Reviewing The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman

I found this book because of Dungeons & Dragons Appendix N, which I know about thanks to Jeffro Johnson. He deserves a great deal of credit for drawing attention to these stories, so be sure to check him out as well.

The Old Gods Waken is the first novel following Silver John, whom Wellman had already written several short stories about. The story is about an Appalachian hillbilly and an American Indian facing down two English druids who were trying to raise the old god Baal in America. Appropriately for the setting, it starts off with a dispute over a property line.

In terms of plot, this is a classic adventure story in which the two heroes must overcome a variety of obstacles to rescue their friends from being sacrificed to a devil. They face several kinds of dangers, some relatively mundane and some outright supernatural. It’s a fun tale.

At least as much as the plot, though, I love the Silver John stories for the language. They are written in a backwoods Appalachian dialect that gives them a distinct flavor without ever becoming obtrusive or veering into mockery. If this were any other group of people (e.g. blacks, Hispanics, Arabs), Wellman would be celebrated for authentically capturing the voice of a people. But since they’re white, our “intelligentsia” are completely uninterested.

It's also fun watching two men face down Baal armed with, among other things, a medieval Christian prayer from Albertus Magnus.

It's a fun adventure story. It's nothing philosophically deep, but it's a good time, and, unlike most things published today, it's not spiritually toxic.

The book is somewhat difficult to get ahold of, although you might check here, if you’re really interested, you might take a look over here. (But I didn't tell you that, okay?)

Just to give you a sample, I'm going to include a couple of quotes from a scene where the two heroes are facing down a crowd of American Indian vampires called Raven Mockers.

John: "I don't rightly know if you're the meanest one in this crowd, but I reckon you're sure God the ugliest. Nobody can deny you that." And a little later: "Come ahead, and don't stop and tarry by the way. You're a-looking for trouble, and I've got a good lavish plenty of it for you, right here and now."

A lot of fun, I highly recommend. Go read 

Finishing my review of Year's Best Fantasy 3

"A Prayer for Captain La Hire" by Patrice E. Sarath - This is a story of four of the companions of Joan of Arc years after the war. It is based on real historical characters and facts about their life.

It is not just good, not just fantasy, it is a Christian story. I am stunned. It may be worth the entire rest of the slag heap to have found this. (Yes, it's not all been a slag heap, but much of it.)

"Origin of the Species" by James Van Pelt - Theoretically, this is a story about a young werewolf, but that's a paper-thin cover for a story about adolescence and romantic jealousy. For good measure, it has a nice helping of "this woman don't need no help from a stupid man" at the end.

Look, I don't mind symbolism and allegory, but I do mind the author standing over your shoulder the entire time pointing and saying, "It's a metaphor. Do you get it? It's a metaphor for [insert subject here]."

Again, a good fantasy story should take us out of our world into something strange and wonderful. This story, like a couple of others in this anthology, instead takes magic and makes it humdrum and everyday. It's just . . . *sigh*

"Tread Softly" by Brian Stableford - In England in the aftermath of World War I, a gravely-injured war medic finds a rare magical artifact that can influence dreams. This one appears to be corrupted, but he makes restoring it his mission in life. However, a series of disasters befall him and those around him and he ends up losing even that.

It's fantasy. It's not just an obvious metaphor for some other issue. It's even modern fantasy, and genuinely creative, which makes it a cut above at least half of this book.

But...

I hate the main character/narrator. He is solipsistic and self-righteous to an unbelievable degree. Possibly Stableford intended him to be unlikable, in which case, he succeeded, but I find it difficult to enjoy stories with such an unlikable main character.

For comparison, try to imagine the inside of Gollum's mind. That's about how slimy this guy feels.

Interesting premise. But, wow, what a horrible person the narrator is.

"How It Ended" by Darrell Schweitzer - A medieval lord and knight returned from the crusades is troubled by terrible dreams and discovers that his life is not what he thought it was.

At the start, I thought this was going to be "middle ages stupid, Christianity bad, crusades evil" ham-handed propaganda. We've certainly had some like that in this collection. I was mistaken. I feel a little troubled by the ending, but it's definitely not the cheap, stupid propaganda piece I had feared.

"Hide and Seek" by Nicholas Royle - A fairly short horror story. Horror, of the right variety, is a kind fantasy. Ok. The concept is a disturbing one. But for some reason, and maybe it was just my own mood, it just did not land for me. I see what he was aiming for, but it just didn't work. Maybe that was on my end, though.

