Review Category: Books

THE SPARK OF FEAR: TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND THE HORROR FILM

Brian N. Duchaney’s book, The Spark of Fear: Technology, Society and the Horror Film, is an interesting read. Starting as it does with the by-now standard recap of the birth of movie horror, it actually goes back further than one might originally suspect from the cover picture of Frankenstein’s monster. Duchaney actually goes all the way back to the Gothic novels of the 1800s, which allows him to make the point that technology has been a major part of what society fears since the original publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein nearly 200 years ago.

If one thinks about it, the Gothic novel was, essentially, a genre of self-parody, utilizing tropes and imagery to create a set of conventions that were almost rote, with the conventions allowing the novels to comment on themselves as they went along. It’s possible to consider the novel as a sort of technology, as well, making Shelley’s book doubly reflective in terms of its effect on society.

The Spark of Fear picks up more and more as it goes along. The middle chapters, dealing as they do with a more science fiction approach to horror, present the standard interpretation of technological horror – man meddling in affairs he’s ill-equipped to handle – but are unfortunately left by the wayside to return to the more familiar aspects of the horror genre as Duchaney moves into the ’70s and ’80s.

While films such as Alien are touched upon, one wonders why Duchaney never touches on any film where the terror is legitimately technological. For all the author’s discussion of technology being a reflection of an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality, wherein we fear the rural as we become more urban, the flipside isn’t addressed at all. While the concept that a return to nature might be deadly is discussed vis-a-vis The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, the reverse – technology being the actual aggressor – isn’t mentioned. No Hardware, no Deadly Friend, no Chopping Mall. In a book which deals with technology and horror, the author talks more about science fiction with an edge of terror (Lawnmower Man, Demon Seed, A.I.), but never discusses actual technological horror.

The only real focus on the meeting point of technology and terror is the discussion of found footage in chapter nine, “Exhibitionism, Technique and Establishing Modern Horror.” Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch are the obvious main points, but Duchaney does manage to fit in the likes of Cannibal Holocaust, as well. Still, it’s technology as the means for delivering the story, rather than the plot of the story itself.

Using films like Return to Horror High and Cabin in the Woods as a means by which to address the reflexive nature of modern horror, Duchaney actually makes a better case than when focusing on the found footage genre. The found footage commentary focuses almost exclusively on how those films reflect societal trends, such as selfies and other aspects of social media, while neglecting to address the fact that this is a means by which a which the financial constraints of  the filmmakers can be utilized to their advantage. This is opposed to the discussion of how something like the aforementioned films, along with Scream and its myriad sequels, use standard tropes as a means of commenting both on society and the genre itself.

Speaking of Scream, Duchaney missed a wonderful opportunity to use Scream as jumping off point to a grand overview of the modern horror film. It’s disconcerting that no-one has yet recognized that while Scream is obviously a slasher homage, it also follows that Scream 2 is a sequel homage, Scream 3 a take on a trilogies, and Scream 4 a reflection on reboots. The pattern’s always seemed rather obvious, and it’s difficult to understand as to why – when spending a goodly amount of time discussing the reflexive nature of modern horror – one wouldn’t take the opportunity to visit a series of films that comments on film series and sequels.

Given that Duchaney misses his chance to end the book with what seems like the next logical step –  namely, using modern film technological advances to update and reboot the films he’d early discussed –  The Spark of Fear unfortunately ends with a feeling of unfinished business. Discussing reboots and relaunches would’ve allowed the author to return to the discussion of Gothic with which he began the book, bringing the story full circle.

INFO: THE SPARK OF FEAR: TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND THE HORROR FILM / AUTHOR: BRIAN N. DUCHANEY / PUBLISHER: MCFARLAND / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 
 

THE DEAD ASSASSIN: THE PARANORMAL CASEBOOKS OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

The influences on the second volume in Vaughn Entwistle’s Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle series are as plain as day to anyone who has watched a horror film in the last 30 years. Though Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the protagonist (along with his good friend Oscar Wilde), it is essentially Sherlock Holmes meets Frankenstein (or The Terminator, if that’s more your speed). Fortunately, there are no obvious in-dialogue allusions (as that’s the sort of thing we can’t stand), but this doesn’t disguise the more serious issue that we have with the book.

Certain events make it very hard to take the novel seriously. We apologise for the spoilers but in this case we feel it’s justified. For instance, let us consider the eponymous dead assassin. For a start, there’s two or three of them. We’re willing to suspend our disbelief up to a point. But the book lost us around the point where Conan Doyle and Wilde come across the monstrosity again and are, for some reason, surprised to see that it is a man who was hanged. We would be fine with this except A) this is the third time this has happened, and B) they also saw this coming and took steps to prevent it. There’s no excuse.

