Book Review: Hecate's Cauldron

Book Review: 'Hecate's Cauldron' edited by Susan M. Schwartz

3 / 5 Stars

‘Hecate’s Cauldron’ (256 pp) was published by DAW (book No. 469) in February, 1982; the cover artwork is by Michael Whelan.

In her Introduction, Editor Susan Schwartz describes the role of the witch, or sorceress, in world literature, indicating that in assembling stories for this anthology, she elected entries that avoided the traditional treatment of the witch as a figure necessarily limited to medieval European legend and history. 

Accordingly, the majority of the stories in ‘Cauldron’ are not tales of warty old crones casting spells and riding brooms, but rather, are fantasy stories that prominently feature female characters.

All of the stories in this volume were specially commissioned or solicited for this book.

My short summaries of the entries:

Boris Chernevsky’s Hands, by Jane Yolen: in the far future, a young man of Russian descent encounters Baba Yaga.

Mirage and Magic, by Tanith Lee: at this period of her career, Lee routinely over-wrote her fantasy short stories; this tale, however encrusted with self-consciously ornate prose, deals with a sorceress who is converting a city’s young men into shambling simpletons.

Willow, by C. J. Cherryh: Cherryh, also intent on using a prose style heavily modeled on the prose of Ye Olde Mythes and Legendes, offers a dark, brooding tale of a battle-weary knight and his encounter with manifestations of the Goddess.

Moon Mirror, by Andre Norton: a Witch World tale; the young woman protagonist has an encounter with a magical pond. A rather unremarkable tale from Norton.

The Sage of Theare, by Diana Wynne Jones: the weakest entry in the anthology. This story uses a humorous approach to the adventures of the mortal son of the God Apollo, who finds his earthly destiny with the aid of the mage Chrestomanci, a character from Jones’s previous fiction. Devoid of any witches, sorceresses, or other lead female characters, this story undoubtedly showed editor Schwartz what happens sometimes with these invited anthologies: you’re stuck with what your contributors give you............

The Harmonious Battle, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson: derived from Japanese myth and legend, this story deals with a female samurai and her adventures in the spirit world.

Science is Magic Spelled Backwards, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg: a contemporary setting is used for this humorous tale of a young woman, an engineer at a nuclear power plant, who gets timely advice from her mother and her mother’s coven.

An Act of Faith, by Galad Elflandson: this is really the only entry in the book that is set in medieval Europe, in this instance, Norway. It’s a grim, violent story about the village seeress and herbalist who confronts the depredations of Christians seeking to convert the heathens. Its treatment of Christianity is unabashedly scathing.

Witch Fulfillment, by Jean Lorrah: another contemporary setting, and another humorous tale; Mary Sue Clyatt consults occult wisdom and makes a bargain with a demon for earthly fame, riches, and romance.

Ishigbi, by Charles Saunders: Saunders, the author of the 'Imaro' stories, offers a downbeat and bloody tale about an African witch who takes vengeance on a fellow sorcerer. One of the better stories in the anthology.

Bethane, by Katherine Kurtz: a Deryni story. The title character, and elderly healer and herbalist, confronts old hatreds when asked to render aid to the children of the nobility.

The Riddle of Hekaite, by Diana L. Paxson: the Queen of a besieged kingdom makes a fateful bargain with the Goddess, who demands her due. Another of the better entries in the collection.

Reunion, by Jayge Carr: retelling of the myth of Persephone, with a modern, slightly sardonic tenor.

Summing up ? ‘Hecate’s Cauldron’, while inevitably containing its share of underwhelming entries, is a reasonably successful anthology overall. It’s an indication that by the early 80s, fiction by women was coming into its own in the world of fantasy publishing, and that DAW was at the forefront…. And thus, ‘Cauldron’ is a premonition of the fact that women would come to constitute the major audience for fantasy literature.

The Venus Interface

The Venus Interface
Heavy Metal magazine graphic novel
1989

In January of 1980, Heavy Metal editor Tim White decided to emulate the magazine's French counterpart (i.e., Metal Hurlant) and add monthly review columns for books, comic books, music, and films. The 'Muzick' column was assigned to Lou Stathis.

