David Dubrow's Blog, page 35

Book Review – Mortal Gods: Ignition by Paul Hair

Mortal Gods: Ignition by Paul Hair is an anthology of three short stories that straddle the line between political dystopia and sci-fi action, focusing on the impact superhumans might have on world events. The author’s experience as a veteran and intelligence analyst lends the stories a sense of realism in both the combat and espionage elements, making the book more than just a cautionary tale of the dangers of governmental overreach and weakness in the face of international terrorism. It’s a fun read, but its brevity leaves more questions asked than answered; clearly, this near-future world needs more stories to flesh it out.

Like Hail and Fire, Mixed with Blood is a disquieting introduction to the world of Mortal Gods, requiring you to read between the lines to see just how far the world has descended in only a few years. Very much a story of espionage, it shows us the face of evil and the superhumans determined to defeat it.

The First Transgender Superhuman plays with our culture’s recent elevation of transgendered people to not just protected status, but near-holy prestige. Presenting the U.S. as a fractured country where individual rights have been all but erased, it’s a disturbing glimpse into a grim future where only the unthinkable can effect true change.

We see the protagonist of The First Transgender Superhuman again in the concluding story Warrior, in which Adam becomes a mercenary, of sorts, in a horrible war. This time it’s superhuman against superhuman, where bullets and energy beams fly across Middle Eastern battlefields and the good guys aren’t much different from the bad guys. It’s a deliberately anti-romantic view of the brutality of the battlefield and what may be necessary to win.

Political without being preachy, Mortal Gods: Ignition packs a superhuman punch. Let’s hope Hair has plenty more stories ready for the next volume.

The David A Riley/HWA Dust-Up: Analysis

(I discussed the genesis of the David A Riley/HWA dust-up here, and interviewed Riley himself about it here.)

Putting this silliness into its proper context isn’t difficult. The Horror Writers Association asked for volunteers to serve on the jury for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology, and former HWA trustee, author, and publisher David A Riley held up his hand. After all, he had served on the Bram Stoker Award jury for First Novel some time before. This is far from a prestigious position, requiring several unpaid hours of reading short story collections, but Riley wanted to help the HWA and give it the one thing no one can ever give back to you: time.

But because Riley had been a member of the UK’s National Front party, an association he now regrets being a part of and left over thirty years ago, he has been deemed a racist, fascist, and awful person. Amidst outrage from Social Justice Warriors everywhere in the horror community, Riley withdrew from the jury. This didn’t satisfy the mob, who would only be happy with Riley’s racist, fascist blood spilled across the shattered remains of a freshly-sledgehammered bust of H.P. Lovecraft.

When I first saw so many SJWs get so upset about this issue, I knew it was bullshit, because SJWs are always full of shit. So unlike the angry Social Justice mob, I actually had the intellectual curiosity to go to the man himself and talk to him. As it turned out, the truth was a lot more complex than the racist, fascist fantasy cooked up by leftist drama queens. If former Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd was good enough to serve in leadership roles in the U.S. Congress throughout a decades-long political career despite having filibustered multiple civil rights acts, I think David A Riley could serve on the Bram Stoker jury. The problem is that “Sheets” Byrd was a leftist and Riley is not.

I can’t help but draw some parallels between Riley’s experience and my own, when Jim Mcleod kicked me off the staff of Ginger Nuts of Horror and subsequently called me, a Jewish man, a Nazi for expressing opinions in my own space that had nothing to do with genre fiction. That was also a politically-motivated attack perpetrated by SJWs intent on damaging my career. While it hasn’t had much effect in that regard, it did damage some relationships and ruin others. Not over anything I did to them, of course, but because I had the wrong opinions and dared to talk about them on my social sites. Despite the books of theirs I reviewed, the time I spent on their behalf doing favors and promoting and supporting, I had become a fascist (a claim historically-ignorant leftists throw about with at least as much abandon as Rick from The Young Ones). To a SJW, it’s never about the work you do: it’s about your ideological purity. Having the right thoughts. Expressing the right opinions.

Prove you’re not a racist. Are you white? Are you male? Do you use outdated terms like male? Sit down and shut up. You’ve had your time in the sun. It’s our time now.

The lack of self-regard on the part of Riley’s detractors would be hilarious if it wasn’t so disquieting. I thought only vampires feared mirrors.

In a few weeks this will blow over and a new outrage will rise to give the SJWs in genre fiction a fresh reason to feel good about themselves. Who’s going to be the next scalp?

Interview With David A Riley

(Interested readers can check out my earlier post on the David A Riley/Bram Stoker Awards dust-up here.)

Horror author and publisher David A Riley was gracious enough to consent to an interview, which I am posting in its entirety.

You’ve been a member of the Horror Writer’s Association for some time. You were also on the Board of Trustees. During that time, did anyone express any concerns about your political views?

No one. Several years ago, when the HWA forum was considerably livelier than now, I was a frequent participant in discussions on it, and no one so much as mentioned my political views, either what they are now or what they were in the past.

