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An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is a New York Times-bestselling author, editor, and critic, known as one of the pioneers of the New Weird movement in speculative fiction. VanderMeer has published over ten novels, including the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award-winning Annihilation, the first entry in his Southern Reach series, which has been translated into over thirty-five languages. In 2018, Annihilation was adapted into a feature film by Paramount starring Natalie Portman.

A special twentieth anniversary edition of Jeff VanderMeer’s first novel, Veniss Underground, is being published on April 11, 2023, which includes five bonus stories and a new foreword by Charles Yu. Veniss Underground takes place in the future metropolis of Veniss, where biological material is recycled into art and a terrifying darkness lies hiding in the labyrinthine world beneath the city.

We recently had the honor of discussing with VanderMeer about Veniss Underground, the Southern Reach series, and more.

[GdM] Congratulations on the twenty-year anniversary of your first novel, Veniss Underground. What made you decide to revisit the story?

[JV] MCD/FSG and Picador US had been releasing the rest of my backlist in new editions, like the Ambergris Trilogy, and I’d also been getting more and more involved in environmental causes while writing novels like Hummingbird Salamander that are very direct about ecological issues. When I went back and read Veniss, it felt like it sat comfortably between the direct environmental message of Hummingbird Salamander and the lyrical, experimental one of my novel Dead Astronauts. So, a reissue felt relevant, and also given the actual 20-year anniversary of initial publication occurs during April, which is also the month for Earth Day.

[GdM] How did you originally conceive the idea for this novel and how did it evolve into its final form?

[JV] I wrote the first part, from the point of view of a failed poet/writer, Nicholas, and then mulled the implications of that—sold that part to Interzone under the title “Quin’s Shanghai Circus,” which is also the title of a novel by the little-known US writer Edward Whittemore. The novel contains a scene of a slaughter of circus animals that is deranged and terrible and also one of the more unique and visceral scenes I’d ever read. Somehow, to me, it dovetailed with the biotech themes of my story and also the idea that in the far future even obscure works from our time period might wind up being the inspiration for things in that future. Then, once I realized characters in that first section would be their own viewpoint sections, I had the rest of the novel.

[GdM] The foreword for the new release of Veniss Underground is written by Charles Yu. How did he become involved in the project?

[JV] Charles and I have known each other’s work for quite some time and I’ve always loved how he weds formal experimentation with great emotional intensity. Even when he’s meta, he’s not abstract. Veniss structurally, going from “I” to “you” to “him,” and how those pieces fit together has some sneaky experimentation to it, and I thought the book might appeal to him. He was kind enough to say yes and to have some very interesting things to say about Veniss.

[GdM] Charles has a great quote in the forward, “In Veniss, a reader can see in VanderMeer’s first novel many of the preoccupations found in his later work, the conceptual DNA of a larger project already present, pluripotent stem cells that will go on proliferating for years into many more books, many more beings and worlds and ideas.” Looking back 20 years later, do you find this to be true?

[JV] Yes, definitely. As a writer who has always grown up surrounded by incredible biodiversity and lush habitat, one thing I bring to my fiction is an understanding of how the natural systems of the world are vital—and part of that is always trying to see things from a nonhuman as well as human perspective. This permeates my view of biotech, as well.

[GdM] The diverse narrative styles in Veniss Underground are particularly effective at building emotional connections with the three point-of-view characters, Nicholas, Nicola, and Shadrach. How did you decide to employ first-, second-, and third-person narration across these three perspectives? Did you encounter any particular challenges among these three narrative styles?

[JV] I once read a novel with sixteen different first person points of view, and it exemplified for me that sometimes varying perspectives can be the most effective way of creating characters that don’t merge into one another. Nicholas is definitely ego driven and thus “I” seemed appropriate. The realities of Nicola’s situation demanded second person, while Shadrach’s quest through very strange realms felt like it needed the ability to visualize more that third person affords. Far from creating challenges, deciding on this approach solved all sorts of problems and felt very natural.

[GdM] Veniss Underground is known as one of the defining works of the New Weird movement. How would you describe New Weird today? How has it evolved since the original publication of Veniss Underground twenty years ago?

[JV] Someone once said it was a moment more than a movement, and similarly, for most of us associated with New Weird, we were just passing through, caught in and lifted up by that moment, but we weren’t “New Weird writers.” I’ve certainly gone back and forth on how I feel about the term and sometimes looked askance as new generations discover it and redefine it without knowing the history. But at the same time, more than most “movements” I think “New Weird” as a term simply helps, even now, to make clear a certain visceral yet also cerebral approach to some liminal place that otherwise has no name. Should it keep finding a name and losing that name? Or remain nameless?

[GdM] Veniss Underground features meerkats in a variety of forms. When did your fascination with meerkats begin? Does this relate to the etymological connection between meerkats and your surname?

[JV] [laughs] No, it has no connection to my surname, which means “of the lake”. I just find esoteric mammals fascinating and loved their little communities. But it was funny, because I first saw a photo of them without wider context and thought they were five feet tall. Half-way through writing the novel, I saw a video and realized “oh crap—they’re tiny!” And that’s the why large ones in Veniss are described as biotech combined with other animal genes. One reader called Veniss “Saw meets Meerkat Manor” when the novel first came out, which also kind of cracks me up.

[GdM] How has your process of writing evolved since the publication of Veniss Underground? If you could have given yourself one piece of writing advice at the early stages of your career, what would that be?

