For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get…
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Erika A.
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Gina Anderson
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Erin S. Bales
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Carey M. Ballard
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Barbara A. Barnett
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Judy Black
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Kristina Elyse Butke
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Leigh Dragoon
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Gemma Files
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Venessa Giunta
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J.L. Gribble
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Janicu
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R.J. Joseph
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Keyes
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Howard Kleinman
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Michelle R. Lane
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John Edward Lawson
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S.J. Lyon
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Michael May
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Kelly McCarty
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Ronya McCool
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Merrin
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Kendra Merritt
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Anna Meservier
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Nancy O’Toole Meservier
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Tez Miller
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Lisa P.
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Sharon Patry
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Sherry Peters
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Casey Price
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Whitney Richter
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Lane Robins
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Nicole Taft
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Calie Voorhis
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Shara White
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Betsy Whitt
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K. Ceres Wright
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Stephanie M. Wytovich
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Nu Yang
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Welcome to Speculative Chic
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Site Disclaimers & Comment Moderation Policy
Founder & Editor-in-Chic: Shara White
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This blog (or fanzine, if you will) is a labor of love, and/or a maybe-expensive hobby. You can pick. But the point remains that this blog is not making any money: not off of advertisements, not off of donations, not off of anything. Not yet.
Which means everyone involved in this venture (editors, contributors, graphic artists, etc.) is a volunteer. Unless otherwise noted, we’re buying/borrowing the books we review. We are not affiliated with any company or any group, nor do our opinions here represent anyone else but the person making them.
Because we’re volunteers, this also means that none of us are obligated to put up with anything but courteous behavior from our commenters. And if courtesy is a question, imagine you’re going to someone’s home you aren’t familiar with . . . say, your spouse’s boss, and your spouse is REALLY gunning for a promotion, so good behavior counts! This means you aren’t going to cut it up and throw around dirty or offensive language. You’re not going to get super-drunk and start screaming at the guests. Nor will you start arguing with your spouse’s boss over politics and telling that boss what an idiot they are if they don’t believe that John Oliver should be our next president.
No. You’re going to be polite. You’re going to engage in conversation and if you do find yourself in a debate, you’re going to keep it civil, keep it clean, and you’re going to avoid saying anything that amounts to a personal attack.
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To get back to our metaphor — party at your spouse’s boss’ house — engaging in the above behaviors will get you kicked out and likely not invited back. Worse, your spouse may not get that promotion!
But, if you do a great job, your spouse might get promoted. If you’re REALLY awesome, the boss might offer you a cushy job too. Not that we’re hiring, no… like I said, everyone at Speculative Chic is a volunteer, and while we may always be on the lookout for more volunteers, we can’t pay them.
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This comment moderation policy has been inspired by running a blog for over fifteen years, as well as strict comment policy over at The Mary Sue. I’ve always likened someone’s blog space as a home you’ve been invited to, so I was thrilled they used a dinner party example.
October 1, 2020
While I’d intended to brace everyone sooner, it’s probably just as well to rip the bandage off. Starting today, October 1st, 2020, Speculative Chic is going on an indefinite hiatus. Why? You may have noticed some of your favorite writers fading to the background and not posting any new content. And the truth is, 2020 has been a challenging year.…
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September 30, 2020
There are two ways to consider Chris Carter’s Millennium, according to most people. One is to see it as an unofficial spin-off from The X-Files that ended up cancelled after it was never quite able either to find or to maintain its stylistic “feet” through its increasingly unpopular three seasons; the other is to see it as a show which…
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September 29, 2020
I first learned about Final Fantasy in Nintendo Power magazine around 1990. In a multi-page spread, Nintendo announced the Summer of Final Fantasy with great excitement. The fan mag promised us dozens of hours of story and exploration with a customizable party in a massive new world. When the game released, I spent countless hours with my friends playing through…
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September 28, 2020
They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Jessica Drake-Thomas, whose book of poetry, Burials, will be released…
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September 25, 2020
At Speculative Chic, we feature a lot of authors who share everything from their favorite things to the inspiration for their work. But why not also share their fiction? Welcome to Fiction Friday, where you’ll be able to sample the fiction of a variety of authors, including those who write at Speculative Chic! Today, we’re featuring Ty Drago, to celebrate…