Do you have previous experience serving on an awards jury?

I served on the [Bram Stoker] awards jury for First Novels several years ago. So far as I am aware my participation was viewed satisfactory by everyone concerned and I found it easy to do what was expected to the best of my abilities. There were no complaints.

Why did you withdraw from the jury of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology?

Because, as I saw it, that was the best thing to do for the good of the HWA. There is nothing prestigious or glamorous about being a juror. It does involve a lot of unpaid, unseen, arduous work reading an enormous number of books by authors or publishers or, in the case of anthologies, editors, keen to have their books included amongst the finalists for the Stoker awards. Of course the juries cannot add more than a few books, but it does mean reading all those submitted, good, bad or indifferent. I know from when I was a juror for First Novels this can be a hell of a chore. Standing down, therefore, was easy – it saved me a lot of hard work, some of it far from enjoyable. I only put my name forward because the HWA sent out a last minute email appealing for volunteers from active members for this position. I thought I was helping the HWA by stepping forward, never realising the reaction stirred up by certain individuals, some of whom already had a personal grudge against the HWA and are not even members.

Tell us about the UK’s National Front Party. What drew you to it?

I joined in 1973. At that time it was widely viewed as a patriotic nationalist party with serious concerns about the high numbers of immigrants who were coming into the UK at the time. Amongst its members were a number of retired senior servicemen from the Armed Forces, clergymen, teachers and other professionals. The chairman of the nearest branch to me had just defected as a leading member of the Conservative Association in Blackburn. It had a pseudo-respectability in its early days which only gradually disappeared over the years. It denied being fascist, having a totally democratic internal structure, including annual elections for all officers. Splits at the top, though, happened a lot over the years, the most devastating coming only three or four months after I resigned from it. After each split many of our best members would become disillusioned and leave. The skin-headed thug was not typical by a long shot in the earlier years. Unfortunately, as violence against the party escalated over time, these became far more predominant.

I would add that I was involved in the north west of England, far from the party’s headquarters in London and the people I worked with were local. We only had intermittent involvement with anyone from the leadership and were more or less left to get on with things as we saw fit. Also, you did develop a sort of siege mentality over the years, so that exposés about the party’s leadership were generally viewed as smears, a bit like the reaction, I would imagine, goes on in groups like the Scientologists.

Are you still part of the UK National Front?

I resigned in 1983 and have not been involved since.

A lot of people have characterized you as a fascist. Would you say that’s a fair description of your politics?

No.  It’s an easy label to flash around, usually by those who are fascists themselves, particularly from the left. Fascists don’t believe in free speech and try to suppress it for their opponents. I have never in my life tried to do that. They are also prepared to use physical violence against their political opponents. I was never involved in anything like that. I would add that during the time I was involved in the party any member who associated with a neo-nazi group, either in Britain or overseas, faced expulsion. This, I can confirm, was enforced.

Do you feel as though you have anything to apologize for in regard to your politics, past or present?

Who should I apologize to? To those who have been baying for my blood? Most of the people involved in this debate come from the States. Since I have never been involved in politics there I should certainly not have to apologise to them. Do I regret having spent those years that I did in the National Front? Yes. If I had my time over again I would not do it. But the early seventies were a different time. Still recovering from its loss of empire, Britain was in a poor state, with strikes, the three-day week, regular power cuts, uncollected rubbish bags piling on the streets, the danger of Militant Tendency (the extreme left) taking over the Labour Party, unprecedented numbers of people arriving from overseas and the air that something had to give, that the country was on the brink of collapse. By the time I left the National Front we had Thatcher. A year later I took part in a non-party march through Blackburn against her notorious Poll Tax.

In your professional career as a writer and publisher, has anyone questioned your competence because of your political views?

Till this recent fracas, no.

Have you ever refused to work with anyone in the writing industry because of his or her politics, race, or religion?

No, that would not make sense and I have never done it. Even when I was involved in politics I never treated anyone differently because of their politics, race or religion. As a small press publisher I have twice paid for artwork from Vincent Chong, one of my favourite artists. I am currently working with a young black British writer over publishing a collection of his stories. I mentioned this elsewhere recently and had it thrown back in my face as being the equivalent of someone saying “I have black friends therefore I am not a racist”. Take a look at how many small press publishers in the UK have books written by black authors. I have only been publishing for just over fifteen months and before this year is out at least one of my books will be by a black writer. I don’t need to do it. I could so easily have turned him down. The fact is I like his work and would be proud to publish it. Which is the only thing that matters. End of story. Re politics, a writer who happily admits to having been a member of the extreme-left wing Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party, approached me for a story to be included in a charity anthology he was putting together. I sent him one and it was included. I have also helped to advertise the book. His politics, past or present, meant nothing to me and I was more than willing to help.

What would you tell a writer who is considering joining the HWA?

