is desperate. She is frightened. In an age when eschewing faith was trendy with the nation’s elite, she was forced to return to it. It all was developed wonderfully.

The setting added a lot to the plot. This was not a medieval village or a remote part of Europe or the Middle East. Pazuzu took his act right to the nation’s capital, just off the Georgetown campus. It was urban America. It was a wealthy family with a wealthy child. American readers could relate. The landmarks were real to them. The people were real. That went a long way to making The Exorcist an excellent horror novel.

The strongest element was the blending of science and religion. Father Karras is not only a priest, but a psychiatrist. He tries science, grasping at the rational before employing his wavering faith. He exhausts the solutions science has to offer before seeking a religious solution. This blending lent a great deal of rationality to the novel in an era when society sought rational answers for all dysfunction.

I’ve heard the movie called the scariest film of all time. I disagree. It is a good film bordering on great. But scary? No. The book ranks very highly on the various rankings of horror novels. Is it that terrifying? I didn’t think so. It is interesting. It is compelling reading. It is a good story, well paced and tightly told. But it didn’t have me transfixed the way The Shining or the Haunting of Hill House did. Those are superior scary stories.

Blatty’s novel was timely inasmuch as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby was. Faith in the church in America was ebbing in 1971. The social revolution of the 1960s had ended, but its aftermath was still much a part of the American fabric. Blatty’s novel served to remind America of the power of faith. I don’t mean to preach the gospel. It’s just an observation that faith and religion are powerful. At a time when its importance was diminishing, Blatty’s novel and movie was as subtle as a brick to the forehead.

If you are a fan of horror, The Exorcist is an absolute must-read. The tropes Blatty establishes would be used by many other authors for stories of possession. Blatty drew from fact and solid research and introduced it to the horror community. It became a wellspring of modern possession tales and should be valued for that if nothing else.

This Perfect Day By Ira Levin

This Perfect Day
By Ira Levin
Copyright 1970

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei
Led us to this perfect day

Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ
All but Marx were sacrificed

Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx
Gave us lovely schools and parks

Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood
Made us humble, made us good

Hundreds of years in the future, mankind is guided, assisted, and controlled by a computer known as Uni. Uni assigns treatments of various drugs and vitamins to keep humans pliable and happy. Jobs are assigned. Sex is permitted on Saturday nights. People are moved from continent to continent based on Uni’s perceived needs. Society is docile, happy, and controlled.

From Wikipedia:
Li RM35M4419, nicknamed "Chip" (as in "chip off the old block") by his nonconformist grandfather Jan, is a typical child Member who, through a mistake in genetic programming, has one green eye. Through his grandfather's encouragement, he learns how to play a game of "wanting things", including imagining what career he might pick if he had the choice. Chip is told by his adviser that "picking" and "choice" are manifestations of selfishness, and he tries to forget his dreams.

As Chip grows up and begins his career, he is mostly a good citizen, but commits minor subversive acts, such as procuring art materials for another "nonconformist" member who was denied them. His occasional oddities attract the attention of a secret group of Members who, like Chip, are also nonconformists. There he meets King, a Medicenter chief who obtains members records for potential future recruitment to the group, King's beautiful girlfriend Lilac, a strong-willed and inquisitive woman with unusually dark skin, and Snowflake, a rare albino member. These members teach Chip how to get his treatments reduced so that he can feel more and stronger emotions. Chip begins an affair with Snowflake, but is really attracted to Lilac.

Chip and Lilac begin to search through old museum maps and soon discover islands around the world that have disappeared from their modern map. They begin to wonder if perhaps other "incurable" members like themselves have escaped to these islands. King tells them that the idea is nonsense, but Chip soon learns that King has already interacted with some "incurables" and that they are indeed real. Before he can tell Lilac, Chip's ruse is discovered by his adviser. He and all the other members of the group are captured and treated back into docility (except King, who takes his own life before he can be captured).

Some years later, Chip's regular treatment is delayed by an earthquake. In the meanwhile, he begins to "wake up" again and remembers Lilac and the islands. He is able to shield his arm from the treatment nozzle and becomes fully awake for the first time. He locates Lilac again and kidnaps her. At first she fights him, but as she too becomes more "awake," she remembers the islands and comes willingly. In process she was raped by Chip. Finding a convenient abandoned boat on the beach, they head for the nearest island of incurables, Majorca. There they learn that UniComp, as a last resort, has planted failsafes that eventually lead all incurables to these islands, where they will be trapped forever away from the treated population, and eventually marry and have a child together.

Chip conceives of a plan—destroy the computer, UniComp, by blowing up its refrigeration system. He recruits other incurables to join him, and they make their way to the mainland. Just as they reach UniComp, one of the incurables—an agent of the programmers—betrays his partners and leads the rest of group at gunpoint to a secret luxurious underground city beneath UniComp, where they are met by Wei, one of the original planners of the Unification. Wei and the other "programmers" who live in UniComp have arranged this test so that the most daring and resourceful incurables will make their way to UniComp, where they, too, will live in luxury as programmers.

After joining the programmers, and after a few tentative attempts to confide in someone, Chip shares his misgivings with no one, lies low, and dedicates himself to the task of gaining Wei’s confidence. For example, to deceive Wei, Chip consents to the replacement of his green eye with a brown one—even though this involves giving up a cherished part of his identity.

But when, nine months later, a new group of incurables arrives, Chip leaves the welcome party with the intention of using the newcomers' explosives to blow up the master computer. There follows a harrowing physical struggle with Wei (who has the body of a young athlete), and the shooting of Wei. Just before he gets killed, Wei betrays his real motive in creating this dystopia:

“Chip, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward, “there’s joy in having it, in controlling, in being the only one.”

Chip knew all along that it was power hunger—not altruism—that drove Wei to chicanery and murders. On his way up from the underground city towards sunlight, Chip tells an angry programmer: “’There’s joy in having it’: those were [Wei’s] last words. Everything else was rationalization. And self-deception.”

The book ends with Chip riding a helicopter toward Majorca where his wife, son, financial sponsors, and friends are hopefully waiting for him. For the first time in his life, he sees raindrops in daytime—nature’s affirmation that the era of slavery and total control is finally over.

I have been an Ira Levin fan since I first discovered The Stepford Wives in the late 1970s. Yet this book never crossed my path. How can that be? I am glad to have discovered it.

Levin never veils his metaphor too heavily and here, he is obviously panning the communist state. He decries the central planners who decide every facet of the lives of the people in a communist society. However, he puts a different spin on it than Orwell or Huxley. His totalitarianism is passive from beginning to end. It never harms or hurts dissenters. It exploits them. Perhaps that is scarier.