One example not enough? Let us furnish you with another. A moment from this book is cribbed from The Princess Bride (another case of obvious influences), but in this case the reference makes no sense, as the person invoking the idea believes he’s functionally immortal anyway.

Then there’s the ending. A typical happy ending was in the cards. However, this was derailed in a clever and shocking way. Naturally any trace of innovation couldn’t last and so things were set back onto their natural course with a solution that broke our disbelief to boot. We probably won’t be reading this again, as the obvious flaws in logic make it one to lock back inside the tin dispatch box.

INFO: THE DEAD ASSASSIN: THE PARANORMAL CASEBOOKS OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE / AUTHOR: VAUGHN ENTWISTLE / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

MIRRORS IN THE DELUGE

Short stories are great; short texts to read when you only have snippets of time and don’t want to get kneedeep into a novel, involving enough to stimulate the imagination, and the best short stories tend to leave you wanting more. However, if you or your publisher are brave enough to put in the back book blurb the phrase “master storyteller” then you’d better make like Dahl, Calvino, or Asimov and deliver on this.

And Mirrors in the Deluge very nearly delivers. The premise for these short, speculative fiction pieces is that they work as small mirrors; they are variations on places and things familiar and imagined – a photon explains its work and is “compelled to speak in metaphors”, a beard achieves sentience. Hughes’ ‘mirror worlds’ are surreal, daft anthropomorphisms of the everyday. There’s fun to be had with the mythical, as we meet the prototype for the Trojan Horse and learn of the wooden men built by an equine community, and the fantastical, as a fairy goes to a goblin market and meets both a robot and a dinosaur in a plum. As promised by the book blurb, the book is filled with word play – the story A Dame Abroad is full of puns and reads like a psychedelic version of Airplane meets Tim Vine-esque one-liners. The story Gold, Mryhh and Frankenstein follows a trip to the theatre which disintegrates into a sinister and grotesque spectacle.

A small criticism of the book is that a few of the stories are too short, even as flash fiction pieces; they start to go somewhere then abruptly end with no room for the narrative to breathe. These work more as vignettes; they are great ideas that could be extended into longer works. A second criticism is that the title of the book is fantastic, however, there was no titular short story – this could be by choice – and the teasing preface and epilogue, Premature Afterword and Belated Foreword, do continue the mirror theme in lieu of this.

All in all, these stories are colourful romps told by a storyteller with a vivid and often witty imagination and allow Hughes’s playful stories to whisk you along.

INFO: MIRRORS IN THE DELUGE / AUTHOR: RHYS HUGHES / PUBLISHER: ELSEWHEN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

VIRTUES OF WAR

The first in a new trilogy of military sci-fi, Virtues of War follows the investigation by Earth’s Astral Force into unrest in its interstellar colonies and attempting to diffuse the situation by a combination of coercion and diplomacy. When this fails and a full-scale war breaks out, everyone must do what they need to in order to simply survive.

Military sci-fi can have a wide spectrum of realism, from the professionally probable to the sublimely ridiculous, and this is more comparable to the hierarchical regimen of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet than the overblown machismo of Andy Remic’s Combat K. Like Campbell, Coles’ navy background is evident from his writing style, from the intrinsic understanding of the various units that make up a single force to the authentic portrayal of life aboard a ship where hundreds of people spend their every waking moment together. However, while the regular military jargon is clearly born of an ingrained comprehension of it, it’s a little jarring for the layperson to extract relevant information from.

While the technical side of things is expertly portrayed (we even get a crash course in multi-dimensional physics) the same cannot be said of the characters. Alternately following stoic strike officer Katja, charismatic pilot Jack, ambitious ship commander Thomas and manipulative intelligence officer Breeze, as viewpoint characters they are distinct individuals, but they don’t get much in the way of development as the story progresses, and each ends the book largely unchanged from how they began it. While they are soldiers, they are also human beings and as such are just as prone to making errors of judgement as the rest of us, only theirs can have far-reaching ramifications. In fact, Katja spends a large amount of the war unsure whether or not a particular bad call on her part was what kicked off the conflict in the first place.