Lou Stathis, NYC, Summer 1986

[Note to modern-day readers: nowadays, the occupation / pastime of 'Rock Critic' has all but vanished from the cultural and media landscape. But back in 1980, 'Rock Criticism' was still a major component of pop culture. Although the genre would not survive the arrival of the Internet in the 90s, in the 80s, the magazine shelves contained a number of titles devoted to the topic. The foremost, and still surviving, example was Rolling Stone, but there also were Creem, Circus, and a sizable, ever-changing lineup of other, more fleeting titles.]

Stathis (1952 - 1997) wrote columns that were not very different from those being produced by other rock critics of the era. Like those other critics, Stathis adopted an arch, too-hip-to-be-fully-understood tenor in his writing (for example, he used the word 'rok' in place of 'rock'); and his columns were less about actually reviewing music, and more about showcasing Stathis's exquisitely jaundiced, world-weary attitudes regarding a variety of cultural topics. 

Stathis - like every other rock critic of the late 70s - early 80s - routinely praised performers in the Punk, New Wave, Electronic, and avante-garde genres, while disparaging 'mainstream' acts. 

Stathis was particularly prone to showcasing 'alternative' rock groups that were laboring in (often well-deserved) obscurity, since for him, searching out and showcasing these bands was a potent reminder to readers as to just how cutting-edge Lou Stathis could be.

Here's an excerpt from his column for the May, 1980 issue of Heavy Metal, in which Stathis waxes eloquent about a single from the New Wave band 'Fad Gadget', issued on an obscure UK label called 'Mute Records'. 

Note Stathis's use of phrases such as 'electrotunesmiths', 'manic minimalism', 'aggressively optimistic electropop', and 'counterpointed synthesizer melodies.'  That's how Rok Criticism is done !

[There actually is a surviving Fad Gadget video clip posted to YouTube, titled 'Collapsing New People'...........!   While it's unintentionally funny, it's no better, and no worse, than any other New Wave / Synth Band song issued on the indie labels in the UK back in that era.]

Later on in the decade, Stathis was eventually promoted to Associate Editor at Heavy Metal, and when the magazine dropped the review columns, he began writing some of the comic / graphic content of the magazine. 

Which brings us to 'The Venus Interface'. Released as a 'Heavy Metal Graphic Novel' (although in reality it's a just typical, square-bound version of the magazine) it was issued in 1989. The story was written by Stathis, with the artwork is supplied by a team of 7, including well-known HM contributor Arthur Suydam.

In his Author's Note, Stathis indicates that (inevitably) William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick were his literary inspirations, while the New Wave band Joy Division's track Interface was "........a song that helped set my mind during the writing."

Without revealing any spoilers: the heroine of the story, named Sheldon, possesses the ability to take the shape of any of the hundreds of races populating the galaxy. When not shape-shifting, Sheldon (conveniently for Heavy Metal readers) is a lithe brunette who wears little - if any - clothing.

Sheldon's ability catches the attentions of the Director of the Coca-Farben conglomerate. The complex life-extension treatments that have kept The Director alive are failing, and his only hope for survival is to collect various tissues and essences from a number of the galaxy's races. Once collected, the tissues will be extracted to create a formula for eternal youth.

Sheldon has misgivings about the assignment, but the pay - and the prospect of getting her own dose of the rejuvenation formula - lead her to accept.

The bulk of the story deals with Sheldon's efforts to acquire the needed specimens from some of the galaxy's more bizarre, and unpleasant, worlds. These efforts require Sheldon to adopt the forms of lubricious teletubbies, robots, fish, and insects....

Stathis's writing isn't very original, using the first-person narrative of the world-weary private-eye who is taking on what they know will be a dirty job. There is a determined effort to mimic the writing style of Burroughs; most of the dialogue is a stream of cynical quips, and tart one-liners. The plot also shows the influence of the Cyberpunks, which isn't surprising.

The artwork in 'Venus' is, overall, pretty good. Arthur Suydam's contributions are particularly noteworthy.....it's yet another case of outstanding draftsmanship and coloring buoying an underwhelming story.

Mark Pacella also contributes some pleasing artwork.

I found the section contributed by Peter Kuper to be unimpressive.......

That of Kenneth Smith is a bit too garish and cartoony for my tastes, but it does work......

Michael Uman's art strikes me as being too derivative of Bill Sienkiewicz........

While that of Jim Fletcher - which bookends the opening and closing segments of 'Venus' - holds up well.......