[JV] My advice to the younger me would just be: Keep doing what you’re doing, exactly the way you’re doing it. Which is just to say that I’ve always written what’s personal to me and what I’m passionate about and I can’t write any other way. I’d be writing even if I never got published. I’ve just been extraordinarily lucky to find an audience for books, like Veniss, which, after all, features a disembodied wise-cracking meerkat head superglued to a dinner plate. There must be a lot of timelines where that kind of gig doesn’t pay much.

[GdM] You are known as a passionate environmentalist and have been dubbed “the weird Thoreau” by The New Yorker magazine. You have even restored a natural ecosystem to your own Tallahassee backyard, which now features remarkable biodiversity. Which animals and plants have you been most surprised to discover in the VanderWild?

[JV] Seeing both gray and red foxes has been great, but also the amazing diversity of insects. I can’t keep track of all of the kinds of bees, butterflies, and wasps that now find this place home. And it’s all because of planting so many native plants, each of which has evolved over millions of years to be the host for as well as sometimes food for equally individually evolved insects. That’s what you lose when you clearcut a place, build on it, and then replaced the habitat that was there with generic lawn and some crap myrtles you bought at Home Depot.

[GdM] You clearly find much inspiration in the infinite complexity of nature. Do you feel that your connection and appreciation of nature impact into your writing? And if so, how?

[JV] It’s hard to quantify because when you’re surrounded by something your whole life and feel like you’re part of it, not separate, how do you analyze the impact? It’s just there. Mostly, I guess I have always understood the intrinsic value and personhood of the nonhuman in our world and not understood how we could work against that in so many self-destructive ways. This is the world, not the built environment of parking lots and strip malls. If we give up an idea of the world the way it actually works, we doom ourselves, too. So this is one urgency that drives my fiction, along with the curious fascination with just how complex and amazing Earth is when we don’t destroy parts of it for no particularly good reason.

[GdM] We are very excited about Absolution, the upcoming fourth entry in your Southern Reach series. What can you tell us about this newest installment?

[JV] I’m letting it build organically and slow, driven by so much we don’t know about the Séance & Science Brigade in the first three books, the role of Old Jim in it all, a prior clandestine biological mission not related to the Southern Reach, and a sudden waking vision of white rabbits appearing all over the forgotten coast 30 years before the border comes down. That’s all I can really say at the moment.

[GdM] How do you develop the concepts for your new books? Do you tend to start with the world or the characters, or perhaps with a general theme?

[JV] When you’re a beginning writer, you try to accumulate technique so you have as many different ways of writing a novel as possible. You stop and start a lot and figure out your process. These days I still work hard on continuing education as a writer, but the writing process has definitely changed, in that I spend a lot more time thinking about a piece of fiction before I write it. Over time, I’ve come to realize I’ve written too early before, but never too late. As a result, I tend to write fewer drafts and to know exactly the moment to take notes and scene fragments and begin to write a draft in earnest. It’s always about the viewpoint of the character wedded to some initial situation and image or relationship to landscape. But I also have to know the ending, or some approximation, before I start.

[GdM] Do you have any news about the upcoming TV adaptation of Borne? How does the experience of adapting a book to TV compare to that of adapting to a feature film?

[JV] All I have to say is the team at AMC and the folks now involved in adapting Borne are amazing and there’s been significant progress. The option was just renewed as they get some final pieces in place. But the treatment I’ve seen is incredibly faithful to the book while deviating in ways that make sense for the change in medium. I’m so excited to share more, but that’s all I can really say for now.

Interview by John C. Mauro and Beth Tabler

Read Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

 

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REVIEW: Killer by Peter Tonkin

After Peter Benchley’s Jaws was published in 1974, its massive success and that of the 1975 film adaptation inspired a wave of authors and filmmakers hoping to hit the commercial jackpot with their own lurid tales of aquatic creatures terrorizing those poor fools who thought it was safe to go back into the water. Books and films about piranhas and giant octopi followed, and Guy N. Smith even memorably wrote a series of novels about killer crustaceans, beginning with Night of the Crabs in 1976. Larger and more intelligent than Jaws’ iconic great white shark, killer whales also enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starring Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, Orca: The Killer Whale was released to theaters in 1977, to poor reviews and middling box office results. Peter Tonkin’s 1979 novel Killer, however, fared much better. Lean and tightly plotted, Killer emphasized the orca’s formidable physicality and intelligence in prose in a way that Orca: The Killer Whale failed to accomplish on the silver screen. While successful in both the United Kingdom—the author’s home country—and in the United States, Tonkin struggled to produce subsequent novels. The aquatic horror boom faded with time, and Killer inevitably fell out of print.

Now, more than four decades since the book’s debut, Killer is back. It received glowing coverage in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (2017) retrospective, and now the novel itself is a part of Valancourt Books’ companion PAPERBACKS FROM HELL line of cult classic horror novels curated by Hendrix and Too Much Horror Fiction blogger Will Errickson. The Valancourt Books release is available in both digital and nostalgia-inspiring mass market paperback format, with Ken Barr’s vintage cover artwork and a new introduction by Hendrix.

The titular Killer is a massive orca raised in captivity as a part of a US Navy experiment. Trained dolphins were used during the Vietnam War to detect enemy divers attempting to sabotage moored ships, and the novel envisions an evolved version of the real-life Marine Mammal Program, one in which an orca—more powerful and more intelligent than a dolphin—is conditioned not just to find suspicious swimmers, but to terminate them as well. The killer whale takes to its training all too well and, inevitably for this type of horror story, a moment of human error leads to disaster. The orca kills one of its captors and escapes its enclosure, fleeing to the deep sea with a taste for human flesh.