"Death in Love" by R. Garcia y Robertson - It's hard to explain how obnoxious this is as a finish to the book. It took me a while to recognize it, but the main character is a hard Mary Sue. She is the ruler of an island keep guarding the straits to a sea which is an important trading zone. She is supposedly the demi-goddess of death, but that appears to be merely a title, as she has no supernatural capabilities. Everyone treats her, though, as if she is some mystical creature.

She is fantastically good at everything: She is a diplomat, a warrior, a doctor, a ruler, and great at all of them, and all men desire her. Also, literally everyone, including rulers of tribes she had only heard of three or four days ago, recognizes her on sight and respects her. Even if she was some marvelous being, this is not how the world works before modern communication methods.

The only reason this story is in this book is because it's childish feminist trash.

---

So, what's the verdict on this book as a whole?

It is a disaster. I count seven stories that are worthy of any kind of recognition. Seven out of twenty-nine. A few of the stories here are pure political poison. A lot of it is just stupid and boring. "Aren't I clever. It's a metaphor. Do you understand the metaphor?" Yes. You have all the subtlety of a two-year-old running around with a hammer.

There were a couple of bright spots. But it was like finding a diamond underneath an outhouse. You have to sort through a lot of excrement to get there.

It seriously makes me wonder how I didn't see how bad some other things published around the same time were. It's all managed by the same people. Much of it had to be the same dross.

Those people are not going to change. If we want better, we must look elsewhere, build elsewhere, and vigilantly keep them out.

As a final note, be sure to read A Prayer for Captain La Hire. It is excellent, and a gem among this trash heap.

Continuing review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - Part 4

 "Sam" by Donald Barr - A man finds himself fading out of existence after being fired from his job and forgotten.

Fantasy? Yes, shading into a weird kind of horror, but yes. Well-written? Yeah. Good story, creepy. Not political message fic.

Although it's not presented this way, it would be easy to tweak this into terrifying horror.

"Persian Eyes" by Tanith Lee - A high-ranking Roman in the imperial period finds a new slave girl much more than he bargained for, to his destruction.

I haven't read much Tanith Lee, but I've heard high praise of her. This is a) very good and b) actually fantasy, transporting me to another world both in terms of time frame and in terms of supernatural threats. Subtle and creepy. Very good.

"Travel Agency" by Ellen Klages - Very feminine. Very self-indulgent, self-insert. Barely qualifies at fantasy at all. Makes a metaphor literal at the very end. *le sigh*

Every single time.

"A Fable of Savior and Reptile" by Steven Popkes - A talking turtle (whose special qualities were not explained as far as I had read) finds and befriends Jesus as a child. He makes it very clear that Jesus is the son of Joseph by a shotgun wedding (crossbow wedding?). John the Baptist is a teenaged sadist. I quit because I see no reason to subject myself to further abuse.

Yes, you're very brave satirizing Christians, who are the target of the monsters in power. You're so very clever telling this from the perspective of a talking turtle.

Once again. This was the "best" of this year?

"Comrade Grandmother" - From the introduction, I was expecting this to be awful. I was expecting Mary-Sue feminist bullshit. I was pleasantly surprised.

This is a story of a woman trying desperately to defend her homeland from invaders and slowly selling herself to an ancient witch to do so. In many ways, it feels like a real fairy tale. It's not easy. It's not pretty. In some ways, it may have been a terrible idea.

The only thing that makes this a little annoying is that the homeland is communist Russia and the invaders are, of course, the evilest people in all history (history history story ory), the Nazis. But, to an ordinary Russian, it was still their home, and it was still an invading army, so I can't really blame them for that.

"Familiar" by China Mieville - An urban horror story. It's never made clear exactly how different this world is from our own. A small-time witch in London summons up a familiar. He soon finds it is not remotely what he expected and is costing him far more than he bargained for.

Fantasy? Check. Intriguing, in a gross and disturbing way? Check. The best point in its favor is that it genuinely has an old-world fairy tale kind of feel: Play around with dark powers and you are going to end up somewhere you very much don't want to be. 

I can't honestly say I liked it, but I also can't say it was poorly done.

"Honeydark" by Liz Williams - A man flees a high position in politics into anonymity in a small village. He finds both a safe haven and a terrible secret.

This feels like it's part of a larger story, like there's a novel or series of stories it's connected to. It's not that it's incomplete, but the scale of the implied background seems to say there's a lot more to this world and it's not a standalone story.

Is it fantasy? Yes. Is it poisonous political propaganda? No, or if so only a bit. It reminds me just a little bit of the story of The Wicker Man. No, I haven't seen it, but I know the basic plot.