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September 25, 2020
I enjoy escaping into space opera, and as a librarian, I enjoy promoting my favorite reads. I loved K.B. Wagers’ The Indranan War trilogy, starting with 2016’s Behind the Throne, which starred a gun smuggler-turned-princess who leveraged her past in negotiating alliances, avenging her family, and stopping wars. So I was excited to hear about A Pale Light in the…
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September 24, 2020
I’m generally not one to read poetry, so I wanted to reach beyond my comfort zone and dive into a collection for the first time. The major conceit of Burials, as listed in its premise — “the narrative of those whose voices have been taken away” — also greatly intrigued me. I’m happy to read a work that challenges me…
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September 23, 2020
I liked Aurora Rising well enough to check out its sequel, Aurora Burning. And since the first one ended with the squad coming together and actually working as a team (and since that’s my favorite part of any ensemble piece) I figured the second one would be all about Squad 312 versus the galaxy. Aurora Burning (2020) Written By: Jay…
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September 22, 2020
I fell down a rabbit hole of reading lists about diverse books when the colorful color of The House in the Cerulean Sea caught my eye. I noticed that the book is set in a home for magical children, which reminded me of one of my favorite series, Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I also want to…
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September 21, 2020
They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Catherine Wallace Hope, whose debut, Once Again, comes out October 6th…
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There are two ways to consider Chris Carter’s Millennium, according to most people. One is to see it as an unofficial spin-off from The X-Files that ended up cancelled after it was never quite able either to find or to maintain its stylistic “feet” through its increasingly unpopular three seasons; the other is to see it as a show which was ultimately unable to recover from the fact that its plot and thematic cornerstone — a mysterious world-rocking event coinciding with the end of the second millennium A.D. — was due no more than four years after the series’ launch in 1996. (Carter was eventually able to shoehorn a Millennium ‘verse-based episode which climaxes as the 1999 New Year’s ball drops on Times Square back into The X-Files, which some might argue allowed him to provide Millennium‘s main character Frank Black with a suitably weird, dark, and somber finale.)
Despite being a welcome weekly showcase for veteran genre character actor Lance Henriksen, who turns in some of the best work of his entire career, the show faced the same challenge that defeated far better creatives than Carter, during the same era: Fannish commitment notwithstanding, you could only ever get so far trying to depict grimy Se7en-esque serial killer gore and sexual creepiness on mainstream network TV at a time when people couldn’t even swear after 11:00 PM. Eventually, this Standards & Practices inflexibility would wind up spawning a whole alternate market of pay-TV channels aimed at those who preferred their existential despair uncut for commercials.
And then, with 20-20 hindsight, there’s also the far larger problem of the Millennium itself landing like a lead balloon, in general. In the days leading up to it, I remember joking viciously about how much I was looking forward to standing on street-corners at 6:00 AM, January 1, 2000 and yelling at any passerby I thought looked even faintly religious: “Hey, what d’ya know? Still here!” But I didn’t, not least because none of the End-of-the-World last things we’d been so strenuously warned about actually came to pass, at least not immediately — it seemed like kicking a dead dog while it was down. Instead, we all congratulated ourselves for not having been fooled into forming mass suicide pacts or stockpiling canned food and Krugerrands . . . everybody I knew, anyhow. Like most of the rest of our extremely narrow slice of the world, we never saw the real downward slide coming, the one that started when the planes hit the Twin Towers. The same one that ended up with at least some of us sitting right here, pandemic-plagued and homebound, distracting ourselves by watching old TV shows and surprising ourselves by realizing just how predictive they now seem.
Yet it turns out those predictions aren’t about “the” Millennium, so much, as about millennialism as a concept — that no matter how good or bad things may seem right this second, there’s always some group of people out there simmering over their particular brand of secret wisdom/conspiracy theory scripture, dreaming of how much better it would feel to slam the reset button and burn it all to the ground so they can find out what happens next. Could be a heaven on earth where it’s fifty white virgins to every incel and women are forbidden by law to say “no,” could be an escape hatch to a fresh new dimension or friendly aliens scooping up our kids and re-homing them on another planet, could be some variety of Mad Max post-apocalyptic playground where most of the people you hate are dead and everybody finally has to listen to you because you’ve got the guns — who knows? One thing for sure, it’s bound to be far more interesting than whatever’s going on right now!
This, not serial killers and secret societies, is the horror Carter’s Millennium was actually created to explore, however haphazardly. The idea that whether or not good and evil exist, whether or not the natural ever intersects with the preter- or supernatural, human beings have a death-instinct hibernating inside them which is just as strong as our drive to love and be loved in return, if not infinitely stronger. The possibility, terrible and soul-destroying yet all too easy to believe as it might be, that the only thing ever really likely to bring about the “end of the world” for us . . . is us.
It’s a lot, I get it. And it all starts with Frank Black (Henriksen).
As Millennium‘s pilot episode introduces Frank, we soon learn the three most important things about him: He’s a former profiler for the FBI who quit after being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, a loving husband to Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and doting late-life father to Jordan (Brittany Tiplady), and currently a self-employed “consultant” who occasionally works with a mysterious cohort of other former FBI agents called the Millennium Group. Frank credits the Group’s expertise in the unusual with helping him recognize and control the special “sense” that often sent him towards particularly weird cases, ones like the “motiveless” recent murder of a strip club employee which he spots in the newspaper right after moving his family back to Seattle.