Weigh up the pros and cons, what the HWA can do for you, then make your decision, but study what it can do for you carefully and don’t be put off by those who seem to spend inordinate amounts of time decrying it, often for very selfish reasons. Make your own mind up from the facts. I have been a member for ten years and have not regretted it, in spite of the recent controversy. There are a lot of good people in the HWA and if you need help, particularly as a new writer, it’s there to be had.

Thank you very much for your time.

At the end of the week I’ll provide some analysis. Stay tuned.

David A Riley and the HWA

At times it’s interesting to get under the hood of the writing business and see how the sausage is made, to mix cliched metaphors. This issue happens to concern horror writers, so it has particular meaning for me at this time.

In short, an English horror author named David A Riley was set to be on the jury for the anthology segment of the upcoming Bram Stoker Awards. As it turns out, Riley was once a member of a far-right, nationalist political party in the UK called the National Front. A Tumblr blog was created to curate some of Riley’s online commentary, titled David Andrew Riley Is a Fascist. Wikipedia’s entry on National Front can be found here.

When outraged members protested Riley’s appointment to the jury, Horror Writers Association President Lisa Morton issued a tepid statement on Facebook that satisfied nobody. As is so often the case, the most arresting thing wasn’t the statement, but the ensuing discussion. Three distinct elements stood out and are worth examination.

First, what you’ll find throughout the discussion is a great deal of virtue-signaling. Virtue-signaling is the same as moral preening (my favorite euphemism) or polishing one’s moral bona-fides. When you loudly proclaim on social media how awful something is to display how virtuous you are for proclaiming on social media how awful something is, that’s virtue-signaling. The thread is chock-a-block with virtue-signaling about how awful Riley’s views are, how the organization mustn’t be tarred with his brush, how the HWA is”problematic” for not sprinting away from Riley fast enough (as if the mob can ever be outrun), concern-trolling about the HWA’s reputation, and other instances of moral preening.

Second, the thread has really big buts. The biggest but is, of course, “I believe in free speech, but…” A clever reader always ignores everything before the but in any statement containing a but. Anyone who puts his big but into the free speech discussion is not on the side of free speech, but is actually in favor of criminalizing speech he finds offensive (see what I did there?). As someone who worked at the bleeding edge of First (and Second) Amendment issues in publishing for over thirteen years, I find the big buts disturbing, but they’re there, and they stink like hell.

Finally, this comment from Kate Jonez (highlighted at File 770) caught my attention:

Like many other organizations the HWA has chosen to support free speech. This forces them to accept situations that many members would prefer not to accept. The HWA can and has removed jurors who can be documented as instigating violence or making threats, but vetting jurors’ political background is outside the scope of a writers’ organization. Who else should be removed? Should the HWA remove people who’ve spoken out against Syrian refugees, anyone who has a negative position on Affirmative Action, anyone been accused or convicted of domestic violence, anyone who has voted against gay marriage? I personally would be happy never to hear opinions from people holding these views. I don’t think people who think this way are capable of making informed decisions any more that white supremacist/fascists are.

As horrifying as this quote is, what you won’t find is anyone disagreeing with it. To the SJW, the quality of your work doesn’t matter. It’s your opinions that matter, and if you have the wrong opinions, well, you’ve got to go. Disagreement is hate. To Kate Jonez, if you disagree with the unqualified good of Affirmative Action, you can’t be trusted to judge a book properly.

I disagree with the unqualified good of Affirmative Action. I have spoken out against accepting more Syrian refugees into my country. I suspect that many of my views would make Kate Jonez horribly unhappy if she were to hear them, and according to her and her fellow travelers, I’m incapable of making informed decisions.

Keeping O’Sullivan’s Law in mind, the lack of pushback against Kate Jonez’s thinking is disturbing, but not surprising, and the HWA is likely to continue in this direction. Riley’s case is the canary in a coalmine. What we’re going to see is an expansion of what’s considered badthink to include all manner of opinions that stray from SJW boilerplate. It’s inevitable. Your writing career will be put in jeopardy if you express the wrong opinions, if it hasn’t already.

First they came for the Hugos…well, you know the drill.

Riley has since resigned from the Stoker jury.

Later this week I will publish an interview I conducted with David A Riley that discusses this dust-up. It’s really quite illuminating.

Friday Links: Bigfoot vs. Zombies, Devilday, and Nevballs Murray Shows Off

Weird stuff’s been happening this week. Can you feel it? No? Well, even if you can’t feel it, you can at least read about it. That’s where the Friday Links come in: serving up links to the weird, the bizarre, even the horrific for your reading pleasure. Let’s see what’s up:

Nev “Nevballs” Murray showed off his copy of Iain Rob Wright’s Hot Zone at Confessions of a Reviewer!! : “I’m so pleased to be able to call Mr Wright a friend, even though he does constantly insult me on social media and address his emails to me to “knob end” or “Nevballs” instead of Nev. I will get him back one day.”
On the isle of Reunion, near Mauritius, a number of children at school were apparently  possessed by demons : “An emergency meeting was called on Monday after reports that students eyes were rolling into the back of their heads as their bodies spasmed uncontrollably. Despite an ongoing investigation, parents believe the chilling incidents at Jean Lafosse College in the French Indian Ocean Island of Reunion were caused by “spirits”, local media reported. And a disturbing video of an Imam “cleansing” one of the girls emerged on the web.”
Monster Magazine World brought us part two of the 1972 magazine Psycho Annual #1. Worth it for the Blind Fate feature alone!
I don’t want to know the person who didn’t like the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. I definitely don’t want to know the person who won’t take some time to look at what fell out of Zombos’ Closet : the massive pressbook for the film, which includes an advertisement for official Monolith jewelry!
Anything Horror lived up to its name by reviewing the bizarre genre flick Bigfoot Vs. Zombies: “A small army of flesh-eating zombies. And by “small army”, they mean four. And by “flesh-eating”, they mean “doing the mime grab without actually showing anything approaching flesh eating”. And by “zombies”, they mean some are painted grey, some have Halloween masks on, some just stand there, some do the magical thing where they appear out of nowhere when a character turns around despite being out in the open and there’s no way they could sneak up on them”.”
It seems as though ghosts continue to haunt the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado: “[Henry Yau] said he doesn’t usually like people in his shots, so that’s why he took the photo when he did. “When I took it, I didn’t notice anything,” Yau said. Now here comes the spooky part of the story. When he looked at the photo the next morning, he noticed a figure at the top of the stairs.”
Sean Eaton discussed Shub-Niggurath in all of her(?) dubious glory at his always-fascinating R’lyeh Tribune : “Ognjanović suggests that female authors need not ascribe to Lovecraft’s “eugenic fear”, nor reiterate his issues with “monster mothers and monstrous births”.  Rather, his concept of cosmic horror, of an infinite, malevolent universe unconcerned with puny humanity, provides ample basis for all kinds of explorations of the terrifying unknown.  Furthermore, Ognjanović offers the pragmatic advice that female characters in Lovecraftian adventures need not be symbols of good or evil, or symbols at all—they can be ordinary people.”
I’ve never seen an action rap musical from Japan, but Mondo Bizarro has: “Weird, weird stuff.  The Film is all sorts of bizarre for a number of reasons.  First off, it is a Rap-based Musical.  Is that a common thing over in Japan that I’ve just somehow missed over the years?  Mind you, the Japanese Band I know the most- Maximum the Hormone- does have/had a Rapper in it, but still.”
If you do nothing else this week, you have to look at what came out of Monster Brains : bizarre engravings from Arent van Bolten. They have to be seen to be believed.
At The Slaughtered Bird , Kriss Pickering reviewed the horror film The Boy: “The acting in The Boy is one to the biggest positives in the film, with Lauren Cohan’s performance in particular standing out. She does a great job at conveying the sense of dread she is feeling towards the start of the film, and the contrast in emotions she is feeling as the film goes along deserve a lot of praise. Also, the chemistry between Rupert Evans Malcolm and herself is evident. Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle’s portrayals of Mr & Mrs Heelshire, Brahm’s snooty and mentally unstable parents also deserve a mention.”
Ruined Head discussed the 1969 horror novel Devilday by Angus Hall: “Told from Barry’s perspective, the book functions best as a character study, with Toombs’ bombastic presence looming over the entire proceedings. His sinister persona and dubious philosophy–providing a guilt-free pass for all behavior to a chosen few—are watched over by Barry, whose own sense of morality is limited by his drive for success in the television industry. Toombs’ ex-wife and the young president of the Dr. Dis fan club are other characters that fall into orbit around the former horror star, motivated by their own personal desires.”
For a first for this site, Breakfast in the Ruins talked about a beat novel by Thom Keyes: “I don’t suppose young Thom Keyes had any aspirations to become the next Hemingway, but he must at least have thought he’d made a solid early entry in the inevitable paisley shirt / groupie rampage “rise and fall of a rock group” paperback sub-genre… and as such, we can only imagine the sheer level of face-palm he must have experienced when he saw what the design team at Mayflower/Dell did to it.”
A review of a documentary on the famous UK comic 2000AD titled, Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD bubbled up From the Depths of DVD Hell : “By the time we leave this golden period in the second half of the documentary entering into David Bishop’s time as editor which saw the comic not only lose focus as its once sharp satirical eye began to wonder to easy targets like Tony Blair (B.L.A.I.R. 1) and the Spice Girls (The Space girls), while at the time Bishop had to battle against less than PC advertising which seemingly was designed to embrace the lad culture of the 90’s but at the same time eliminate any female readership they had. Honestly it really has to be seen to believed that they could ever have been considered a good idea.”
Here, I talked about the newest front in the Culture War: bathrooms . On a related note, I understand that the current events/political posts may alienate potential readers. What I’ve found is that writers on the left side of the aisle never have this concern, judging from their social media offerings. As someone concerned about the direction of our common culture, am I supposed to void the field of ideas out of fear that somebody will get upset? Absolutely not. What differentiates me from many other artists is that I don’t put litmus tests on my audience. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to read my books, no matter what they believe. Black/white, left/right, gay/straight, rich/poor: all I care about is your money er, your interest in my fiction.

