March 11, 2015

From “City of Simulacra” by Camila Sur

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I…I don’t think it knows what it’s creating. Not consciously, at any rate. It’s like an unconscious echo of things once known and cherished.

You’ve seen the impossibilities, just like I have. Shells of buildings without interiors. Subway tunnels where no train will ever run because they have no exits. People, or pieces of people, seemingly carved out of white marble, out of pearls. Sometimes a whole figure, sometimes just part of one trailing off into nothingness.

Nobody goes there anymore, and I don’t blame them. Anyone who’s seen the new constructions, how unsettling they are, or even the messy pangs that birth them…no, I don’t blame them at all.

We’re not sure of what’s in the center, what’s causing it. But I think it’s obvious that they are…or were…like us. And, like I said, I don’t think it knows what it’s doing. What we’re seeing are mere dreams, echoes, of a life it once knew.

If archaeologists could excavate the depths of your dreams, if little men ran over your naked subconscious looking for meaning, what would you do? What would I do?

That’s why we must be cautious.

That’s also why we must know.

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February 28, 2015

From “Betwixt Spheres of Sea and Sky” by Sheskey Spears

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Theirs was a world of tranquil waters and still air.

The waters ran to a glassy and infinite depth, and none who had swum deeper than a few breaths had ever returned. Therefore, they did not concern themselves with the depths save for what they could fish from it or the distances one could travel.

The still air was infinite, and rare was the day it was not lit by an even glow that flared and faded at regular intervals. The occasional crimson-tinged clouds appeared on the horizon around sunset, but those who set of in pursuit thereof never returned. Therefore, they did not concern themselves with the skies save what they could catch from it and how long it carried a shout.

Betwixt water and sky were their homes, great orbs of soft and malleable material that bobbed placidly in the waters. The orbs were easily worked, and if carefully laid out to dry pieces of them could be used to make doors or even boats. In time, they were hollowed out, with many generations of the same family sharing a sphere. Subtle tides amid the waters were always bringing together and breaking up groups of spheres, and it was in that way that they spread far and wide.

One of the oldest and hollowest spheres returned from a long sojourn across the drifts with a curious passenger atop its apex: a portal through which a bright golden light continually shone. It was quite unlike the portals they used to enter and exit the bobbing spheres, which were always circular or oblong, and it always remained at the top of the elder sphere even after curious gawkers worked together to turn it.

But, like the depths of the sea and the horizons, those brave few who ventured through it never returned.

However, unlike the depths or the horizons, one day something ventured into their world from the other side.

Inspired by this.

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February 23, 2015

From “Brass Against the Darkness” by Tassa Bringas

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The tutor sketches her as she poses next to the trophy case, spread across the tarnished scores, the forgotten pride of students long since dead. Stumbling fingers dance across a canvas propped up by textbooks. Her pose is one meant for sunshine and vinyl appliques, not the dusk of after-hours school and the cool light thereof.

She is as a wolf, hunting for what she needs from a mankind that owes her a livelihood, and the tutor’s sketches are her first kill.

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December 5, 2014

From “O for Omega” by Angel De Montigny, Jr.

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The Captain’s crew explored the reef and lagoon for several hours, many of them marveling at the long-silent technology and well-preserved relics of the Bygone Age that still littered the beach. The tower at the center of the lagoon was at an unsteady angle, and exploration was limited to ten minutes at a time by the Captain’s orders. He also opened the arms locker to make sure that none of his men attempted to make off with a valuable antique, as he fully intended to see anything they took from the islands placed in a museum or given over for a thorough examination.

“Look at this, Cap’n,” said the bosun upon returning from his shift exploring the unsteady tower. “A message in a bottle.”

“Aye, that it is. And a fine way of keeping the note from being corroded by salt water and spray.” Uncorking it, the Captain read the missive aloud:

To all who may read this, know that I have struck out in search of something bigger than my island and myself. I do not regret taking this chance over a life of safety and comfort. All I ask of anyone who finds this note is to honor my choice and to do what they can to see that our little home, and the years we spent there, are not wholly forgotten.