Frank immediately offers his investigative help to Seattle homicide detective Bob Bletcher (Bill Smitrovitch), an old friend, and soon discovers clues which lead them to a client the murdered woman used to call “the Frenchman” (because he was often heard mumbling the prophecies of Nostradamus to himself, in the original French). In order to decode these prophetic quatrains, Frank in turn calls on his primary mentor at the Group, Peter Watts (Terry O’Quinn). Thus the show sets up a semi-procedural pattern that nevertheless hints at deeper, darker things pretty much right from its initial scenes — its ground-note less a Silence of the Lambs-style realism cut with touches of the grotesque than an X-Files-ish sense that even its more human evils are excessive, and literally dread-full in ways that require the involvement of a person with Frank’s abilities, someone who appears to absorb the way victims’ screams intersect with perpetrators’ dreams like a modern-day sin-eater.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Millennium, both in its own time and in contemporary context, is its concentration on older or unknown actors previously confined to supporting roles. Born in 1940, Henriksen himself didn’t manage to land a main character part until 1982 (in Piranha 2: The Spawning); so much of what he brings to Frank Black is therefore informed by an already-lengthy career in the shadow of showier performances: Both the innate gravitas/apparent emotional restriction of a man out of time and the barely-hidden potential for violence of an actor whose stark bone-structure often leads to him being cast as a villain, yet also the gently surprising self-awareness of a person who understands his own nature well enough to occasionally joke about it. His onscreen marriage to Gallagher is mainly depicted as that of two adults who value themselves equally, carefully negotiating their own individuality around the slowly increasing needs of the child whose love they share — Jordan, who probably has the same “gift” as Frank, one which begins to place her in danger the more she uses it. Not to mention how, like her father’s, Jordan’s sensitivity soon attracts the attention of . . . outside parties.
Though we start off chasing supposedly “mundane” serial killers, the supernatural enters into Millennium far earlier than most people might pick up from a typical series recap. An argument could be made, for example, that it first raises its head in “The Judge” (episode four of Season One), but either way, Season One also contains both “Lamentation” — the introduction of Sarah-Jane Redmond as Lucy Butler, a woman who’s either a witch or possessed by a demon, maybe both — and “Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions,” in which Frank is approached by a lawyer intent on recruiting him for evil purposes, who is later assassinated by a teenager possessed by something else entirely. Butler reappears in both Season Two and Season Three, where she confirms her status as both Frank Black’s nemesis and one of the series’s most overt expressions of inhuman, “outside” evil, but even without her presence, we still get episodes like “The Curse of Frank Black” (2.06, in which the ghost of a man damned for committing suicide warns Frank to leave cases in which he senses inhuman evil alone) or “Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me” (2.21, which features four demons disguised as human beings sitting around in a diner, swapping stories about how Frank Black recognized them and put them off their hellish stride). Granted, those both occur after Carter asked Glen 
Morgan and James Wong to take over as showrunners and let them work without direct oversight, marked in general by a sharp tonal shift and up-tick in overt supernaturalism from which some critics say Millennium as a whole never entirely recovered. But even in Season Three, where Carter returned as a consultant with Chip Johanssen and Michael Duggan as the new showrunning team, set on confirming the victorious faction emerging from a schism within the Millennium Group itself as a slightly more understandable enemy, we still get both a Lucy Butler episode (“Antipas,” 3.13) and an episode which appears to set up a whole new inhuman evil nemesis for Jordan Black (3.16, “Saturn Dreaming of Mercury”).
Don’t worry, though — the procedural element does continue throughout, anchored both by Frank’s choice of job and a raft of equally great acting from continuing characters like O’Quinn, The Stepfather himself, who manages to negotiate a role which sometimes demands he be Frank’s best friend and sometimes his worst (human) enemy, full of charm, deception and genuine humanity (Peter Watts’s monologue about why he joined the Group after losing his own ability to process crimes so dreadful they picked away at his faith is a master class in subtle tragic acting). Then there’s the amazing turn from Glen Morgan’s wife Kristen Cloke as Lara Means in Season Two, a similarly “sensitive” agent who ends up joining the Millennium Group while Frank ultimately rejects them, only to plunge headfirst into a visionary downward spiral that culminates in a twenty-minute hallucinatory psychotic episode set to Patti Smith’s “Horses” (episode 2.23, “The Time Is Now”).