Illustration taken from Call of Cthulhu’s Arkham Unveiled supplement.

Bruce Springsteen, North Carolina Bathrooms, and You

The West is involved in a culture war that will determine the direction of modern civilization for decades. From the struggle against Islamic extremism to the definition of masculinity to the redefinition of science fiction in literature, there is no element of daily life that isn’t under assault by ideologues intent on upending our common culture, and when they can’t effect this change through persuasive argument, they move to legislation. Failing that, they resort to financial bullying and the politics of personal destruction. I have been personally involved in this conflict since I was kicked off the writing staff of Ginger Nuts of Horror by site owner Jim Mcleod for expressing opinions in my own space that are shared by millions and millions and millions of other people.

The newest front in the culture war is the colloquially-termed “North Carolina bathroom bill.” On February 23, 2016, the Charlotte, North Carolina city council voted to expand legal protections for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, effectively allowing men to use women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and other private areas if those men identify as women. (Women who identify as men could likewise use men’s private areas for their private functions.) A month later, North Carolina’s governor signed a law (the so-called “bathroom bill”) that blocks the February 23 law and mandates that a man born as a man use the private areas set aside for men, not women, and vice-versa.

Once this law was passed, PayPal withdrew its investment from the state of North Carolina, saying, “The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.” In reply, North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor said, “If our action in keeping men out of women’s bathrooms and showers protected the life of just one child or one woman from being molested or assaulted, then it was worth it.” (This statement is deliberately similar in construction to the gun control arguments claiming that if outlawing a certain type of firearm saves the life of one child, it’s worth it.)  Congressman Robert Pittenger of North Carolina’s 9th district had a more scathing reaction to PayPal’s decision: “PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including 5 countries where the penalty is death, yet they object to the North Carolina legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men in to the women’s bathroom? Perhaps PayPal would like to try and clarify this seemingly very hypocritical position.”

More recently, Bruce Springsteen canceled a planned concert in North Carolina, saying, “To my mind, [the bathroom bill is] an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress.” Many other organizations have followed suit.

Let’s make a few things clear:

Believing that one has been born with the wrong genitalia is a form of mental illness.
Mental illness should be remedied with compassion, medical care, and therapy. Psychologists help people suffering from depression, schizophrenia, and emotional trauma in ways that have been proven to work. Not all the time, because individuals differ, but modern medicine has a pretty good track record.
Supporting the delusion that one has been born with the wrong genitalia through hormone replacement and surgical mutilation is an appalling crime, one that does a horrible disservice to the suffering patient and merely serves to reinforce his delusion. Dressing and acting as someone of the opposite sex is one thing. Using scalpels and chemicals to craft a disturbing facade is quite another.
Surgery and hormones don’t make a man into a woman or a woman into a man. If you were born a man, you’re a man. Thinking, believing, and feeling otherwise doesn’t alter that fact.
Most of us don’t care what you believe yourself to be, but when you force your worldview upon us by, for example, deliberately using the wrong bathroom, you’ve involved us in your decision-making, and we have the right to protest.
Believing as I do isn’t bigotry or hatred. Nor is it patronizing to feel compassion for the mentally ill, no matter how celebrated that mental illness has become.
I am not the only person who believes these things.

We’ve now reached a point in the culture war where if you take the perfectly natural position that men should use men’s private areas for private functions and not women’s private areas for private functions, performers like Bruce Springsteen will not perform for you and companies like PayPal won’t do business with you.

(I know that more enlightened countries in Europe don’t have private areas segregated by sex, which is fine for them. We have our own customs in America, and we typically have good reasons for upholding those customs.)

What Springsteen and PayPal and Disney and the NBA and many, many other artists and companies have forgotten is that their financial bullying tactics only work if we let them. They’ve decided that shifting our common culture toward the celebration of mental illness rather than the treatment of it is more important than doing business. That’s immoral. It’s disgusting. And it’s time we fought back.

Fighting back includes not patronizing their businesses. Not listening to their music. Not watching their shows. Yes, it’s massively difficult to avoid Disney, especially if you have children. I like Star Wars and superhero movies, too. We tend to live on autopilot, especially these days, and we’re bombarded with so much conflict that there’s a natural inclination to want to just turn it all off and escape. But they won’t let us. They won’t just shut up and sing. It wasn’t enough to insert themselves into the public discourse (see the Dixie Chicks). Now our entertainers and business associates seek to alter the political process: agree with us or suffer the consequences. You can’t be in the audience if you have the wrong opinions.

What’s more important: your values or your TV shows? We used to have both. Now we can’t. Now the kinds of people who typically deride religion preach to us from pulpits of unearned moral superiority. Who the hell is Bruce Springsteen to lecture you on anything? How dare he?

