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rpcroke's review against another edition
4.0
As others have said, the collection is a little imbalanced. However, there are some gems in here starting right around the middle. I would really give it a 3.5.
I really liked the "places" theme and the stories mostly stuck to it. It was nice leaning on exploring the spaces the author's created, even if the character or plots weren't always tight. "The Beautiful Fog Ascending" is truly a spectacular story though not horror so much.
I really liked the "places" theme and the stories mostly stuck to it. It was nice leaning on exploring the spaces the author's created, even if the character or plots weren't always tight. "The Beautiful Fog Ascending" is truly a spectacular story though not horror so much.
megapolisomancy's review
3.0
A collection of Weird Place stories about the "weirdness of landscape," supposedly, although no one who read this collection without the title/intro would have guessed that (families actually seem to predominate much more than landscape, although I will grant that all of these stories take place in a, uh, place). Said intro is particularly perfunctory, giving a very brief description of each story without any indication of how they (or the collection) came into being. Particularly odd is the Hannes Bok story, which Joshi tells us "was probably written in the mid-1950s but first published here," with no further explanation.
A tough one to rate, because while reading it I was disappointed in the lack of actual Weird Place stories, but in retrospect there were as many enjoyable stories as duds, so let's call it a 3.
Iced In • Melanie Tem
A woman in Kansas, reduced to decrepitude and hoarding after a lifetime of self-doubt and unearned guilt, finds the bleakness of her interior life reflected in an exterior blizzard and is frozen both literally and figuratively when "condemned to freedom of choice." A fine descendant of "The Haunting of Hill House," but not a story of a weird place so much as a study of psychological horror.
At Home with Azathoth • John Shirley
A truly odd one, transplanting 1980s cyberpunk to the 2010s with the barest of updates (mostly in already-outdated lingo like "lulz" and "pwned") and combining the genre's passe conflation of cyber networks and physical space with a Lovecraftian Outer God so that information = place = entity = energy = "form of everything." The writing is painful and the characters obnoxious, but it's outside the box, I'll give him that.
The Girl Between the Slats • Michael Aronovitz
A cold open about mean girls and pica is revealed to be fiction being worked on by a down-on-his-luck author, who turns out to be fiction being discussed by a professor and his class, who are revealed to be etc. Grief and children pop up in each layer, as does a school building, which I suppose is the rationale for including the story here. This is normally my kind of nonsense, and this one is like 70% good, but falls into horror cliche by the end and the whole house of cards collapses.
The Patter of Tiny Feet • Richard Gavin
A horror film location scout is very sad because his wife's promotion means they'll never have children. Irony awaits him in a seemingly-abandoned house. Very Blochian, complete with punny title and a De Vermis Mysteriis reference. A solid weird tale.
At Lorn Hall • Ramsey Campbell
An almost identical setup - a man, alienated from his wife (and children, this time) ends up at a mysterious mansion, and decides to take the self-guided audio tour on offer. Like much of Campbell's later output, this is a rather Aickman-esque study of misdirection and vagaries, informed by the housing crisis and financial crash and some upstairs/downstairs ruminations on British class and decline. This one, inexplicably, is a reprint, the only one in the collection.
Blind Fish • Caitlín R. Kiernan
In the year 2031, a man suffering from PTSD struggles to readjust to life after making an awful, Lovecraftian discovery at the bottom of the ocean some years before. Quintessential Kiernan: the huge import of some past event is slow to unfold, everyone is miserable, fossils predominate; I love it.
An Element of Nightmare • W. H. Pugmire
Quintessential Pugmire, which means it's not for me - in his trademark Sesqua Valley, you are told about the grandson of a local who is investigating a poet and is lead to the Outside, "far more enticing than dull reality." Whimsical and twee.
The Reeds • Gary Fry
A reactionary couple (the kids these days, the city these days, wahhh) have retired from teaching to the country outside London after the wife suffers a mental breakdown. Something weird is waiting for them in the reeds - something that mirrors, AGAIN, their lack of children! Awkward and over-explained, but the reeds and their denizens are tantalizing, and the ending was handled well.
Crawldaddies • Steve Rasnic Tem
Tems' stories are usually standouts in these sorts of anthologies, but this one didn't go much of anywhere. A man returns to his birthplace/ancestral home in the mountains, hoping to find some explanation for what he percieves as his own innate repulsiveness. There's something of the Last Feast of Harlequin here, or any number of Lovecraft's stories about the dark secret at the heart of an insular town.
Three Dreams of Ys • Jonathan Thomas
A realtor's overbearing mother finally dies, and he's free to visit a hotel he's interested in buying in Brittany. He finds that the specter of Ys, the drowned city, still dominates the dreams of the region. In said dreams he finds himself facing a rather rote Weird Woman/seductress theme, with the interesting caveat that Thomas acknowledges the differences in hygiene and beauty standards across the centuries.