-Nerissa-of-the-Sea
-5734-MY

“What do you make of that, Cap’n?” said the bosun, noting his commander’s silence after the last words faded away amid the roar of surf and sky.

“I suppose that whoever lived here made the same choice we all did,” the Captain said thoughtfully. “We’ll do our best to honor their wishes.”

“Do you suppose they found their way? Found another shore?”

The Captain looked out to sea, taking in the green swells, the dark shape of his own vessel, and the towering clouds on the far-distant horizon. “I’d like to think so,” he said after a time. “I’d like to think so.”

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October 25, 2014

From “The Three Juliets” by Calvin Higgins Joachimthal

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Les trois Juliets (1970)
Director: Auguste Des Jardins
Producer: Jens Dardis
Writer: Auguste Des Jardins & Jens Dardis
Cast:
Juliet Delacroix
Marguerite Delacroix
Géraldine Delacroix
Sid Jendras (voice)
Music: Georges Delerue
Editing: Auguste Des Jardins
Distributor: Union Générale Cinématographique

Long considered the masterpiece of French auteur Auguste Des Jardins and overshadowing the other projects he completed before his death in 1976, Les trois Juliets reportedly came about as part of a dinner conversation about the minimum number of actors that would be required for a fantasy film. Des Jardins’ longtime paramour Nadeau Struggs argued that a large cast was necessary, while the filmmaker himself insisted that it could be made with as few as two people, which he later revised to one and a half (with the half person being a voice-only role).

The resulting film follows a lonely woman named Juliet (spelled in the English fashion rather than the more Gallic Juliette) who lives in a Montmartre hovel working an unfulfilling job after the collapse of her dream to move to Paris to become an actress. Through an inventive use of ambient sound, camera angles, and deep focus techniques, Juliet is the only person ever seen onscreen despite the bustling inner city setting. She speaks only to herself or in telephone conversations to her father (Des Jardins’ frequent leading man Sid Jendras in the aforementioned voice-only role).

Only when Juliet spies another young woman in her neighborhood who looks exactly like her does another human being appear on screen, and the meat of the film revolves around her discovery of not one but two young women who seem to share her appearance, background, and even memories (albeit with some key differences). The film plays out as an extended metaphysical meditation with the occasional moments of levity as the three young ladies, each presided over by a father on the telephone that may or may not be the same man and is evasive in his answers. The ambiguous ending, which can be interpreted as a suicide, a merger of the three Juliets into one, or a belated agreement to live their lives as if they had never met, is still cited as an influence by filmmakers to this day.

One noteworthy piece of trivia revolves around the casting. While Jendras is clearly and unmistakably the telephone voice, the situation with the three credited actresses (Juliet, Marguerite, and Géraldine Delacroix) is much murkier. Des Jardins himself claimed that he had happened upon a set of triplets of the proper age and appearance purely by chance (and counted the three as one as a “clever trick” vis-a-vis the original wager). Nadeau Struggs and many critics disagree, insisting that it was a single person filmed with camera tricks, with the reason for the farce cited as a liaison between the star and the director with a triple credit for triple pay (Struggs, for her part, did concede the wager). No triplets Delacroix have ever been located, and Des Jardins’ insistence that the girl or girls weren’t professional actors has made the topic an occasional cause of friction among cineastes. None of the three girls have been seen in public since accepting various awards in 1971.

That point aside, the film is and remains widely popular among devotees of minimalist and fantasy cinema; Kubrick and Tarkovsky both lavished the film with praise and an English language remakes were released to lukewarm reviews in 1977 (Three Juliettes) and 2003 (The Three Juliettes), both notably using the French spelling of “Juliette” rather than Des Jardins’ preferred “Juliet.”

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September 8, 2014

From “A Humble Ant” by Ethan L. Baum

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Excerpt from the WHPL interview of J. Sturgis Tarboski on August 17, 1985.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little bit about your latest book, The Othering of Deerton, out this month from Giraudoux & Strauss of New York. It’s the story of strange object infiltrating a fictional small town with unpredictable and often horrifying effects.

