BOOK REVIEW – STEPHEN H. SEGAL & SEAN WALLACE – WEIRD
TALES THE 21ST CENTURY VOLUME ONE. 2007 Prime Books.
Collection of 12 strange horror stories from the magazine that produced H. P. Lovecraft & Ray Bradbury in the 1930’s.
Richard Parks’s THE MEN WHO CARVED SKULLS is a weak opening tale, about a Haitian island community where the inhabitants hire skull-carvers who carve the story of a life on the skull of the deceased and put it on display for all to see. In the story, a young man commits an act of euthanasia to ensure that certain skulls get stories that don’t end in sorrow.
Lisa Montchev’s SIX SCENTS tells of a zombie girl who gets to date boys by covering her decomposing flesh with appropriate perfumes.
Trent Hergenrader’s excellent WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION tells of a miner who dies in an underground accident, but still turns up for work the next day to dig coal alongside his son. The zombie survives more fatal accidents and gets regarded as a jinx by the other workers, but when the son is also killed, the father allows himself to die properly. The son continues to report for duty.
SPIDER COMES HOME by Gerard Houarner proves that weird need not always mean tragedy and gruesome bloodshed. It relates the story of Dia, a young tribesman in a jungle community. His people attribute all their pain and bad fortune to a mysterious spirit called simply Spider. Dia decides to confront this figure, and engages him in a duel in which they throw stories at one another. Spider proves to be less of a menace than Dia believes, and he has been trying to guide the lost dead to where they need to be. As Dia learns to let the dead join in the half-hearted food and story fight, he realizes that Spider has not always necessarily got bad intentions.
RAVENOUS by Paul Brucata are a rock band led by a singer with a succubus-angel as an imaginary friend, who others seem to see when stoned and taken by the music, but the singer and his demonic lover want only each other. Others find them a distraction, and they are increasingly ostracised. – The story seems unclear quite where it is going. The demon is invisible for the first half and conveniently visible when the plot requires it, but little is really explained.
William Markly O’Neal’s BOB BODEY’S BODY PARTS is a great fun story of the Grand Guignal, in which a drunkard finds a toy dispenser in a Laundromat, which gives out real human body parts for a few cents at a time. Foolishly taking a go, he is given a human eye, which ends up quickly embedded inside his brain, enabling him to see inside his own head. He tries to get it out with other body parts from the machine, and they get stuck in his head too, equally fully functional. He goes mad and rips his own skull apart trying to get them all out again.
THE PAST NEVER DIES by Holly Philips is one of the weakest stories. A girl and a dog that see ghosts seek an arsonist who has killed a number of people already. Without the supernatural touches this would make a decent detective story. For once the horror elements just get in the way.
Carrie Vaughn – FOR FEAR OF DRAGONS – A straight forward fantasy story, and a dammed good one. A virgin girl is left as a sacrifice for a dragon by a superstitious people, but when she kills the dragon, they need a new source for their ritual fears and set her up as a witch, but who’s side is she on?
Paul E. Martens – WHAT HAPPENED WHEN TAMMY BROOKMEYER SOLD HER HOUSE – Funny, and shamelessly silly parable in which a new neighbour turns out to be a wild bear. One neighbour is killed going to ask it to turn down the music it plays late at night, so what chance is there for the poor man who suspects his wife might be having an affair with it?
Peador O’Guillin - THE DRAIN A magical amulet brings its new owner nothing but misfortune and illness, so he seeks a way to pass it back to its demonic owner in a way that it can never be passed on to anyone else and ruin more lives.
Barth Anderson – THE FURIOUS HOST – A group of drunks seeking the next pub down the road drives through a bunch of mythical entities from Wagnerian opera, and crash into what might be Odin’s eight legged horse.
Kurt Newton’s THE RELEASE is an adultery tale with a difference, in which a sentient insect husband finds that his wife eats another man instead of him.
A mixed bag collection, that mostly works but occasionally falls rather flat.
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
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