Some time later, promising young scientist Kate Warren sets out for an Arctic research camp, hoping to form a closer relationship with her brilliant but (both physically and emotionally) distant marine botanist father. Their brief reunion is cruelly interrupted when their plane crashes en route to the research facility, leaving father and daughter trapped on an aimlessly drifting ice floe with four other survivors. Resources are meagre and tempers quickly grow strained, as the group of survivors includes both arrogant camp director Simon Quick and Colin Ross, the taciturn scarred man Simon holds responsible for the death of his loved ones after a disastrous Antarctic expedition. The situation deteriorates even further when the stranded party comes to the attention of the escaped killer whale, now dominating an entire pod of two dozen wild orcas. The killer’s training kicks in and he becomes fixated on the humans, intent on both devouring them and teaching the pleasures of human meat to his fellow cetaceans.

Killer is a taut story of survival. Where Benchley’s Jaws filled pages with meandering subplots involving the Mafia and Police Chief Brody’s wife’s infidelity (wisely excised from the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg), Tonkin wastes no time getting to the good stuff. The six stranded individuals are rarely given time to catch their breath, and neither is the reader. Killer is also clearly a horror novel, rather than a simple wilderness adventure. Whenever the killer whales fall upon their prey (be it human, whale, polar bear, or walrus), the violence is almost triumphantly graphic. Where the shark in Jaws is a solitary, almost machine-like predator, Tonkin uses the orcas’ pack tactics and malicious cunning to great effect. The survivors are always on the defensive, struggling to deal with the killer whales’ organized ambush attacks while supplies dwindle and their ice floe gradually, inexorably disintegrates around them.

While tension—punctuated with bursts of gory violence—dominates Killer, Tonkin also deftly captures the emotional dimension of the story. Even before the killer whales arrive on the scene, the gripping plane crash sequence effectively reveals each character’s inner world, sliding from perspective to perspective as each of them confronts their own mortality. Some react with grim resignation, others turn to religious faith (fascinating supporting character Job wavers between Methodist Christianity and the Arctic gods of his Inuit heritage), while others reveal cowardice and contempt for their fellow man. The tendencies and weaknesses displayed during the crash scene become more and more pronounced on the ice floe as the survivors’ situation grows more desperate.

Does Tonkin succeed in his original goal of outdoing Benchley’s Jaws? Killer perhaps holds together better as a novel; Jaws is a rare example of the movie adaptation being better than the original book. On the other hand, the orca’s superior size and intelligence aside, on a primal level there’s something deeply terrifying about great white sharks that orcas can’t quite match. Killer is an easy recommendation for enthusiasts of “animal attack” horror novels, but the vastly uneven odds and interpersonal conflict among the survivors is likely to appeal to fans of zombie novels as well. With Peter Tonkin’s Killer, the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL reprint line has resurfaced another winner.

Read Killer by Peter Tonkin

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Cyberpunk 2077 Two Years Later

Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the great controversial games of 2020. Also, 2021, and only started to lose that reputation around 2022. It was, to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, supposed to be the Chosen One and ended up being Darth Vader instead. However, everyone loves a redemption story and if I were to give CD Projekt Red any props then it will be for the fact that they spent the past couple of years trying to fix the game that shouldn’t have been released in the state that it was.

So how is Cyberpunk 2077 in 2023? I’m going to answer that question with all the latest patches, up-to-date hardware (that was a perfect storm of bad timing since the majority of fans didn’t have access to due to microchip shortages), and an open mind. I’ve also played the game in its original broken state, on last generation hardware, and with all the disappointment that can only come from someone who is a mammoth cyberpunk fan as well as author.

The premise, for newcomers, is that you are V, a street merc in Night City. Night City is the most violent city in a post-apocalypse America where technology is advanced but savagery is the order of the day. Superpowerful corporations rule the city’s skylines and bloodthirsty gangs rule the streets. V’s background is determined by your choices such as being a corpo (corporate), Nomad (wastelander), or Street Kid (what the title says) but all of them more or less end up in the same place.

The majority of the game has your character fused with an AI reconstruction of a tabletop RPG character from the original Cyberpunk 2020 game: Johnny Silverhand. Johnny Silverhand is played by Keanu Reeves, in yet another iconic cyberpunk role, and is a burnt out anarchist terrorist that urges you to take anti-corporate but ultimately futile stances. Oh and your character is dying with only a few weeks left to live.

The updates to the game haven’t really affected the main plot and there’s still plenty of issues to have with that. The game suffers ludo-narrative dissonance with the fact V is dying of an incurable (?) brain disease that implies you should rush through the main plot but Night City is an open world setting that is full of hundreds of adventures to do for in-universe money. This leads to the somewhat weird feeling that V can be as rich and glamorous as Tony Montana but doesn’t have any time to enjoy it. That may be deliberate as a storytelling choice but it’s not as fun as it could be.

The big changes are the fact that the game has about 90% less bugs and broken quests, which still leaves some in the game. Unlike in writing books, however, you’re allowed a few when you’re making video games and there’s a “normal” level of these now. Compared to launch where I had to reload my crashing game near constantly, I had almost no issues whatsoever this time around and I could appreciate the game’s visuals much better. The occasional pop in and glitch seemed a small price to pay.