Season Three, meanwhile, gives Frank a new partner to play off: Canadian actress Klea Scott as FBI Special Agent Emma Hollis, introduced as a bit of a Clarice Starling expy, who also ends up being courted by the Group through Peter Watts. Scott’s character arc has her consistently playing Scully to Frank’s Mulder, yet always allows her agency enough to make her own decisions, shoring up the series’s overall respect for female characters as complicated human beings. See also CCH Pounder as forensic pathologist Cheryl Andrews, Harriet Sansom Harris as profiler Maureen Murphy, and Catherine Black herself, who not only gets a whole episode without Frank’s input in Season One but investigates a case with Lara Means in Season Two (2.19, “Anamnesis”).
By current standards, Millennium — like The X-Files itself — is very much a period piece, firmly ensconced in the dead technology, popular storytelling modes and cultural ideals of a different era. (A whole Season One episode is plotted around the since-discounted idea of every networked computer suddenly zeroing out at once during the 1999-to-2000 changeover, while one of its overall standout episodes, “The Mikado” [2.13], is a straight-up serial killer thriller that spins on a live-stream snuff website so old-school it only refreshes every twenty seconds.) Nevertheless, its surprising experimentalism, moments of the outright numinous, and sheer emotional power continues to impress, especially when exploring the sadly subtle border where fantasies of power can slide from harmless to harmful, threatening to destroy others, destroy ourselves, or even — at their most intense — the entire world.
As eventually becomes clear, the purpose of people like Frank and Jordan Black may be to provide a sort of healing spiritual guidance for an increasingly despairing millennialist global culture drunk on one part zealotry to three parts terrorism, made up of people so disconnected from what’s going on around them they feel they have the right to choose “a better path” for everyone else. And that concept, sadly, still sounds extremely relevant to the time we’re living through right now.
Welcome back to My Favorite Things! Each week, our contributors let you know about the speculative content you need to be consuming, right now. This week’s column features a bold collection of feminist essays, the announcement of an exciting new sci-fi book, and a binge worthy television show. Intrigued? Then keep on reading.
Shara’s Favorite Thing is… The Geek Feminist Revolution!
I feel like a broken record at this point, and if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, bear with me, but I have to go with Kameron Hurley’s excellent book of essays, The Geek Feminist Revolution. It’s not just a memoir, nor just a bunch of critical essays: it’s a call to action, an examination of what it means to be a woman writer in the genre, in the world, and all the ways we can work harder, fight harder, and make the genre better. If I could buy this book for every woman writer (or any writer who wants one, period), I would. I so would.
Tez’s Favorite Thing is… The Wanderers!
As a blogger it’s always interesting to find out a new title, release date, or art. When doing my weekly list checks, it was such a delight to come across this US/Canada cover for Meg Howrey’s The Wanderers. (I’m a sucker for a starry background.) The novel is an awesome-sounding story of three astronauts in training to go to Mars. It’s also sold UK/Australian rights, and with a different publisher so we may get another fantastic cover. Put the book on your wish-list now for its mid-March 2017 release! (Cover art and release dates subject to change, of course.)
A couple of weeks ago I was on a long international flight, poking at the entertainment console, when I saw the airline had Season 1 of Mr. Robot available. I’d been meaning to try this show so I started watching it, and before the plane landed I was hooked. This is not strictly speculative fiction, but I’m going to throw it in here because one element of the story, a giant corporation that has its hands in everything (I saw it as an amalgamation of Amazon and Microsoft and and Starbucks) and literally uses the same logo as Enron, puts this into the Dystopian arena. The protagonist, Elliot (Rami Malek), works at a security consulting firm that assists E. Corp, but on his off hours he’s a hacker that uses his skills to find out everyone’s dark secrets and maybe dispense some social justice. It’s in this secret life, one that is focused on techo-vigilantism that brings the suspense to the story. Elliot gets involved with a hacker collective, lead by an enigmatic Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), that’s determined to fight E. Corp. but there are complex mechanisms and motives at play. The technology is presented believably, and Rami Malek manages to be mesmerizing even with Elliot’s awkward dead-eye stare and monotone voice. As the episodes continue, what starts out feeling like something off, becomes a full-fledged unraveling, and yet after the last episode of the season, I still have questions. I’m really looking forward to season 2 (July 13, USA network). Season 1 is currently free with Amazon Prime.
Any thoughts on the selections above? Do you have any recommendations for us? Let us know in the comments below.
People hate the Devil. No really. It’s a huge debate in horror, and it’s one I’ve had to listen to and weigh in on for the past few years as I’ve finished up two religious horror projects, both inside and outside of graduate school. And I get it. The appeal of a character who is only bad and therefore has a pretty stereotypical game plan when it comes to the desecration of morality can be at best boring. I mean if the Devil exists, then God has to as well, right? And if God exists, the Devil will always be the lesser of the two. So what’s the point?