As you would expect from the subgenre, there is a considerable volume of action, and none of it disappoints. The ship-to-ship space battles are fast and intense, often having little more than a sensor blip vanishing to signify the destruction of an entire ship and the instant loss of countless lives. Complementing this, the ground fighting perfectly captures the frenetic chaos of armed combat, where soldiers are only aware of what’s going on right in front of them and even taking a moment to consider anything beyond could mean their death. There are no statements of morality made about the war, with neither side portrayed as being wholly in the right or wrong, but merely two sides of a conflict battling it out while commanders away from the combat zones dictate what entails victory or defeat. While many characters judge each other for the choices they make, the book doesn’t dictate opinions to the reader, and allows us to make up our own mind about what we think of them.

INFO: VIRTUES OF WAR / AUTHOR: BENNETT R. COLES / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 26TH

 

LIFE OF ACTION

Subtitled ‘interviews with the men and women of martial arts and action cinema’ Life of Action, written, appropriately, by one Mike Fury, is as good an example as any of a book which does exactly what it says on the tin. Fury, a self-confessed lifelong action movie junkie, has interviewed thirty-five of today’s busiest (if not best known) action movie stars, stunt performers and directors, and the result is a book which serves as a useful barometer of an intriguing substrata of movie-makers whose work appeals to a very specific (and, we suspect, very demanding) target audience.

In its own way, Life of Action is very intense book. Action movie fans have very clearly defined expectations of their heroes and whilst few, if any, of the subjects Fury has interrogated here are destined to become household names, their work is as closely followed and scrutinised by its audience as that of any higher profile Hollywood A-Lister. Fury’s book is divided into three distinct categories. ‘Actors’ presents the author’s interviews with better-known names such as Scott Adkins, Richard Norton and the legendary Dolph Lundgren and names such as Zara Plythian, Robin Shou and Rina Takeda who may be less familiar to the casual reader but whose work in low-budget martial arts movies and webseries has brought them to the attention of action movie devotees across the world. They’re all busily and quite contentedly making names for themselves in their chosen genre and whilst it’s hard not to suspect that most of them are aware of their limitations, they’re clearly passionate about what they do and their tireless work ethic puts many of today’s better-known stars to shame.

Other sections in the book are devoted to ‘Stunts’ and ‘Directors’, with perhaps John Hyams being the most recognisable name in the latter category, whilst the former chronicles the exploits of the rare breed of performer who makes a living tumbling through windows, falling off horses and being beaten about the head in relative public anonymity in sometimes quite well-known movies.

Fury and his chosen subjects are joyously enthusiastic about action movies and their enthusiasm leaps out of every page. Most of the interviews follow a fairly similar formula – the book’s  best dipped into rather than read in a couple of sittings – and the layout isn’t hugely exciting, consisting of a few blandly-presented photographs supporting the interviews and a list of each interviewee’s selected works. But for the modern action movie aficionado Life of Action represents an irresistible opportunity to learn more about the lives and work of hard-working, largely-unsung and often fairly anonymous film-makers whose tireless efforts and commendable determination to be the best they can in their chosen genre is a welcome reminder than the real innovators in today’s movie world are those who rarely wander across Hollywood’s big-budget radar. Life of Action is absolutely required reading for anyone who’s ever heard of Cynthia Rothrock.

INFO: LIFE OF ACTION / AUTHOR: MIKE FURY / PUBLISHER: MILL CITY PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

THE SCIENTIFIC SECRETS OF DOCTOR WHO

Doctor Who and science have had a very on-and-off relationship, with uncountable moments of plausibility being erased from existence in favour of dramatic licence. But back in 1963, the show began with a very educational remit – to balance historical stories with future-set stories, so that children and their parents would learn about different historical eras and scientific ideas, while being entertained by the adventures of the Doctor and his companions – and it’s that ideal of educational entertainment that Simon Guerrier and Dr. Marek Kukula are returning the franchise to.

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who is a sizeable book divided into three sections – ‘Space’, ‘Time’, and ‘Humanity’ – each further divided into five chapters. Each chapter begins with a short Doctor Who story, followed by an explanation of a related scientific concept, drawing links to the Doctor’s adventures past and present in order to assist their explanations.

This is a difficult kind of book to get right – too wordy and you become inaccessible, too simplified and you become patronising. And yet Guerrier and Kukula hit the perfect balance, clearly and dynamically covering a wide range of subjects. It’s perfectly pitched for Who fans who are intrigued to know more about concepts touched on by the show, and though some scientific-minded readers may find themselves familiar with much of the ground covered, there’s something new for everyone.

