Carrie At 40

As astonishing as it might sound, Saturday 5th April marked the 40th anniversary of Stephen King's debut novel "Carrie" being published.  NSFWG member Mark West, a longtime fan of the writer, was approached by the review site readerdad.co.uk to take part in their Carrie At 40 celebrations.

You can read his article and review on this link.

As a kid of the ‘70s and ‘80s, I grew up with Stephen King and was aware of him – and a certain book – before I really knew who he was or what he did. During the ‘70s, my Dad was a fan of paperback horror and he had a small bookcase in his and my Mum’s bedroom. Sometimes – not often – I’d go in and look at the spines on the shelves, daring myself to look at the gloriously gruesome images that adorned the covers. One book that killed me was The Fog by James Herbert – the hand holding the woman’s head – but the cover that got me every time I looked at it (and it still has the power to unsettle, since my own 8-year-old son doesn’t like it either) was the New English Library edition of “Carrie”. I have the 1986 ‘sixteenth impression’ so mine has “author of Christine and Pet Sematary” on it but otherwise the image is the same – a well painted portrait of a young woman with wide, staring eyes, a snub nose and a small mouth, opened slightly to show her incisors. Blood seems to run from her hairline, making trails down her face to drip off her chin. I was too young to appreciate it properly, too young to read it but that image succeeded in scaring the crap out of me.

...read on at this link

An Easter break

With Eastercon just winding down, we thought we'd take this opportunity to wish readers of the blog a Happy Easter.

In our own inimitable style...

New from Newcon Press

Newcon Press, the imprint run by NSFWG co-chairman Ian Whates, has two new anthologies out, filled with excellent writers.

Both books will be launched on Friday evening at this year's Eastercon in Glasgow, 6.00 pm on April 18th, unveiled at a launch party which will also see the release of a new collection from Eric Brown and The Moon King, Neil Williamson's debut novel.

A mysterious disappearance in the closed confines of the lunar colony, a man who claims to see a biblical reference made reality, a vital message carved into a piece of decaying skin, a powerful woman’s sage advice to her granddaughter, an artist determined to create the ultimate work of art whatever the cost, the dangerous search for a very special book, a future metropolis terrorised by an enigmatic serial killer, a man caught in a dark spiral of revenge…

Open the covers at your peril.

1. Introduction -- Ian Whates
2. E.J. Swift – The Crepuscular Hunter
3. Adam Roberts – Gross Thousand
4. Donna Scott – The Grimoire
5. Emma Coleman – The Treehouse
6. Paula Wakefield – Red in Tooth and Claw
7. Simon Kurt Unsworth – Private Ambulance
8. Jay Caselberg – Bite Marks
9. Marie O’Regan – Inspiration Point
10. Paul Graham Raven – The Boardinghouse Heart
11. Simon Morden – Entr’acte
12. James Worrad – Silent in Her Vastness
13. Paul Kane – Grief Stricken
14. Alex Dally McFarlane – The (De)Composition of Evidence

Paperback - £9.99 / Hardback - £15.99

order from Space Witch here

Quantum mysteries, explosions with no apparent source, wartime code-breaking, artificial intelligence cloaked in the sweetest of forms, enchantments undertaken on a whim, a fetish convention at a small town hotel, a faithful pet’s ghost that won’t let go, a surgeon forced to operate at gunpoint, a future London where fate rests on the choice of dishes selected at a meal… All this and more.

1. Introduction -- Ian Whates

2. Stephen Palmer – Palestinian Sweets

3. Frances Hardinge – Slink-Thinking                   

4. Storm Constantine – A Winter Bewitchment

5. Andrew Hook – Softwood

6. Adele Kirby – Soleil

7. Stewart Hotston – Haecceity

8. John Llewellyn Probert – The Girl with No Face

9. Jonathan Oliver – High Church

10. Maura McHugh – Valerie

11. Holly Ice – Trysting Antlers

12. Ruth E.J. Booth – The Honey Trap

13. Benjanun Sriduangkaew – Elision

Paperback - £9.99 / Hardback - £15.99

order from Space Witch here

Also, available from Space Witch, is "The Newcon Press Little Black Box" which contains

Hardback copies of both volumes of the duo anthology

La Femme

And Noir

An envelope filled with a quartet of sheets signed by all the contributing authors

A black tea-light candle shot through with silver, couched within a purple organza bag woven from the wings of dark fairies. The two books will be bound together with ribbon to protect the unwary reader, the inside of the box lined with black as an added precaution:

The NewCon Press Little Black Box is strictly limited, with only 100 available, each box individually numbered. When they’re gone, they’re gone…

Price: £39.99

NSFWG member Paul Melhuish interviewed...

