Rob Wickings's Blog, page 43
November 12, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: D Is For Doctor Strange
The last Marvel movie of 2016 is a fun, psychedelic romp through the origins of the Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Stephen Strange! Join Rob, Clive and Curiosity as they explore the world, the performances and whether or not we’ve found the last one of those pesky Infinity Stones…
November 5, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: G Is For God Told Me To
The last of our Spooky SFF episodes celebrates a gritty slice of New York noir that twists and turns into a highly freaky slice of horror-tinged SF. From acclaimed low-budget film-maker Larry Cohen, this is a film that takes virtue from the lack of money. Cohen favours invention and good writing over special effects Sturm und Drang.
A meditation on identity, religion and family, God Told Me to is a powerful piece of work that really stays with you. A fitting end to our exploration of the horrific side of SFF!
October 31, 2016
A Launch, and a poem for Halloween.
Hell of a week, Readership. Much wordery. Very writeness.
As those of you keeping an eye on my Twitter and Facebook streams will know, this Saturday marked the launch of Tales From Our Town, the latest anthology from Reading Writers. I’m very proud to be both a contributing member and part of the committee of a writing group that’s been running for the best part of sixty years. Our latest collection of stories celebrates the town we have chosen to make our home, and dare I say it’s our best yet?
Yes, I do. Because it is. From rememberances of one of our great forgotten footballers, to the early days of England’s Greatest Knight, to ghostly tales at Reading landmarks, there really is something for everyone in this slim yet handsomely presented volume.
Our launch event at Reading Central Library was a busy, buzzy way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Stories were read. Cake and tea was had. Simple pleasures, but home-crafted with love and pride. Why not check it out?
But that’s not all. Three days before, RW held their Autumn Short Story Competition. The theme–ghost stories. I thought I was in with a good chance here, so I went with a left-field choice. An 850-word piece of epic poetry channeling Edgar Allen Poe. In my hubris, I could not see how I couldn’t win.
Oh, the vanity. Ah, the hubris.
Our judge, the brilliant Jane Cable, described my piece as ‘a very brave attempt’. If you sniff delicately, you can still smell the charcoal from that epic burn. Suffice it to say victory was not mine. Worse yet, the winners were all head, shoulders and nipple above me. That’s what happens when you join a writing group. You suddenly realise you’re not the boss you thought you were.
HOWEVS. Pride should not preclude me sharing the work, which I still feel has merit. So, as a Halloween treat for you, oh Readership, allow me to present my Thing For Halloween. Please to enjoy My Brave Attempt.
The Drowned Bride
(After Edgar Allen Poe)
She was married in September, when the leaves were burning gold,
A reflection of the dowry that her father glumly paid.
Her new husband, dark Erasmus, standing straight and tall and bold
was the third son of the baron, a true catch, the village said.
But Erasmus had his demons. Dark Erasmus, bathed in sin
loved his whores and drink and gambling and had no need for a wife.
But the money that came with her was enough to draw him in.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘it’s quick enough to end this… with a knife.’
The girl, sweet pale Casandra, was unworthy of this fate,
not sixteen when the bells pealed at the chapel on the green.
She walked the aisle, her father proud, she did not make them wait,
A child no longer. Woman now, a beauty rarely seen.
Casandra and Erasmus, bound by solemn wedding vows
that the cruel son of the baron shrugged away like last night’s shirt.
He swore ‘I’ll take this pretty thing, and into her I’ll plow
Then make for her a bed in softest quiet graveyard dirt.’
The wedding night was cruel, my loves. The wedding night was hell.
Casandra suffered horrors as Erasmus slaked his lust.
He brought his knives to bed, my loves. She suffered as he thrust.
And when the beast was done with her, he threw her down the well.
The well was deep. The well was cold. The waters drew her down.
Her blood-soaked dress was heavy as a stone around her legs.
But Erasmus did not kill her. No, he chose to let her drown.
He gulped down most of her sweet life yet chose to waste the dregs.
Oh, sly Erasmus. Killer? No. A pervert and a thief
but he could tell the truth about Casandra, come the test
‘She lived still, last I saw her!’ Erasmus bellowed in fake grief.
‘She left our bed past midnight, slipped away while I took rest!’
They searched for sweet Casandra, in the castle and the town
while Erasmus feigned the agony of lovers bound, star-crossed.
But when they opened up the well, no sign of her was found.
The waters deep had swallowed her. Erasmus’ bride was lost.
But in the silent depths, the drownéd bride was not alone.
A water spirit dwelled within, and listened to her plight.
It saw a way by which this evil deed could be atoned.
‘This shall not pass,’ it whispered. ‘Thou shalt have revenge tonight.’
Erasmus at his pleasure. Sheets a-stained with wine and worse.
A-sporting with two sisters, while a third played mandolin.
He celebrated freedom and his freshened, bulging purse
With no thought of Casandra. All his mind was set on sin.
A cold, damp breeze sprang up, although his chamber door was shut.
The candelabra flickered, guttered, brightened then went out.
A new source lit the room, a glimmer, Jade-green, rippling, but
As if seen underwater. Cold Erasmus gave a shout.
‘What trick is this? What foolishness? You think to cause me fright?
My innocence is proven! My conscience, it is clear!
Away with you! I have three girls to entertain tonight!’
But the sisters, seeing trouble, found excuse to disappear.
The watery light grew brighter and a shape began to grow
like a shadow made of pond-weed, like a squirming shoal of dread,
and Erasmus stared in horror at the nightmare from below…
His drownéd bride, Casandra, came to life above the bed.
‘This cannot be,’ Erasmus said, as in the air she hung
Her long black hair adrift as if in water it did lie.
She smiled at his stark terror, as he screamed to tear his lungs
‘This cannot be! I put you in the well so you could die!’
Casandra drifted closer, reaching out with fingers pale,
Erasmus, frozen on the bed, could only watch her fall.
‘Death is fleeting,’ said the bride. ‘I tear th’ ethereal veil
for one last kiss. My husband, thou cannot deny my call.’
Her fingers brushed his cheek. So cold. They left a moistened trail.
Her eyes had gone to white, an empty, soul-less, fish-blank stare.
She straddled him. ‘Oh, husband, let our ship of love set sail!’
Then drew his lips to hers and kissed him with a bride’s sweet care.
Erasmus could not move. Now, stricken, felt his lips part wide
as eagerly, Casandra slid her tongue between his teeth.
He choked and strangled at the harsh attention of his bride,
but trapped and smothered, there he died, she dagger, he the sheath.
Come the morn, they found him, laid spread-eagled on the bed.
His eyes stared up at nothing, and his jaws were open wide.
His skin was blue, no breath he drew. Erasmus, he was dead.
And his lungs were filled with water. But the bed and sheets were dry.
As was the castle well. Its water vanished overnight
So they sent a boy down on a rope, into the cool, dim round
And there he found Casandra. Pale, serene, her eyes still bright.
Her gown unrent, washed clean, bone-dry.
The drowned bride had been found.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
October 23, 2016
Out Of The Depths
Between 1844 and 2013, HMP Reading was the involuntary home for thousands of people who had caused offence to the state. From its original aim as a new model prison, with design features considered progressive for the time, the building changed, grew and mutated. Over the decades it became shabby, gradually less fit for purpose. Finally, after service as a young offenders lock-up, it was closed three years ago.
And that would have been the end for this unlovely, haunted building, if not for the fact that it is world-famous under its original name. Or rather, because of one particular inmate. Between 1895 and 1897 Prisoner C.3.3 suffered, wrote movingly of his torments, and immortalised the building whose walls enclosed him.
We know the man as Oscar Wilde, and the building as Reading Gaol.
The future of The Gaol has been under question since the last prisoner left. The historical significance of the place is beyond doubt, but the Ministry of Justice is unwilling to release it to the public, hinting darkly that it may be pressed back into use at an unspecified future point for an unspecified future purpose. However, the site-specific installation group Artangel, as part of Reading’s Year Of Culture, has pulled off something of a coup. They’ve shown just how appropriately the building can be used as an arts venue.
Untitled (Water) by Felix Gonzalez-TorresTheir event, titled Inside, has opened up The Gaol for the first time to the public, allowing us to walk the gantries and stand in the tiny cell where Wilde would have paced and fretted for 23 hours a day. Art and writing from names like Ai Weiwei, Steve McQueen, Nan Golding and Wolfgang Tillmann have been placed on the site as responses to themes of incarceration, censorship and the troubled lives of LGBT people, who still face imprisonment for the simple act of loving in a way in which society disapproves.
Meanwhile, in the chapel, readers await. On our visit, actress Maxine Peake, sombre in black, sat on a plinth designed by Jean-Michel Pancin to the same measurements as a Reading prison cell. Behind her, the original door to C.3.3 glowed in autumn sunlight. At mid-day, she began to read Wilde’s most passionate and revelatory work, De Profundis. This hundred-page letter to his lover and tormentor, Lord Arthur Douglas, is part confession, part therapy, part consideration on the nature and creation of art. The readings take an average of four hours to complete–a marathon task. This has not deterred other famous figures from taking on the challenge. Over the course of the event, actors Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw, writers like Colm Tóibín and performers of the calibre of Patti Smith will read the piece just yards from the cell where it was written, on Wilde’s permitted ration of four sheets of foolscap per day.