I didn't love it, but it also didn't repel me. For this collection, that's a win.

---

There are six more stories (125 more pages) left, so my next update should be the last.

It's really sobering to realize this was 20 years ago and the trajectory has been only downhill since.

It's also sobering to realize that until fairly recently, although I didn't much of this stuff, I didn't recognize how it fit in terms of a larger picture.

The people who have done this to our storytelling are evil. Flat out, no sugarcoating, no excuses. These people are evil. If you are a sane, decent Christian, they hate everything that matters to you.

We can't accept this. We have to take our storytelling back.

Continuing review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - Part 3

"Social Dreaming of the Frin" by Ursula K. Le Guin - A quasi-sociological report on the people of the "plane" (which term is quite vague) of Frin who share one another's dreams. An actual fantasy story, and actually well-written.

There's no overt political messaging. If I didn't know previously know about it, I don't know if this would occur to me, but Le Guin was interested in Buddhism, and this does have significant Buddhist overtones. But it's not grotesque message-fic. It's a good story which also conveys the author's values. Even if I don't agree with those beliefs, I cannot say this is badly done.

"Five British Dinosaurs" by Michael Swanwick - I can't really call this a story. It's five separate tiny vignettes about dinosaurs. Some are fantasy, kind of. Some are just stories. There's barely enough in any one to actually call it a story. This seems more like a gimmick than fiction.

"The Green Word" by Jeffrey Ford - On the positive side, this is a fantasy story. On the negative side, this is ham-handed message fic. It is about mean, evil Christians in the middle ages persecuting wise, decent pagans. The pagan witch is a Mary Sue with unexplained fantastic physical abilities. The evil Christian king is literally named King Pious. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He is stupid, selfish, hypocritical.

I can read well-written stories by people I disagree with, even appreciate them. This is trash which a reader will only like if he already agrees with the message.

"The Comedian" by Steve Chapman - This is an actual fantasy story about a family with a variety of psychic talents. It's not bad. It's very character focused, in a way that to me, smells a little of someone who wishes he were writing "literary" fiction but has decided that it's easier to get published in genre.

Actually fantasy, not overtly offensive. On the high side for this book.

"The Pagodas of Ciboure" by M. Shayne Bell - A very sick little boy in France (apparently leukemia, although not named most of the story) goes with his mother to the countryside to recover. While there, he meets some magical creatures called pagodas who, legend says, have healing powers. They help him and he ends up helping them, and growing up to be someone quite important.

Really good, actually. Again, no political nonsense. Almost an old school fairy tale. This may be my favorite story so far.

"From the Cradle" by Gene Wolfe - A young man who works in a book shop becomes interested in a rare book that is for sale on consignment. Although he can only see a page or two at a time, he becomes fascinated by its stories, which turn out to be a trail of breadcrumbs leading to . . . something else.

An odd mix of fairy tale and science fiction. Wolfe doesn't provide a complete picture, but a series of dots, and trusts his reader to find the whole. I'm quite certain I missed some things the first time through and should re-read this.

Excellent story.

---

So, I am currently halfway through by page count and just over halfway through counting by stories. What's the score so far?

Out of 15 stories:

Stories that are not fantasy or only maybe fantasy if you squint at it the right way: 6

Stories that are toxic political propaganda (some overlap with previous): 4

Just plain good fantasy stories? 5

Was this the best short fantasy fiction of 2002? No. I'd bet my life no. If I could still find it, I'd bet I could find stories written by nobodies on the internet from that year that were far superior to most of those published here.

It's stunning to me now, to see how far things had fallen already 20 years ago, and I hadn't even noticed it. And, as far as major publishing houses and such go, it's only been downhill since.

We can't accept this, and we can't wait for someone else to fix it. We have to create and support the culture we want.

Speaking of, you might take a look at my own book: The Mayor of Christ Mountain.

Continuing the review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - part 2

So let's see what other wonders this book of "the best" fantasy stories of 2002 has for us.

"A Book by Its Cover" by P.D. Cacek - In Nazi Germany, shortly before the Holocaust begins in earnest, a Jewish bookshop owner finds his store, which the Nazis had raided and burned all his books, can turn people into a copy of their favorite book, from which state they can be recalled. He uses this to help Jews escape the e-e-e-evil Nazis.

I found this story annoying at first, but after a while, it was actually pretty funny. Once you've grasped that the event in question simply did not happen, the propaganda about it can be humorous. In this case, you have to accept that the Germans this boy knew, for no reason at all, became seized by an insane hatred. They are literally cartoonishly evil. The author does not have the main character's former friend, now Nazi, actually twirl his mustache while cackling maniacally, but he may as well have.

The only reason stories like this get by is because they are coasting on a huge swell of emotional manipulation. But if you're free of that, it's quite funny how empty they are.

"Somewhere in My Mind There Is a Painting Box" by Charles de Lint - Holy crap! It's an actual, unambiguous fantasy story...and there's not some wicked political message thinly disguised...and it feels like a fairy tale, with the same kind of dangers of fairy land that stories all the way back to the brothers Grimm might warn of. I'm shocked.

Good story. This is the first good unambiguous fantasy story I've seen here so far, and I'm almost a quarter of the way through the book.

"The Pyramid of Amirah" by James Patrick Kelly - Fantasy? Check. Good? It's interesting and well-written, at least. For a late-twentieth century atheist, this is a pretty good take on religion. So, yeah, it works.

"Our Friend Electricity" by Ron Wolfe - A middle-aged low-level book editor has a whirlwind romance mostly at Coney Island with a pretty twenty-ish young woman. The main character may murder someone with a skee ball. Near the end, he either has a vision of the past or travels back in time briefly for no clearly explained reason.

There are some genuinely poetic passages here, but by the end, it feels self-indulgent, writers writing about writers, for one thing. Also, the "fantasy" element enters late, and is vague and poorly integrated with the rest of the story. This is not a bad story, but it's terrible fantasy.

Again, I grow weary of being sold "It might be fantasy if you squint and look at it from a certain angle." Writers and editors, if you don't want to write fantasy or science fiction, that's fine. You don't have to. Don't write it. But please do not write mundane "literary" fiction, barely dress it up, and try to sell it to me as "fantasy."

I am now about 1/3 of the way through this book and I have found 2 stories, only 2, that are actually good, and actually fantasy. I get the impression Hartwell knows better and I can only attribute this disaster to the co-editor Kathryn Cramer.

Hmmm, Cramer? Oh, every single time.

I will soldier on and complete this review, possibly by the end of this year.

A rolling review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - Part I

  

In an ongoing effort to be as irrelevant as possible, I'm going to review the anthology I'm currently reading, Year's Best Fantasy 3 edited by David Hartwell...which was published 20 years ago. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm going to do a rolling review of the individual stories as I go.

These stories were first published in 2002. If these were, indeed, the best fantasy stories published that year, then the fantasy genre was almost entirely dead. They weren't, of course. They were just the ones most politically fashionable. It was not nearly as bad then as it is now, but SJW corruption of science fiction and fantasy was already well underway.

I have no doubt that with money and time, I could create an equally long collection (~490 pages) of actually good, actually fantasy stories that would sustain an actual fanbase. Of course, if I understand correctly, Amazon has destroyed the ebook market, but that's a separate question.

So, on to the stories.

First thing I did was browse the table of contents. I saw "Cecil Rhodes in Hell" by Michael Swanwick near the end. It was only a single page. I had an idea what I was in for, and I was curious, so I skipped to that.

This could barely be called a story. It is basically an encyclopedia entry (Wikipedia before that existed, kiddies) with a "white people bad" moral tagged on at the end. I am not kidding. It is garbage and the only reason anyone would publish it is because of a sick, seething hatred of white people.

Also, for anyone who wants to engage with the real world, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) is not doing well at all since they decided to kick out all of their white farmers, confiscate their land, and hand it over to blacks. Good. I hope they starve.

Going for a more standard reading experience, I returned to the beginning of the book for Kage Baker's "Her Father's Eyes." This is a story told from the point of view of a young girl on a train ride in post-World War II America. It is atmospheric and tense, and...debatably fantasy. There is nothing here that is absolutely distinct from our own world. It might be a fantasy story, but it could very well be just...bad people.

I hate these it-might-be-fantasy stories. If you're going to sell it as fantasy, make it fantastic, not, "might be fantasy, might be mental illness or a child's misunderstanding of the world."

It's not a bad story, but is it fantasy? Is it the best fantasy?

Next up "Want's Master" by Patricia Bowne, which is about academic politics and fundraising and growing old slightly dressed up in magical terms. Instead of taking us out of our own world into something exciting and fresh, Patricia opted to make magic boring and petty as office politics and gladhanding to raise money.

"October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman - The months of the year convene to share stories. It's a cool setup. The personifications of the months are interesting. The story October ends up telling is a self-indulgent gamma poor-persecuted-me fantasy...in the worst sense of that word.

"Greaves, This Is Serious" by William Mingin - A send-up of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. He makes a fair point, but it's fundamentally a mean-spirited shot at a much, much better writer, and, once again, barely qualifies as fantasy.