The sidelines have been erased. You’re in the fight whether you want to be or not. You were just living your life up to this point, minding your own business, and then bam: your well-considered opinions and ethics have been instantly transformed into bigotry by moral imbeciles. Doesn’t that make you angry? We used to ignore leftist Hollywood show business stupidity and hope it would go away, but that hasn’t worked. Bullies don’t just walk away when you ignore them. They get in your face until you submit.

So what do you do with a bully? You hit him. Not once, not twice, but so many times that he gets frightened thinking about messing with you again. That’s what we have to do with Springsteen and his fellow travelers. We have to hit them where it really hurts: the wallet. We have to show them that we contemn them as much as they scorn us, that we won’t do business with people who tell us we’re backwards, hateful rubes because we happen to disagree. Fuck me? No, fuck YOU. Without us, you’re nothing. Without you, we just change the channel.

Make sure they know that you won’t stand for their bullying, and do so in public. You’ll get support. You will, but you have to have the nards to actually stand up and do it. You’ve got at least one friend who agrees with you, right? And that friend probably has another friend. And so on. This won’t happen without you. This is your fight now, so you might as well get in there and start throwing some punches. It’s easier when you have help.

Do you really want some has-been numbskull like Bruce Springsteen telling you what to do? Really? How long are you prepared to let some stupid rock star lecture you before you tell him to go to Hell?

Update: Author, (former?) Springsteen fan, and blogger Daniella Bova also weighed in.

Friday Links: Matty-Bob Cash, Judas Ghost, and Escalofrio

I don’t know about you, but this week has been brutal. Time for some escape. What’s happened in the world of the strange, the bizarre, the horrific?

The Catholic Church is offering a week-long course in exorcism for priests and laity: “The lectures and panel discussions—which include direct Q&A with actual exorcists—aim at equipping students to recognize demonic activity and deal with it properly, including through the practice of exorcism itself and prayer of deliverance. This year’s enrollment in the program comprises pastoral workers, psychologists, doctors, teachers, lawyers, as well as dozens of priests, and features a lineup of speakers including Vatican officials, bishops and even Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome’s Jewish Community.”
At Nev Murray’s Confessions of a Reviewer!! , Matthew (Matty-Bob) Cash related the confessions of his past, present, and future: “Ever to be one to be the last on the bandwagon I’ve recently discovered Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series. I was always put off in the nineties by the trashy book covers, skulls and stuff, I still really hate book covers that look like they should be the cover on a heavy metal album (not that I have any issues with metal \m/ ) I loved his take on the vampire Mythos and the whole espionage, or ESPionage as they refer to it, spies with telekinetic powers, kinda like a horror X-Men.”
John Kenneth Muir deconstructed one of my favorite films, the 1994 effort The Shadow: I don’t believe that The Shadow is as visually compelling or inventive as Dick Tracy is.  That film’s overwhelming and distinctive color scheme — as well as its fidelity to keeping action sequences confined to individual “frames”– resulted in a singular entertainment.  Yet The Shadow does a remarkably effective and impressive job creating 1930s New York City, and locations such as The Cobalt Club, The Empire State Building, the Monolith Hotel, and the aforementioned Brooklyn Bridge.”
If you like the original Star Trek, if you’re even the least bit interested in monster flicks, you must take a look at what fell out of Zombos’ Closet : Monsters of the Movies Volume 1, Issue 9.
It turns out that there were such things as Soviet Westerns back in the day, and Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! reviewed one titled The Elusive Avengers: “Loosely based on Little Red Devils, a novel by Pavel Blyakhin, The Elusive Avengers spawned two sequels, making it one of the more popular examples of the uniquely Russian riff on the Western genre known as the Ostern, or “Eastern.” Like most Osterns, it is set in Ukraine during the chaotic period of civil war that followed the Russian Revolution.”
The Horrors of It All brought us the horror comic Haunted Love Issue #3: Tomb for Two. Disturbing, disgusting, invaluable. Take a look.
Sean Eaton delved into matters theological and Lovecraftian at his never-to-be-missed R’lyeh Tribune : “It seems that horror, religion and the psychological process that creates dreams, visions and nightmares form an unholy triumvirate, each contributing substance and inspiration to the other two, and all derived from the same underlying material.  Which material is comprised of the primordial fear of death, the terror of life’s ultimate meaninglessness, and the intuition that other realities exist beyond the one we know.  Like that more familiar and comforting Trinity with a capital ‘T’, this one consists of three different entities united in one substance.”
The ghost of a woman’s mother-in-law has begun to haunt her family photos in the UK’s West Yorkshire: “Caroline Walker was snapping shots of her grandson as they played peek-a-boo. But when the 49-year-old looked through her shots, she spotted a see-through spirit in a nightie popping up behind him. Caroline, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, said: “It’s really weird and quite spooky, I can see arms and part of a see-through body that appears to be dressed in a nightie. ‘The figure in the pictures is transparent and the only person I think it could be is my ex-mother-in-law because we have her old furniture in the room.'” (A problem with an easy solution. –Dave)
Taliesin Meets the Vampires reviewed Jonathan Maberry’s book V-Wars: Night Terrors: “Whilst arguably the first V-War never really ended, this volume is set during the second V-War and one of the great things about the volumes is how the various authors pull your loyalties one way and another. One moment you may root for a human and the next a vampire.”
At The Slaughtered Bird , The Movie Critic Next Door reviewed the film Judas Ghost: “Jerry McKay (Martin Delaney, who will soon be in ‘Now You See Me 2’ is the slightly smarmy team leader who’s always got everything under control, even when he doesn’t. Anna (Lucy Cudden) is the psychic of the group who hears and sees things the others don’t. Ian (Alexander Perkins) is the tech guy who handles all the computer scanning and such. He’s afraid of the dark and should really have a nice normal job in the IT department of a bank, but somehow ended up here. Then there’s the cameraman Mark Vega (Simon Merrells).”
The real-life horror of sleep-paralysis was the subject of discussion at Ghost Hunting Theories : “The Germans have a creature named “Alp” An alp is typically male…Its victims are often females, whom it attacks during the night, controlling their dreams and creating horrible nightmares (hence the german word Albtraum (“elf dream”), meaning a nightmare). An alp attack is called an Albdruck, or often Albdrücke, which means “elf pressure”. Alpdruck is when an alp sits astride a sleeper’s chest and becomes heavier until the crushing weight awakens the terrified and breathless dreamer.”
Who doesn’t like Euro-sleaze? Especially Euro-sleaze from the 70’s? Not me. That means I do like it. So does the House of Self-Indulgence , which reviewed the 1978 film Satan’s Blood, AKA Escalofrio: “On the other hand, eating your food like a dog has never been cool. And that’s exactly what Annie catches one of her hosts doing at one point. A normal person would have politely excused themselves after witnessing this canine display and ran for the exit when the opportunity was right. But since it’s the… (Yeah, yeah, it’s the 1970s. People put up with all sorts of weird ass nonsense back then.)”
Here, I reviewed the film He Never Died and told you about my dead cat .