The visit is one that puts a load on you. The sheer weight of thick stone presses in. Bars and grilles put a grid over every sight-line, chopping and splitting the light. Inside each cell, graffiti speaks of lives put on hold, the drag of days that pass like weeks, of hours that pass like days. There’s little sense here of the improving mission of Reading Gaol’s architect, George Gilbert Scott. This is a place to sit and wait. A place to survive. The sad little bits of posters left on the cell walls, stuck on with toothpaste as the prisoners were not allowed blu-tack, feel almost like a tiny portion of an inmate’s soul, left behind as tribute or payment. Punishment always has a cost.
For Wilde, the cost would prove too high. Broken by the experience and estranged from his past life, he died in 1900. But the years he spent in Reading Gaol redefined him as an artist with a profound and tragic sense of the transformative power of art. De Profundis speaks to us even now as a work of impact and import, allowing us to understand that love and forgiveness are more powerful forces for good than punishment and imprisonment. His legacy, and that of the thousands of other souls that passed through the heavy gates of Reading Gaol, should be remembered.
Inside continues at the former HMP Reading until early December. Tickets for the readings are long sold out, sadly, but don’t let that deter you from a visit to one of the country’s most unusual and affecting art happenings.
(Featured image: ‘Oscar Wilde’ by Marlene Dumas)
October 22, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: S Is For The Stone Tape
Onwards with Spooky SFF month, as we discuss a massively influential slice of hauntological freakiness: Nigel Kneale’s terrifying The Stone Tape.
It ticks all the boxes: 70s setting, shot on video, Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack. A sharply empathetic performance from Jane Asher helps to elevate this story, but the whole thing is deeply unnerving and still bloody scary.
This is what happens when you try to solve the science behind hauntings…
Includes the first instance of a new term from Rob: cathode-punk.
GUYSGUYSGUYS! The Stone Tape is on Cosmic VideyouTube! Dim the lights, pour yourself a scotch and indulge.
October 14, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: S Is For The Sword And The Sorcerer
We continue Spooky SFF month with the bizarre gore-drenched fantasy-horror The Sword And The Sorcerer.
It’s a formative experience for both our futurenauts for various reasons (including a parental ban from Clive’s mum and dad). Master of exploitation Albert Pyun’s first movie, it features changes in tone rapid and extreme enough to give you whiplash. From swashbuckling to sadism, this movie has it all!
October 8, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: L Is For Lifeforce
It’s October, which means Curiosity is skewing spooky. This month our over-excitable alien chum is feeding Rob and Clive titles with an extra layer of creepyplasma.
We start with Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce–a deranged slice of Quatermass-style oddness with added nudity, exploding corpses and weapons-grade scenery-chewing. This one has to be seen to be believed, and even then you won’t believe what you’re seeing.
September 30, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: L Is For Logan’s Run
No, we’re not talking about the 70s Michael York/Jenny Agutter film. Rather, we’re taking a look at the source material–the William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson novel. An entirely different, much darker but much more cinematic prospect. Which is frankly a lot more fun!
We believe the time is right to reconsider this cracking, pulpy take on a society that has shrugged off its humanity in favour of youth. Who needs another movie?
Pictured: the exceedingly battered 1970 Corgi edition of Logan’s Run that lives with Rob.
September 23, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: S Is For The Survivalist
What would survival in a post-oil society be like? As life slips back into an agrarian, hard-scrabble existence, how can we find meaning or even happiness? How much do we have to lose before we lose our essential humanity?
Stephen Fingleton’s cult psychodrama The Survivalist takes on these questions and weaves a taut story of uneasy trust and betrayal from the tangled threads. A film to admire, and one that gives you a lot to think about…
For a more informed take on the film, check out director Stephen Fingleton in conversation with Stuart Wright on the excellent Britflicks podcast…
http://www.britflicks.com/Podcast/23938
The Survivalist is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD.
September 16, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: O Is For The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
As usual with our short story posts, we urge you to read the story before listening.
https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/omelas.m4a
A parable on the sacrifices even the most utopian societies have to make. Does Ursula LeGuin’s acclaimed story dig into a deeper truth…or is it simply stating the obvious? Worse, is it suggesting that the best we can do when faced with atrocity is walk away? Rob and Clive try to unpick this most knotty of threads, only to find themselves more deeply tangled than before…