TARBOSKI: Horror is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Perhaps from another perspective it’s not horrifying at all.

INTERVIEWER: How do you mean?

TARBOSKI: Imagine some of your better ant poisons. It tastes delicious, so the worker ants carry it back to the nest to share. And it poisons them all, poking holes in their exoskeletons so they die of dehydration or causing them to leak hemolymph–their blood–from their joints. To the ants, that is a catastrophe, a horror. To us, it’s cause for celebration. No more ants.

INTERVIEWER: Are you saying that’s he central thrust of The Othering of Deerton? Something trying to eliminate people in the same way that one would eliminate ants?

TARBOSKI: Not at all. The ants could be carrying food contaminated by a nuclear test back to their nest. They die in the same way but there’s no agency there–we don’t care that they die, but we weren’t trying to kill them. My point was only that in The Othering of Deerton we are the ants, and that–to me–is the real horror of the piece. We’re not used to being the ants.

INTERVIEWER: Could you talk a little bit about your influences in this latest work?

TARBOSKI: Of course. A lot of my peers are cagey about influences; I think they like to seem themselves as fonts of universal genius. Me, I think that it’s disingenuous. If nothing else, influences serve as a nice reading list for people that liked the book.

INTERVIEWER: So what’s your reading list for The Othering of Deerton?

TARBOSKI: Well, anyone can probably see the influence of the Strugatskys, whose Roadside Picnic came out from MacMillan about a year before I started writing, and which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s to them I owe the central conceit, the effect of the utterly alien on the familiar, though they dwell much more on the aftermath while I am much more in the moment.

INTERVIEWER: They are Soviet authors?

TARBOSKI: That’s right. There’s something wonderful about Soviet science fiction. Ants working for a different queen, if you will. I count a lot of foreign influences on this latest book…lots of different queens, if you will.

INTERVIEWER: What are some others?

TARBOSKI: Well, Borges of course, but he’s in everything I write. I’m trying to learn Spanish so that I can read his works in the original Spanish and perhaps send him a letter. But I think the biggest influence on The Othering of Deerton is probably the late French filmmaker Auguste Des Jardins. I met him in 1975 in New York at a press junket, and I had the opportunity to speak with him at length about his masterpiece, Les trois Juliets. Are you familiar with it?

INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it.

TARBOSKI: You’re missing out. It’s a brilliant, brilliant movie. A French woman finds that there are two other women with the same name, same family, same history, and same face living near her in Montmartre. You might have heard about how Des Jardins supposedly found triplets to play the Juliets; some people still think he did the whole thing with trick photography. In any case, like any fan I asked Des Jardins point-blank what the truth was: why were there three Juliets? Were any of the theories about the film true?

INTERVIEWER: What did he say?

TARBOSKI: He said that he didn’t know.

INTERVIEWER: How could he not know if it was his own film?

TARBOSKI: I asked the same question, and he said that it was the most liberating part of creativity. In the real world, there is cause and effect. But in fiction, in fantasy, you can have effect without cause. Your audience will always find a cause, and their cause will be better than any you could ever dream up; by making your effects compelling, you incite them to find ever more beautiful causes.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. So if I were to ask you where all the strange items in The Othering of Deerton come from, and what their purpose is, what would you say?

TARBOSKI: I don’t know, I’m just a humble ant.

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July 31, 2014

From “The Silent Remaker” by Julius Blair, Jr.

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In time, the armies of the Remaker arose in the far east. He had learned of the Silent Fortress during a half-finished apprenticeship as a Laconic Guard decades ago, before leaving for the Eastern Wilds (or being exiled thereto, depending on which version of the tale one hears). In the waning days of the Great Dynasty, the Remaker gathered to himself a remarkable number of followers and moved upon the Fortress with intent to take it.

The Remaker’s motives may seem insanity incarnate on the face of things: at the heart of the Silent Fortress lies the Eternal Child, the one who dreams the world into being, and to wake them is to cause the unraveling of the world. That is the very reason for the Silent Fortress and the Laconic Guard who stand vigil over it. Why would anyone, especially a powerful warlord, seek to make war upon it?