Another large change is the driving mechanics have received an overhaul. Previously, the game’s cars and motorcycles drove like utter crap, which was a bad thing when much of the city is set up to accommodate cars. The revised system works much better but I still mostly walked around Night City and used its fast travel system. The much despised police system remains unchanged but since they will only go after you if you injure an innocent or approach them the wrong way (like real cops *rimshot*), there’s very little need to interact with PCs. Still no car chases or car customization with only a few racing missions.

Some of the things added to the game really do increase its enjoyment factor, though. A group of additional apartments for V to purchase are excellent for giving you the sense he (or she) is actually moving up the Night City ranks. We also have a transmog system that allows you to dress your V however you want without losing any of the benefits of armor. There’s also additional activities to do at your apartments like drinking coffee and taking showers that provide bonuses. These little things add a lot to the immersion element of Night City that had previously been pretty absent.

For fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, there’s also some additional nods toward the anime. There’s not many of them but as a fan of it, I really enjoyed it. However, it underscores the fact that really there needed to be more content for the game. I also appreciated the addition of text messages from your love interests that deepened the somewhat shallow relationships from the original game. Hopefully, we’ll get that when we get the DLC Phantom Liberty but Night City has gone from being “good” to “great” but could have been “greatest of all time.” Still, Night City is a monumental accomplishment and the characters are fantastic.

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Groping the Elephant by Mark Lawrence

I’m terrible at giving writing advice. Partly it’s because my approach has essentially no structure and “Just do it.” might serve as a motivational sound bite but it’s not a great deal of help for someone struggling at a complex task. But my subpar advice giving isn’t entirely down to the inscrutable nature of my own approach. It’s also because I recognise that we’re all different. This wasn’t an instinctive understanding. I was always rather shocked to find that there were people who actively disliked the things I like most. But sufficient repetition did eventually get the message through the thickness of my skull. Writers are so varied in their approach that to offer them specific, prescriptive advice has always seemed foolish to me.

This has been a long walk to say that readers are also that varied, and what works for one will often not work for the next. And finally we reach my actual topic: grimdark. What else would Mark Lawrence write about for Grimdark Magazine?

I last wrote a book I consider to be grimdark more than 10 years ago (Emperor of Thorns) but to many I will always be grimdark-author-Mark-Lawrence. That’s less testimony to the sticking (staining?) power of grimdark than it is to readers’ desire to put authors on one shelf and have them stay there. I think the same thing would have happened if I had opened with a romance or a comedy. It’s convenient to both publishers and readers if authors pick a lane and stay in it. It’s inconvenient only to me – I get bored.

But I digress. Grimdark! A word that has launched a thousand ships onto the stormy waters of defining a new subgenre. I’m not here to define it though I have taken shots at that in the past (see the end of this article for perhaps my most successful). I’m simply here to describe one of its features like one of the blind men describing the elephant by touch in the parable first seen in a Buddhist text ~2,500 years ago.

First let me offer you the thoughts of some of the others who have run their hands over this particular portion of the beast. Grimdark is, they say, relentless grim and dark (it’s all in the name), nihilistic and without even a glimmer of hope. Everything is worthless, there’s no point, why bother. And why, they say, would I want to read something like that? There is, they say, enough pain and sorrow in the world. Anyone who, like them, wishes to cheer themselves up should, they say, turn to some cosy fantasy, some light spirited comedy, some tale of hearts and flower filled meadows.

This is a perfectly valid response. We are, as I have led with, all different. I have known people with severe depression who self-medicate with an hour of stand-up comedians mainlined into their arteries via the medium of Youtube. It has seemed helpful to them.

When I’m having a bad day I seek distraction and I’m not really fussy about the form, it could be comedy, but equally well it could be a re-run of Aliens. “They come at night … mostly.” But I’m definitely not going to be seeking out anything particularly sad. Schindler’s List is right out!

And this brings me to the greatest surprise of my writing career after the fact that I have a writing career. I have received many – we’re talking dozens now – of messages from readers of The Broken Empire trilogy that credit the books with helping them out of dark places in their lives. Out of. Not into.

 I have had emails from a young man in a non-voluntary camp for survivors of recent suicide attempts. I’ve had messages from people suffering the worst kinds of depression. From people struggling with addiction of many kinds. Messages from people of different ages, sexes, and walks of life, all saying that following Jorg through his various rampages helped them deal with the shit that the real world was dumping on them.

Colour me surprised. Somehow the allegedly hopeless story of a violent, and in lots of ways despicable, young man was a lifeline to not just one or two individuals, but many. And as with all these things, I have to assume that what shows in my inbox is the tip of the iceberg.

These lines, more than 10 years old now, are from a young man who eventually did take his own life, but not for more than 5 years after this incident:

“I saw how Jorg had triumphed against all odds and I was inspired. Not to be a killer, but to not give up. This helped me through treatment.” 

So, my message for all those people who take time out of their busy schedules to make posts letting everyone know how terrible grimdark is, is not an attempt to change their particular reading tastes – just a reminder to them, were they to be reading this,  of quite how different we all are. They might, in their minds, pattern readers of grimdark into some caricature, people delighting in the misery of others or some equally ungenerous interpretation. I’d like to call, as a sometime writer of grimdark, for a little more kindness, cosiness if you will, and understanding that the value others find in these works is not something that you should trivialise and paint as shallow or mean-spirited. It’s just another example of the wonderful diversity of our kind.

And, to conclude, as promised here’s that definition of grimdark that seemed to find favour among those who call it their preferred subgenre:

Grimdark is often called hopeless, but in doing so people miss that it isn’t apathetic – it is (for me) characterised by defiance in the absence of hope.