Importantly, it’s evident the writers really know both their science and their Doctor Who; the quotes and references chosen genuinely do support the science and rarely feel crowbarred in. You’ll learn how we can potentially travel in time, just how plausible Omega’s anti-matter universe is, and all about creatures with regenerative abilities similar to a Time Lord’s.

The short stories, by authors Whovians will know from the novel and audio series, are also of a high quality. Every Doctor gets at least one story (though the Twelfth appears more often than others) and each story deals with the following chapter’s scientific concept without preaching the educational point. Inevitably, some don’t work as well as others – with a couple feeling constrained by their word counts – but they’re more than made up for by the better tales. A particular highlight is Andrew Smith’s The Constant Doctor, a Fifth Doctor tale with an unexpected regeneration-based twist and some good-hearted jokes at the expense of 1970s special effects.

Whether you’ve been a Whovian for decades or Mr. Capaldi’s your first Doctor, if you’ve ever watched an episode of Doctor Who and wondered “could that really happen?”, Guerrier and Kukula probably answer your question – and a whole lot more you never thought of asking. Educational but not inaccessible, entertaining but not patronising – The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who is a book the producers back in 1963 would love.

INFO: THE SCIENTIFIC SECRETS OF DOCTOR WHO / AUTHOR: SIMON GUERRIER & DR. MAREK KUKULA / PUBLISHER: BBC BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 4TH

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

If there’s anything even definitely negative about David Shafer’s debut novel, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, it’s that across its 400+ pages things take an awfully long time to get going. However, once things do get going, you’re in danger of giving yourself papercuts from flicking the pages at an abnormally high speed in order to uncover this bizarre tale of digital paranoia Shafer concocts.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot depicts the escapades of a screwed-over medical worker, a junkie self-help author and a drunkard school teacher, all of whom inevitably give the novel a three-books-in-one feel. This motley trio come under the unwanted attention of a ruthless organization dubbed The Committee, who seeks to change how the world’s digital information sharing operates and control it for their own wicked ends.

A pulpy-sounding set-up to be sure, but it’s given a snarling, punk-ish deliverance through Shafer’s style of writing. His is a mixture of the laidback cool you aspired to be in your teen years with a freakish paranoia that fits the characters and the story marvellously. The core trio are an intoxicatingly wicked group of ruffians, who Shafer devotes miles of chapters in making sure you’re as entwined into their emotional core as possible. The plot has a jittering, stop/start rawness about it that is frustratingly exhausting to become engrossed in, but that engrossment is inevitable.

Shafer’s obsessively detailed style of writing does save Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’s unkempt manner of storytelling somewhat and stays on its feet long enough to keep you hooked. With three individual heroes across 400+ pages, it’s almost unavoidable that the novel collapses on itself somewhat, but Whiskey Tango Foxtrot rarely lets up on its entertainment drive. Coupled with the growl of a Stooges album and the heaviness of a Nolan film, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a deliciously schizophrenic blast of a read, and it may take a while to catch fire, but when it does there’s flames everywhere.

INFO: WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT / AUTHOR: DAVID SHAFER / PUBLISHER: PENGUIN / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 4TH

THE ELECTRIC

With new genre novels coming out every week it can be very easy to miss something, especially if it’s a debut novel produced by a small and independent publisher. The Electric is a case in point; a clever and heart-warming tale of the supernatural which may have passed you by, simply because you’ve never heard of the publisher or the author.

The plot follows a teenager called Sam Crowhurst, a young man on that delicate cusp between boyhood and being a grown-up. Thanks to a recent bereavement, his mind and soul are in a state of chaos, and it’s only when he comes across a mysterious old cinema called ‘The Electric’ that he begins to face his own personal demons. He drags his two closest friends into the discovery, and between them they learn a lot about themselves and each other. The Electric is a tale of young love, loss, coming-of-age and, of course, ghosts. The cinema is haunted by movie-loving spooks, who happen to find most horror movies hilarious.

The Electric also happens to be a love letter to the cinema. A haunted movie theatre that shows features starring the ghosts of old movie stars is a perfect excuse to dive head-long into movie history and explore what makes the silver screen so special. The main protagonists are also movie fans, and this seems perfectly natural throughout the story. The natural flow of the story is one of its key stylistic features; the author builds gently on the readers expectations, carefully building his world and characters throughout so nothing feels forced (and making the ending difficult to predict).

The Electric is an impressive first novel. Andrew David Barker’s style is whimsical and nostalgic, and the work reads like the haziest recollections of a childhood long since gone. The pace is gentle and relaxed; there’s very little foreshadowing here and not a great deal of depth. Instead we get a strong ghost story with just enough surprises to keep the reader engaged throughout. The characters are firmly envisioned and it’s easy to understand the dynamics between the three children.