An answer can be found in the chaos and destruction of the Great Dynasty, when royal power was fading and the countryside was rent by bandits and brushfire wars. The economy was in shambles, a powerless and insane king held the throne, and the countryside’s many men-at-arms were more preoccupied with putting their choice for Regent on the throne than alleviating the suffering of the masses. It was, as the poet Crusander put it, “a time when the better angels of mankind slumbr’d deeply.”

Against that backdrop, the Remaker offered a powerful millenarian message: by awaking the Eternal Child, the would would be unraveled–but it deserved to be unraveled. A world such as theirs did not deserve survival, and the Eternal Child would soon return to slumber, dreaming a new and more equitable world anew in which all would be happy and healthy and there would be no death and no war.

Several people confronted the Remaker in private audiences, aghast at the audacity of his plan. What if the world was not remade? What if the Eternal Child remained awake forever? What if the new world was worse than the existing, or wholly alien, or did not contain any of the people who had brought about its end?

To these questions, the Remaker’s answer was always the same: “I cannot think of a more unjust world than the one in which we live, so we owe it to ourselves to fight and die for even the ghost of a chance at a better one.”

It was a powerful message, and by the fifth harvest since his rise, the Remaker’s vanguard troops could see the Silent Fortress from their forward positions.

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May 29, 2014

From “Rains of the Down Below” by Winfred Siebens

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Drops of the endless frigid rain beat upon the windows of the tiny cabin, whose fire offered no warmth and whose dryness only inflamed the misery of being sodden with dryness a dim and fading memory.

“I’d have thought,” said Ellis, “that the rain would somehow be better than the snow. But, somehow, it’s worse.”

The man of the cabin, who had not offered his name, shook his head. “That expectation is exactly why the rain exists and why it never ends,” said he. “The promise of relief only makes the suffering keener for being unexpected and felt in place of relief.”

“It seems like a waste,” Ellis replied. “If suffering is what they want, why cloak it? If they want me to ache, put me on nails and pour acid in the wounds and be done with it.”

“Don’t you see?” the cabin-man sputtered. “Suffering is the why, and the how. It’s the only reason the route to the down below exists, because our suffering is the most exquisite draught, and it is carefully cultivated with the patience and skill of a master vintner.”

Ellis shook his head, thoughts of his wife and child close by. “Suffering can be withstood. There’s always hope.”

“Always hope! That’s the carrot that leads people down here, and before they know it they are in the unseen hands of a craftsman who has been making misery since the earth cooled to embers.” Ellis’s host raised his voice, speaking with the sudden conviction of a street preacher in the throes of a sermon. “Shall I tell you about the woman who found her husband, returned this way with him, only to have him dissipate into mist within sight of the Mount? Or the man who was attacked by what he thought was his son, forcing him to kill who he most loved?”

“They were fools,” Ellis said, faking a certainty he did not feel. “I’ll do better.”

“Against a foe that can move mountains, sink canyons, and extract the rarest suffering from any of us like a gourmet sucking marrow from a split bone? No. For every angle you think you know, they know a dozen you don’t. For every strategy, a dozen countermoves.”

Ellis glared at his host. “If you feel that way, why are you here? Why not leave?”

“Because if I leave, I cannot warn others. I cannot relate the stories of the lost. I am a sin eater of sorts here, resigned to my suffering in hopes of lessening that of others. It is the only succor I have found in this place, and at times I fear that even that is but another illusion.”

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April 17, 2014

From “The Seeker, the Usurper, and the Guide” by Ming Li Garber

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Shoji, the Seeker, crossed his blade with Tsuchiya, the Usurper. Their clashing steel was as the conflict between their lords and masters in a microcosm.

“It is my lord’s right!” cried Shoji. “He alone can use the power of the Ryūsei for the good of all!”

“It is no one’s right!” returned Tsuchiya. “No one can master the Ryūsei’s power! That is why it was hidden away. Your master will destroy himself and others in his madness!”