The Devil, at least for me, isn’t a man in a red suit who runs around with horns and a pointy stick — hello innuendo! — stabbing people and stealing souls. It’s a little bit more complex than that, and I’ll be the first to say, and to say loudly, that I love working with the Devil. He’s one of my favorite characters to write in genre because he represents chaos, confusion, lust, absence. The Devil makes you question everything you know and everything you believe, and if someone asked me to define horror — which they often do — that’s the description I give them. Horror doesn’t push boundaries, it questions what the boundary is and why it’s where it’s at to begin with.
Growing up Catholic, I’ve always had this if-you-fuck-up-you’re-going-to-Hell kind of fear. Because of that, the idea or representation of the Devil has always been what’s scared me the most. I’m not knocking Catholicism, but I’m also not going to deny that the element of fear and guilt is a huge part of the religion. That in itself is fascinating to me as a writer. Why should I fear my God? Why should I live in a fashion where I’m constantly under judgment? Where I’m terrified to do something or try something because, even if my intentions are good, it might result in my body being tortured and tormented for the rest of eternity?
That devotion, that fear, that way of living life is why the idea of cults, sacrifice, and the Devil takes me by the throat and keeps me up at night. People are willing to do things, terrible, terrible things, in the name of God, or the name of Satan, because they think it will save or purify their souls. Kill a child? Murder your family? Rape, pillage, plunder?
The Devil isn’t just a man, he’s an idea, he’s a concept. If you misbehave, you’re sinful. If you like sex, you’re devilish. The concept of darkness, of finding it, cultivating it, accepting it, and spreading it, sings my song, baby. I like a character who questions my innocence, my morals, my humanity. When I write evil, I’m writing the physical representation of seduction in every form. Give me sex, greed, envy, and wrath. I want your pride, your gluttony, your sloth. And I’ll write your malice, your fear, and your confession, but I won’t do it with darkness.
I’ll do it with light.
That’s why I’m a big fan of Fox’s new television series, Lucifer.
Based on characters created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Carey, and Mike Dringenberg, viewers get to watch their favorite fallen angel struggle with his humanity, his sense of punishment, and his anger towards his father. See, what I think people get wrong about the Devil in terms of writing horror is that they think he’s all bad. Did I just get sympathetic? Hell fucking yeah! If you have a character that is all darkness, then just like we discussed above, what’s the point of writing him/her? For instance, my favorite part of the show is when Lucifer starts handing out punishments because he wants to see justice for the good guys. In other words, Lucifer only punishes bad guys; he doesn’t encourage them to be bad, he just makes them pay for their sins once they’ve been committed, which means he’s not the one to blame when shit hits the fan.
I like to remind myself, over and over again, that Lucifer was once an angel. Sure, the Bible states that he fell, but at one point, he was nothing more, or nothing less, than God’s winged cheerleader. So there’s a past there. There’s a story. People get feisty when the Bible is looked at as a piece of literature and not as a holy text, but when all is said and done, it’s a book, and it’s a book that was not composed by God, nor by Lucifer. What we have here is a story. And as writers, we know that there are two sides to every story and maybe Lucifer is down in Hell because he was the only one God trusted enough to do the job and to do it right.
After all, Mr. Morningstar was his favorite, right?
Or maybe the stories we’ve been told are true and the Devil is a bad guy, and a flawed character, albeit a powerful one. When done right, he’s brilliant. He’s charming, manipulative, sympathetic. When done poorly, well, we’ve all seen that song and dance. But I think what’s important here is that the 
Devil is flawed. He made a mistake. He fucked up. He’s in Hell because he was cast out by his father and shunned by his brothers and his sisters. He is sinful — an embodiment of the seven — and he makes mistakes just as we do. That’s why he loves us. That’s why he wants us. We’re like him — vulnerable, thirsty, and vengeful. We’re the perfect prey. He’s not playing with anything that isn’t already inside of us — and that is where the horror lies.
It’s not in the Devil.
It’s not in God.
It’s in us.
And if that’s not scary enough, let me take it a step further:
God didn’t like being challenged, so he got rid of his competition. Snuffed him out like a cigarette and hid him away from the world, trapping him in a sea of fire and damning him for eternity. Everyone is so concerned about what’s happening below, but who is to say that there isn’t something equally as terrifying happening above?
Remember. Religion is blind faith.
That’s why horror writers — that’s why I — love playing with it, because what’s scarier than to confront the idea of hope that we all have, but that none of us can confirm? Religion is all about good versus evil. But what if we flipped sides? What if we stopped hearing that God wins, that God exists, that God doesn’t make mistakes?