...online at Jim Mcleod's excellent horror resource "The Ginger Nuts Of Horror".

Great interview and some nice mentions for the group.

To read the review at the Ginger Nuts site, click here.

The Book That Made Me - Mark West

In the fifth part of an ongoing series, NSFWG member Mark West
discusses "the book that made me"

* * * * *

A confession!  I stole the idea of this thread from Jim Mcleod at the Ginger Nuts Of Horror site, where he kindly asked me to write about the book that drew me into the genre.  This is that book, Stephen King's non-fiction exploration of the horror genre up to 1980.

Since it was Jim's idea, I won't repost the article here but if you click this link, it will take you to my entry on his site.

I loved the book.

The Book That Made Me - Steve Longworth

In the fourth part of an ongoing series, NSFWG member Steve Longworth discusses "the book that made me"

* * * * *

I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I now find 'The Book That Made Me' to be almost unreadable.

I must have been about twelve or thirteen. My reading habits were undergoing a rapid evolution. I was moving on from being an avid devourer of DC and Marvel comics. I consumed Agatha Christie 'whodunnits' with gusto, reading as many as I could get my hands on, and sometimes even correctly guessing the murderer (by the way, if you have never read her 1926 masterpiece 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' then treat yourself - a survey of 600 members of The Crime Writers Association concluded it was the finest example of the genre ever written).

In my enthusiasm I pressed Christie's work on my good friend Mike (who is now a Texas oilman, an interesting story in itself about a miner's son from Salford).  He returned the favour by giving me a book to read, and changed my reading habits forever.

The book was 'Triplanetary' by EE 'Doc' Smith. It blew me away.

The story was first serialised in 'Amazing Stories' from 1934 and then reworked into the 'prequel' of Smith's 'Lensman' series of novels and published in book form in 1948.

The novel opens before our planet is even formed as an ancient race, the benign Arisians, observe the collision of two galaxies (one of them being our Milky Way) a process that gives rise to multitudinous planets in both galaxies. The story ends (and the entire Lensman series ends) hundreds (or possibly thousands) of years into our future.

During the galactic interpassage the malevolent Eddorians burst from a parallel universe into our reality. Thus begins an eons long struggle for control of both galaxies, with every major event in human history being part of a proxy struggle between both ancient civilisations.

The epic sweep of the story totally boggled my mind. I didn't know you could do that. This was 1971. I had previously thought that the misty abandoned quarry where they seemed to film most 'Dr Who' exteriors was the limit of the imagination. Then, in 1969,  along came 'Star Trek' and we had our horizons expanded. But this was nothing compared to the limits (or absence of limits) to Smith's imagination. Faster than light travel, immortality, telepathy, mind-melding, avatars ('working projections') and space superweapons are just for starters. We also have the ultimate 'goodies' versus 'baddies' adventure story, romance, thrills and non-stop high tempo action.

I picked up the book a few years ago and... well, I had to put it down again. The style is very stilted. 'Pulp' seems the best word to describe it. The earlier part of the book, describing events in World Wars One and Two, are long, stodgy and mostly irrelevant and should have been vigorously edited. The characters are two dimensional. There are plot holes aplenty (the Arisians and Eddorians have to keep their existence secret from the human and other races whose destinies they are shaping, and I don't buy the reason why), and the morality in the story is simplistically 'White Hat' and 'Black Hat'.

And (whisper it softly) I am 45 years older than when I first picked up the book and (I hope) my critical faculties and tastes have evolved (though I'm not sure they have matured).