Illustration by Mark J. Ferrari for Call of Cthulhu’s S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands.

Some Thoughts About My Dead Cat

I’ve written about my geriatric cat Connie before.

He died yesterday. He had stopped using the litter box and was having a terrible, miserable day-to-day existence, so we took him to the vet and had him euthanized.

There’s nothing about the experience that isn’t shitty, and I can’t elevate it through writing, no matter how well-considered the words. I don’t have any great insights about life and death and pet ownership.

I feel guilty that I didn’t do enough to improve his life, and in retrospect the many accommodations we had to make for him weren’t so bad compared to the finality of his death. And yet he is still gone. It’s silly to cry over the loss of an animal, and embarrassing to cry in front of strangers. And yet I did both.

I’m a parent now, so why should I mourn a dead cat? Especially a cat, an animal notorious for its aloofness, its conditional affections. It’s effeminate, it’s unmanly to do anything other than shrug at a dead cat. When a dog dies, that’s different. With a dead cat, you make a joke and move on. Right?

No, fuck you, man. I’ll knock your fucking teeth out your head. I’m not sitting here fucking sobbing, all right? I feel shitty that my cat died. Don’t be a dick about it.

He was a nice old cat. I nicknamed him Furry Con after the hand puppet named Furry Tom in that horrible but awesome movie The Last Boy Scout. We picked him up at the Humane Society fifteen years ago in Boulder, Colorado. Just a garden-variety cat.

Is this public grieving? Bleeding all over social media? I hope not. But writers and cats, it’s a thing, so you’ve got to mention it when the cat dies. Still, there’s always something a little off about a writer who just has to tell you about his pets in his biography: “So-and-so lives with her wonderful husband and cats Fucknuckles and Spittake in the wilds of Missoula, where she is working on her next best-seller.” Or worse, the spergy autobiography list, which is super-popular on Twitter: “Public Speaker. Husband. Truth-seeker. Cat owner. YA Sci-fi novelist. Kitchen ninja. #Amwriting”

At least, at least I’m not referring to the cat as a fur kid. Fur kid. Are you fucking kidding me? It’s not a kid. A cat is nothing like a child. Look, I know that as a dad I shouldn’t look askance at adults who don’t have children, but it’s pretty damned hard not to when Tyler and Chloe Smith refer to their Maine Coon mix as their fur kid. No matter how much you love your cat, it ain’t never gonna be a kid. There’s no line to blur.

Anyway, rest in peace, Furry Con. It would be nice if the God that made us all gave you a soul. If He did, then I pray your little cat soul is at peace, doing whatever it is you’d want to be doing for eternity. If He didn’t, then perhaps one day we’ll gather together the enormous number of hairs you left around the house and have you cloned. I wish I’d done more for you while you were alive.