What if God did make a mistake and it was casting out Lucifer?
If God is all powerful, why was Lucifer such a threat?
What if there’s a story that we don’t know about?
That all of us are too afraid to tell?
Angels versus demons.
Heaven versus Hell.
Maybe it’s time we (as writers) start questioning the fact that we picked sides before we heard both stories.
Stephanie M. Wytovich is an instructor by day and a horror writer by night. She is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, and a book reviewer for Nameless Magazine. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-nominated poetry collections, Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, and Brothel earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press, and her debut novel, The Eighth, is simmering in sin with Dark Regions Press. Follow Wytovich at stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com and on twitter @JustAfterSunset.
Technically, this is a reread, but it’s a reread with purpose. Robert Jackson Bennett is one of my favorite writers, slipping onto my auto-buy list. The thing is, it wasn’t always that way.
I read The Company Man, and didn’t like it. So then I read Mr. Shivers and didn’t like it. After that, I read The Troupe and almost liked it.
Then I read American Elsewhere and loved it.
American Elsewhere (2013)
Written by: Robert Jackson Bennett Genre: Horror Pages: 662 (Trade Paperback)
Publisher: Orbit
The Premise:
Some places are too good to be true.
Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map: Wink, New Mexico.
In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things.After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother’s home. And the closer Mona gets to her mother’s past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different …
SPOILERS AHOY. This is a book from 2013, so kind of fair game. Also content warning for suicides and miscarriages.
Discussion: I have a lot to unpack up front; not least, why did I keep reading works by an author who wrote books whose endings I didn’t like? And why did American Elsewhere work so well for me when his others didn’t?
I kept reading Bennett because he always provided a trifecta of great things: Complex characters. Fully realized settings. Solid writing.
I just didn’t like the stories they wrapped around.
I am not really a horror reader. There are too many horror stories that rely on man’s inhumanity to man and the cruel nature of the world. Too many stories where people go out of their way to be awful. These stories are full of good people struggling and dying, or full of bad people being bad and dying in terrible ways. Pure horror is rarely my jam.
If I’m going to read horror, I want it leavened with something more palatable. Mystery. Adventure. Thriller. It’s why I binge-read Koontz as a teen.
The Troupe tipped closer to dark fantasy, centering on a song that built the world. So even with three books behind me that I didn’t appreciate as much as the writing deserved, I picked up American Elsewhere. I was so glad I did.
American Elsewhere IS a horror story: it’s full of blood and gore and people being horrible to each other for the wrong reasons. It’s full of oppression and despair and people trapped in the ruts they’ve made of their lives. It’s also got a compelling batch of cosmic fantasy — the kind of magic that might just be sufficiently advanced science.
The spoilery gist of this book is that in the past, Coburn Observatory did some experiments with mirror lenses and something observed them right back — a god who was hunting for a world to rehome her enormously powerful and enormously large brood. She dropped them all off in Wink, the manufactured town built around the observatory, gave them three inviolable rules: “Stay here, and wait for me. Each of you should obey the next eldest while I am gone, and you should never harm one another or anything else besides.” Then she died.
This results in Wink being very weird indeed: not only are there monsters aplenty, Wink is mired in the pop culture of cocktails and green lawns and his and her social roles that Mother thought was appropriate. Some of the people in Wink are real humans, some are only wearing the appearance of human shape, and some are monsters banished to the outskirts for not being able to fit in. On top of all of that, there are fragments of the God-Mother’s body scattered around Wink, slowly changing the landscape.
When Mona arrives in Wink, it’s during a funeral for one of the eldest members of the god-family who has been murdered. The town is stunned. Murdering one of the god-children is impossible for a human to do, and it’s unimaginable for one of the family to have acted in such a way.
At first, the remaining elder members of the family want Mona to leave, sensing that her presence is disruptive, but when there’s a second murder, one of them recruits her to figure out what’s going on.
American Elsewhere is a big thick book which makes room for some petty irritations.
It takes a long time to get Mona mostly up to speed. The reader beats her there, because we get to see scenes that she doesn’t. It gets a little tiring to watch Mona spinning her wheels for the first third of the book. Once she gets Parson (one of the elder siblings) to spin her a “fairy tale” about a family — a very thinly veiled history of their kind — then the story kicks into high gear. Before this moment, Mona’s been stumbling bravely through the dark; afterward, she is still confused but she’s on the right track.
There are a lot of characters here, and some seem to exist to pad out the population. As is the case in many horror stories, they exist only to provide appropriate death counts later. That bugs me, especially when you get to the Grand Guignol climactic act of people suiciding in droves in grossly violent ways. Yeah, thank you for developing all these tiny walk-on roles just so we can see them get slaughtered.
