Christmas Cheer!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers - may they be filled with the love of Christ and the joy of family (and of mashup art)!

Magazine Rack Revolutionary

Earlier this week the nominees for the 2017 Hugo Awards were announced, and while for the most part I can't really gin up much of a reaction I was quite gratified to see that Cirsova Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine has won a nomination (which, these days, is almost more prestigious than actually winning) for Best Semiprozine. Now, I've been an eager reader of Cirsova since it premiered on Kickstarter in January 2016, but have inexplicably failed to talk about it here.

Time to fix that.

 Inspired by what he called "older, weirder, and pulpier" fiction and seeking to provide an outlet for the same, editor P. Alexander really hit the ground running with Issue #1. Basically every story, from the alternate-history Spanish-Armada-with magic story by Kat Otis to the pure undiluted sword-and-planet tale by Abraham Strongjohn to the first part of James Hutchings's poetic adaption of Edgar Rice Burrough's "Princess of Mars" has something to recommend it. My personal favorite, I must say, is "A Hill of Stars" by Misha Burnett, which has a great take on the Howardian pre-historic civilization idea, mainly by using the Old Ones from H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" as the just-fallen empire which the dinosaur-riding human barbarians are in the process of looting. The main character is a former slave of the Old Ones who uses their knowledge to win life, love, and liberty in a terrific example of what the "Pulp Revolution" literary movement is about.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so - shortly after the issue was published, Misha Burnett opened up the "Eldritch Earth" setting for other writers to use, and the just-released Issue #5 of Cirsova is reported to have several of the resulting stories. Alas, while I have downloaded the issue I haven't yet found time to read it, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Certainly the middle three issues have consistently met the expectations set by #1. While there's certainly an emphasis on science-fantasy stories of one sort or another, there's really something for everyone here. Just to give a quick idea, some of the other stories that impressed me the most included -

• "Hoskins' War" by Brian K. Lowe, from Issue #2, a Weird American Revolution story.
• "The Lion's Share" by J. D. Brink, from Issue #3, featuring a space pirate operating in the classic piratical mode.
• "Blood and Bones: Caribbean 1645" by Jim Breyfogle, also from Issue #3, in which a young wizard pulls a fast one on both the colonial government and a pirate crew.
• "The Lady of the Amorous City" by Edward Ermelac, from Issue #4, in which a not-yet-King Arthur fights a really weird knight.

And that's just a few of the dozens of stories that I found the most memorable - I haven't even mentioned the essays by Jeffro Johnson and others analyzing the older pulp stories, or the fact that Issue #3 was designated the "Pirate Issue", or hardly anything other than the surface of this fine magazine. And to top it all off, all the content from the first two issues is available free at the links above!

Even if, like me, you're a fan of science fiction or fantasy but don't consider yourself a short fiction reader, if anything would change your mind, Cirsova would. I really don't know of anything else (except maybe Skelos) like it.

So, Cowboys & Aliens . . .

 . . . has come and gone from the theaters, and I've had some time to mull over my reaction to it. I'd been anticipating the movie for quite some time, and was frankly a little bit underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing I can point to as being bad about this movie - well, nothing major, anyway - but I have, nonetheless, an unsettling feeling that something was off. Maybe my expectations were just too high.

Anyway, despite my vague dis-satisfaction, this film still did - and did well - what it set out to do, namely take a typical Western and turn it on it's ear by introducing invading aliens. Now, I'm not very familiar with the Western as a genre - I've often said my favorite example of such is Back to the Future Part III - but prior to the first alien attack, it seemed that we were all set for a stereotypical - and probably literal - showdown between the anti-heroic drifter* and the corrupt cattle baron that rules the town with an iron fist.

In their own ways, over the course of the film after the alien attack both Jake and Colonel Dolarhyde transcend the stereotypes they start out as. For Jake this is mostly a matter of slowly recovering his lost memory (though the closing scene indicates that he's given up outlawry), but Dolarhyde has a much more dynamic character arc.

He begins as a straight-up antagonist, first seen torturing one of his own employees over some incinerated cattle (for some reason, he doesn't believe the  hapless cowpoke's claim that the herd caught fire while he was falling in the river), then stomping into town to demand that the sheriff give him Jake (who did him some as-yet-unspecified injury) and Percy (his bratty son) instead of sending them to the Marshal, as the law requires.

As badly displayed as it is, this kernel of goodness - Dolarhyde's love for his son - is ultimately the catalyst for his redemption. In particular, Percy's capture by the aliens spurs him into leading the posse to track them down, thus forcing him to co-operate not only with a gang of outlaws that robbed him, but with the local Apaches. This is particularly eye-opening for Dolarhyde, as some of his employees are Apaches - and one in particular, Nat, seems to have great respect for Dolarhyde, and at one point brings up a tale of his deeds during the Civil War. Unfortunately, Dolarhyde does not appreciate this, gruffly telling him that the stories "weren't for you, they were for my son."

