Sauvage Sitdown - An Image of Dead Names
Being a review of Death Flex, an Anthology by Pilum New Voices.
Here we are, another jump in our long retreat from the lost cause, still no home in sight. Put something on, sparks, something full of heart break.
Aye-aye Cap’n, heartbreak coming up.
The headsman of Nuremburg, Franz Schmidt put an end to hundreds of convicts, each of whom merited a line in his ledger:"Schober was beheaded by favour; Marti was hanged, and the bleachers made him a pair of very white hose, a doublet and stockings of Cologne linen."Introduced by the best-selling author, Brian Evenson, Pilum is proud to publish four new writers who take us into the forgotten reality behind these laconic entries in Schmidt's fascinating sixteenth-century execution records. Brian Renninger, JB Jackson, Lester Glover, and John Daker rescue final truths only fiction can properly deliver. The back half of this beautiful, yet lugubrious volume examines the reality principle at play in the fiction of Jack Vance by leading Vance critic, Paul Rhoads. Further fictions from Messrs. Alexander Palacio and Charles Crabtree transport us to settings uncomfortably proximate and movingly legendary. Finally, Jeffro Johnson meditates on the significance of death, ludic and otherwise, among players of D&D.
Thus reads the add copy for this collection of short stories and essays. But the question, as ever, is if the promises on the outside are fulfilled on the inside. And in short, yes, and how! My friends (Bias Notice: I am friends with the Pilum Crew, and working on stories for publication with them) at Pilum have put together an excellent collection of stories and essays here. The verve and style on display here makes me despair to ever approach, nevertheless, I must persist. Inside the covers we find the following.
Thirty-one Blows by Brian Renninger. This story cleaves most closely of all to the central theme and personae of Franz Schmidt and his diary. Expanding a cryptic diary entry of a single line into a tale of terror that is both effective and tightly written. A strong contender for best in the volume and well placed up front. Seriously, read it by lamp-light in bed and then had strange and unsettling dreams and unrestful sleep. Perfect.
Just listen to this. No, seriously, read it aloud and listen to it.
The church bells were not yet ringing. Neither was there a visit from the emperor who, so far as anyone had heard, remained sitting like a toad on his throne in Prague with one eye looking toward the Turks and the other at Bohemia. Nor was the sky filled with falling stars and fighting angels as older residents of Nuremberg remembered from near a quarter century previous. And it certainly was not something more mundane like a visitation from traveling minstrels. The hangman in black strolled down the street toward the Raven’s Stone.
Woah. Thus starts a tale of woe and ill deeds done in a moment of weakness borne of a moment’s soft-heartedness towards a wife that rebounds terribly indeed upon an entire house. The sins of the fathers visited upon the entire house. And the key to escape lies in the one last remaining fragment of priestly authority to bind and lose on earth as in heaven left in newly protestant Nuremberg. Powerful stuff.
Ingenue by Alexander Palacio: Psychedelic vision? Daydream? Nightmare? Perhaps even a psychotic episode? A trip of some kind for certain sure. I’m not even sure what is happening other than my own terror. Is hospitality dead? I know not. But I need more of whatever this is. That I do know.
The Inquisition of Der Schleim by JB Jackson: Witches and mutants and wizards and alchemists, oh my! A prisoner under interrogation slowly, bit by bit, reveals the mystery of a fire and missing persons. This story is more straightforward yet seemingly takes place in the same time and place as Renninger’s, but instead of creeping horror that slowly builds and compounds upon itself, we have a shock of body horror and disgust and then a terrible reveal that puts everything in a much more horrid context. Only now at the end do you understand. Jackson channels Robert Chambers here, much as Renninger channeled Robert Howard (and perhaps a little Derleth although Brian would throw his shoe at me for saying it) earlier.
What Kind of Artists is Jack Vance? by Paul Rhodes: The first non fiction essay piece in this collection, I find this effort difficult to judge or otherwise engage with critically or conversationally, as I simply haven’t read enough Jack Vance (the horror!) to have any formed opinion, let alone a valid or interesting one. I can say that this essay has challenged me to rectify that, so in that sense I can say it has been somewhat effective on me. I find the author’s chosen examples strange, but perhaps he intends for us to find this Aillas character self-serving, self-righteous, and slavish in the given snippets. I don’t know.
Maledicta by Lester Glover: This story of thieves and beggars, ne’er-do-wells in Nuremberg, is startlingly well written and paints clear images in the mind. I know exactly what has happened in this story. What I have yet to discover, however is what it all means. This tortures me. Perhaps I am simply too much of a grunt to get it. But the words are beautiful, despite my inability to find closure in the closure. All I know is, nothing good comes of selling dead men’s teeth to a yid sorcerer living in dark sewers beneath the city, and nothing does.
To See a Black Devil by John Daker: This piece really captures the seedy sides of the Dallas and Forth Worth metro area. And weaves into the picaresque local travelogue a narrative of gumshoe investigations a tale of preternatural horror that ties back to the Nuremberg centric stories; witchcraft, devil worship, and even the sasquatch mythos. Artfully done, and the conclusion is horrific indeed, because you can understand the choice made, not approve mind, but understand. Do you wish to live deliciously? At what cost?
The Kobold’s Stare by Jeffro Johnson: The third most important person in D&D history pens this essay on the meaning of death in our grand old game, which touches on the differing zeitgeists of the 70s and 80s and the games and movies they produced. The bloody, death comes easy world of the original D&D sets (Original, Holmes, Basic, and Advanced) are a stark contrast to the more lenient, nerf-edged, airbrushed ethos of Second Edition and BECMI era TSR. This goes hand in hand with the so called ‘nihilistic’ movies of the 70s, which we are invited to review as perhaps not so much nihilistic as ‘not Pollyanna’ in the wish fulfillment for big-damn-heroes to save us without any blood-price. For certain sure, events since the dead-cat bounce that was ‘morning in America’ have shewn that the visionaries of the 70s had a better finger on the pulse of events. Don’t eat the soylent, and don’t fudge the dice.
Death in Petzu Maal by C.D. Crabtree: We end strong with the other strong contender for best story in the collection. C.D. Crabtree weaves a majestic and sprawling tale of civilized plots and barbaric vigor in a decaying world of dino-riding, obsidian blade wielding, human sacrificing, assasins’ guild permitting, pyramid temple builders. And so much more. Mysteries abound. The terse but compelling words weave an image that seems to be one part Tekumel and one part Ashes of the Urn. As a lover of high conceit fiction, this really motors my boat, and I loved grappling with the conlang on display here. This may not be your cuppa, but it sure as heck is mine. I want more!
And that’s the collection. A might and fine collection it is. I feel compelled to re-read it and plumb it’s depths again for something missed. Reading it has changed the way I think about my own writing. It is that good. You. Need. To. Be. Reading. This. It’s tight. TIGHT!
This book is a GO at this station.
Buy it. READ IT.
Do it. Do it now!
We’re done here, Calcs, plot us a jump to the next system, and Sparks, spin us up something to take the edge off.
Aye-Aye Cap’n, playing us out sah!