There’s a segment that dragged for me: A story within the story where Mona finds old redacted files about the staff of Coburn Obsevatory. Through these ephemera, she gets to know the people who were working there before Mother came through and tries to piece together the events. Usually, I adore this kind of thing — characters reading documents in a secret lab — but the problem is, none of these characters really matter in the now. Plus the question of what actually has happened was answered for the reader by Parson’s fairy tale. It’s enjoyable enough, but I wanted to get back to the main storyline.
All those irritants aside, this book is really a good read. For a horror novel written by a male writer, I thought it was surprisingly centered on mothers and their children in a really interesting and plausible way.
Mona is a woman who tried to make a life for herself (job, husband, baby) and when it fell apart after a violent accident in which she miscarried, she became a drifter. She’s haunted by her mother’s suicide which occurred while she was very young. Mona only ever knew her as a miserably discontent housewife striving for the perfect home, so she’s stunned to find out that her mother had been part of the cutting-edge experiment that resulted in Wink being the way it is.
There are Big Revelations here in this book, one predictable but delightful, and some that are elegant twists on character development that make you sit back and give a satisfied “ah,” no matter how many times you read the book. That Mona is slightly more than human? Predictable but perfectly used here. The sheer human-relatable core to the mother-god? Or the cause of her mother’s mental illness? A wonderful twist.
I like the god-children. They’re varied immensely and run the gamut from pathetic (yet terrifying) to charismatic and powerful (yet terrifying). Even the ones who masquerade as humans do so in ways that are disconcerting. Not only are they basically parasitical invaders of human flesh, they don’t really behave in human ways, so there’s a constant level of dissonance, a feeling of subtle wrongs.
One of the most fascinating characters is also the most enigmatic — the rejected child named The Wildling — caged, and resentful, but also tragic. I also really liked the First, who was both more alien and more human than many of the others. The villain of the piece is also the most wounded, and is really nothing more than a child crying out for its mother.
I loved the magic. There’s so much strange and weird that permeates Wink that it becomes a really individual setting. You get Bennett’s description of the physical terrain, but you also get the lingering sense of the uncanny always lurking just out of sight, carefully ignored or covered up for by the locals.
One of the benefits of a big book is that Bennett can include all sorts of things: there’s the horror, the murder mystery, Mona’s quest for her mother’s history, and then there’s the local criminals who get dragged into the godlets’ plans, dealing heroin in exchange for carrying strange, deadly tokens around. It all means Bennett has space to flesh out the world and characters. That makes up for the characters who exist just to die.
In Conclusion: In the end, American Elsewhere is such a satisfying read. It’s got big, world-altering stakes, but they’re based on small, intimate issues, and that’s a lovely combination. Mona’s a great character to guide us through; changed by all these vast events, but still managing to keep her humanity. That said, I’m thrilled that his writing has tipped over to full fantasy — the Divine Cities trilogy is amazing, and the Founders series looks to be just as good — but this one really feels like the book where he hit his stride. It won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award, so I know I’m not the only one who thinks so. If you’ve missed this one and you like fantasy-laced horror, check it out.
One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a new column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.
For our very first installment, we bring you horror author from Down Under and body-horror specialist, Claire Fitzpatrick, whose debut short fiction collection, Metamorphosis, will be released on September 2nd from IFWG Publishing!
Gerry Huntman, Managing Director of IFWG, has described Claire as a “firm, niche voice in the horror field.” So what, exactly, shaped that voice? Well, inspiration can come from many different sources, and not all of it is beautiful. Let Claire explain…
I can’t recall any defining book or film that set me on my course of becoming a horror writer. I do, however, remember three very specific horrific events on TV that left a distinct impression on me as a child — that death was everywhere.
I was quite young, around 7, when the two-part docudrama The Day of the Roses came on. I was living in New South Wales at the time. My parents were out, and my sister and I were in their bed, watching TV, as our 60ish-year-old babysitter was in the loungeroom doing whatever it was 60ish-year-old babysitters did. Probably drinking port, as she liked to do. My sister was asleep, and as I was flicking through the channels, I stopped at a grisly scene of a woman trapped underneath a derailed train. I don’t know why it caught my attention. Maybe it was the look of sheer horror on her face as she struggled to free herself? Maybe it was because she was surrounded by the fellow-injured and the dead? I have no idea.
As I grew older, I learned The Day of the Roses was about the 1977 Granville railway disaster. Today, it remains the worst rail disaster in Australian history and the largest loss of life in a confined area post war. At 8:10am on the 18th of January 1977, the 6:09am train from Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains was headed towards the city when it derailed and rammed into the supports of the Bold Street bridge in Granville. The bridge collapsed, causing 470 tonnes of concrete and steel to fall onto two carriages of the train. 84 people died. More than 213 were injured. A total of 1,300 were affected.