Having said all that, I was interested to hear Peter Hamilton at Eastercon a few years ago say that  Smith's novels had been his introduction to SF . 'Doc' has been acknowledged as an influence by figures such as Robert Heinlein and George Lucas. Many of the tropes in the 'Golden Age' of pulp SF were invented or developed by Smith, and I think his legacy is secure.

'Triplanetary' is the book that hooked me. I then went on to devour Smith's other novels (including the equally epic 'Skylark series with its planet-sized spaceships and matter transmitters capable of moving worlds across the galaxy) and the works of Issac Asimov, Harry Harrison, James Blish and of course Arthur C. Clarke.

The book that reeled me in and made me a lifelong SF reader was published in 1975 and I read it when I was 17. If 'Triplanetary' blew me away then 'The Jonah Kit' by Ian Watson blew my mind; which is exactly what I think Ian set out to do.

(You can read more of Steve's thoughts on NSFWG Chairman Ian Watson's novel "The Jonah Kit" at his interview post which is on this link).

'QX' Lensmen!

The Book That Made Me - Nigel Edwards

In the third part of an ongoing series, NSFWG member Nigel Edwards discusses "the book that made me"

* * * * *
"The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)

What’s in a book?

Words, that’s what. And it’s (English) words that I love, even if I sometimes get muddled and don’t always understand how they are best used.

Like most writers great and small, one of my first (and surely most abiding) loves was reading. From my earliest memories I can recall no happier moments than when I was trying to match colourful pictures to the mysterious glyphs that accompanied them. The sense of delight I had when ‘See Dick run. Run, Dick, run’ actually made sense is hard to describe. It was a feeling of achievement never since matched (which, I suppose, could be something of an indictment of me!)

I cannot honestly say I remember exactly what that first book was titled, nor who wrote it – but whoever they were, they had a stroke of genius in putting together those simple sentences. They hooked me, and I’ve been reading ever since.

As a point of fact, I don’t remember the names of those books from my furthest past. But what I do remember is the characters: Noddy, Big Ears, and Rupert the Bear being the most dominant. I wonder if Enid Blyton and Alfred Bestall realised how culturally significant their work would become? Probably not (but I bet they secretly hoped!)

I progressed to reading (amongst many, many other) The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, not to mention the Kemlo and Pocomoto series by Reginald Alec Martin (under the pseudonyms of E.C. Eliott and Rex Dixon). I loved the classical works, too, end eagerly devoured Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Kidnapped, etc., etc.. Actually, I developed a very eclectic taste which, I believe, helped my reading to progress quickly. By the time I was 10 years old I’d read all the available James Bond books, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, and Miss Marple in our local lending library (you remember those, I’m sure – big brick buildings with dusty atmospheres. I think there are still one or two around).

I also loved reading through The Children’s Encyclopaedia of Knowledge, all 6 volumes, over and over – I think I still have them in my attic. Equally, though, I avidly collected and immersed myself in the Beano, Dandy, Hotspur, Eagle, Look & Learn, not to mention a host of ‘trashy’ American comics from both DC and Marvel (I wish my mum hadn’t thrown them out when I finally left home for good – I had #1 editions of Silver Surfer, X-Men, and others, and they would have been worth a fortune today!) Then there were a host of ‘war’ picture magazines that my pocket money bought from the local newsagent (the only title I recall was The Big Palooka, about an American GI and nothing to do with the Joe Palooka comics – ring any bells, anybody? Oh, and my mum threw out my collection of these, too.)

But it wasn’t until I was 12 that I came across the book that was to most emphatically capture my imagination – The Hobbit, by you-know-who. What magic! What skill! What artistry! What depth! It wasn’t long before I picked up on The Lord of the Rings, of course, and that was it – I was totally lost in the world of fantasy, elves and goblins and all manner of wicked beasties! I went on to read The Silmarillion, as well as the short tales such as Farmer Giles Of Ham, and (my favourite) Leaf By Niggle. I guess if I had to name the literary hero who really inspired me to write it would have to be J.R.R. Tolkien.