Grimdark is often called nihilistic, but this misses the idea that you can accept a nihilistic truth and still choose to die for a principle you know is an emotional construct.

A grimdark “hero” has a tendency to go all in – to burn their bridges even when they don’t need the warmth. They are, in their way, an allegory for hope, in so much as having been shown there’s no meaning in the world, they still cling to some elements of it. And in those choices they are revealed.

The way it’s painted by the disapproving you would think that grimdark fiction was the literature of surrender to the inevitable. When in truth it is the story of the battle against it – sharpened by the knowledge that there’s no ultimate victory to be had.  

 

Read Mark Lawrences Newest Novel, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

 

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REVIEW: Tales From The Magician’s Skull – No. 10

First debuting in 2018, Goodman Publications’ Tales From The Magician’s Skull has reached its landmark tenth issue. While the arrival of new magazines dedicated to short fantasy fiction is not uncommon, Tales From The Magician’s Skull distinguishes itself from its fellows via its specific editorial focus and high production values. Directed by editor Howard Andrew Jones, the magazine is dedicated to never-before-published stories written in the classic pulp Sword & Sorcery tradition.

In addition to digital formats, the magazine is available in high-quality physical volumes manufactured via traditional offset printing (rather than print-on-demand). This tenth issue boasts a vibrant cover painting by veteran paperback cover and comic book artist Sanjulian, and each of the nine stories contained within have been given their own accompanying black and white illustration. Interior artists include Jennell Jaquays, Brad McDevitt, and Stefan Poag.

In an essay titled “Defining Sword-and-Sorcery” (collected in special issue No. 0 of Tales From The Magician’s Skull), Jones describes his vision of the S&S sub-genre and what distinguishes it from other varieties of fantasy. He highlights the outsider hero as one of the hallmarks of S&S: the protagonists often exist on the margins of society as wandering barbarians or thieves, rather than comfortably ensconced nobles and townsfolk. S&S heroes tend to live by their wits and martial ability, with magic either unreliable as a tool or outright malignant. And rather than lofty ideals or nation-level politics, these heroes tend to be motivated by earthier, more immediate concerns: the acquisition of wealth, romantic desire or lust, or the simple will to survive another day. Jones also emphasizes the breakneck pacing of S&S stories and their focus on violent action. All of the stories contained in this tenth issue demonstrate these qualities, making Tales From The Magician’s Skull an easy recommendation to readers who enjoy an abundance of action and peril in their fantasy.

The magazine’s cover art is dedicated to “The Demon Rats,” by C. L. Werner, a prolific author of licensed fiction set in the various WARHAMMER settings. The story involves Shintaro Oba, a disgraced samurai who finds himself tasked with exterminating a suspiciously coordinated horde of iron-fanged rodents intent on destroying a temple’s library of scriptures. He receives some assistance from an alluring shape-shifter with her own agenda. While Shintaro Oba has appeared in previous stories, no prior knowledge of the character is required to enjoy this adventure. Both the premise and characters are colorful, but some of the names feel awkwardly constructed in Japanese.

Perhaps the simplest story in the issue is also one of the most effective. “Green Face, Purple Haze” by Marc DeSantis is about an American soldier in the Vietnam War who finds himself magically transported to a fantasy realm with its own battles raging. Gunpowder fails to work, robbing him of the technological advantage of his assault rifle, but his modern military training and indomitable fighting spirit serve him well in the conflict between humans and the bestial urks. Although the specific words of the modern US Marine mantra “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” do not appear in the text, this story entertainingly celebrates that ethos. With its focus on the unchanging nature of war and visceral combat descriptions, this story in particular has a lot to love for grimdark enthusiasts.

Many of the stories collected in this issue are grounded and gritty, but others venture into much stranger territory. “The Sorcerer’s Mask” by Jason Ray Carney, managing editor of Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery, involves an unnamed thief unjustly cast into a vast dungeon by a paranoid immortal wizard. The Rogue must rely on his wits and the aid of an enigmatic soothsayer to effect his escape, and there is a sense of grim inevitability leading up to the final confrontation. The story moves quickly despite its vivid detail, covering a surprising amount of ground in a mere six pages. “A Simple Errand” by Grimdark Magazine contributor Matthew John also involves a prison break, but one where a sorcerer (or “meddler” in the story’s parlance) frees a barbarian warrior awaiting execution in order to put him to work on a dark mission: killing an alien god on another world. This adventure is packed with hallucinatory imagery worthy of Roger Dean’s cosmic prog rock album artwork.

A surprise highlight of the issue was “The Black Pearl of the Sunken Lands,” by Cynthia Ward. In this story, a headstrong youth named Bruko vows to reclaim a legendary lost treasure to prove himself worthy of the affections of a beautiful maiden. This familiar premise is freshened by the fact that the protagonist is a nereus (aquatic humanoid) and his sidekick in the endeavor is an intelligent dolphin with blades strapped to his fins. It’s a simple thing, but the underwater setting makes a significant difference in the feel of the story. Ward’s sly humor further enhances the piece; the object of Bruko’s affections makes it pretty obvious to the reader that she’s not especially interested in marrying Bruko, and the dolphin companion proves to be more intelligent than the hero he’s accompanying.