Tsuchiya’s passion was his undoing. As he spoke those words, Shoji maneuvered his way into a commanding position. The Seeker’s next attack bypassed his opponent’s defenses, striking at a vulnerable shoulder point in his armor. Shoji rammed the blade home; Tsuchiya cried out once, sank to his knees, and was silent.

“An honorable pose in death, at least,” grunted Shoji, flustered with the rush and thrill of battle. He cleaned his sword and sheathed it. He approached the altar, the tiny shrine to the Ryūsei, that his efforts had uncovered despite the deaths of his men. “How do I open it?” he demanded.

Moriko, the Guide, was the only member of either party to have survived. “There is no secret,” she said. “Anyone who has made it this far against all comers has earned the right to bear the Ryūsei and its power.”

Without acknowledging the Guide’s words, Shoji reverently took hold of the altar and lifted it. In a hollow within, wrapped in a dirty rag, was a small statue of purest crystal: a woman carved in the old Asuka period style. He whispered the command word that his lord had taught him, asking only that the Ryūsei, the granter or wishes and the remaker of the world, glow from within. In that glow, Shoji would see his master’s design fulfilled–and his own.

The statuette remained stubbornly dim before the Seeker, its blank crystalline eyes ciphers. Shoji spoke the word again, uttering the same command, to no avail. “I don’t understand,” he said, his eyes fixed on his prize. Guide, what is the meaning of-”

Shoji, the Seeker, was cut off in mid-word. Moriko, the Guide, had approached him from behind and slipped her long dagger into the same weak spot that had doomed Tsuchiya not moments ago. “Shh,” said the Guide in a comforting tone. “It will all be over in a moment.”

It was the custom of Moriko and her family to serve as guides for those foolish enough to seek the Ryūsei in their lands, and to waylay and murder them for their valuables. It had been a delicate balancing act, but anyone coming across the bodies would assume that the men had killed each other over a worthless counterfeit bauble.

As Shoji, the Seeker, rattled his final breath, the Guide turned him around and lowered him, face-up, to the ground. As his vision began to fade, the Seeker saw something that caused his hard features to soften with wonder.

The eyes of Moriko, the Guide, were aglow with an inner light unbeknownst to her. The Ryūsei had obeyed its command, and the Seeker was now expiring in the arms of his prize–a hiding place so secure that none after he would ever stumble upon it.

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January 20, 2014

From “Kuk-Kuk Quaa” by P. Elizabeth Smalley

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Gaines Park had no shortage of trees and no shortage of squirrels to inhabit them, rodents grown fat and entitled by living off the refuse of students from the community college or specifically put out for them by Students for a Happy Earth. In fact, the park supported two warring populations of the critters: the larger but lazier fox squirrels, and the smaller but severely ADD grey squirrels. They could often be heard chittering at each other, with the insulting nature of the exchange generally clear from context.

And, sometimes, they would chitter and chirp at nothing in particular.

“Look at that,” Isaac said. A grey squirrel was perched in the barren highest boughs of a half-dead maple, clearly exposed, and making such a rodenty cacophony that it was audible for dozens of yards in every direction. “What are you doing, squirrel? You’re just telling every predator in range that there’s a tasty rodent up that tree and that dinner is served!”

“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” said the squirrel. “Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” It was staring straight at Isaac and flicking its tail like a tiny battle pennant.

“They can see you up there, you know,” Isaac continued. “No leaves. And if you run away you’ll just exhaust your nut fat and die of starvation!”

“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk,” said the squirrel, unmoved. “Quaa-quaaaa!”

“I give up,” Isaac said, throwing up his hands. “I tried to help, but you’re being evolutionarily maladaptive.”

“She is warning the other nearby squirrels of a potential predator, and pinpointing that predator’s location by varying her alarm call and looking at it while flecking her tail.”

Isaac had no reason to doubt the speaker beside him, as she was the avatar of Aquerna, the Norse goddess of squirrels. “Oh. I guess she’s warning the other squirrels about me, huh,” he said sheepishly. “How do you say ‘I don’t want to eat you because you’d probably taste gross’ in squirrelese?”

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