Two-Minute Movie Review: He Never Died

Nothing against Black Flag, a band I’ve heard of but never listened to, but I never liked Henry Rollins: he’s a banal, socially-conscious Hollywood “rebel” who supported the Occupy movement and loudly proclaims anyone to the right of Noam Chomsky to be a sister-humping mental defective. I understand that the vast majority of people in show business hold the same opinions as he does, but they’re not typically so vocal about it.

However, as Jack in the film He Never Died, he did incredible work, investing his role with a kind of humorous brutality few actors could have managed.

Jack is a shut-in, a self-directed outcast who speaks in a clipped, affectless manner and eats human flesh when he’s hungry enough. When he gets an unwelcome telephone call from an old flame, his carefully-constructed existence falls to pieces, forcing him to engage in some truly brutal, horrific violence.

What made the film so funny wasn’t Jack’s lines, but what he didn’t say and how he ignored basic social niceties because he simply does not care about the feelings of others. Combined with his size and generally frightening appearance, he can get away with that and suffer few consequences: he can’t be embarrassed, he’s not concerned about what you think, and if he gets mad at you, you’re hosed. In many respects he’s all id until his superego comes calling. Literally.

What didn’t work so well was the plot, which got clumsily shoehorned into the last half of the film; the main antagonist failed to evoke any tension and I was left at the end of the movie wondering why I should care about what happened.

Nevertheless, the rest of it is worth watching. Four out of five stars. Under the break I have some spoilers that I want to mention.

 

 

Jack’s true identity as Cain bugged the hell out of me. I understand that there’s an obscure legend that Cain is actually descended from Eve and an angel, making him a Nephilim, but that’s kind of dumb. So the scars on his back where wings used to be ended up as kind of a disappointment. And if he was Cain, where was his Mark?

Finally, Rollins as Jack said that his original name was pronounced “Kayyin,” which doesn’t make sense. According to Biblical tradition, it would have the Hebrew pronunciation “Kah-een.”

Why not have him be a fallen angel, if you were going to give him wing-scars?

I’ve Got an Assignment for You

Usually on Fridays I post the Friday Links, where I collect current links from various websites that deal with subjects relating to horror or the bizarre. I’m not going to do that this week because I’ve found something else that will horrify you to your very core, and it’s far more affecting than any fiction you’ll ever read.

Attorney, radio show host, writer, and now television personality Mark Levin made his 50-minute interview with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry free to watch on his website LevinTV. Dr Pry is a national expert on the subject of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), and the interview covers what would happen if an EMP were to strike the continental United States. In short, anything with a microchip would be fried and our civilization would be thrown into utter chaos.

I grew up during the Cold War, and I remember how anyone who prepared for the aftermath of a nuclear war was ruthlessly derided as a kook, a crazy, a nutjob. Having a personal nuclear fallout shelter was considered the height of lunacy. This contempt for preparedness has carried through to today, where people who learn so-called “primitive” or survival skills and stock up supplies in case of disaster are called, somewhat patronizingly, “preppers.” Preppers are a little less-contemned here in Florida, where most of us have a hurricane kit, but go anywhere else in the country, especially the northeast, and you’ll find that the very notion of self-reliance in an emergency is laughed at.

I used to laugh at it, too.

I don’t have a personal background in preparedness. My family never considered it when I was young. The notion of learning survival skills, of stockpiling water and food and even weapons in case of a long-term emergency simply wasn’t discussed. It wasn’t relevant to our daily lives. Fortunately it didn’t become an issue, but that’s not because we were prepared. We were just lucky. And luck always runs out.

Later I started to read about it, and I learned that disaster preparedness isn’t irrelevant. It doesn’t have to be a joke. Whether you live in New York City or London or Paris or Tel Aviv, taking your safety and survival seriously is, actually, one of the best things you can do for yourself. Especially if you have a family.

This isn’t a thing you have to do all at once. The next time you go shopping, buy an extra can of something you like to eat. Maybe an extra few cans. Bottled water is cheap, get some of that, too. Amazon will ship stuff to you if you don’t have a car. You spend money on cigarettes, on coffee, on TV and movies and restaurant meals, don’t you? If you can afford that, you can afford to set aside just a little bit of funds for your survival, too. Imagine how stupid your Blu-Ray collection’s going to look when you’re rationing toilet water to drink.

Shameless plug: I talk about survival preparedness in my book The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse. Yes, I put it in the context of something that can never happen, but I do discuss hardening the exterior of your home against assailants, what should go into a bug-out bag, and other serious subjects. And it’s got lots of cool illustrations of zombies.

Say the North Koreans don’t set off a nuke 30 km above Nebraska and blow out every electronic device from Canada to Mexico. What’s the worst that happens? You spent money and time preparing your family for disaster. That’s not so bad, is it?

So my assignment is for you to watch the show. It’s 50 minutes out of your life. You’ll learn things you didn’t know before, and it might spur you to take your life into your own hands just a little bit more.