I don’t know why the image of the disaster is imprinted in my mind. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even alive then. I didn’t know anyone who’d been there. I think it seemed strange that a simple car bridge could do such damage. But perhaps it was because I learned of the accident when I was a child? Children are sponges, after all. Maybe it became a nightmare I was somehow part of? I can’t remember.
Not long after watching the docudrama, the 1997 Thredbo landslide occurred. I don’t recall if we were watching the news or not, but I remember learning about the incident, as I went to primary school in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales, and the year 6 kids went to Thredbo for the end of primary school camp. Half an hour before midnight on Wednesday July 30, 1997, the earth gave way and the mud thundered down the steep slopes of the Thredbo ski resort, destroying two lodges. One was a four-storey ski club lodge with just one occupant, the other was a staff lodge with 18. All 19 were trapped under a mess of earth, debris, and heavy concrete slabs. A single man survived; a man trapped for 65 hours beside the body of his wife. It seemed so grotesque to me — trapped for so long besides someone who had died, trapped beside the body of the one you loved.
Image from ABC News
My family moved to Queensland in 2001 when I was around 11 or 12. I soon became enthralled by the idea of natural disasters and developed a fascination for finding out more information on disasters in my area. But not a lot happened near me, and life felt strangely dull. Until one morning awoke to my father in the loungeroom staring at the TV. He was a scaffolder and was usually gone before I got up for school. However, this morning he seemed transfixed to the television, staring at it in a mixture of bizarre fascination and disbelief. I stood beside him and watched as the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers collapsed, engulfed in a pillar of fire and smoke. As I watched the images of people fleeing the area, covered in blood, dragging the dead, a bizarre image came into my mind — a collage of trains, landslides, burning buildings, dead bodies, and people screaming. I’m not sure if my sister and I went to school that day. I don’t know anyone who did.
Over the years, more disasters followed. The 2003 Canberra bushfires. The 2006 Beaconsfield Mine collapse. The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. It all seemed to come one after the other. Of course, disasters happen everywhere you go. It’s not uncommon to know someone who’s been affected by one. There’s a joke in the family that we shouldn’t exist because of that one time my Scottish great-grandmother missed that damn boat that sunk in 1912.
I’m now 28, and I still have a fascination with disaster shows and documentaries. In fact, one of my favorite shows is Air Crash Investigations. I’m also interested in the mechanics of trains and aeroplanes, and even wanted to be a pilot. I like learning about how things work, why things break, and how to fix things so they won’t break again. I like writing about taking things apart and putting them back together. I enjoy learning about anatomy, and the machinations of the human body. I developed a keen interest in anthropology, and the ways in which societies work together during horrific accidents or events. I’m currently pitching a Masters idea about the hedgehog’s dilemma, a metaphor used to explain introversion and self-imposed isolation. And it’s interesting, since that’s exactly the opposite of what happens during these events. Instead of isolating themselves, total strangers risk their lives to help one another. Yes, death is everywhere, but it doesn’t have to be.
Apparently, there’s a scientific reason why we can’t turn away from tragedy. Carl Jung suggested our mental health depends on our shadow, that part of our psyche that harbors our darkest energies, such as melancholia and murderousness. The more we repress the morbid, the more it foments neuroses or psychoses. To achieve a kind of unity, we must acknowledge our most demonic inclinations. I couldn’t stop watching people leap to their death from the Twin Towers. There’s something about tragedy that stops me in my place and demands my complete and total attention. However, it seems like once we welcome these grim events into our psyche, we’re able to comprehend them more, find the humanity in the darkness.
I don’t know if being aware of catastrophic events and natural disasters at a young age helped me to become the horror writer I am today, but it has certainly assisted with my natural curiosity of the macabre. I’ve held them in high regard as the moments that made me stop and think of all the true and natural horrors of the world. Through them, I’ve learned life is filled with unplanned events, unforeseen catastrophes, and a lot of fodder for creative writing. That’s not to say I look forward to disasters — I simply find them interesting and remain morbidly fascinated. It’s one of the few things that’s stuck with me as a kid. I’m sure life would have been much different if I’d remained interested in Green Teen Skipper dolls, but often the things that stick with you aren’t what you necessarily expect. Life is weird that way. I suppose that’s why writers are weird, too.
Claire Fitzpatrick is an award-wining author of speculative fiction and non-fiction. She won the 2017 Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism. Called “Australia’s Queen Of Body Horror” and “Australia’s Body Horror Specialist,” she enjoys writing about anatomy and the darker side of humanity. Visit her at www.clairefitzpatrick.net/. Facebook || Twitter || Instagram
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