There can be no writer of fantasy today who, if they have read the Great Man’s works (and I can’t imagine any who have not) was not influenced by the battle for Middle Earth. And therein lies a problem. I’ve since read no end of books by other fantasy authors and not one (except, potentially, Frank Herbert’s Dune – although that’s really SF rather than Fantasy) who, with all deserved and due respect, measures up to Tolkien’s skilful crafting. I dare say that if I had read the first Thomas Covenant book (just the first: I wasn’t especially impressed by the rest) before I’d read The Lord of the Rings I would then feel the same way about Stephen R. Donaldson as I do about Tolkien. We can only be children of our time after all, and must inevitably be influenced by that which is contemporary.

But I would love to be possessed of the talent of just one of J.R.R.’s fingers. I would love to be able to craft with the imagination and proficiency at his disposal. But the reality is that I have only the ability I was born with, just like everyone else (which is kind of comforting, I think). There are true giants out there and we do stand on their broad shoulders – it’s the only way we can escape from their shadows. And in so doing I like to think we are not trying to vie with their greatness; rather, we are attempting to extend their efforts, their immensity, their brilliance, their clarity of vision. It is their pioneering work that has set out the path we tread in our efforts to emulate their example. And it’s important to remember that, giants as they were, all those Tolkien’s and Verne’s and Defoe’s and the rest, they too were standing on the backs of the giants who had gone before them.

And so, laptop hot on the top of my lap, I once more settle down to string words of my own together, hopefully in ways that not too many predecessors have done. And I known that out there, in small living rooms or converted attics, there are countless others like me who are doing exactly the same. We may not be giants, but maybe those who come after us will be, and if our limited but honest efforts encourage them to release their imaginations then, maybe, we haven’t done too bad a job ourselves.

The Book That Made Me - Ian Watson

In the second part of an ongoing series, NSFWG Chairman Ian Watson discusses "the book that made me"

* * * * *

David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

On a Sunday afternoon in 1956, aged 13, I was riveted for about 3 hours by a dramatisation of David Lindsay's 1920 novel A Voyage to Arcturus on the BBC Third Programme (the intellectual station) accompanied by very suitable eerie musique concrète.  Probably I tuned in because the name of a *star* in the title suggested that this might be science fiction, although I also remember listening to a dramatisation of Vladimir Dudintsev's Not By Bread Alone, interrupted when my father walked in just as some interrogator was uttering the words "sexual intercourse"—"Turn that off; I won't have you listen to that kind of thing!"—the only even vaguely erotic moment in this tale of heavy engineering and Soviet bureaucrats.

Initially I assumed that Arcturus must be a play, but fairly soon I found a Gollancz edition of the novel, printed on wartime economy paper, in North Shields public library.   After an Edwardian-mode séance, rudely interrupted, the symbolically named trio of Maskull, Krag, and Nightspore travel to an abandoned Scottish observatory, from which they depart in a crystal ship for the planet Tormance (torment + romance, or maybe tor + manse, or maybe...) circling Arcturus, propelled by bottled back-rays, namely the light from Arcturus which yearns to return to its star, much faster than it came to the Earth; not a bad notion, really.

Arcturus is a Pilgrim's Progress written in the harsh and lurid language of Prophecy rather than mere Fantasy.  Awaking alone on Tormance, Maskull travels through zones representing different philosophies of life—such as Nietzschean will to power, or duty, or lust, or sweet loving passivity—
generally wreaking murder and mayhem unintentionally or intentionally, for in each zone he sprouts new sense organs which make each philosophy seem to be absolutely true and binding, even though this is illusory.

Welcome to the Wombflash Forest, and to Matterplay where evolution runs riot, and to other startling locations, and to such characters as Earthrid who plays deadly music upon the surface of a lake called Irontick.

Arcturus had a big influence on C.S. Lewis's space trilogy.  Tolkien also much admired Lindsay's novel.  Colin Wilson went even further in enthusiasm, declaring Arcturus to be the greatest novel of the 20th century.  Arcturus is the book which I have read the most times.  I even started writing a fully worked-out sequel to it, but Gollancz (owners of the copyright at the time) rejected my proposal and my two sample chapters on the grounds that Arcturus is primarily an exotic technicolour adventure like something by Jack Vance (whom I also admire).  This is indeed true superficially, but ignores Lindsay's metaphysical intentions fully and mesmerisingly carried out; which is why he wrote this masterpiece.

for further reading of Ian's recollections on this book, go to his site from this link.