For approximately 7/8s of this book, I was confident where the story was headed. I enjoyed reading it, but felt that Levin had broken no new ground in the field of dystopian totalitarianism. Man, was I wrong. That linear path that Levin was following took an abrupt turn. Adjusting to that, the reader thinks he’s got it figured and it twists again. I love a writer not afraid to punch his readers in the face with a great twist. Levin is great with the ending of his book.

I’ve not read all of Levin’s works, but I’ve read most of them and this one was the only one with anything resembling a happy ending. No happy ending (if you’re a Christian) for Rosemary or her baby. No happy ending for the feminists in The Stepford Wives. No happy ending from those exploited Boys from Brazil. Yet the hero in his one stab at dystopia gets his happy day. For fans of Levin, that in itself was a twist they probably didn’t see coming.

Like Levin’s other work, This Perfect Day was devoid of humor. No laugh lines. No humorous situations. It’s all dark and disconcerting. For me, this is what good horror and good dystopia is made of. Dean Koontz is one to get too cutesy with his horror and just ruins it. Stephen King does this occasionally as well. Give me the nasty writers like Levin or Bentley Little.

I wonder why This Perfect Day is not better known or more highly regarded. I believe this was the only Levin novel not made into a film and that’s a damn shame. As much as I appreciate the b-movie campiness and unveiled social commentary of the movie version of Logan’s Run, I know that This Perfect Day is a better story. Farrah Fawcett and all the other beautiful women would have fit into the script quite nicely. Alas, without a screen treatment, This Perfect Day is doomed to obscurity with so many other great dystopian novels of the 1960s and 1970s unrecognized by the Hollywood intelligentsia.

Suffer the Children By John Saul

Suffer the Children
By John Saul
Copyright 1977

A hundred years ago, in Port Arbello, Maine, an ugly and unspeakable crime happens. A little girl is raped and murdered by her father. Her body is never found. After committing the ghastly deed, the father promptly commits suicide. This is the curse of the Congers.

One hundred years later, the Congers still reside in the same home in Port Arbello, with nearby woods and a cliff falling to the ocean below. The old family fortune is dried up and Jack Conger publishes the town newspaper while his wife, Rose, sells real estate.

Jack Conger has committed his own crime. He does not remember the details, but the results are apparent. One day, a year before, he came out of the woods carrying the unconscious body of his younger daughter, Sarah. Since that day he attacked – but did not rape – Sarah, she has not spoken. She lives in her own world that only she understands.

The Conger’s older daughter, Elizabeth, is a well-adjusted 13 year old who is well behaved, does well in school, and takes very good care of her impaired sister.

There is tension in the Conger marriage as Jack’s crime has rendered him impotent – at least when it comes to his wife. Between their dysfunctional daughter – rendered so by Jack – and their marital problems, the Congers are always on edge with each other.

One night, a classmate of Elizabeth’s stumbles back into town, also unable or unwilling to speak. The local constabulary can find no evidence of an abduction or any other crime even though her father keeps pressing for a full investigation. Later, a second girl goes missing, lured to a remote cave by Elizabeth who is answering to another entity that has entered her head.

Elizabeth has been visiting a cave that is believed to only be legend. The cave is located along the cliff and is very hard to get to. There, she has found the skeleton of a young girl murdered 100 years before. The spirit of that girl speaks to Elizabeth through a Ouija board and takes control of her mind and body at night. She goes to the cave and stages tea parties with her captive, a dead cat, and the dead girl.

A third child, an eight year old boy, goes missing a few days later and the residents of Port Arbello are quite worried. The boy, like the girl, was lured to the cave by Elizabeth and forced to participate in the macabre ritual.

Meanwhile, young Sarah – who has been witness to many of Elizabeth’s crimes – is growing more agitated and acting out. Elizabeth’s activities go unnoticed as the Congers deal with their daughter, her school, and the school psychologist. Sarah becomes a suspect in the disappearances even though the police concede she is too small to have overpowered a teenage girl.

Events come to a head when a third kid goes missing. This time, it is the teenage son of the Congers’ new neighbors. Elizabeth eventually kills all of the kids she has imprisoned in the remote cave and manages to frame Sarah for the crimes when Sarah returns from the cave carrying a dismembered arm. Sarah is sent to a sanitarium while Elizabeth and her parents try to resume a somewhat normal life. The bodies of the missing kids are not found for many years until construction of apartments leads the sheriff to the remote cavern and the skeletal remains of four children.

Suffer the Children was John Saul’s first novel and sold more than a million copies. In the wake of the success of The Exorcist, books featuring young girls possessed or driven to evil took off in popularity. Witness the success of Audrey Rose and other titles like it. Saul’s manuscript was timely in its submission.

It also set a pattern for plotting that Saul would use over and over again throughout his career which has now apparently ended. He starts with a prologue taking place 100 years before where a child is either the victim of a crime or is the doer of a crime. Then that spirit is awakened and haunts or helps a child or children in the present. Not all his books are like this. But most follow this same format.

Suffer the Children succeeds on several levels. First and foremost, it is atmospheric. The remote, hidden cave and the ghastly scenes Elizabeth plays out are brilliantly written and absolutely creepy. The candle-lit macabre tea parties with Elizabeth’s rantings succeed in creeping out the reader.

The tension in the novel is well-developed. Saul usually develops his characters only to the point of making them interesting enough to the reader for the plot to work. There are no extensive backstories – al a Stephen King. But Saul goes above and beyond in developing his characters in Suffer the Children with Jack and Rose Conger. The tension in their marriage, their growing anxiety over Sarah’s increasingly bizarre behavior, their worry about the Conger curse, Jack’s affair with his secretary and their feelings of inadequacy as parents all serve to keep the tension high in Suffer the Children.

Saul falls short in what I believe to be an essential element of great horror: What was the nature of the evil? Although parts of the story are told from Elizabeth’s point of view, we are never really in her head. What drove her to do what she did? Was there an evil spirit, Beth, who contacted her through the Ouija board? Did finding the cave and the body of the dead girl lead to the possession? Or, was she just acting out the Conger curse because she had to be the perfect daughter in a home riddled with tension? Saul never lets us know exactly.

The actions and reactions of some of the characters are rather unbelievable. Why would Rose stay with and continue to love a man who inexplicably beat his daughter so badly that she was traumatized to the point of not talking? Why would Elizabeth, aware of her father’s crimes against her sister, continue to love and cherish a father who did that? Why would a chief of police continue a close friendship with that sort of person? None of that really makes sense, but is essential for Saul’s plot to work. A plot relying on implausible behavior is going to be weak.

Along that same point, nobody even has a private moral objection to Jack’s crime. Nobody privately thinks he is a drunken lout devoid of morality. Worse, people like his secretary and the chief of police tell him what he did wasn’t so bad because he didn’t rape her! If I knew someone like this, if I was force by business or decorum to be polite, I would. But my private feelings would be of loathing.

Why was Jack not arrested for his crime against his daughter? One might reason it was a different decade with different values, but I don’t buy it. Child abuse was child abuse in the 1970s. He got drunk and beat his daughter badly. He obviously did some serious harm to her psyche. It is clear that she was rape tested. Yet he is allowed to go on with his life like he was the perfect father. It just doesn’t work in real life or in fiction. It’s too implausible.

These shortcomings can all be explained by the fact that Saul was a young writer and this was his first novel. He got much better over the next several books with more believable character actions and reactions and more clearly defined evil. While Suffer the Children is not great horror, it is good horror carried by some excellent writing. It was good enough to establish John Saul as one of the top authors of horror fiction for four decades and worth the time spent reading.

The Legend of Huma: Dragonlance Heroes, Vol. 1 By Richard Knaak

The Legend of Huma: Dragonlance Heroes, Vol. 1
By Richard Knaak
Copyright 1987

From Wikipedia:

The book narrates the adventures of Huma Dragonbane, a Knight of the Crown, his meeting with Kaz the Minotaur, the discovering of the dragonlances, and the defeat of Takhisis during the Third Dragon Wars.

Huma and the rest of his unit patrol through a desolate village. Huma's commander, Rennard, orders the investigation of the nearby woods due to a rumor of goblin activity. During the ensuing confrontation Huma is separated from his unit. While searching for his comrades he comes across goblins tormenting a captive, the minotaur Kaz. After saving Kaz, Huma strikes up an unlikely friendship with the minotaur and later with a silver dragon before being reunited with the Knights.

Once back at headquarters, they encounter a battle between the forces of Paladine and the forces of Takhisis. Huma is struck in the battle and loses consciousness. He awakens in an infirmary being tended by a woman who introduces herself as Gwyneth. Huma is appointed captain of the watch, and encounters his old friend, Magius, a powerful magic user.

Magius tells Huma to trust him, but has to leave while Huma returns to the knights' encampment. The knights are engulfed in a battle with the forces of Takhisis and Huma and Kaz are thrown into a magical darkness. Magius leads Huma and Kaz through the battle to his Citadel, but later prevents them from leaving. Magius tells Huma that he is a renegade mage that took the test in the Tower of High Sorcery.

The Citadel is discovered by Galan Dracos and comes under attack by the forces of Takhisis. Magius tells Huma that a mountain represented by a tapestry in the Citadel is important and that Huma should journey into Ergoth toward this mountain. Huma and Kaz flee the Citadel.

Huma and Kaz are separated. Huma fights off dreadwolves and warriors and becomes lost in the forests of Ergoth. He is helped by an Ergothian commander who brings him to the Ergothian camp. The Ergothians tell Huma that the lands around Ergoth have been ravaged by the plague. While the camp is traveling Huma comes upon a ruins of a town and is captured by servants of Morgion. The Ergothians rescue Huma who then encounters Magius, and the two escape into the night.

Magius and Huma come across the knight Bouron who is attached to an outpost of the Knights of Solamnia. Bouron and his commander Taggin welcome Huma. Taggin captures Kaz and puts him on trial. Taggin releases Kaz to Huma and allows Huma to continue on his journey to the mountains accompanied by a retinue of knights.

Magius, Kaz and Huma traverse the paths in the mountains and Huma is separated from the others. Huma is led to a temple built into the side of the mountain and encounters Gwyeneth. Gwyeneth tells Huma that he will face challenges before he can claim the prize that he has come for. Huma enters the mountain and faces Wyrmfather, an ancient, serpentine dragon. Huma hides in Wyrmfather's treasure room, discovering an evil magical sword called the Sword of Tears. Huma kills Wyrmfather with the Sword of Tears and is teleported through a magical mirror in the treasure room to Solomnia.

Huma returns to Vingaard Keep to find that the head of the knights, Grand Master Trake, has died. Huma is to attend a meeting that will determine whether Bennett, Trake's nephew or Lord Oswald, the High Warrior and Huma's mentor, will become the next Grand Master. During the meeting Rennard tells everyone that Oswald has become mysteriously ill. At night Huma discovers the guards near Lord Oswald have been put into a magical sleep, then encounters Rennard dressed as a servant of Morgion, trying to poison Lord Oswald. Huma and Rennard fight, but Rennard escapes. Lord Oswald thanks Huma for his help and sends him back to the mountains of Ergoth. Huma encounters Rennard inciting villagers to violence. The two fight until Rennard is mortally wounded. Huma is then teleported back to Wyrmfather's treasure room.

Huma finds the Sword of Tears, lying among the treasure. He takes it with him and looks for an exit from the mountain. Huma encounters Gilean, a grey clad mystic, who tells him to leave the sword behind. Huma struggles for control as the sword tries to control his mind, eventually prevailing, discarding the sword. Huma is granted access to the workshop of Duncan Ironweaver.

Duncan tells Huma that he is the creator of the Dragonlance and allows him to pass into a room where Huma has a vision of the knightly, benevolent god Paladine, on a platinum dragon. Paladine hands Huma the Dragonlance.

Huma exits the chamber and finds Gwyeneth, who tells him that Kaz and Magius are nearby. Huma finds Kaz and Magius and with the help of a silver dragon that Gwyeneth sent for, they are able to prepare the lances for transport to Vingaard Keep.

En route to Vingaard the group is attacked by Crynus and Char. Huma and the silver dragon kill Char and Crynus is defeated with the help of Kaz and the silver dragon. Warriors of Takhisis attempt to steal the lances, but are prevented from doing so by Kaz. Magius is captured and taken back to Galan Dracos.

Huma rejoins the knights to find that there are many Dragonlances already there. He finds Duncan Ironweaver, who tells him he had many. Many good dragons show up and are fitted with the new lances, and go into battle against the evil dragons of Takhisis.

This entry in the Dragonlance canon is held in high regard by fans of the series. I enjoyed reading it. But I thought the characters were flat and the plot somewhat episodic.

There were many exciting scenes and the battle scenes were well written and fun to read. But between the battles, there were few revelations, few insights, and little introspection on the part of Huma. This is when character development happens. This is where you make the character interesting, sympathetic, and compelling. Knaak fell a little short of that. Huma was thin.

He had honor. He was all about the honor. Why? Just because he was a Knight of Solomnia? As Knaak reveals, knights are capable of scheming and duplicity. What set Huma apart? What made his honor flawless? We never learn.

Huma’s friendship with Magius is another undeveloped aspect of the character development. Were they just kids who were close friends? Did they face adversity together as children? Did one help the other as children? What forged this bond that led to Huma’s trust in Magius who seemingly had gray morals? Again, that was left on the table.

I loved Kaz the Minotaur. This character will appear again in the Dragonlance saga and have his own novel. Kaz defines what it is to be a minotaur. He’s warlike, aggressive, and hot tempered. But minotaurs are also about honor, like the Knights. Knaak’s treatment of Kaz and the minotaur race was fantastic.

Overall, Knaak’s development of the Knights of Solomnia of old – those knights so revered by Sturm in the Chronicles – was also masterful. This is their first appearance in novelization and given Weis and Hickman’s background on them, had to be handled carefully, lest they become a caricature of moral perfection, or worse, a politically scheming group of soldiers that was less than the honorable warriors of legend.

The dragons in The Legend of Huma were charming and again, handled well by Knaak based on the legend developed by Weis and Hickman. Gwyneth is a charming, but tragic creature. She is a true dragon in her fierceness in battle. She is a kind, loving woman in human form and Huma’s legend is defined by her.

Finally, I give credit to Knaak for an ending fitting for a legend. Huma’s death was masterfully crafted. Not lugubrious, not melodramatic, but heroic and sad. This is the easiest point for an author to trip up, getting caught up in his need to flex his writing chops. It’s also the easiest way to ruin a good story, making the reader gag on drama. Huma’s end was a fitting end to a knight whose legend would survive the cataclysm.

My evaluation is based on a comparison to the Chronicles and Legends written by Weis and Hickman. Perhaps that is an unfair standard, given that Weis and Hickman were the creators of the Dragonlance world and were allowed to make their own rules, set their own parameters, and define the world. Knaak works within those definitions. But with the thin characters, it falls short of the tales of the earlier novels who had fantastic, well developed characters who made the stories work.

Heart Shaped Box By Joe Hill

Heart Shaped Box
By Joe Hill
Copyright 2007

Judas Coyne is an aging, washed up rock star living in relative comfort on a New York farm with his goth girlfriend, MaryBeth. Judas has a passion for the macabre and morbid. One day, his assistant points out an auction site where a dead man’s suit is being auctioned off. The suit comes with its very own ghost.

Judas purchases the suit and it arrives in a heart-shaped box. After its arrival, bad things start happening around Jude. One evening, he sees an old man wearing the suit sitting in his hallway, watching him. A few days later, his assistant flees the home, vowing never to return. He has contacted the seller to get information about the suit and did not like the answer.

Jude learns that the suit belongs to the step-father of a former girlfriend of Jude’s who killed herself shortly after Jude ditched her. Anna’s half sister set Jude up to buy the suit so the ghost could avenge his step-daughter’s death.

When the ghost nearly makes Jude kill MaryBeth, they flee their New York farm and head to Florida to see Anna’s half-sister and make her take back her ghost. They take with them their two dogs who are able to keep the ghost at bay. When they arrive, They learn the family’s sinister secret and the real nature of Anna’s death. They are forced to flee after the half-sister’s daughter shoots Jude. They head for Jude’s father’s home in Louisiana where he lays dying of cancer.

Once there, the ghost catches up with them. With the dogs now dead, Jude and Anna are at the mercy of the ghost. However, Anna’s spirit returns through MaryBeth and she is able to vanquish her evil step-father. Jude and MaryBeth marry and have Anna’s step-sister arrested for crimes related to her sister’s death. A few years later, Anna’s niece comes to visit Jude and Anna and they assist her in moving on with her life.

For a first novel, Heart-Shaped Box is outstanding. Well plotted, well paced, and well developed characters are all there. Joe Hill is his father’s child.

Anti-heroes are hard to write well. Judas Coyne is certainly an anti-hero. He’s cold, uncaring, and dismissive of others. While not entirely self-centered, he will usually indulge his own desires before the feelings of others. Hill takes him through the entire character arc. As those around him become threatened because of his indulgence in his macabre hobby, he comes to care for them more. Hill makes him more sympathetic with the abusive father. In the end, Coyne is the consummate husband who cares about his ex-girlfriend’s niece.

The novel moves along quite nicely. The geography is fairly expansive. Hill balances the movement nicely. He does not bog us down in the minutia of the trip, yet he doesn’t cheat by beaming his characters from location to location.

The ghost is scary enough. I did not like the military angle. It humanized him just a little more than I liked. A more ominous or spiritual tie to mesmerism would have served to make the character more sinister.

My chief complaint about Heart-Shaped Box is the denouement. It is entirely too long and mostly unnecessary. I suppose it was to serve to bring Judas’ character arc to where Hill wanted it. It mostly failed. There was no connection to the little girl that shot him several years before. She just shows up without any real reason or attachment to Jude.

It could have ended with Judas and MaryBeth returning to their farm to live in domestic harmony and simplicity. That would have just as well served to let the reader know that Jude was a changed man.

Heart-Shaped Box is a solid horror novel and an outstanding kickoff for the career of Joe Hill. While it is simpler than his later works such as The Fireman and Horns, it is better. The plot is better. The characters are better. And the story is more interesting.

Love and War: Dragonlance Tales, Vol. 3

Love and War: Dragonlance Tales, Vol. 3
Edited by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Copyright 1987

A Good Knight's Tale by Harold K. Bakst
A Knight of Solomnia tells a scribe a tale about how two intertwined trees came to grow together. A protective father tried to shield his daughter from prospective beaus by moving her deep into the forest. Instead, she found something new and different to love.

This read very much like a child’s fairy tale – and a good one. Many of the better Dragonlance short stories read that way.

A Painter's Vision by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel
A beautiful bar maid marries a talented – but poor painter. The couple comes across a bronze dragon and befriends it when the painter paints its portrait. Years later, the painter dies in a house fire. The widow is grief stricken and takes up painting portrait after portrait of her late husband. The bronze dragon checks in on her from time to time over the years and finally, beholds her last and greatest work.

This was one of the finest Dragonlance short stories written by the authors who are the best at it outside of Weiss and Hickman themselves. Poignant while not being sappy, this story hits all the right notes.

Hunting Destiny by Nick O’Donohoe
This is the backstory for the White Stag. We find out that he is a jilted lover doomed to a fate of living over and over again to be hunted. He, along with the hunters who are also doomed for abandoning their posts generations ago, find a way to redemption.

This story was all over the place and was hard to follow. The Stag itself was quite confusing. Was a hero? An anti-hero? A villain? A really weak effort.

Hide and Go Seek by Nancy Varian Berberick
Tas is taken prisoner by a band of hobgoblins. His fellow prisoner notes the confidence with which Tas carries himself as he taunts their captors, even in the face of certain death. Tas is confident that his friends will come to their rescue. Eventually, Tanis and the others pull off a daring rescue.

Good action story with no subtext or distractions. This is the kind of bubblegum fantasy I enjoy most when I read Dragonlance.

By The Measure by Richard A. Knaack
The Solamnic Knight, Garrick, is trapped behind enemy lines during the war of the lance. As the Knights organization becomes increasingly political, he fights by the old standard of the code and the measure.

Good swords and sorcery stuff. Fantasy junkfood to satisfy.