The stories in this issue all share brisk pacing and an emphasis on swordplay, but their heroes are diverse in nature. In addition to Werner’s samurai hero, African-inspired and Native American warriors (in “Nzara” by D. J. Tyrer and “The Silent Mound” by Charles D. Shell, respectively) also have opportunities to shine. One of the toughest and most physically imposing characters herein is a woman: Dakagna, heroine of the grimdark-inflected “Dakagna and the Blood Scourge” by W. J. Lewis. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Jade, the heroine of Jeffery Sergent’s “The Eye of Kaleet,” who uses guile to survive situations where she is clearly outmatched martially.

The issue concludes with a brief appendix entitled “The Monster Pit,” giving various monsters appearing in the fiction game statistics for use with the publisher’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. This is a fun addendum for players of DCC RPG or other games with systems largely compatible with early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, but the page count it occupies is minimal, meaning that non-gamer readers are unlikely to feel alienated or slighted by the non-prose content.

Ten issues and nearly five years in, Tales From The Magician’s Skull continues to deliver fantastic action-adventure tales in an appealing and polished package. Previous issues included a number of established names familiar to fans of contemporary Sword & Sorcery—Adrian Cole, James Enge, John C. Hocking, Violette Malan—but the most recent installments have also begun incorporating exciting newer voices as well. The magazine enjoys near universal acclaim among Sword & Sorcery readers and has become a sort of Holy Grail venue for S&S writers looking to showcase their work, but—like the sub-genre itself—one still gets the feeling that Tales From The Magician’s Skull isn’t quite getting the sort of wider recognition its quality deserves. Whether this is due to difficulties in promoting short fantasy fiction in today’s increasingly entertainment-saturated market is unclear. Perhaps the magazine’s association with a role-playing game publisher and each issue’s appendix of game statistics lead some fantasy readers to assume that Tales From The Magician’s Skull is an RPG magazine, rather than an original fiction magazine with some bonus RPG content. Sword & Sorcery tales are full of scrappy underdogs doing whatever it takes to survive, but like those heroes it’s nice to see the underdogs rewarded in the end with glory and gold. Other Grimdark Magazine contributors (cf. Matthew John’s Robert E. Howard: Godfather of Grimdark? and John R. Fultz’s The Mud, The Blood, and the Years: Why “Grimdark” is the New “Sword and Sorcery”) have remarked upon the considerable amount of shared DNA between Sword & Sorcery and grimdark fantasy fiction. Grimdark readers are encouraged to give Tales From The Magician’s Skull a look, perhaps it will become a new favorite discovery.

Read Tales From The Magician’s Skull – No. 10 edited by Howard Andrew Jones

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REVIEW: The Fisherman by John Langan

Abe is a widower who lost his wife to cancer. Another coworker of his, Dan, lost his family in a car accident. To get their minds off their losses, they take up fishing together. On some of those trips, Abe swears he can still hear his deceased wife’s voice.

John Langan’s The Fisherman is a fantastic horror novel, and winner of the 2016 Bram Stoker Award. Like the best horror, it gives you time to like and understand the characters before the truly eerie parts happen.

There are three parts to The Fisherman. The first is just about Abe and Dan becoming fishing buddies while processing their losses. Even though this could just as easily fall into literary fiction for the first part of the story, there’s a low sense of dread and unease throughout. When Dan decides they have to go to Dutchman’s Creek, a river not on any map, the tension snaps into place. Dan’s evasive on where he found out about this river, claiming it was in an outdated old guide.

On their trip to Dutchman’s Creek they stop in an old diner, and here the supernatural element that could have previously been explained away as the mind playing tricks comes to the forefront. Howard’s Diner is empty except for them, though there should be a crowd at this time. And when they say they’re about to fish Dutchman’s Creek, Howard, a complete stranger to them, starts relaying the story behind Dutchman’s Creek, which takes up the entire middle act of the book. He relays it with perfect precision, and Abe, unable to get it out of his head, writes it down with even more information he shouldn’t know.

At this point The Fisherman becomes a full fantastical horror, following the construction of the Reservoir prior to the first world war. The story comes from a minister who heard it from the daughter of a professor involved in it, and more pieces she gets from her husband, who had helped her father at this time. The nested nature of these stories means there are areas where the story just stops to explain that they don’t know exactly what happened here and there, but these are their best guesses.

The professor, Rainer, is an immigrant from Germany who had been forced to leave his university, and it’s clear it’s because he was studying the occult. In a lot of books, the occultist professor would be the clear villain; here, he’s the only one with any chance to know what they’re dealing with and how to stave it off. This section, due to the more distant voice telling the story, is the least emotionally resonant part, even as there is a lot more actual plot, full of sorcery and horror and things that should not be.

After Abe and Dan leave Howard’s Diner, despite the warnings, they nonetheless head to Dutchman’s Creek. Here the present story and the past collide, and The Fisherman goes fully into the uncanny. Howard’s story has a sense of local legend, but here the story of two widowers suddenly confronting that place where the real meets the unreal effectively creates some real terror.

Langan’s prose is slow and detailed but very effective, and his characterization is sharp though subdued. The story, with all its century-spanning depth, takes its time in building up the characters and the stakes. And The Fisherman has one of the creepiest final lines I’ve read.

Read The Fisherman by John Langan

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REVIEW: Cyberpunk 2077: You Have My Word

Cyberpunk 2077: You Have My Word is one of the Cyberpunk 2077 spin-off fiction comics by Dark Horse comics. I’ve enjoyed several of these comics and had mixed feelings on others. Basically, they’re short adventures set in Night City. If you aren’t a big fan of the world of Mike Pondsmith and the later CD Projekt Red setting, then these are probably not for you. If you are, it’s good to check on whether the spin off fiction has some value other than a cash grab.