The Uncollected Ian Watson, a new collection from PS Publishing

To be launched at EasterCon in April, PS Publishing are launching "The Uncollected Ian Watson", which will be edited by Nick Gevers and published as a 408 page jacketed hardcover.

Here are powerful stories which have never been collected before, such as ‘Jingling Geordie's Hole’, voted both the best and the worst story of the year by readers of Interzone magazine (sometimes by the same readers!), the kernel of Watson's novel The Fire Worm. Likewise, the short story which birthed his novel Deathhunter. And there's a stand-alone story related to the masterful Mockymen, never published before now. The mischievous 'Divine Diseases', which appeared in the science journal Nature, brought protests to that august publication; a similar satirical brio informs ‘The Real Winston’, a clever alternative take on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Besides stories, gathered here are many entertaining and often profound pieces of non-fiction, yielding deep insights into the author's creative works. In 'The Author as Torturer' he asks a question even more urgent today than when first voiced 20 years ago. Here are Watson's inspired impersonations of H.G. Wells (even if the period clothing doesn't show in print). Aptly, the Times Literary Supplement commented àpropos Watson's fiction: 'A phenomenon, a national resource to be conserved, Ian Watson resembles H.G. Wells in both invention and impatience.' Well, The Uncollected Ian Watson is devoted to conserving these and other pieces previously scattered across anthologies and magazines—as well as Watson's views on films ranging from The Wicker Man to The Matrix, plus his perspectives on artificial intelligence as published in Intelligent Systems journal. His relationship with comics is explored, and much much more. Here’s the full line-up.

CONTENTS

Three Kinds of Close Encounters with Comics

How I was Shot by Adolf Hitler

Jingling Geordie’s Hole

Beware the Pedicating Tribads!

King Weasel

Shell Shock

How the Elephant Escaped Extinction

The Drained World

Vile Dry Claws of the Toucan

The Tragedy of Solveig

Science Fiction, Surrealism, and Shamanism

The Shortest Night

The Author as Torturer

A Cage for Death

Secrets

Scars

The Jew of Linz

The Big Buy

Eyes as Big as Saucers

The Aims of Artificial Intelligence

The Matrix as Simulation

The Real Winston

H.G. Wells in Timişoara

Of Warfare and The War of the Worlds

The Wicker Man

Dark City

Stephen King’s Thinner: An Attack Upon America

A Daffodil Jacket, or The Misadventures of Sebastian in Kyiv

Divine Diseases

Intelligent Design 2.0

Story Notes

More information can be found at the PS Publishing site or at Ian's site.

The Book That Made Me - Paul Melhuish

In the first part of an ongoing series, NSFWG member Paul Meluish discusses "the book that made me"

* * * * *

The year is 1990. The place; somewhere is Switzerland. The weather; sunny. I’m supposed to be hitch-hiking. I’m sitting on the crash barrier on some rural road and there’s a blind curve to my left. Hardly any cars are coming but I don’t mind because I’m sitting there, rucksack at my feet, reading Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, part of me hoping no cars come for a while, the other part of me knowing I’ve got to get to Lausanne at some point today. When a car does come I can hear the engine before the vehicle rounds the blind curve so I snap the book shut and slip it into my denim jacket pocket, stick out my cardboard sign for Lausanne, smile in that I’m-not-a-serial-killer reassuring grin I’ve perfected for hitching, and the car drives straight by. Good, I think, I can finish the next chapter.

Obviously someone picked me up because I’m writing this in my kitchen and not on that same blind bend where I’ve been stuck for the last 24 years.

For this piece I was going to cite The Lord of the Rings as the book that made me but I chose not to for two reasons.

1. Everybody else has already chosen this book as their special baby.
2. Although LOTR remains one of my favourite books it didn’t inform my writing today. I don’t write fantasy as such. I write horror, Sci-fi or a combination of both with fantasy elements. Weaveworld had a bigger influence on my writing than I’d care to admit.