It is a big sign of Dolarhyde's development, then, that later on, as Nat lays dying, Dolarhyde tells him that "I always dreamed of having a son like you." Conveniently, when Percy is rescued from the aliens he's displaying the same amnesia that Jake had, which means that Dolarhyde has been given something of a second chance with him. It is, I suspect, not accidental that the name of their town is "Absolution".

In contrast to these weighty matters, a lot of the film, including the parts with the actual aliens, is actually quite light. In part, this comes from attempts to draw comparisons between the aliens and the cowboys - the worst example is probably the Space Lassos with which the townsfolk are abducted. Thankfully, almost nothing else is quite this campy**, and it's actually somewhat refreshing to have the alien's motivation be something as mundane as gold (of course, they may need it for industrial purposes and not, as Dolarhyde hilariously assumes, as currency).

The film did have a couple other mis-steps, such as the aliens' seemingly variable vulnerability to gunfire and/or bladed weapons. Another thing that bugged me was the upside-down ship in the middle of the desert - not that it wasn't a cool visual, but were we supposed to assume that the aliens somehow caused it? Because that would be completely at odds with what we later find out about the scale and capabilities of the alien's operations.

But these are minor vexations with what turned out to be a perfectly enjoyable film. I'm still not sure what exactly was lacking about it - it had, as I mentioned, deep character development, but there was quite a lot of decent and (so far as I could tell) period- and genre- appropriate action. And all this, without devolving into preachy comparisons of the invading aliens with the settlers. Perhaps it was, after all, just my expectations that were off - the film, for the most part, worked really well. If nothing else, they certainly nailed the Western "look" - when the west wasn't getting blown up, that is:

That image says everything else that needs to be said, really.


*I note with interest that, as an amnesiac, Daniel Craig's character begins the film quite literally as the man with no name. And when it is revealed, his last name is Lonergan. Ha!

**And it could have been much, much worse. Several years ago, the graphic novel this film was . . . let's say inspired by, was available to read online for free. Horses that flew because their shoes were made of alien metal were involved.

Lincoln: Statesman & Slayer

Anyone vaguely aware of literary happenings last spring probably noted the arrival of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Jane Austin/Zombie Horror mashup written by Seth Grahame-Smith. Although the book itself was pretty unspectacular - the tone swung wildly between the
"Pride and Prejudice" and the "Zombies", and was more than a bit jarring - there was apparently a waiting market for odd genre mashups. Over the next year, a great many other novels with a similar theme were released, some by the same company, some not (and a couple missing the point entirely - the violent clash between the mundane and the fantastic is what sells the idea, and War of the Worlds with zombies just doesn't have that same resonance).

Despite this flood of imitators,when the announcement of an official prequel (the deliciously named Dawn of the Dreadfuls) arrived, Seth Grahame-Smith was not involved. Eventually, it became clear why. (Possible spoiler warnings to follow)

Although not quite the first to replace "Historical Fiction" with "Historical Figure", Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a very respectable sophomore effort on Grahame-Smith's part. The overall tone is very much that of a respectable work of history, even while describing Honest Abe decapitating the undead with the same ease with which he split fence rails. This is partially achieved by presenting many of the action sequences as excerpts from Lincoln's journal. The interlacing of historic fact (for example, the heartbreaking number of Lincoln's loved ones who died throughout his life) with vampiric conspiracy is also skillfully done, in a technical sense at least.

Questions inevitably rise as to the appropriateness of using real people and events in this sort of work, and there are two specific cases here that must be dealt with. Lincoln's family life is mostly glossed over, though all due attention is given to Lincoln's grief when his loved ones die (the cause of these usually being implied to be murder by vampires instead of the various actual diseases that they fell prey to is remarkably non-exploitative).

The issue of slavery & the Civil War, however, is much more central to the storyline. Grahame-Smith casts Lincoln as being the key opponent of a group of vampires plotting to take over the United States, using the "peculiar institution" both as an easy source of nourishment and to pave the way for their eventual takeover. This has the effect of demonizing the main faces of the Confederacy, namely Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth (the latter literally), as well as possibly misrepresenting Lincoln's own views on slavery. While it is still not quite clear how much of his writings on the subject came from personal belief and how much from political necessity, Grahame-Smith leans heavily towards the latter. At least he doesn't fall into the trap of equating the vampires with the south exclusively - one memorable scene has Lincoln accusing General McClellan of being one of the undead, and New York (of course*) seems to be a major center of activity for the creatures.

Still, I thought the whole subject was handled with as much tact as was possible, though this is of course a highly subjective analysis. On the whole, the book itself is quite worth reading - I even learned a couple things about the historical Lincoln I wasn't previously aware of (such as the Baltimore Plot) - though I really did not particularly care for the post-assassination epilogue, for a number of reasons (The mental image of Vampire Lincoln attending Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech in his own memorial is not one of them, however). Probably the book is strongest in the beginning, when young Abe is the scourge of vampires all over the frontier.

Final Note: As seems to be the case with many popular books, there appears to be a film version of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in the works. And who currently seems to be in charge of the project? Tim Burton. Really, could it have been anyone else?


*Warning: TvTropes link. Do not use if you have less than two free hours. Void where prohibited.