The Exiles by Paul B. Thompson and Tonya Cook
A young Sturm Brightblade, his mother, and their maid are forced to flee Solomnia after a peasant uprising. They take to the sea to sail for a new home. They are taken prisoner by a vampire creature and must fight for their lives.

A great backstory for Sturm Brightblade. It gives his character new depth as a melancholy warrior.

Heart Of Goldmoon by Laura Hickman and Kate Novak
Riverwind, a pauper-son of a pauper of the Que-Shu tribe is one of many men competing to escort Goldmoon, the princess of the Que-Shu, to the temple of the new gods to visit her ancestors and learn from them. But Riverwind and his father worship the old gods, making him a heretic. He bests the competition and is one of two men to accompany Goldmoon. There, he and she both learn the nature of treachery and the nature of the new gods as well as the old ones.

This was a fantastic story! These authors capture these two already established characters wonderfully and provide a tremendous backstory hinted at in the original trilogy.

Raistlin's Daughter by Margaret Weiss and Dezra Despain
The legend of Raistlin’s daughter. A strange woman enters an inn where Caramon and Raistlin are having supper. She is molested by some of the locals and the twins come to her defense. She casts a strange spell over Raistlin and there is only one way he can save himself and her.

This story received top billing on the cover of the book. But it is not nearly as good as some of the others.

Silver and Steel by Kevin Randle
This is the tale of Huma’s final battle with the forces of the Dark Queen.

The author really overdid it with the blood and gore. Not that the story is particularly graphic. It’s just that he says over and over again in various ways, there was lots of blood and gore.

From the Yearning for War and War's End by Michael Williams
An account of the siege of Palanthas from a young knight of Solamnia as he writes his brother from the infirmary. He compares the attitudes toward battle and war between the foot soldiers who do the grunt work and the knights who lead.

The prose of this story was certainly different from the other Dragonlance stories I’ve read. It was much more literary and highbrow. A thoroughly enjoyable story.

Night Chills By Dean Koontz

Night Chills
By Dean Koontz
Copyright 1976

Paul Annendale takes his children, Mark and Rya, camping near the small, New England town of Black Water. Little does he – or the residents of Black Water – know that the town has been brainwashed by an evil corporate mastermind as a test case for eventual world domination.

Scientist Ogden Salsbury and millionaire Leonard Dawson have concocted a scheme to pollute the town’s water supply with a serum that will make the residents particularly susceptible to subliminal advertising. Then, using various media purchased by a dummy corporation, inculcate the residents with subliminal suggestions through advertising and messages inserted in movies, opening their mind to absolute control using simple keywords.

Young Mark stumbles onto Salsbury toying with one of the town’s residents and pays the price. Paul, his girlfriend and her father search the town for Mark and learn the horrible secret of Salsbury’s domination. Untainted by exposure to the poisoned water, they are the only ones left in Black Water that can fight the evil.

This was an early entry by Dean Koontz and it is strongly plotted. It moves along quite nicely and has a little love story as a subplot. Koontz certainly can tell a story and his use of flashback to explain the development of the serum and the program to dominate the world is particularly effective.

What stands out strongly in this book is the erotica. This has always been a Koontz strength and what sets him apart from most other writers in the horror genre. It is entirely sadistic with Ogden Salsbury either dominating or thinking about dominating women sexually with his mind control technique.

I’ve read reviews – mostly by women – who feel this is gratuitous and unnecessary sexploitation in the novel. I disagree wholeheartedly. It establishes the effectiveness of Salsbury’s programming. It shows the reader just how strong and effective it is. Without these two or three scenes, the novel would have been rather flat and dull.

The characters are a bit thin. But they do reflect a writer still honing his craft. Paul is well developed as the pining widower looking to move on with his life with a new woman. But Ogden Salsbury is just a bit cartoonish. He really lacks complexity. All we know is that he has mommy issues and horrible fear and hatred of women. Koontz doesn’t give us much more than that. But it’s enough to make this short novel work.

This is one of the earliest Koontz novels I’ve read and, to my knowledge, this is the first use of a frequent Koontz villain – the evil corporation. Koontz employs this device again and again in many books with varying results. It worked well in the novel, Midnight. Here, it works on a superficial level as a vehicle for a mad villain. Again, we are talking about a fairly short novel. So, it only takes the bare essential elements to make it work.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Dean Koontz. I enjoy his early work much, much more than his later stuff. He’s always been a bit of a novel factory. But, in his later work, the heroes were all great overachievers and there was always a dog. I like dogs well enough. But one dog novel is enough for anyone.

That said, Night Chills is a work by a young author who was not yet trapped in a formula or recycling characters. It is thin and short. But sometimes, that can be fun and Night Chills was an easy, fun read.

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol 5 The Eye of the Sybil and Other Classics By Philip K. Dick

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol 5
The Eye of the Sybil and Other Classics
By Philip K. Dick

Introduction by Thomas M. Disch
Author Thomas Disch remarks that there are writers that readers read and there are readers writers read. While Philip K. Dick’s stories got lost in time for a while, they have returned and a new generation is discovering them.

The Little Black Box
Two proponents of the religion known as Mercerism are harassed by a state department bent on wiping out the nascent religion as it grows in popularity through an Empathy Box that allows his followers to experience their savior’s torment as stones are hurled at his as he walks through the desert.

Philip K. Dick expands upon the dystopian religion he introduced in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. We get a better idea of how it developed in its early days and how Empathy Boxes were once contraband. Superb short story with interesting characters and a well-paced plot.

The War with the Fnools
Government agencies are at war with an alien race trying to invade the earth. The Fnools try to blend in by duplicating humans in every day occupations. Their new gig is as real estate salesmen. However, Fnools are easy to spot because they are only two foot tall. However, when a captured Fnool takes a drag off a cigarette, he doubles in size. He adds another two feet when he has a swig of whiskey. Now, at six foot tall, he sneaks into the agency’s bomb shelter where a secretary is hiding. He returns from there eight feet tall. Mankind might have a battle on its hands if the Fnools decide to take up vices.

This alien invasions story was a little light and silly for me. It’s obvious that, for whatever reason, Dick was trying to keep it just that way and make the end just a bit risqué. There was nothing wrong in the writing. Just not my kind of story.

Precious Artifact
Earth is devastated after an interplanetary war and human terraformers are sent to Mars to prepare the planet for human habitation. The most successful of the terraformers, Mitt Biskle, wants to return to Earth. A psychologist tries to discourage him, reminding him that his family is en route from Earth to join him on Mars. He travels to Earth and immediately becomes suspicious that human beings are all but gone from the planet and that their enemy, The Proxima.

This is the heavy, meaty science fiction that Dick produces so well in his short fiction. Complex and full of emotion, Precious Artifact delivers an emotional climax with a wonderful twist.