INFO: THE ELECTRIC / AUTHOR: ANDREW DAVID BARKER / PUBLISHER: BOO BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

VHS VIDEO COVER ART

There are multiple movie tie-in books that deal with art, but VHS Video Cover Art offers something different: a trip down memory lane.

Author Thomas Hodge is also known as The Dude Designs, an artist that harks back to the heyday of the video store, and you’ll recognise his style from the DVD covers and posters for films such as Hobo with a Shotgun, Wolfcop and The Innkeepers. Here he has collected a wide and varied selection of full VHS video covers – front, back and side – that celebrate the old school ways of promoting a film to the casual viewer who’d popped into their local video store. Hodge was given access to the collections of two of the biggest VHS collectors out there, and the pure breadth of films on show even suggests that there probably could have been a second book.

There are six different sections, highlighting the genres of action, comedy, horror, kids, sci-fi and thriller. Within these, Hodge has deliberately left out the art of the big guns such as Drew Struzan and Neal Adams, instead choosing films that may not have had big budgets. There are a few better known films here, such as Return of the Living Dead and The Evil Dead alongside the quirkier titles, but the popularity of the films is not the most important factor here. It is the art.

From the actual hand-drawn covers that try to dazzle the renter in the store to the blurbs on the rear that are sometimes mistakenly hilarious, there is so much to appreciate here in comparison to the dull, photoshopped banality of today’s posters and covers that all appear to follow a specific dynamic.

There is a reason why companies like Arrow and Scream Factory make a killing on rereleasing the older titles on DVD with newer, sometimes fan-made, artistic covers. This book explains why.

If you are of a certain age, then prepare for nostalgia to pour out of these pages as you sit and peruse the covers inside. There will be a few titles in here that you’ll remember seeing on the shelves, some you probably even rented and forgot about pretty quickly afterwards, but there is some untapped gold in here as well.

This is a weighty tome, but is a great conversation starter that should be left on your coffee table.

Ah, the good old days………

INFO: VHS VIDEO COVERT / AUTHOR: THOMAS HODGE / PUBLISHER: SCHIFFER PUBLISHING LTD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

WHEN THE HEAVENS FALL: THE CHRONICLES OF THE EXILE, BOOK ONE

Marc Turner’s debut novel has arrived. When the Heavens Fall is the start of a new epic fantasy series entitled The Chronicles of The Exile. The book has both strengths and weaknesses, but should easily find a place on a shelf of an avid reader.

The novel centres on a stolen book and four characters who each have their own motives in getting involved. The Book of Lost Souls is stolen with the intention of overruling Shroud, the Lord of the Dead. The four central characters each have their own storylines in their involvement that weave into the overall plot. Luker Essender, a guardian, is forced into pursuing the thief in order to locate an old colleague. Prince Ebon Calider has conflicts to contend to as the magic creeps in, but must also stay focused on political action. The most intriguing character of the whole novel, and possibly the most influential in terms of plot progression, is Romany, the high priestess to the goddess, the Spider. The conversations between these two characters are by far the most enjoyable parts of the book. The spider exercises her control, much to the despise of Romany. The downfall to the novel is that some characters are more enjoyable to read than others, but this problem should be fixed as the series progresses and the storylines become one and the same.

The plot is basic underneath all the characters internal political motives, but this set up allows for a more complex story as the series progresses. It is clear that this is going to be a very epic series in terms of scope. When reading the blurb, it appears that this could be just a one-off book, but as the book develops it is clear that the extent of the world building and the development of the characters journeys that this is more than just a basic plot. The series is projected to be six books in length, and with the page count at 550 in the first novel, it is clear that this is going to be epic in the extent of both size and the overall storytelling.

Marc Turner’s work can be clearly linked to Steven Erikson, but with fewer characters. As the series progresses into book two and three, it should become clearer how successful this series is going to be. However, with the current marketing campaign and the quality of the storytelling, it is likely that this novel is going to find its place with fans of Joe Abercrombie and Steven Erikson. The characters are dark, which has become a distinguishing feature of epic fantasy, and the inclusion of troublesome gods allows for a story that is well developed with the potential to become one of the go-to books of the genre.

INFO: WHEN THE HEAVENS FALL: THE CHRONICLES OF THE EXILE, BOOK ONE / AUTHOR: MARC TURNER / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW