I’ve loved Terry Gilliam’s work since I was a kid watching Monty Python on PBS. I saw Time Bandits at least five times in the theater. Brazil still knocks me sideways every time I see it and I find few scenes in film so lovely as Baron Munchausen and Venus waltzing in the air. I love Gilliam’s manic creativity, his juxtaposition of fun and collapse.
I wanted to love The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as well.
I used to get all upset that literary fiction journals so seldom publish speculative fiction. I’d decry their elitism as they rejected me (this helped me to divert attention from the fact that speculative fiction magazines didn’t want me either, but never mind). Scifi is good, too! You guys are jerks! I’d wail.
I’d get mad that magazines professing love for writers such as García-Márquez, Borges, Rushdie and Murakami would say in submission guidelines that they aren’t interested in genre fiction. Hypocritical bastards! I’d cry. Shakespeare wrote about ghosts and witches!
OK, to tell the truth, I still get upset.
Ask me to name my favorite song, film or novel and there’s simply no way I can answer. I’ll stumble around in my brain trying to decide whether it’s Burma Shave or Minnie the Moocher, Wings of Desire or Million Dollar Legs, Invisible Cities or The Wind in the Willows or Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ask me my favorite painting though and I have an immediate answer: René Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumières (1954).
“This is the beginning of the conte philosophique—not a story with a thesis to demonstrate, but one in which the ideas appear and disappear and tease one another in turn, for the pleasure of one who has enough familiarity with them to be playful with them even when he takes them seriously.” –Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature.
Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchausen, having submitted affidavits attesting to his veracity in the absence of no less august a person than the Lord Mayor of London and confirmed by Mssrs. Sinbad, Gulliver and Aladdin, recounted with vigor his extraordinary adventures. These include, but are not limited to, outwitting a hungry lion and forty-foot crocodile in Ceylon (where cucumber-bearing trees play in the breeze), travelling by beanstalk to the moon, mending a horse bisected by a portcullis, and treated an elephant pretty roughly with its own trunk.
When it comes to not actually travelling somewhere, famed Parisian dramatist, swordsman and Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac easily eclipsed Marco Polo (who merely might not have gone to China) by visiting to the moon and if that were not enough to impress, he also took vacation on the sun. And Quebec. A pity that a man so full of lighter-than-air travel and fantastic zeal should have met his end here on Earth, by way of a demonstration of gravity: namely a large piece of wood dropped on his head. (I admit, I conflate truth and fiction, here, but only with a very sound reason: it’s more fun.)
The Accursed Waning Ossuary
It lurks in darker monoliths,
And disembodied, feeble glades;
In noisome crescents to reveal,
Unspoken slabs of charnel shades.
Miasmal ichor of the tomb,
And aeons anxious gibbous sleep;
Inflexibly gelatinous,
As desperate portals lapse the deep.
Repellent, vivid, terrible!
The moist facades of sentience,
Assumed grotesque and obdurate,
Some damnable arcane intents.
An aperture of effluence,
Connote a mausolean span;
While shadowed cenotaphs repel,
The blasphemous array of Man.
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Night-Gaunt
I
Among innumerable mountains of madness,
The only moving thing
Was the tail of the night-gaunt.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a madman
Tickled by three night-gaunts.
III
The night-gaunt whirled in the Ngranek winds.
It was a small part of the Dreamlands.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a night-gaunt…
Ouch.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The haunter of the dark,
Or the horror at Red Hook,
The night-gaunt writhing
Or just after.
VI
Dusk filled the perilous eyrie
With daemonic damp.
The shadow of the night-gaunt
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Kingsport,
Why do you dream of white mist?
Do you not see how the night-gaunt
Lurks around the caves
Of the hoary form of Nodens?
VIII
I know yellow masks
And putrid, inescapable flute-sounds;
But I know, too,
That the night-gaunt is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the night-gaunt flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many Zoog rings.
X
At the sight of night-gaunts
Flying in a green light,
Even the dholes of Pnath
Would wax emphatic.
XI
He rode over Baharna
In a tethered zebra.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The wings of some insect
For night-gaunts.
XII
The Skai is moving.
The night-gaunt must be plunging.
XIII
It was evening all eternity.
It was dank
And it was getting dank.
The night-gaunt whirled
In the primal mist.
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see at full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
Rudolph, the Pink-Skinned Deep One
Rudolph, the pink-skinned Deep One (Deep One!)
had some very rosy skin. (Like a human!)
And if you ever saw him, (Yuck!)
you would even hate his fins. (Like Bologna!)
All of the other Deep Ones (Deep Ones!)
used to laugh and call him names. (Like Sea Monkey!)