Retreat Syndrome
Did John Cuppertino murder his wife as he believes? Or is she fine and living in Los Angeles as his psychologist tells him? Is he living in San Jose and working at a middle management job? Or is he in a prison on Ganymede? Is his mind being manipulated by an unscrupulous government and/or an unscrupulous corporation? Or is he insane?

Dick wrote many of these stories where false memories are implanted or created to delude the hero of the story. This one is okay, but falls just a bit short of creating a mood of desperation on John Cuppertino’s part.

A Terran Odyssey
This tells the story of several members of a post-nuclear war society where man and animals have mutated into strange beings with curious habits. The tales of a trap maker, a little girl with her brother living inside her and a disc jockey interweve.

As we see Dick’s short stories growing longer as he progresses with age and development, they become increasingly intricate. This tale is one of his most intricate short stories. The sparse character development actually serves to increase the dystopian feel. Wonderfully told from multiple points of view, the story eventually ends where we knew it needed to.

A Terran Odyssey was not published in Dick’s lifetime. It became part of his novel, Dr. Bloodmoney.

Your Appointment Will be Yesterday
Time flows backwards for many in the future thanks to a nifty little invention. But when a saboteur threatens to put time in the forward flow again, agents have to act today (which is yesterday) to prevent it to preserve their way of life.

It’s an inventive premise but a wholly unsatisfying story with too many plot holes to overlook even in a short story.

Holy Quarrel
A computer repairman is awakened by military intelligence. He is summoned to work on the Genux-B computer that monitors military movements all over the world to determine the likelihood of war. The computer believes the country is at war and that the enemy is in northern California. The culprit is an evil gumball vendor and his products.

Perhaps an argument against computerization is made here in the early days of computerization. There was a strong fear of computers and computer errors when they first entered the mainstream. The gumball angle is not as stupid as it sounds.

A Game of Unchance
A Mars settlement is visited by an interstellar travelling amusement show. They offer games of chance that offer prizes of small dolls. A local man figures out how to activate the dolls and bring them to life, unleashing a menace upon the planet and perhaps the galaxy.

This is the old fashioned science fiction that I like and few write it as well as Dick.

Not By Its Cover
Books, bound in Wub fur are defective. The type changes to reflect a belief in life unending. The publisher is most distressed that the books they are publishing with these very expensive covers and binding are defective. They search for clues as to who is changing the text and how it is being done.

Dick revisits his first ever short story, Therein Lies the Wub. Wubs, creatures of Mars, seem like primitive creatures. But there fur has properties unseen and heretofore unobserved. A thoroughly enjoyable story.

Return Match
A killer pinball machine stalks a detective who raided a casino where it was housed. Aliens brought it to earth and put it in their casino to play a dirty trick on earthlings.

I love the premise and the straight-forward science fiction. But this story is clumsy and falls flat. I think Dick was trying for commentary on impulse and gambling. It didn’t work.

Faith of our Fathers
In a future world where the communists rule the globe, a young party official purchases what he thinks is snuff from a street vendor. It is actually a drug that allows him to see the truth. He finds out that the party leader is not what he seems. He is much, much more.

Dark and heavy story telling from Dick in this masterpiece. Dick often dabbles in alternative futures with government and culture. This is a superb example. This particular story was published in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions and was one of the best in that legendary collection.

The Story to End All Stories for Harlan Ellison’s Anthology Dangerous Visions
A woman copulates with a mutant animal in a post-nuclear war zoo and gives birth to another mutant. She is forced to fight another woman for possession of it.

This story might have totaled 500 words and I suspect that it was some sort of inside joke between Dick and Harlan Ellison

The Electric Ant
A man goes to the hospital following the amputation of his hand. There, he learns that he is not really a man, but a synthetic human. To learn the nature of himself and the fabric of time, he begins to tamper with his memory systems and discovers who and what is real and who is not. Others make the same discovery.

This is a subject explored in the subtext of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. What does it mean to be human? In that story, there was external conflict. In this story, the conflict is all internal when the android is tempted over and over to push the limits of his experiments to the brink. A masterfully told and thoroughly enjoyable tale.

Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked
Cadbury works all day gnawing on trees and is paid in blue poker chips. His wife wants him to work harder and earn white poker chips. He tosses out a message in a bottle and a female beaver responds. He goes to meet her and finds out the grass is not greener.

This story is a wee bit more than sexist. It is really anti-woman. All of the woman are exploitive and manipulative. I’m not a fan of intelligent animal stories and did not find this one exceptional enough to enjoy.

A Little Something for Us Tempunauts
Three time travelers return to their time and earth. Except that it’s not their time. It is about a week in the future – far from their destination of more than 100 years in the future. In reality, they have just died and will attend their own funerals. They are trapped in a time loop that keeps them repeating this same pattern over and over again. They strive to break it.

The mysteries and perils of time travel are oft explored in science fiction. Dick revives an frequently used trope and makes it work nicely.

The Pre-Persons
In a dystopian society where scarcity of resources is a reality, abortion is not just used on the unborn as a means of population control. Parents can now have their children aborted up to the age of 12 when the government has determined they have a soul. Two men and two boys resist.

This is a powerful story and leaves little doubt as to where Philip K. Dick stood on the issue of abortion.

The Eye of the Sibyl
Sybils are people who foretell events and have attachments to past consciences. A man, aptly named Philos Dicktos, simultaneously lives in the time of Julius Caesar and John Kennedy and foretells the assassination of both.

This story is confusing with its parallel narratives and uneasy transitions between those two narratives. The story is obviously inspired by Dick’s “spiritual” experience in 1974 and what one might describe as a breakdown.

The Day Mr. Computer Fell out of its Tree
A lovelorn computer creates a topsy turvy world when it cannot find someone to love. The leaders of the world set out to find a woman who lives in the earth and listens to radio soap operas so that she might show the computer some love.

This represents another attempt by Dick to write light, comical science fiction. I hate it.

The Exit Door Leads In
Bob Bibleman goes out for lunch and ends up “recruited” to go to college. There, while learning about philosophy, he is tested on basic morality, leadership, and initiative.

Dick’s later fiction is much less plot oriented and more philosophy oriented. This particular story was written for a Rolling Stone publication for colleges upon request.

Chains of Air, Web of Aether
A man living on a remote, frozen world reluctantly enters into a relationship with his neighbor who has a horrible disease. He cares for her during her treatment and recovery, all the while denying to himself that he cares about her.

There is a lot of emotion in this story that is not typically found in Dick stories. PKD was a bizarre dude and didn’t really convey a great depth of human feeling in his stories. However, the reader can easily identify with the hero of this story and his mixed emotions.

Strange Memories of Death
A man recounts how his apartment building went condo and one of the tenants – and eccentric old woman – was forced to move out. He did not know her, but thinks about how life must be for her, being forced from the only home she’s known for years.