I’d spent my adolescence in rural Oxfordshire reading James Herbert books, going for solitary walks an bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend. I loved all that New English Library horror but for me the writers never went far enough into the fantasy elements. They would mention hell but I wanted to see it, suicide trees and all.

Time passed. I left school with no qualifications, worked as a painter and decorator and quickly decided I didn’t want to work my life away priming skirting boards (they wouldn’t let me near any proper paint anyway) so I made plans to travel. At eighteen I inter-railed around Europe on my own and flipping loved it. At nineteen I left home and decided to hitch-hike through Europe and work in Spain. I ended up working in Switzerland. Well, both countries began with S.

Before I left, I bought 4 books and put them in the side pockets of my rucksack. One book was On the Road by Jack Kerouac (which I thought was crap. Well, I was nineteen) another was Magician by Raymond E. Feist (which I still think is crap but as he outsells me by millions I’m probably the only one to think this) I can’t remember the third one but the forth book I took was Weaveworld.

I began reading it in the youth hostel in Dover, I didn’t read it on the ferry crossing the channel because I got talking to a pretty Cambridge graduate called Emma and we drank halves of lager for the short crossing, but I did read it in Paris, Spain, the South of France and finished it in Switzerland.

The story centres around a guy called Cal Mooney who finds a carpet, Weaveworld, and becomes embroiled in the battle for who should own and use this carpet. The carpet, when unravelled, reveals a magical world which amalgamates with the real world. There is a creature called the Madeleine who rapes men and reproduces with them, a salesman who possesses a jacket that can produce any gift his ‘customers’ desire. The protagonists find Oriel, the angel who guards the gates of Eden and the goodies and baddies travel to the centre of the carpet to find the Fugue, the power centre for the carpet.

Weaveworld is a massive, mind twisting adventure and a real page turner. What made the pages come alive for me was the fact that I was having my own adventure as I reading the book.

I’d hitch-hiked through France and got from Paris to Bordeaux in one lift. I’d hitched from Bordeaux to Barcelona with an American who had come to Europe to escape the law for some unspecified crime. Experiencing something of a crisis in confidence I’d decided to not bother looking for work in Spain and just travel instead so headed back into France. One time I read Weaveworld sitting under a bridge with bullfrogs burping as I’d have to sleep rough that night because I was in the middle of nowhere and I wasn’t going to hitch-hike at night. I travelled with an Irish guy called Colm and we spent the Easter weekend in the Pyrenees. I was reading the book in exceptional scenery. Colm and I looked for work in the South of France but he eventually got me a job working on a farm in Switzerland, lying to the farmer and his family, telling them that I was a student (a lie I had to keep up for my whole four month stay there).

I finished Weaveworld in a Youth Hostel in Switzerland. It was late and I was the only one in the lounge of this funny little wooden cabin. I stayed up until midnight reading. It would be my birthday the next day and I would be 20. Not a bad way to end your teenage years.

I really missed that book when I’d finished. I wanted Cal, the Weaveworld and all the characters to carry on. I also did something I’d never done before. Usually, I was precious about my book collection and would keep books. I left Weaveworld on the book shelf of that youth hostel. It would be nice to think it stayed there or, even better, got picked up by someone else travelling so they could revel in the books magic when travelling.

I read Weaveworld again in 1992 but it didn’t have the same magic. I was working as a kitchen porter then, living a mundane life and knowing the story already took the edge away.

Not only did the book open my mind to literary possibilities but the experience of travelling around Europe changed my perspective forever. I learned that life didn’t have to be humdrum and boring. I learned that you could just set out with just a rough plan and something would come up. The experience improved my problem solving skills and I learned to overcome fears that had once mentally crippled me. This was my rite of passage;  having to survive sleeping rough and having no money, working in a strange country and getting past the language barriers. If I could survive that I could survive most things.

There are other books I’ve read when life was good that I remember with great affection. I read Michael Moorcock’s Hawkmoon series last year. I was unmarried when I started that book and married when I finished it. Perdido Street Station I remember reading when I was on placement in Slough and things were going well. I also have fond memories or reading Imajica by Barker in 1995 at my first year of university in Northampton but Weaveworld always reminds me of my time thumbing it across Europe.