Summing up, I read 'The Venus Interface' with the expectation that it would mirror - for the worse - the self-indulgent, pretentious writing style Stathis employed for his Rok columns. But all things considered, 'Venus' is better than I expected it to be, mainly because the majority of the artwork is fine enough to buttress the plot.

If you are a fan of the Heavy Metal issues of the 80s, and you can find a copy of 'Venus' for $5 (which is what happened to me), then it is worth picking up. Compared to contemporary sf graphic novels, like The Manhattan Projects, Black Science, and the over-praised Saga, it fares well.

Book Review: Monument

Book Review: 'Monument' by Ian Graham

5 / 5 Stars

‘Monument’ first was published in hardback in 2002; Ace Books released this mass-market paperback version in March, 2005. The outstanding cover painting is by Jerry Vanderstelt.

I don’t usually review books published after the late 80s – early 90s, but in the case of ‘Monument’ I am making an exception, mainly because it’s one of the best fantasy novels published in the last 20 years, particularly in the sub-category of ‘dark fantasy’. It’s superior to any number of novels from authors like China Mieville, Tim Lebbon, Patrick Rothfuss, Peter Brett, Alan Campbell, Mark Lawrence, Brent Weeks, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, etc. etc.

And what makes ‘Monument’ all the more impressive is that it was the first published novel from Ian Graham, a bookseller who lives in a village in northern England.

‘Monument’ is set in Druine, a medieval world where magic exists, but is outlawed by the oppressive Pilgrim Church, whose Wardens have the power to summarily arrest anyone they suspect is violating the Church’s precepts. Heretics so apprehended often are condemned to a painful death, their heads mounted upon the trunk and branches of the Penance Oak in the city square.

The protagonist is a huge, ugly, unkempt man named Anhaga Ballas. Ballas is a vagrant, a thief and a drunkard. Ballas is not your usual fantasy hero; lice crawl through his hair and his food-matted beard, and the stench from his un-washed body leads gentler folk to avoid his company. 

Ballas is utterly amoral, and will quite happily knock an innocent senseless if it will allow him to steal enough coins for a flagon of rotgut wine and a dalliance with the cheapest of prostitutes.

As 'Monument' opens, Ballas is lying prostrate on a back alley of the city of Soriterath, the victim of a severe beating. He is rescued by a conscientious priest named Brethrien. When Ballas recovers his health, Brethrien sends him on an errand to the house of a scholar named Calden. There Ballas glimpses a jewel of unusual design and craftsmanship…..a jewel he endeavors to steal.

But as the unwitting Ballas is to discover, the jewel he covets is no ordinary trinket, but an artifact potent with the magic of Druine’s former inhabitants, the long - exterminated race of the humanoid Lectivins. And when the Pilgrim Church discovers what Ballas knows about the jewel, they will issue an Edict calling for his capture and execution...........and they will pursue him over the entire width of Druine.

For Ballas, the only hope of survival rests upon fleeing across hundreds of miles of wilderness to reach the northern refuge of Belthirran.

But no one he meets believes that Belthirran even exists……..!

‘Monument’ is at heart a chase novel, built around a straightforward narrative that deals with Ballas’s efforts to escape the ever-tightening noose being drawn by the Church. Graham avoids the over-writing so common to many contemporary fantasy novels, and instead relies on a clean, unadorned prose style that, despite the book’s length of 452 pages, keeps the plot continually moving along in a true 'page-turner' manner.

Graham also relies on frequent episodes of violence to impart momentum to the narrative, acts of mayhem related in the sharp, crisp style reminiscent of the best crime fiction.

‘Monument’ isn’t perfect; its characters are overly prone to launching into extended speeches, and Ballas at times seems to lead so charmed a life that his encounters with his pursuers are predictable in terms of outcome. But what this novel does so very well is to merge the day-to-day reality of a medieval world, in all its gritty, nasty, and brutish glory, with the tropes and trappings of a fantasy novel. The elements of fantasy and magic that appear in ‘Monument’ are infrequent, but always well-placed and not contrived, giving the book the sort of grounding that is absent in many others of the genre.

If you have yet to read ‘Monument’, then it’s certainly worth picking up. 

Graham took quite some time to craft his second novel, but in 2015,  a prequel to 'Monument', titled 'The Path of the Hawk', appeared. A paperback version is available from your usual online retailers. 

Epic Illustrated June 1984

Epic Illustrated 
June,1984
No. 24

One of the better singleton entries in this issue is 'The Jewel in the Clouds', by first-time contributor and artist Jon Zack. According to the 'Overview' section of the magazine, editor Archie Goodwin was alerted to Zack's artwork by Boris Vallejo. 

Goodwin asked Zack to contribute a feature, with Goodwin providing the 'script' (which essentially consists of a trite prose peom).

Despite Goodwin's unimpressive text, Zack's offbeat, imaginative art style is well worth viewing. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information about him with a Google search....so this Epic Illustrated entry may well have been his only graphic art to ever be published.

Book Review: Nomads

Book Review: 'Nomads' by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

2 / 5 Stars

This novelization (232 pp) of a script by John McTiernan was published by Bantam in May, 1984; the cover artwork is by Jeff Adams. The movie itself was released in the US in March, 1986, and marked the directorial debut for McTiernan, who later would go on to direct Predator and Die Hard.

I watched Nomads on VHS some years after its release, and found it a mildly entertaining film, albeit one limited by its low budget. The film had a very '80s' aesthetic, featuring the sort of visual schemes and synthesizer-heavy soundtracks that are familiar to anyone who watched MTV, and feature films such as American Gigolo and Miami Vice.

The film and novel follow each other with little variation. 

Without disclosing spoilers: 

In one plot thread, a French-Canadian anthropologist named Jean-Charles Pommier moves into a rented home in LA to start a teaching career. Pommier is shocked to discover that the house previously was the scene of a gruesome murder, and that a group of vicious-looking California street thugs regard the house as a shrine. Pommier, whose specialty is the study of nomadic tribes, is repulsed, but also intrigued, by the thugs, and soon follows them as they make their rounds in the greater LA region.

Pommier gradually realizes that these modern-day 'nomads' are in fact of supernatural origin, living o the edge of human awareness. He also learns that they don't take kindly to being scrutinized by strangers.

In the other plot thread, an emergency room doctor named Eileen Flax discovers, to her dismay and horror, that she has a 'psychic' connection with Pommier. As a result of this connection, she is prone to lapsing into a trance, where she is a passive onlooker to his interactions with the nomads.

As the narrative unfolds, both Pommier and Flax will find themselves targeted by the nomads.....but how can they convince the world that these 'modern ghosts' are not only real, but capable of murder............ ?

Looking at the clips of the film that are posted at YouTube, Nomads is handicapped to a considerable extent by its low-budget origins. Most of the film's content revolves around tedious sequences of psychodrama shot exclusively in close-up, as well as out-of-focus tracking shots of people walking down corridors and hallways while ominous music plays in the background.

And unfortunately, this novelization shows the limitations of being based on a script for a low-budget film. It's a good 40 - 60 pages too long, with too little actions, and way too much unnecessary exposition on the anguish-driven mental states of the major and minor characters.

Those few moments of action that take place in both the film and the novel are limited in scope, and tend to rely on the passivity of Pommier and Flax, as helpless victims of the nomads, rather than a gripping life-and-death struggle with the 'forces of darkness'. 

The nomads themselves are rather underwhelming villains; again, the low-budget nature of the film means that on screen and in the novel, they are come across more like ill-behaved extras in an 80s New Wave music video, than a coterie of truly dangerous outcasts.

If you are hungering for nostalgia, then 'Nomads' may be worth picking up. But if you are looking for a forgotten gem of an 80s horror novel, then you're going to be disappointed.

Escape from New York comic book

Escape from New York
Christopher Sebela (story) and Diego Barreto (art)
Boom ! Studios, 2014 - 2015

In December 2014, indie comics publisher Boom! Studios issued the first issue of a series of 'Escape from New York' comic books, a sequel to the classic 1981 sf movie from John Carpenter.

[Earlier in 2014, Boom! had released a comic book series based on Carpenter's 1986 film, 'Big Trouble in Little China'.]

The 'Escape from New York' sequel evidently is scheduled to last for 6 issues.

Given my opinion of the contemporary comic book scene, I didn't have major expectations for the new series, but I was willing to pick up the first two issues to see what it was like.

On the one hand, the series does start things off right where the movie left off, which is good....our hero has made the President a laughing stock and threatened World Peace, and Bob Hauk is ordered to put Snake right back into NYC prison. Snake, of course, has no intention of complying, and makes a break for freedom.