This is the first entirely non-genre fiction I’ve ever read by Philip K. Dick. I can’t help but feel he wrote it to work out some lingering guilt or other emotions. As such stories go, it was perfectly acceptable. Not my cup of tea.

I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
A man partially awakens from cryogenic sleep during a ten year space voyage. The ship’s computer, recognizing that the man will go insane if he is not mentally stimulated for ten years, constructs scenarios inside the man’s mind, drawing on memories. The memories awaken old guilts and hurts that destroy any chance of happiness when he finally arrives at his destination.

This was a disturbing story that was exceptionally told. It really lays bare how small, but pivotal deeds in our youth can deeply affect us in our adult life.

Rautavaara’s Case
Space debris strikes a ship and wipes out two members of the three person crew. The third person has her brain revived by aliens who are eager to study human behavior as she hallucinates. Meanwhile, Earth officials protest the abuse of their near-dead astronaut.

Deep religious issues are explored in this short story. How might one religion see the relationship another has with its deity? Also explored are the ethics of keeping alive a brain damaged person.

The Alien Mind
A cruel and heartless astronaut kills his pet cat when the cat sends his ship slightly off course and embarrasses him in front of an alien race. That race makes sure he pays for his cruelty.

It was an interesting topic to approach in a science fiction setting. However, the story itself fell flat with a vanilla ending.

Mister Slaughter By Robert R. McCammon

Mister Slaughter
By Robert R. McCammon
Copyright 2010

The adventures of Matthew Corbett continue in the third installment in Robert McCammon’s remarkable and thoroughly enjoyable series. Instead of solving mysteries, Matthew is hired security to escort a mass murderer to justice.

In the wake of his adventures in The Queen of Bedlam, Matthew is basking in his new found celebrity. He’s the toast of the town for unmasking The Masker. He dresses like a dandy and likes to be seen in New York’s trendiest taverns. But his budget is suffering for it.

A chance find of lots of cash would seem to be the answer to Matthew’s budgetary woes. Before he can put the money to work, however, he and Hudson Greathouse are hired and dispatched to the Bedlam Asylum to pick up Tyranthus Slaughter – a mass killer in London and a notorious highwayman in the New World. They are to escort him to New York where he will be shipped to London to meet justice and the hangman.

Matthew and Greathouse arrive at the asylum and take Slaughter into custody. However, greed waylays them and allows Slaughter to escape. Matthew and Greathouse barely survive and Greathouse is badly injured. They are rescued by some local Indians. One of the Indians, who spent a great deal of time in Europe, agrees to help Matthew track his quarry.

Slaughter proves to be the most diabolical being Matthew has ever encountered. He kills without compunction or motive on his way to meet his employer – an agent for the notorious Professor Fell who has placed a death mark on Corbett and Greathouse. Matthew is riddled with guilt as he and Walker In Two Worlds track Slaughter across the countryside in a game of cat and mouse. The bodies pile up and Matthew knows that, had he divulged his acquisition of wealth to Greathouse before Slaughter led them astray, these deaths would have been avoided.

Matthew finally catches up to Slaughter at a remote hog farm, renown for their fantastic sausage. There, he learns a great deal about the enigmatic Professor Fell. Before he can catch Slaughter, however, he escapes and sets out to carry out another murder assignment. The target is someone very close to Matthew.

Matthew pursues him and the two meet. When the chips are down, Matthew finds an unlikely ally and Slaughter meets his end. He returns to the Indian reservation to find Greathouse nearly healed and ready to return to New York.

In earlier reviews of Speaks the Nightbird and The Queen of Bedlam, I professed and indifference to mystery stories, but my enjoyment of those two novels which were indeed complex mysteries. This book was a cat and mouse chase story. I normally revel in chase stories like Mine and Gone South by McCammon. However, I did not enjoy this book as much as I did the earlier works.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the reading. McCammon has me hooked on Matthew Corbett. The deliciously morbid twist near the end was delightful. McCammon’s characters were as interesting as ever. The book suffered no major defect and is beloved by Corbett fans and fans of McCammon.

I didn’t find this chase story as compelling reading as the mysteries. All in all, the events in the chase were pretty predictable except for the aforementioned twist. Matthew’s mysterious ally was obvious. The fight scenes were pedestrian. I like Matthew more for his wits than his brawn.

This was also, by far, the shortest of the Matthew Corbett novels. It was not the immersive experience the two prior books were. I love a long, deep novel with rich characters, interweaved subplots, and compelling action. Of course, Corbett and Greathouse are already developed by the earlier novels and McCammon does a fine job with Walker In Two Worlds. But there were no subplots. The chase was straight forward.

My minor gripes aside, this was a fine entry in the Corbett series and an enjoyable read. It is not as dense and layered as the earlier entries, but shows another side of Corbett – the Matthew Corbett tried by physical challenges rather than mental.

The Stars, Like Dust By Isaac Asimov

The Stars, Like Dust
By Isaac Asimov
Copyright 1951

Biron Farrill is a student on Earth, completing his college studies when he detects a bomb in his dorm room. He escapes, but is whisked away after a professor informs him that his father, a political dissident, has been murdered by the Tyranni who rule many star systems.

He is sent to Rhodia, one of Tyran’s conquered planets, to learn about a plot to overthrow Tyranni rule. He is betrayed by the Director of Rhodia and is forced to flee with the Director’s daughter, Artemisia and her uncle Gilbert. They travel to the planet Lingane to meet with dissidents there.

There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane (who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth), who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula — they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula.

The Tyranni spaceship stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about his daughter's and brother's well-being. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of Farrill discovering them until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula.

The Autarch believes that the planet is the rebellion world. However, there is no sign of life anywhere. When the Autarch and Farrill leave the spaceship to apparently set up a radio transmitter, Farrill faces the Autarch and accuses him of getting his father killed at the hands of the Tyranni. The Autarch affirms the accusation, to which Farrill adds that the Autarch feared his father's growing reputation. That is why he arranged Farrill's father's death.

In a fight, Farrill subdues the Autarch with help from the Autarch's aide, Tedor Rizzet, who reveals that he is ashamed of the Autarch for killing a great man like Farrill's father. Later, as Farrill and Rizzet try to explain everything to the rest of the crew they picked up from Lingane, the Tyranni fleet arrives and takes them prisoner. Aratap interrogates Farrill, Artemisia, Gillbret and Rizzet in order to ascertain the coordinates of the rebellion world but they do not know where it is. However, the Autarch reveals the coordinates to Aratap. Rizzet kills the Autarch with a blaster in anger.

While Aratap interrogates Farrill, Gillbret manages to escape to the engine room of the spaceship and short the hyperatomics. Farrill, realising the danger, manages to contact Aratap. The engines are repaired, but Gillbret is injured and later dies.

