Book Update – September/October 2024

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I had this recommended when I asked for people’s science fiction novel recommendations on a social media platform. I can’t say I loved it as intensely as I’ve seen others, but it has some incredible ideas and moments that have stuck with me. The parts I liked appealed to some existential ideas I have been thinking about for years, particularly humans, disregarding that they are ultimately just a type of animal who benefited (or were cursed) by being taken down an intense path of evolution. 

The book opens with the collapse of humanity on Earth. Scientists are attempting to prepare other worlds for those who can evacuate, as the homeworld is uninhabitable. One of those worlds is targeted by human fundamentalists who believe the project is blasphemy against the species. Remnants of the experiment remain and lead to the accelerated evolution of a spider-like species. The narrative jumps back and forth between the human survivors aboard the ark Gilgamesh, who seek a world to settle on while dealing with internal conflicts. 

The flip side are the generations of spiders born and dying as they build a functional society. The spider chapters are the book’s strength, and the human ones were where I felt myself becoming the most bored. The moment of first contact between these groups is a fantastic sequence that captures everything unique about this story. I wish I had enjoyed it more. I needed to be in the right headspace, ultimately.

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Year’s Best Horror 2023 edited by Ellen Datlow

I finally got my hands on the latest annual from horror editor Ellen Datlow, and as always, some stories popped out more for me than others:

• Solivagant by Angela Slatter

The collection starts with a fantastic story about a woman plagued by a ghoulish vampiric creature. He’s responsible for killing her family, which she was blamed for, and sending her on the run for decades. A concerned elderly neighbor thinks our protagonist is simply dealing with an abusive boyfriend but eventually learns there’s a lot more going on.

• Gate 9 by Jeffrey Ford

I’ve enjoyed Ford’s work before, and this short was a delight as well. It starts off simple enough: Dad trying to wrangle his daughter through the airport terminal so they can make their flight and be reunited with Mom. However, the little girl needs to use the bathroom, and the dad apprehensively sends her in by herself. And then waits. And waits. And waits. Then, things begin to get truly weird in a surreal manner. Fantastic story.

• Flaming Teeth by Garry Kilworth

A group of thrillseekers who want to escape from the monotony of the world discover an island in the southern Pacific that appears untouched. They set up camp and start playing Robinson Crusoe, their yacht just a radio call away. Then signs of life appear, not just animals, but something intelligent and huge. I’m not a huge fan of monster stories, but this one hit all the right notes.

• Incident at Bear Creek Lodge by Tananarive Due

I have never read Due’s work before, but I have heard much about her. After reading this short, I need to find a story collection for more. A young man wants to finally meet the maternal grandmother he’s heard about his whole life. She was a movie star in the 1920s & 30s, but his mother would prefer he doesn’t. Her younger brother, the boy’s uncle, agrees to take our protagonist to his grandmother’s cabin in the woods. A very unpleasant & harsh welcome awaits.

• In the Wabe by Alison Littlewood

This dark urban fairy tale tells of a mother whose daughter disappeared years ago while playing on the statue of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park. The police find a homeless old woman who they think took the girl; she is wearing the girl’s clothes, having stretched them over herself. This leads to the mother discovering other disappearances around this statue, which have seemingly impossible-to-explain outcomes.

• Bb Minor, or the Suicide Choir: An Oral History by Gemma Files

It’s short and sweet, told in the testimonies of the people involved. A crime tip line gets a call about strange music in a rundown apartment building. The people calling in to report a complaint but doing so in frightened hushed whispers. Even the volunteer on the phone can hear a strange rhythmic thrumming in the background. We follow the police as they enter, only to come across a macabre tableau that speaks to the twisted creativity of the human mind and a horror that recalls the viral kind found in Japanese horror films.

• The Collection by Charlie Hughes

In my opinion, this is an intensely original story, and I could not anticipate where it was going. That’s a good thing. Layla rents out her family’s guest house on AirBnB at the behest of her husband. The Sheldons show up to rent the place. They seem nice. It’s their son, Geoff, that strikes her as strange. Layla has a dark chapter from her past involving her mother’s habit of hooking up microphones to listen in through every room of the house. This is such a great, dark, mind-twisting tale.

• 1855 by Jacob Steven Mohr

This is an epistolary story told from the perspective of Mr. Ford, who oversees an orphanage in New York City. A little boy, Luca, arrives at the home and one night kneels and speaks to something in the darkness. Ford and the nuns who run the home daily believe Luca communicates with something sinister. They call in a priest who can speak Italian, the boy’s native language and the child proceeds to tell a story that chills the grown-ups to the bone.

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Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

I have never been disappointed by Brian Evenson, so I was delighted to see his short story collection coming out the exact same day as Laird Barron’s new book. These two books helped make my October that bit better, and I needed it. This story was a slight shift from Evenson’s normal fare. I noticed a lot of variations on the same themes (mothers, robots, the end of humanity) and a shift to more science fiction stories than just horror.

• The Rider

Reiter’s car breaks down, and he decides to go on foot and search for help in the nearby town tucked away. The place seems absolutely barren. Knocks at a dozen doors result in no answers. But then he finds an occupied home. It’s inhabited by an adult man who seems completely out of it and a little boy who sits on his shoulders, steering him around. This is a true “weird” story, surreal and nightmarish.