The premise of this comic is a revenge story. A family living out of Night City in the Badlands, not quite Nomads but closer to them than the city folk, is one struggling to survive in their trailer park existence. All the family has secrets. One of them being a former Militech soldier with an exaggerated belief that the company cares about its veterans after they leave their service. Another being a former Edgerunner with a legendary reputation. A third being an up-and-coming Edgerunner who is supporting her family with the violent dangerous lifestyle.

Things go horribly wrong in Night City because, well, that’s how life goes in the post-capitalist hellhole built on the Pacific Bay. One of them is killed and a mission of revenge begins that starts to unravel all the various secrets that all of them have been hiding. The people involved in the murders are also far closer to the family than any of them would have imagined.

I’m going to state this is probably the best of the Cyberpunk 2077 comics. I had my issues with Where’s Johnny and Trauma Team, but this manages to capture most of the essence of the game as well as its complicated plot. So much of it that I kind of regret this is just a miniseries and wish it had been part of an ongoing storyline. However, I will give the comic the additional praise of saying that it sticks to the landing.

The best part of You Have My Word is the fact that the ending is earned. A lot of the comics end in tragedy or despair but this one is just an organic follow-up of the events that happened throughout the story. Plus, it fit the characters as we know them. When there’s a twist, you may not see it coming you but understand how the persons involved came to the decisions that they made. Which is rarer than you think in these kinds of stories.

Indeed, the biggest failure of the comic is that it is only four issues and at the very least, this could have had two more issues of character development for what is genuinely interesting and well-written characters. I understand why they may have dialed down the size of the work but I think the comic deserved more space.

The art in the Cyberpunk 2077 comics is always beautiful with a mixture of gritty and colorful that makes them enjoyable to read. The action is subdued but visceral and the writing is excellent. It’s not necessary to buy, there are no characters from the main game, but it’s a nice piece of side content that I think people will enjoy.

Read Cyberpunk 2077: You Have My Word

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REVIEW: The Return of the Knights by Gregory Kontaxis

The Return of the Knights is the debut novel by Greek fantasy author Gregory Kontaxis and the first volume of his series, The Dance of Light. Originally published in Greek, The Return of the Knights has been translated into English by Sophia Travlos.

Gregory Kontaxis embraces the classic chosen one trope with Elliot, the main protagonist of the story. A village boy who exhibits unusual talents both on the battlefield and in politics, Elliot comes from a humble background but is full of hubris. Overconfident and brash, everything comes a bit too easily for Elliot. I know this is a well-worn fantasy trope, but personally I found Elliot to be overly grating. Grimdark aficionado that I am, I often found myself rooting for the villain just to see Elliot knocked down to size.

Speaking of villains, The Return of the Knights features an archetypal bloodthirsty, power-hungry antagonist in Walter Thorn, a local governor who wages war against the Queen of Knightdorn. Although I cannot quite accept a villain with such an innocuous name as Walter, his violent actions speak clearly for themselves. My favorite parts of The Return of the Knights were whenever Walter walked onto the page with his over-the-top villainy.

The worldbuilding in The Return of the Knights is excellent in terms of its epic scope and complexity. There is a clear influence from A Game of Thrones in the breadth of Kontaxis’s world. If Kontaxis can also match George R.R. Martin’s depth of worldbuilding in future installments of his series, then I could see a loyal fanbase emerging for the land of Knightdorn.

Although my own knowledge of the Greek language is restricted to its use in mathematics, the translation by Sophia Travlos seems quite proficient. The prose flows smoothly throughout the book, with only a few awkward word choices. My only complaint about the writing style is its overreliance on dialogue. I would have preferred a greater emphasis on showing rather than telling the reader.

The Return of the Knights embraces classic epic fantasy and many of its well-worn tropes while also delivering a story full of political intrigue and action. Although many aspects of the book follow standard constructs, Gregory Kontaxis serves up a few shocking twists near the end of the book.

Overall, The Return of the Knights is recommended for epic fantasy fans wishing to quench their thirst for all the classic tropes. Gregory Kontaxis clearly has a lot of talent, and I look forward to reading more from this up-and-coming author.

3/5

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REVIEW: The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

Azoth’s days are numbered. Stuck within a city with no culture but street culture and a guild controlled by a sadistic thug, young Azoth fights for survival. Driven by fear and desperation, he seeks the legendary killer, Durzo Blint. For Guild rats like Azoth, tomorrow is never a guarantee. To escape death on the streets, Azoth must convince Blint to take him as an apprentice. He will risk it all to become everything he is not. Unafraid. Dangerous. Invincible. Someone like Durzo Blint. Though Azoth will learn even legends have their own dark fears. Brent Weeks imagines a cruel world swarming with political schemes, magic, and assassinations in The Way of Shadows.

Life as a guild rat is cruel. It is a life where innocence and childhood do not exist. The horrors we witness through Azoth’s eyes give authenticity to his need to escape. Brent Weeks excels at depicting bleak scenarios with even worse outcomes. The Way of Shadows is not about overcoming evil. It is about forsaking morality to survive.

“Life is empty. When we take a life, we aren’t taking anything of value. Wetboys are killers. That’s all we do. That’s all we are. There are no poets in the bitter business.”

The Way of Shadows begins in the filthy warrens of the city but no corner of Cenaria is safe. While Azoth is one of the main perspectives, Brent Weeks provides the insights of several characters ranging from the Mistress of Pleasures, a duke, and those of the criminal underworld. While each perspective is vastly different, each character has their enemy. Danger stalks them all. A theme of “failure is worse than death” undertones each storyline. Brent Weeks writes with a fast and high stakes tempo, creating an urgent need to find out what happens next.