The space jump is made with the coordinates given to them by the late Autarch. However, they find a planetless system consisting only of a white-dwarf star. Aratap lets Farrill and the others go, believing that there is no rebellion world. Aratap makes it clear that he will never to be chosen as Director. Biron and Artemisia are allowed to marry.

It is eventually revealed that there is indeed a rebellion in the making, located on Rhodia itself. The Director is its leader; he deliberately took on the persona of a nervous and timid old man to throw off suspicion from himself and his planet.

It is further revealed that the Director, who possesses a collection of ancient documents, has searched for, and found, a document that will help a future empire-yet-to-be (likely Trantor) govern the galaxy. This document is ultimately revealed to be the United States Constitution.

The Stars, Like Dust works on a level not achieved by The Currents of Space or Pebble in the Sky. It does not try to be a complex spy thriller told in less than 200 pages. Nor does it get weighed down in heavy politics or distracting and ineffective subplots. The Stars, Like Dust is pure space opera loaded with shootouts, space trips, mysterious planets, and evil bad guys.

This is not, in and of itself, the definition of good science fiction. Subplots, intrigue, complex schemes and thick character development are all ingredients of great general fiction and genre fiction. But when an author tries and fails to effectively incorporate these elements into the story, the result is drudgery for the reader. When an author tries, and succeeds to tell a simple, but exciting, story, that’s reading gold.

This is not to say The Stars, Like Dust was a great story telling achievement. It had a couple serious flaws. The first was the introduction of a mysterious document Biron was supposed to secretly obtain on Earth that was so powerful it would help foment revolution. This is the book’s only subplot and mercifully, Asimov dismisses his own foolishness until near the end when the characters have an, “oh yeah, what about that?” moment.

That document is, of course, the U.S. Constitution. While I am as reverent of the Constitution and its principles as anyone, I hate to see it inserted into science fiction. I can’t help but remember William Shatner’s melodramatic reading of the Preamble in the Star Trek episode, The Omega Glory. That is a painful memory. This subplot didn’t need to be there.

Of course, there is also the dated sexism in the story. Biron’s love interest, Artemisia, is the consummate female lead in these pulp era science fiction stories. She is a bystander. She is a passive narrative voice. She has no active role. Today’s readers are a little more demanding of their heroines.

Asimov’s early works deliver for me just what I want them to: good stories that are well-paced and well told. Writers who cut their teeth on pulp magazines work hard to economize words and tell stories that move to economize on space. Asimov, like Bradbury, Matheson, Dick, and the other greats who emerged from this format, rank among the great story tellers and I love them!

Although it was the third written, The Stars, Like Dust is the first in the chronology of the Galactic Empire series that lies between Asimov's Robots series and Foundation series. It takes place centuries before the rise of Trantor as the rulers of the galaxy. The beauty of the Galactic Empire series is, it need not be read in chronological order by story or by publication date. The novels each stand on their own.

A Stir of Echoes By Richard Matheson

A Stir of Echoes
By Richard Matheson
Copyright 1958

Tom Wallace is a workaday, blue collar joe in 1950s suburbia. He has a lovely wife, a little boy, and a baby on the way. One evening, he attends a neighborhood party and brings along his oddball brother in law. Everything changes for him and his neighbors.

Tom, his wife, Anne, and her brother, Phil, attend a party held at their next door neighbor’s house. They attend to oblige them, but dread it because they throw dreadfully boring parties. Phil, a Berkley psych major, decides to inject some excitement into the party by hypnotizing someone. All turn down his offer until Tom agrees. Phil puts him under.

Everyone has a good laugh at Tom’s antics under hypnosis. Tom and Anne go home that night and Tom is unable to sleep. He goes to the kitchen and finds there a woman, dressed in black. Tom and Anne are discomfited by the specter and her frequent appearances put a strain on their marriage.

Tom begins to sense the feelings of people around him and eventually can read their thoughts. He learns of the amorous desires of one of his female neighbors for him. He also learns that his best buddy is cheating on his pregnant wife.

Slowly, Tom and Anne’s life and the lives of their neighbors descend into chaos. Husbands and wives try to kill each other. Tom predicts disasters and death. All the while, the specter of the woman in black demands Tom’s attention. He needs to identify her and find out what it is she wants.

With a little sleuthing and use of his new abilities, Tom learns that the woman is his next door neighbor – and landlord’s – sister in law who moved away with nary a goodbye to her neighbors. Tom figures out that she was murdered and he’s confident that he knows who killed her. But at just the wrong moment, his enhanced intuition fails him and the murderer turns out to be the unlikeliest of the suburbanites.

I love the works of Richard Matheson – his print work and his screenwork. The man is nothing short of brilliant and was a pioneer in the art of small screen writing and teleplays. With that said, A Stir of Echoes left me a little disappointed.

One thing that every reader of Richard Matheson knows is that you are going to get sparse prose. Matheson was an old pulp writer and pulp writers had to economize on words to get as much story as possible into as few words as he could manage. This takes real talent and few – if any – were as good at economizing words as Matheson. In A Stir of Echoes, he could have used a few more words.

There were too many characters and none of them were developed adequately. Matheson is not a writer of character studies, but his books and stories usually give you a well developed main character that the reader can root for. Not so in this book. Tom is sympathetic, but not someone I really rooted for. Both his virtues and character flaws were underplayed. He was flat.

The periphery characters came and went as was necessary for the story, but also were lifeless. A rogue babysitter kidnaps their child for no apparent reason. His amorous neighbor is amorous, but we don’t know why. His landlord doesn’t like him, but we don’t know why. The ghost should have been chilling, sympathetic, ominous, or something. She was little more than a device for the story.

What did stand out as good in A Stir of Echoes was the mystery and the two plot twists that came near the end. I’m not a reader of mysteries, but enjoy them when they are part of a good ghost story or other story of the supernatural. Matheson had me thinking, analyzing and guessing up until the end, and then blue all of my predictions out of the water with a well-developed and plausible twist. Even when he falls short on character development, count on Matheson to come through with a solid plot.

The subtext of A Stir of Echoes was not hard to discern, given the time it was written. Suburbs of the 1950s were seen as idyllic where nice white people worked at a factory, paid their bills, and led nice, white people lives free from strife and misfortune. Matheson showed that every neighborhood has some sort of dark undercurrent. That those days and places of Ozzie and Harriet were not always as idyllic as portrayed or as Baby Boomers remember them.

A Stir of Echoes was made into a movie in 1999 starring Kevin Bacon. This is a rare case of the movie being superior to the book. The movie better developed its characters and the script made the ghost story and the underlying murder much more ominous and creepy.

This book is a must read for any fan of Richard Matheson because, by virtue of the movie and its standing with fans of horror cinema, it is one of his better known and more popular titles. However, fans of the movie are going to be disappointed in the one dimensional prose and flat characters.