Submissions 2

To correct the correction - I have been deluged with submissions this past week and now have more than enough material for the next four issues of ST. Therefore I have decided to close ST to submissions for the foreseeable future. Thank you and goodnight.

Submissions

Slight correction to my previous post on this subject. ST will be open to submissions until the end of January. That is all - thanks very much.

The Return

This rarity is based on two stories, one by A.M. Burrage, the other by Ambrose Bierce. It's a fine two-hander with Rosalie Crutchley and Peter Vaughan, who also starred in a famous BBC adaptation of 'A Warning to the Curious'. See what you think.

Adam Golaski

Adam Golaski's story 'Translation' will feature in ST21. In the meantime, here's Adam reading to a (fairly) attentive audience. It's not a complete reading, but the narrative is nonetheless self-contained. You can click straight to part 2 of the video at the end of part 1.

Codex Nodens

Arthur Machen is a revered but not widely read author. He wrote far more than his contemporary M.R. James, for instance, but his stories are not so frequently anthologised and you won't find popular paperback editions of Machen's work. This is a pity, because although Machen can be heavy going he is a fascinating author.

One problem is that Machen had a long career, and over time his style and general approach to fiction. His early work falls into the Decadent tradition of the late Victorian era. His short novel The Great God Pan is a horror story with hints of strange miscegenation. Greatly admired by HP Lovecraft and Stephen King, among many others, it is not exactly packed with drama, but instead relies on allusion and second-hand accounts of some very bizarre and disturbing events.

Machen toned down the Decadence a bit but remained a very unusual and at times contentious writer. His most accessible work is collected in Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, which has appeared in various editions. Tartarus Press does a mobi-for-Kindle version here. Oh, and it was Machen that popularised the idea (in fiction) that the Holy Grail might still be around, thus paving the way for such literary masterpieces as... Well, you know. Dan Brown and stuff.



Anyway, the point of this post is that Cardinal Cox (Peterborough's Living National Treasure) has produced Codex Nodens, a pamphlet of poems dedicated to Machen's mythos and offering some intriguing, not to say witty insights into the great man's ideas. So we have Celticism, strange doings, suggestions of weird sexitude, references to eltritch primordial races in these isles, and a ton of other stuff. As well as poems, Pete Cox contributes a wonderful vignette that captures the essence of Machenesque horror, especially the sense of something unutterably strange that we are always about to glimpse, but never see.

Handily, one of Cox's poems, 'Transmutations', sums up Machen's appeal rather better than I could: 'A person who reverts to protoplasmic gel/Ancient hidden races, secret of the ages...' And then we get the kicker, for me: 'Everything you thought you knew turns out to be lie/Life is but a house of cards kept up from within...' Machen was the original conspiracy theorist of popular fiction. My favourite story of his, 'The Inmost Light', is all about a shady cabal trying to acquire the result of a horrible experiment.

Machen's conspirators are sometimes human, and almost always deadly. But there can be conspiracies of light, albeit accidental: Machen's best known story to this day is a slight propaganda piece thrown off in a frenzy of wartime journalism. 'The Bowmen' almost certainly gave rise to the Angel of Mons legend in 1914, and in the poem 'No Sleep, No Sleep, No Sleep' the poet tellingly evokes the trench conditions that can make grown men believe in the impossible.

Other poems refer to The Great God Pan, faerie lore, Grail or Graal legends, and The Hill of Dreams, often considered Machen's finest novel. Several poems manage, like Machen's prose, to re-imbue the supposedly tame British countryside with a sense of mystery. Along the way, informative footnotes reveal some interesting facts. I didn't know that for the true adept the rituals of the Grail 'could work with a lightly boiled egg whose top had been removed'. Not sure if toastie soldiers are involved.

In a handwritten note accompanying my review copy, Cardinal Cox writes: 'One day (not soon) might do a Codex Silenci (on Algernon Blackwood) or Codex Carnacki (on Hope Hodgson).' Always leave 'em wanting more, eh?

If you would like a copy of Codex Nodens, follow the usual rigmarole:

Send a C5 SAE to

58 Pennington
Orton Goldhay
Peterborough
PE2 5RB

You can also email the Cardinal at cardinalcox1@yahoo.co.uk

An Interview with Reggie Oliver

Insights into the actor and playwright who has written several acclaimed collections of stories, the latest of which is Mrs Midnight. Reggie is also the nephew of Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort farm, and she's one of many fascinating authors mentioned in this ramble through his library. Also, for fans of the feline, there's a guest appearance by an authorial cat.

John Llewellyn Probert's House of Mortal Cinema

If you're a fan of cheesy, low-budget horror films from the last century (and who is not, pray?) then you could do worse than mosey over to the cinema blog of author J.L. Probert. His fiction has appeared all over the place, even in ST, and he's clearly a lover of all things absurd and a bit loopy. His blog consists of enthusiastic and erudite opinion on films that, in many cases, were forgotten almost before they were released. His latest review is of Frogs (1972) of which I have vague but fond memories. It's not strictly supernatural, but then it makes no real sense anyway. Here's a sample of John's review:

FROGS is buckets of fun. Most of the deaths involve a degree of intelligence and planning not commonly encountered in simple vertebrates. A murder in a greenhouse requires the lizards in question to not just knock over bottles of chemicals but to presumably be able to read the labels on the jars so they know which bottles to smash so the contents mix to produce a lethal gas.

He's right, you know.