They never let poor Rudolph (Pinko!)
join in any Deep One games. (Like water polo!)
Then one shadowy Innsmouth eve
Dagon came to say:
“Rudolph with your skin so pink,
won’t you bring me chum to drink?”
Then all the Deep Ones loved him (Platonically!)
as they shouted out with glee, (Ftaghn!)
Rudolph the Pink-Skinned Deep One,
you’ll go down in history! (Like Crawford Tillinghast!)
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
At the Libs of Madness
When age [verb past tense] upon [a place], and wonder went out of the [plural body part] of men; when [colour] [plural noun] reared to [adjective] skies tall [plural noun] [adjective] and [adjective], in whose shadow [number] might [verb] of the [astronomical body] or of spring’s [gerund] meads; when learning [adjective] earth of [pronoun] mantle of [noun], and [person in the room] sang no more save of [adjective] phantoms seen with bleared and inward-[gerund] [plural body part]; when these [plural noun] had come to pass, and childish hopes had [verb past tense] away forever, there was a [animal] who travelled [preposition] life on a [noun] into the spaces whither the world’s [plural noun] had [verb past tense].
* * *
We were [gerund] on a dilapidated seventeenth-century [noun] in the [adjective] afternoon of an [adjective] day at the old burying-ground in [place in New England], and [gerund] about the [noun]. Looking [preposition] the giant [plant] in the [noun in British spelling] of the [place], whose [noun] has nearly [verb past tense] an ancient, illegible [noun], I had made a [adjective] remark about the [adjective] and [adjective] nourishment which the [adjective] [plural noun] must be [gerund] in from that hoary, charnel [place]; when [a person in the room] chided me for such [adjective] and told me that since no [plural noun] had occurred there for over a [period of time], nothing could [adverb] exist [infinitive verb] the [noun] in other than an ordinary [noun].
* * *
In a dream [celebrity] saw the [noun] in the valley, and the sea-coast beyond, and the [adjective] peak overlooking the [noun], and the [adverb] painted [plural noun] that [verb] out of the [noun] toward the distant [plural nouns] where the [noun] meets the [noun]. In a [noun] it was also that he came by his name of [celebrity], for when awake he was [verb past tense] by another [noun]. Perhaps it was [adjective] for him to [verb] a new [noun]; for he was the last of his [noun], and [adjective] among the [adjective] [number] of [city], so there were not many to [verb] to him and [verb] him who he had been.
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
 |
Say, kids, would you like an ambivalent awful squid-head cosmic beast of your very own? You would? You can make one for yourself or to inspire madness in your enemies. Come on, I’ll show you how! |
As the self-appointed craft and cuisine correspondent here at tor.com, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t talk a little about Christmas.*
When shopping for ornaments, you’ll find dangling doodads for golfers, knitters, ice skaters, surfers, birdwatchers, all manners of hobbies. But what of the geek? What of someone who couldn’t care less for fishing but would love something from Red Dwarf? Where does one go for specialty geek items? There are shops such as Zazzle and Etsy and so on, and sometimes you can find wonderful things pre-made. But you can also make your own. The personal touch counts for a lot, I think. That’s why you’ll turn your nose up at a print of Matisse but you’ll put a kid’s drawing up on the refrigerator and show it off to your friends. You nepotistic anti-Fauvist, you.
I want, as always, to demonstrate crafts that are easy, inexpensive and require nothing hard to find. I’m going to talk about super-duper easy ornaments, Kindergarten level, really, albeit with sharper scissors. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it has less value, after all.
The Other Other Gods
You know all of the Other Gods
the Old Ones and their avatars
from creatures made of bubble soap
to things that lurk beyond the stars.
But what of Other Other Gods?
less famous than ol’ squid-face head?
For where you dare not dare to dare
the fearsome Rhonda licks the dead!
Part dish, part rat, part magic lamp
Part cuttlefish, part soup, part slug
The arcane Trevor, while you sleep
pours buttermilk upon your rug.
There’s Pam, whose gums stink of the sea
And Stephanie the bloated sun
And Omar, called the Goat and Wheel
And what’s-her-name, the nameless one
And Ferdinand, the Leaping Glare!
And Butterscotch the Brutal Snore!
And Ethan Jones of Wichita.
(I don’t know what he’s in here for.)
More terrors gibber in the mist
than penetrate the mind’s facades
So when your rug smells of the dead
Recall the Other Other Gods.
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see at full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
Nyarlathotep, I’m Breaking Up with You
I know that it’s pretty rude to break up with someone on a blog, but since you won’t return my calls and I am like going insane and stuff and I figure I might as well tell anyone out there who is listening. And my therapist says poetry is cathartic, so there’s some of that, too.
I remember when we hooked up it was during the election when everyone was all intense politically and everyone was like “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican” and you were all, “I dig the flute.” And I thought, OK, that’s kinda goofy, but at least it’s different.
I once thought you were so exotic
tall and swarthy and erotic
but now I see you’re just despotic,
creepy-crawly and chaotic.
You said you were like from Egypt and I was all, “Oh, how cool.” Even though I was thinking, like, I know a guy from Egypt. His name is Abdul. That’s a real name. I mean, Nyarlathotep? Dude, how made up is that? But love blinded me to the stupidness of your name. Or deafened me. Whatever.
Nyar-Nyar, Teppy
names I called out
on hot autumn nights
spent in sweet tangles
and so many angles.
Now these endearments
make me want
to spew.
And the same is true
when I hear the Bangles.
And like, everywhere we went, you had to bring all your friends. At first I was like, wow, he’s so popular. But then I saw your entourage for what it really is. Brain-dead suck-uppy brown-noses, every last one of them. Totally under your spell. I was all, “Am I dating you, or your freaking minions?”
My therapist says you’re probably insecure
and that’s why you seek to control.
Actually,
that’s what my therapist
says about me,
and that I project too much.
But I bet it’s the same for you.
Thursday night was the last straw. I got all dressed up, for nothing. We were supposed to go out, just you and me, to a nice restaurant, but where do we go? Hanging around old railroad tracks at night with you and your monkey-boys—I swear they’re a bunch of tweakers and you probably run a meth lab or something, Nyarlathotep—and then it starts snowing and do you offer me your coat? Take me home? No, your little entourage like starts up a drum circle and you whip out your flute.
How did I ever put up with that flute?
I wanted to smash in your face with each squeak
I swear if you play it again I will shoot.
and I’ll laugh as I throw your remains in a creek.
With sharks in it.
And that’s why we’re through, Nyar-ass-lath-fake-ho-Jethro Tull-tep.
I swear, all you ever wanted was to drive me crazy!
But I will be stronger than that. I will not be your slave!
So, anyway, if you read this, call me.
Illustration by Brian Elig.
(Click on image above to see at full scale.)
For more, see the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index.
High on a hill was a lonely goat who ate some berries and went kind of crack-headed all over Ethiopia, and people have loved coffee ever since. I love coffee. I love the steam and aroma of a cup so massive you stir it with a supermodel, and after you drink it, you can set fires with your thoughts. Plus it allows you to stay up and read. Hooray, a lot, for coffee.
I’m fond of tea, as well, but it will never equal coffee in my palpitating heart. Tea is like…Belgium. I’ve nothing against Belgium but I don’t fall out of bed every morning looking like a squinty troll, crying out in pain for some fucking Belgium.
Leigh Butler’s posts and Brandon Sanderson writing the conclusion of the series led me to reread the Wheel of Time. I hadn’t read it in a very long time, almost twenty years since book one. I was a little concerned that my past enjoyment would not be repeated, but that hasn’t been the case. In fact, it’s a lot more fun this time, because I can better recognize and appreciate the copious folkloric and religious references in it. Jordan, as I understand it, wanted to create a world that was both before and after our own, or more precisely, a cyclical worldview in which before and after are equally true and equally inadequate markers. The first time I read it I really didn’t pick up on that at all.
As a Buddhist, I am particularly drawn to the Asian influences in WOT and focusing my attention in that direction has made for a rewarding and perplexing read. I don’t claim at all that Jordan wrote an intentionally Buddhist fantasy story, or that it should be deconstructed from a Buddhist, or more broadly, Asian, angle alone. All I’m saying is it’s one worthwhile avenue to explore.
WOT does not conform to any religious perspective other than its own, and while that’s part of its richness, it also makes for some interesting paradoxes. In investigating these paradoxes, I hope I don’t sound like I’m saying, “Aha! Gotcha, Jordan!” I’m not trying to out-clever the author. It’s just that there are elements that don’t quite add up to me and I’d like to discuss them with the amazingly knowledgeable tor.com crowd.
Jill Tracy is a singer/songwriter/composer/performer/author (most recently in the new anthology Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues), above all, storyteller. I’ve been a fan of her work for several years. While I could go on and on about how lush and evocative her music is, I think it’s far better to hear her description.
Jason Henninger: I was reading through older interviews you’ve done, and you often cite The Twilight Zone as an inspiration for your music. Tell me more about that.
Jill Tracy: Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone had a huge effect on me. The tales were disconcerting, yet there was always a message underneath. You learned something. It was smart. It taught me succinct, less-is-more storytelling. Often it was what you didn’t see that really put the fear in you. “Eye of the Beholder,” for example. This woman is presented to be so grotesque, and you don't see her face until almost the end, nor the faces of the surgeons and nurses trying to help her become less hideous. You’re on the edge of your seat wondering how horrible the woman must really be. And at the end you see she’s a beautiful woman, the doctors are hideous creatures, and you’ve been totally mind-tricked! How fantastic that a story could evoke such emotion and response essentially revealing so little. I abide by that in my approach to music. It’s the breath, the spaces between the notes and the arrangements that make the work come alive. The soul lives in the silence.
The composers—for example Bernard Herrmann who also worked with Alfred Hitchcock—really pushed it to the edge for me, showing that mood can be solely conjured by music. Someone’s at a carnival, and it’s supposed to be happy, but then suddenly the music changes and gives it a sense of dread.
Summer, 1978, my big brother and I built a rocket and took the neighborhood boys to Mars. That summer is a jewel in my memory, a time of industry, invention and adventure. It was a Ray Bradbury summer. The best summer ever. I wish there were photos of the ship, but, I am sad to say, not one remains. I’ll do my best to paint the picture.
My brother, Michael, was always building something; as far back as I can remember he had blueprints in his eyes and a mind made of erector set parts. He even had a secret super-scientist alter ego: Art Formula. What a fantastic name! Always moving, tearing apart, modifying, scheming, testing, meshing. In kindergarten, no one could match his prowess in imaginary robotics. By the time he was ten, Michael was Nikolai Tesla and Doc Savage combined in one skinny suburban blond kid, or at least that’s how I saw him.
Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer had some Zarquon-sized shoes to fill when he agreed to write And Another Thing..., the sixth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. I am not an expert on Douglas Adams, so if you want a hypercomplex ultradetailed megacomparison, go away. I’m just this big fan dude who made Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters with absinthe*. To further proclaim my ignorance, other than this book I’ve never read Colfer. Hell, I just learned how to pronounce his first name. (My assumption had been overly Tolkienesque.)
Perhaps, were I a bona fide Adams expert, rather than an enthusiastic, um, enthusiast, I’d be up in arms about how Colfer doesn’t sound like Adams (witness the whole Sanderson-isn’t-Jordan kerfuffle). But my arms are not up-in, because Colfer did not write, nor did he intend to write, as if he were channeling the late great. This is made clear early on, as the first thing Colfer did was quote Douglas Adams in big letters, as if to declare to the reader: “I’m not Douglas Adams. This other guy was. Wasn’t he a hoopy frood?”
Steamcon has concluded and the intrepid organizers of the convention likely all spent Sunday evening unlacing their corsets and taking the goggles off and drinking copious amounts of some libation well deserved. From my perspective, the convention was a great success, especially when considering that it was a maiden voyage, so to speak. While many of the organizers had been involved in other conventions, none of them had created one from the ground up before. Bravo. I knew the convention was off to a good start when on the shuttle from the airport to the hotel I counted no fewer than five excellent hats, and none of the baseball or trucker varieties.
(Aside: Gentlemen at steampunk events, consider tipping your hat to a lady. Just a thought.)
I sincerely believe that the more creativity and effort you put into a holiday, the more memorable and personal it becomes. This isn’t a matter of talent or expense. It’s all about inventing and having fun. For Halloween, what I enjoy most is to make genuinely unusual objects without relying on complicated techniques or rare materials. Readers of my Science Fiction Cuisine posts will be familiar with this attitude.
Looking at craft magazines around Halloween you see two general levels. One is geared toward kids and is, for the most part, non-threatening in skill level, materials and subject matter. Turn a pillowcase into a ghost. Turn a pillowcase into a mummy (never turning a mummy into a pillowcase, though). On the other end, there are the projects that only Martha Stewart’s army of professionals, with unlimited time and budget, can produce. Knit a life-sized haunted house. Make spun-sugar recreations of Inquisition torture chambers with marzipan heretics.
Many of my fondest childhood memories come with skeletons and superheroes. I close my eyes and smile as my mind floods with costumed children crowding dark streets, pillowcases full of candy, eerie music and strobe lights accentuating the usually more subtle horrors of suburbia, and my feet aching from covering block after block in search of treats. I remember getting home and pouring out the treasure on the floor. Few sounds rival the waxed papery rush of a candy avalanche.
Gadgets and/or Words That Are Fun to Say by Caragh O’Brien
Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie by Mitch Wagner
Moffat’s Women #3 - Sally by Teresa Jusino