Willie the Protector • Lois H. Gresh
Alternate history about a man whose job is to maintain the great Machine that underlies an unnamed city. Things go awry when he needs additional income to take care of his family. Disgusting bio-steampunk territory informed by class and gender and delving into Lovecraftian cosmic horror and non-euclidean geometry. A very good one.
Miranda's Tree • Hannes Bok
A very bad one, focusing on a caricatured shrewish mother/wife and her equally shallowly-drawn family (all miserable), whose sister moves in and finds that a tree is her only source of companionship.
The Beautiful Fog Ascending • Simon Strantzas
An isolated widower leaves behind his distant son and empty life for an oneiric forest, replete with the devil and the tree of life. The narrative, like the setting, is delightfully hazy, with phantom sounds and recursions, and is a delight to read.
Exit Through the Gift Shop • Nick Mamatas
A good story, but one that I've read recently enough to skip here.
Going to Ground • Darrell Schweitzer
A man driving the PA-NY border marvels at the desolate landscape of the primordial ridges and valleys, remembers some things he'd rather have forgotten, and sees a procession of the walking dead. It's bad news for him. The great outdoors and panoramic views are not very Poe-esque, but the man's internal journey is, and in case it was too subtle for you, the man is a lecturer on Poe by vocation.
Dark Equinox • Ann K. Schwader
A student finds a photo montage by a cult artist on whom she hopes to some day write a dissertation. The artist's brother wishes she wouldn't, as the artist captured Things Humanity Was Not Meant to Awaken in her art. Ties in real archeology and geography to fictional Weirdness. An exemplary weird tale.
Et in Arcadia Ego • Brian Stableford
Don't think I've ever read a mythos tale set in classical antiquity before, as Greece despoils Acadia and civilization encroaches on the world of Pan and the satyrs and dryads. We're concerned with history and freedom/choice here as the allegory of the cave ("the horror of the cosmic cave") meets Orpheus's lyre. Also, Shub-Niggurath.
The Shadow of Heaven • Jason V Brock
A research ship near Antarctica is drawn into a hitherto-hidden apocalyptic landscape after responding to a distress call. Unsettling monsters and only-slightly-less unsettling prose (oh, the dialogue!) makes for unapologetic pulp, even with epigraphs drawn from Paradise Lost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Prufrock, etc. Some parallel ideas with the Schwader piece, by way of "The Mist" and "Who Goes There" and the Bible.
Flesh and Bones • Nancy Kilpatrick
Well, there's this married couple, and he's obsessed with mummies while she's obsessed with bones, and they're artists, and there's murder, and borderline necrophilia, and a manic fixation on a kind of macabre beauty. It's all very Poe, and all very much more for Goths than for me. How about the Capuchin crypt, though, that's a weird thing, huh?
The Sculptures in the House • John D. Haefele
Self-conscious mythos pastiche set in the Sac Prairie home of our protagonist's vanished uncle. Lovecraftian prose, references to Tsathoggua and Elder Gods, and Clark Ashton Smith's writing and sculpture. This is, perhaps, my least favorite trope.
Ice Fishing • Donald Tyson
A solid enough creature feature about a pair of old friends encountering some deep ones (maybe) while ice fishing.
A tough one to rate, because while reading it I was disappointed in the lack of actual Weird Place stories, but in retrospect there were as many enjoyable stories as duds, so let's call it a 3.
Iced In • Melanie Tem
A woman in Kansas, reduced to decrepitude and hoarding after a lifetime of self-doubt and unearned guilt, finds the bleakness of her interior life reflected in an exterior blizzard and is frozen both literally and figuratively when "condemned to freedom of choice." A fine descendant of "The Haunting of Hill House," but not a story of a weird place so much as a study of psychological horror.
At Home with Azathoth • John Shirley
A truly odd one, transplanting 1980s cyberpunk to the 2010s with the barest of updates (mostly in already-outdated lingo like "lulz" and "pwned") and combining the genre's passe conflation of cyber networks and physical space with a Lovecraftian Outer God so that information = place = entity = energy = "form of everything." The writing is painful and the characters obnoxious, but it's outside the box, I'll give him that.
The Girl Between the Slats • Michael Aronovitz
A cold open about mean girls and pica is revealed to be fiction being worked on by a down-on-his-luck author, who turns out to be fiction being discussed by a professor and his class, who are revealed to be etc. Grief and children pop up in each layer, as does a school building, which I suppose is the rationale for including the story here. This is normally my kind of nonsense, and this one is like 70% good, but falls into horror cliche by the end and the whole house of cards collapses.
The Patter of Tiny Feet • Richard Gavin
A horror film location scout is very sad because his wife's promotion means they'll never have children. Irony awaits him in a seemingly-abandoned house. Very Blochian, complete with punny title and a De Vermis Mysteriis reference. A solid weird tale.
At Lorn Hall • Ramsey Campbell
An almost identical setup - a man, alienated from his wife (and children, this time) ends up at a mysterious mansion, and decides to take the self-guided audio tour on offer. Like much of Campbell's later output, this is a rather Aickman-esque study of misdirection and vagaries, informed by the housing crisis and financial crash and some upstairs/downstairs ruminations on British class and decline. This one, inexplicably, is a reprint, the only one in the collection.
Blind Fish • Caitlín R. Kiernan
In the year 2031, a man suffering from PTSD struggles to readjust to life after making an awful, Lovecraftian discovery at the bottom of the ocean some years before. Quintessential Kiernan: the huge import of some past event is slow to unfold, everyone is miserable, fossils predominate; I love it.
An Element of Nightmare • W. H. Pugmire
Quintessential Pugmire, which means it's not for me - in his trademark Sesqua Valley, you are told about the grandson of a local who is investigating a poet and is lead to the Outside, "far more enticing than dull reality." Whimsical and twee.
The Reeds • Gary Fry
A reactionary couple (the kids these days, the city these days, wahhh) have retired from teaching to the country outside London after the wife suffers a mental breakdown. Something weird is waiting for them in the reeds - something that mirrors, AGAIN, their lack of children! Awkward and over-explained, but the reeds and their denizens are tantalizing, and the ending was handled well.
Crawldaddies • Steve Rasnic Tem
Tems' stories are usually standouts in these sorts of anthologies, but this one didn't go much of anywhere. A man returns to his birthplace/ancestral home in the mountains, hoping to find some explanation for what he percieves as his own innate repulsiveness. There's something of the Last Feast of Harlequin here, or any number of Lovecraft's stories about the dark secret at the heart of an insular town.
Three Dreams of Ys • Jonathan Thomas
A realtor's overbearing mother finally dies, and he's free to visit a hotel he's interested in buying in Brittany. He finds that the specter of Ys, the drowned city, still dominates the dreams of the region. In said dreams he finds himself facing a rather rote Weird Woman/seductress theme, with the interesting caveat that Thomas acknowledges the differences in hygiene and beauty standards across the centuries.
Willie the Protector • Lois H. Gresh
Alternate history about a man whose job is to maintain the great Machine that underlies an unnamed city. Things go awry when he needs additional income to take care of his family. Disgusting bio-steampunk territory informed by class and gender and delving into Lovecraftian cosmic horror and non-euclidean geometry. A very good one.
Miranda's Tree • Hannes Bok
A very bad one, focusing on a caricatured shrewish mother/wife and her equally shallowly-drawn family (all miserable), whose sister moves in and finds that a tree is her only source of companionship.
The Beautiful Fog Ascending • Simon Strantzas
An isolated widower leaves behind his distant son and empty life for an oneiric forest, replete with the devil and the tree of life. The narrative, like the setting, is delightfully hazy, with phantom sounds and recursions, and is a delight to read.
Exit Through the Gift Shop • Nick Mamatas
A good story, but one that I've read recently enough to skip here.
Going to Ground • Darrell Schweitzer
A man driving the PA-NY border marvels at the desolate landscape of the primordial ridges and valleys, remembers some things he'd rather have forgotten, and sees a procession of the walking dead. It's bad news for him. The great outdoors and panoramic views are not very Poe-esque, but the man's internal journey is, and in case it was too subtle for you, the man is a lecturer on Poe by vocation.
Dark Equinox • Ann K. Schwader
A student finds a photo montage by a cult artist on whom she hopes to some day write a dissertation. The artist's brother wishes she wouldn't, as the artist captured Things Humanity Was Not Meant to Awaken in her art. Ties in real archeology and geography to fictional Weirdness. An exemplary weird tale.
Et in Arcadia Ego • Brian Stableford
Don't think I've ever read a mythos tale set in classical antiquity before, as Greece despoils Acadia and civilization encroaches on the world of Pan and the satyrs and dryads. We're concerned with history and freedom/choice here as the allegory of the cave ("the horror of the cosmic cave") meets Orpheus's lyre. Also, Shub-Niggurath.
The Shadow of Heaven • Jason V Brock
A research ship near Antarctica is drawn into a hitherto-hidden apocalyptic landscape after responding to a distress call. Unsettling monsters and only-slightly-less unsettling prose (oh, the dialogue!) makes for unapologetic pulp, even with epigraphs drawn from Paradise Lost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Prufrock, etc. Some parallel ideas with the Schwader piece, by way of "The Mist" and "Who Goes There" and the Bible.
Flesh and Bones • Nancy Kilpatrick
Well, there's this married couple, and he's obsessed with mummies while she's obsessed with bones, and they're artists, and there's murder, and borderline necrophilia, and a manic fixation on a kind of macabre beauty. It's all very Poe, and all very much more for Goths than for me. How about the Capuchin crypt, though, that's a weird thing, huh?
The Sculptures in the House • John D. Haefele
Self-conscious mythos pastiche set in the Sac Prairie home of our protagonist's vanished uncle. Lovecraftian prose, references to Tsathoggua and Elder Gods, and Clark Ashton Smith's writing and sculpture. This is, perhaps, my least favorite trope.
Ice Fishing • Donald Tyson
A solid enough creature feature about a pair of old friends encountering some deep ones (maybe) while ice fishing.
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