"Shift" by Nalo Hopkinson - Before I get to the story, I want to quote a bit from the author bio, "She is on the steering committee of the Carl Brandon Society, which promotes the involvement of people of color in speculative fiction." So yeah, you know what to expect.

In fairness, this is actually pretty well-written. It is, however, vile poison. It takes up the story of Shakespeare's Caliban centuries later. Caliban is a black man. When she arrived at the island, Miranda was so taken by this black man that she immediately decided to have sex with him, and then her father caught them and she accused him of rape.

Literally the entire point of the story is that white girls are desperate to get with black men, and somehow, it's white girls' fault that black men abandon those children. And black men are poor, persecuted victims of white people's perceptions who never did nothing wrong.

On behalf of the tens of thousands of white women in the U.S. raped by black men since this story was written, burn in Hell, Nalo. Burn in Hell.

And that's what I've read so far. It's gotten far worse since, but as you can see, our culture has been in deep trouble for some time now. There are also stories by Tanith Lee and Gene Wolfe in here, so there may be other worthwhile ones. I'm going to keep going, but, geez, this is bad.

My (as yet untitled) story chapter 1

 So I've had this story idea in mind for a while. I've not actually done much on it, though. Here's what may end up as the first chapter (depending how chronologically I decide to tell the story.) Let me know what you think. If people are interested, I may start another blog specifically for this story (Book? We'll see).

Without further ado, our story commences:

---

It was just after 2:00 AM when the windows of Leonard Clump’s 27th floor law offices exploded out into the night, showering the streets below with glass and various fragments of desks, office chairs, and legal documents. Even the cleaning staff had gone home by this point, so nobody was harmed. Firefighters arrived at the scene within twenty minutes and police were investigating the next morning.

Len Clump himself was on CNN and MSNBC the next day denouncing the attack as obviously the act of a white supremacist seeking revenge on his persecuted black clients. “From Emmet Till to Rodney King to Treyvon Martin, we’ve faced senseless violence and hatred from the white man, and we’ve fought it with nothing but our own intelligence and determination. We will continue that fight.” It was in the news for two weeks, but then, as there were few new developments, faded away.

The Tallahassee police devoted all the detectives they could spare to the case, knowing that any misstep was likely to bring national attention. They had brief video of a suspect who may have planted the bomb, but weren’t able to identify anyone. The forensics lab was similarly stumped. The bomb, they said, appeared to have been deliberately constructed to destroy almost all of its primary components. Analyzing the explosives residue, they were able to track it to a package which was delivered to a post office box in Idaho over a year ago, and found nothing more.

So the event dropped out of the public eye. Apart from a few blogs and independent commentators, nobody thought much about it . . . until Clump died in an apparent car-jacking.

(3 years earlier)

“. . . and nothing but the truth,” Edmund Dantent finished, then looked around the courtroom. His throat was tight with anticipation of the questions he might have to answer. This week had been circled on his calendar for two months, although he didn’t know when his specific day would come.

Defense counsel Leonard Clump, standing at his podium, turned to look directly at Edmund for a moment before addressing him. His shaven black head gleamed in the courtroom’s bright lights.

Edmund’s eyes wandered to the defendant’s table, but he quickly looked away. He couldn’t look there, couldn’t think about that.

Clump tapped a button and put something on the screen on the far side of the courtroom. Edmund didn’t notice what it was as he was intently watching the lawyer.

Mr. Dantent, is this your Facebook account?”

“Yes, that looks like it.”

“And is this your post from August 17, 2014?”

The prosecuting attorney said, “Objection, your honor, relevance?”

Judge Liebowitz replied, “Overruled. Please answer the question.”

Edmund read the post to himself, then answered yes.

Clump read the post for the courtroom: “I don’t think this was murder. It looks to me like Michael Brown was attacking that cop. What was the cop supposed to do?”

Clump paused a moment before turning to the jury.

“This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the kind of racism and bigotry that my client had to face on a daily basis in this neighborhood.”

“Obje—"

“Overruled. Please continue.”

“And this is the kind of racism and bigotry was coming from this very man before you, creating a toxic environment, damaging to my client’s mental—“

Edmund could no longer contain himself here: “What’s going on? I’m not on trial here! I am the victim!”

At the first word, Judge Leibowitz began banging his gavel. “Order in the court! You are not to speak unless answering questions. Please continue, counsel.”

Edmund sat in shock as the lawyer droned on, barely noticing what was said until the lawyer had to repeat his name several times for the next question.