But the plot, by Christopher Sebela, too quickly becomes utterly frenetic and haphazard. For example, within a series of only three panels, Snake stands atop a speeding jeep....climbs onto the skid of a hovering chopper.........and makes his way into the cockpit to hijack the aircraft...?! This rushed, facile approach to the narrative gives the comic a hyperactive quality completely out of character with the movie.

Diego Barreto's artwork has the cartoony, manga-inspired styling that dominates much of the contemporary comic book aesthetic, and when it's combined with a flat color scheme from colorist Marissa Louise, the result is less than impressive.....I got the impression I was reading a sequel to 'Escape from New York' produced by Hanna-Barbera.

I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say the plot has Snake escaping New York and lighting out for Florida, now an independent, anarchistic state which protects itself from the federal government via a mine field of Cuban nukes buried along the state's northern border.....

The movie was set in 1997, albeit a 1997 as imagined by a film-maker living the early 80s. Unfortunately, there's little effort on writer Sebela's part to communicate any information on the year in which this sequel is set, and thus, the narrative is devoid of any real stylistic continuity with the backstory, and atmosphere, of the film. It comes across as a rebooted 'Escape' set in a decrepit USA ca. 2015.

There are still four issues of 'Escape from New York' to go, but if the first two issues are any indication, this is yet another unimpressive retooling of a franchise that deserves much better.........

The Hacker Files issue 1

The Hacker Files
by Lewis Shiner (story) and Tom Sutton (art)
issue 1
DC Comics, August 1992

Science fiction / speculative fiction author Lewis Shiner wrote a number of comic book series for DC in the 1990s, starting with 'Time Masters' in 1990, followed by 'The Hacker Files' in 1992, and 'Vermillion' in 1996.

1992 was of course the apex year for the Early 90s Comics Boom, and DC and Marvel were flinging out new titles every month. But this was also a time when cyberpunk, hackers, and the hacking subculture were emerging as pop culture phenomena. So it wasn't too surprising when DC's management decided to act on Shiner's suggestions and release a comic book about ....well......... a hacker.

As Shiner notes in his introductory essay to the series (appearing in lieu of the Letters Column for issue 1) with 'Files' he is intent on a humanistic approach - making the hacker, rather than the computers, the focus of the story. Jack Marshall, the hacker in 'Files', is depicted as a scruffy, antisocial maverick who has little patience with Authority, but Nonetheless Has His own Principles to Which He Stays True. 

This might have been too idealized a portrait, but then again, Shiner was attempting something rather offbeat (even if the book was set in the DC Universe) by having a social outcast as hero.

In his introductory essay, Shiner indicates that he and DC editor Bob Wayne want their Hacker aesthetic to be readily distinguishable from DC's more conventional, superhero-oriented titles (this was something of a big departure from the company's 'normal' approach to comic book design at the time.....DC's more 'adult' imprint, Vertigo, wouldn't be launched for another year yet). 

However, the big weakness of 'The Hacker Files' is the artwork by Tom Sutton. 

According to 'Erotic Comics' by Tim Pilcher (2008), at the time the series was published, Sutton was busy cranking out porno comics for Eros Comics, an imprint of Fantagraphics. Sutton used the pseudonym 'Dementia' for titles such as 'Bizarre Bondage', 'Savage Sewer Sluts', and 'Bondage Slaves'. This workload plainly resulted in a subpar effort by Sutton for 'The Hacker Files', with many panels looking as if thumbnails were hastily pressed into service as the finished art. 

Sutton's pencils are too loose and sketchy to be really effective, particularly for a book that can't rely on the types of frenetic action scenes that typify superhero comics. 

Sutton didn't put much effort into rendering his human faces very well, a major drawback for a book that revolved around depicting face-to-face conversations and interactions. 'Files' is further hampered by use of a murky color scheme from Lovern Kindzierski / Digital Chameleon. 

In future issues of 'The Hacker Files', Sutton's artwork would deteriorate even further............

But......... enough of the Aesthetic Arguments. Below I've posted the first issue of 'The Hacker Files', which features the first installment of the 'Soft War' four-issue story arc. 

(I'll  be posting the three following issues of 'Soft War' here at the PorPor Books Blog)