• Annex

This is one of Evenson’s robot/mother/science fiction stories. A being tells how their keeper takes them to a hidden building. Inside, they undergo an instant education and learn something about their true nature. However, this is not the first time, and the protagonist’s predecessors have had enough time to concoct a plan to break this cycle.

• Mother

Another of the robot stories. Our protagonist lives with Mother and Martu. Mother is very insistent on adhering to a set of rules about where and when the “children” can go. They live in the wilderness with a couple stable structures. The protagonist realizes he has a cavity in his torso and hides an odd piece of metal he comes across while exploring. That cavity turns out to be able to do molecular analysis, and he learns the truth behind Mother’s rules.

• Good Night, Sleep Tight

A more traditional horror story about a man with fragments of memories from his childhood. His mother would tuck him in for bed, then leave the room. A little while later, she would return and tell him bedtime stories. Except these tales were dark & sinister. His mother seemed to get enjoyment out of tormenting him. It’s decades later; he’s a dad, and his mother insists they visit and stay in the house. Our main character must prepare for when night comes, and his mother wants to tuck her grandson in.

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Not a Speck of Light: Stories by Laird Barron

I was very worried we might not get more from Laird Barron as he had a recent medical scare that sent him to the hospital, which he’s still recovering from. This latest collection is not my favorite. It continues Barron’s shift away from the tone of his first three collections and goes beyond the new territory he covered in Swift to Chase. This is the thing about loving a contemporary author. The work I discovered him for will likely remain my favorite. Yet he’s an artist and doesn’t want to do the same thing repeatedly. While I didn’t enjoy several of these, I still respect the hell out of him for trying new things and stretching himself beyond Lovecraftian horror.

• In a Cavern, In a Canyon

It’s a play on the skinwalker stories. A middle-aged woman who has lived a rough life hears a crying noise from the dark edges of her property one night. She goes back to a memory of the time her father went missing. Her uncle suspected something terrible and told her stories about something that lives in the woods and lures people. It cries like a person and hooks them in like fish to devour. This is the exact sort of story I want when I read a book like this.

• Girls Without Their Faces On

I had read this story a couple times over the years. It was published on one of those Weird Tales style websites. This feels the most simpatico with Swift to Chase and its surreal slasher/cosmic horror vibes. Feels like a small piece of a much greater narrative.

• Joren Falls

A couple buys their dream home out in the country. But we all know how that goes. Larry can feel something is off about the house, but he can’t pinpoint what it is. Every time he goes into the attic, he can’t help but feel something watching him from the darkness. Roger, a neighbor and friend, is called to come over and inspect. Something clear spooks him, but he doesn’t go into detail. Larry starts to remember a work trip he took to Japan and what he brought back with him. Things get increasingly worse.

• Nemesis

This is a more experimental story. It involves a sinister goldfish and the idea of an evil force of nature following someone across time, space, and the multiverse.

• Strident Caller

A gigolo hooks up with a wealthy woman who lives in the middle of nowhere. He moves in and brings his dog along. He thought she was single or at least divorced. However, her husband is very much…around, let’s say.

• Tiptoe

I read this in Ellen Datlow’s horror anthology for 2023, and it’s one of the best horror stories I’ve ever come across, probably since Barron’s last collection. A grown man thinks back on his strained relationship with his father, and while perusing some old family photos, he comes across a horrific truth he’d chosen to ignore for all these years.

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The War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony by Nelson A. Denis

I’d been aware of this book for years now. My wife had read it previously. She is Puerto Rican and lived on the island for a significant chunk of her life. Her family still lives there. I knew that reading this would upset me, but 2024 feels like a year where we need to stare into the void and confront the horrors previous generations have let slide by time after time. There’s some discourse surrounding Puerto Rico at the moment, which has me pissed off. You’ve probably heard about the comedian the Trump campaign hired who called the island “garbage” at the Madison Square Garden venue. Then we have the disingenuous pandering of the Democrats, completely craven. None of America’s institutions or political parties give a fuck about Puerto Rico. It is a place to be exploited in their eyes. Some of them may be overt in their racism, others more coy, but in the end, it’s evident none of them care.

This book focuses on the attempt at revolution on the island, which went down in 1950. The Puerto Rican flag was banned by the occupying U.S. forces, as well as certain songs about the people’s pride in their home. Sugar cane plantations dominated labor, and Puerto Ricans were forced to work long, torturous hours for wages none of us would accept. The story of Puerto Rico mirrors so many other places with labor exploitation, the dehumanization of the indigenous people, and the unceasing violence of the United States government.

There’s a reason you don’t get taught this history in U.S. schools. You don’t get told about the man taken to what amounts to a black site of the time, starved for days, then fed meat only to be told by the guard it was his own son. The truth of that statement has neither been confirmed nor denied. What we do know is that the man being tortured had a heart attack and died when he was told this. That’s just one story. Some are more heroic, like the barber who housed weapons for the revolution. This man had his business and his body shot to pieces by collaborating local police forces. Yet, even riddled with bullets, he kept doing damage. If I lived to have just a micrometer of that courage, I would die proud of myself. 

The fate of the Palestinians is much like the fate of the Puerto Ricans. Occupied people whose current generation has never known freedom. Those of us in the West have enjoyed the fruits of these horrors. It can be excused if you don’t know (to an extent), but the moment you do there’s no more excuses. There’s only one acceptable path, which is self-determination & independence with ongoing no-strings-attached financial reparations to the people. Death to every colonizing nation. None of us are free until every single last one of us is free.