I first read The Way of Shadows not long after its 2008 release. Back then, I hadn’t read too many books with morally gray characters especially from a main perspective. I never even heard of the term “grimdark.” Rereading The Way of Shadows now I realized this book was an important foundation for discovering my favorite subgenre. My appreciation for amoral characters led me to discovering books such as The Broken Empire, The Gentlemen Bastards, and Manifest Delusions. It was perfect nostalgia.

The Way of Shadows is a checklist for great dark fantasy- cool fight scenes, political intrigues, compelling characters, a harsh environment, wonderous creatures and magic. It is well worth a read and reread.

Read The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

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REVIEW: A Plague Tale: Innocence

A Plague Tale: Innocence is a work of dark fantasy and that is a surprisingly rare (albeit by no means unknown) work among video games. Historical dark fantasy is even rarer as you don’t often see stories set in the “real” Middle Ages, let alone with the benefit of magic as well as other occult elements. Knowing that A Plague Tale would be set in 13th century France, during the Black Death, and have supernatural elements thus made me very intrigued with this title.

The premise is that fifteen-year-old Amicia De Rune is the daughter of a minor noble house, living a happy life with her parents as well as dog. Lion. Yes, a dog named Lion. I have no idea why this bothers me but it’s literally one of my three or four complaints about the game. Amicia also has a five-year-old little brother, Hugo, who suffers from some unstated ailment that keeps him bedroom as well as isolated from the rest of the family. Hugo’s illness has severely impacted Amicia’s relationship with her mother and resulted in her becoming a somewhat anachronistic tomboy in Medieval France as her father picks up the slack.

Well, things go to hell very quickly as Lion the dog is killed in the most genuinely upsetting part of the game. A nightmarish horde of rats representing the Black Death pours out from the ground and signals the plague is here. It’s not the plague that ruins Amicia’s life, however, but the Papal Inquisition. The Papal Inquisition believes, possibly correctly, that Beatrice De Rune is a practicing sorcerer/alchemist and carry out a massacre. This results in Amicia being seemingly orphaned and forced to flee with her brother.

 

The game becomes a giant escort mission where you attempt to stay ahead of the Inquisition, which is obsessed less with the children’s mother than Hugo himself for reasons that gradually become clear. You also have to avoid the massive horde of rats that are less interested in spreading plague than eating poor Amicia alive. In addition to the Inquisition, you’ll also have to deal with superstitious villagers and English soldiers from the One Hundred Years War.

The game has a slightly believable element in the fact that Amicia de Rune can’t survive fighting any of these soldiers. It’s a one-hit, game over sort of situation since they’re all burly large men while she’s a fifteen-year-old girl less than a hundred pounds soaking wet. So, instead, you must sneak around the Medieval hellscape of dead bodies and abandoned ruins. Less realistic is the fact that Amicia is a master of the sling and if she can sneak attack these guards, she can start building up a body count in the low hundreds.

I have to admit, I actually like the respect being given to the sling. The sling is a surprisingly deadly weapon and people basically forget that it killed Goliath. While I don’t think Amicia could have slain quite as many people as she did, I do like the first couple of times she kills someone and how it causes her deep distress. Unfortunately, time starts to harden our heroine as she struggles to find respite from the constant barrage of horrors.

This is a horror game and a pretty good one at that. The picturesque Medieval community that is destroyed by the violent events that occur is well-done. It’s perhaps cheating that you have a sweet innocent girl have to crawl through giant rat pits that resemble the nest of the xenomorphs from Alien, walk through battlefields of hundreds of dead bodies, and see shocking act of violence after shocking act of violence but it works.

Gameplaywise, it is best described as serviceable and functional. Amicia sneaks, crafts, and slings across a linear set of areas. But just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s not fun. I would have preferred more options, but a lot of the game’s appeal is how helpless our heroine is. Even when she’s got a few options like controlling rats via stink bombs and alchemical goodies, it’s still not too many options.

Really, I also have to give props to the game for its artistry and music as well. The environments are rich and lush, to the point that I really do recommend playing this PS4 game on PS5. They’re sort of the Medieval version of Ghost of Tsushima to me. So many memorable set pieces ranging from the beautiful to the nightmarish. The music is also fantastic with the violin parts my favorite. I even listen to it separate from the game on occasion.

If I had to say the appeal of A Plague’s Tale: Innocence, I would say that it has strong A Song of Ice and Fire energy. Note: I didn’t say Game of Thrones energy. This is much more the “teenager unwittingly in a zombie apocalypse” sort of story that is closer to the literary version of the story. Amicia just wants the horrible things that keep happening to her to stop and they just keep coming. It’s not going to be for everyone but people who enjoy grimdark I think will enjoy this game a great deal.

Speaking of grimdark, what would you enjoy following a teenage girl struggling to survive and trying to protect her bratty ill brother? Why do we enjoy the terrible suffering and nightmarish visages from the Dark Ages? Well, grimdark is a genre built on extremes. Amicia deserves to be in a better sort of fantasy and is a deeply likable character. Seeing her struggle not to break against the horribleness of the world invokes strong protective as well as sympathetic emotions. It’s not for everyone but for those who like it, I think they’ll like it a lot.

This is an older game to review, and the sequel has already come out but I think the original deserves props for what it achieved without a AAA budget. Just don’t play it if you’re afraid of rats.

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