Osama

Lavie Tidhar
Osama

PS Publishing, 2011

Joe, a private detective, lives somewhere in the back of Asia, smokes a lot and drinks whiskey. When once he returns from the bar to his office, he is suddenly visited by a woman with a soft voice. She doesn’t reveal her name and asks Joe to find Mike Longshott, a man whose name is written on covers of a popular series of pulp novels with the main character with the name Osama Bin-Laden. A woman leaves a credit card to pay for expenses, says she will contact the investigator, and evaporates.

The publisher of Longshott’s books, Medusa Press, is located in Paris, but «the address was merely a post office box, not a street address». After talking with a bookseller friend, Joe finds that Mike Longshots is a pseudonym. From the same seller the detective discovers that Medusa Press publishes all sorts of pulp, from thrillers to softporno. «Filth. Utter junk, of course. Wonderful stuff» - says about these books the seller.

Joe immediately books tickets for a flight to Paris, but before leaving, someone attempts to kill him. To solve the client’s case, Joe will have to go to London and New York, meet with shady characters who work for the state, a mysterious private investigator, booksellers and opium dealers. His entire journey, Joe will be reading Longshott’s books, trying to get closer to unraveling the truth.

World of Joe is a world in which we haven’t lived, a world without terrorism. Explosions of buildings and airports, 9\11 - this never happened in the world of «Osama». And you begin to undersand it only some time since the beginning of the book, when Joe reads Longshott’s novels, and we know that he reads books about the bombings and deaths of thousands of innocent people as fiction. He reads and wonders: in his world, it was nothing like this. Joe travels around the world, but perhaps not as a private detective, but as a universal consciousness. Terrorism covers all countries and nations, even those there terrorist attacks have never been. And Joe is just the invisible element that unites the nations, though Joe himself has no idea about it.

Yes, the protagonist here drinks hard, sometimes is trying to crack jokes, falls in love with a client, whom had seen only once, but it is all the formal signs of what «Osama» is not, namely, a PI novel. If Tidhar’d make Joe not a detective with a license, but simply "a master of all trades", this would only make the book better. One can hardly believe in Joe’s detective skills, but he does not pretend to be able to find someone. Joe's more comfortable to sit at the bar and sip alcohol, walk through the streets of capital cities, than in solving the case. Joe, and this is obviously, is one of those who are looking for himself, not for others. Tidhar is lucky that with the search of himself, Joe finds what he was looking for, otherwise the novel would fallapart.

Lyrical style of the author alone is at odds with a pace of a thriller, who then serves as a screen. But behind the screen is just lovely Tidhar’s prose, with its accurate descriptions of urban landscapes and the ability to capture the sadness of man in a bar with a glass in his hand (Tidhar sometimes overdoes lists, it should be noted):

«The air felt humid, feverish, but not of the tropics: a city's smell hung on it like limp laundry, a smell of pavement slabs and concrete blocks and cars and fumes and smoke and food and urine and spilled alcohol and spilled tears, it was a smell of many lives».

It is difficult to say, has Bin-Laden turned over in his grave after this novel or not (even harder to say is Bin-Laden alive or dead), but who cares about Bin-Laden? Just read «Osama».

The Language of Dying

Sarah Pinborough
The Language of Dying

PS Publishing, 2009

«There is a language to dying. It creeps like a shadow alongside the passing years and none of us can avoid oit taste in our mouths. Whether we are sick or healthy it finds us eventually. It is a secret hushed thing that lives in the whisper of the nurses' starched skirts as they rustle up and down our stairs. They've taught me to face the language a syllable at a time, slowly creating an unwilling meaning from it ». So begins this story about dying. In the family the father dies, and five his children gather in the home to be with his father the last few days before his death. The story is told by one of the daughters, who took care of his father, while everyone else went away and minded their own businesses. The story tells from the first person view, but with permanent patches of the second person, this is a kind of monologue, addressed to the dying. Coming father's death is not only the death of one individual, but also the death of the family, its disintegration. A few days before his death it’s the last chance for children to stay together, reunite, solve problems, to forgive one another, and then again to return to their lives, not particularly good ones (especially for the three brothers).

A reader of the novella is also supposed to become a member of the family as an equal surviving parent's death. Inside everything stops, you are a little shaking, throat dry. In such cases, the death of someone else always seems worse than your own.

Before his death, a person leaves all too much, and no one is between here and there. So reading this book, the reader is left alone with a book - with pain, fear and hope.

Seven Cities of Gold

David Moles
Seven Cities of Gold

PS Publishing, 2010

About our time. Muslims have reached the New World and started bloody battle with Christians. Shed much blood, even weapon of mass destruction was featured. This world is cruel, violent, poorly developed. There is no hint that the level of technology of that world is getting to that level of our world. In 714 AD, the history went the other way: seven Catholic bishops had fled from Spain across the ocean to North America to build seven golden cities and found the Christian empire. Japan, homeland of the protagonist of this novella, Chie Nakada, the doctor, does not participate in wars between Muslims and Christians. When the Japanese government hear about terrible weapons and about obsessive Christian leader, hiding somewhere in the depths of the continent, they sent a peacemaker (though with purpose to kill) Nakada to travel up the river Acuamagna in search of the leader Clara Dos Orsos.

While Nakada and her aides are floating down the river, on both sides of it opens a terrible picture: mountains of human corpses, fires, armed men. Nakada can not help anybody; she has a goal that should be reached at any price, to find Dos Orsos.

It really is a journey into the heart of darkness, the world after 9/11 as if there were never this date, but every day is always September 11; world crumbling, the world, where everyone slides on deaths, as on the water. The author essentially gives no guidance (place names say nothing to the reader), about the history of this world we know not from the author but the publisher, thus Moles makes it clear that his novel should not be read as some particular journey but as a metaphor of the journey to one’s own death and the death of all living, read like a hallucinogenic trip, during which death and life are irrelevant, they disappear as a concept from consciousness – Nakada is an opium addict, forced, even by power beating her "medicine" from people. The alternatively-historical component plays almost no role in the book, it clearly is secondary, the primary is the journey of the soul.

Moles has very poetic style, he tells this fast-moving story slowly, without admiring violence. Nakada is a charming drug addict.

«Seven Cities of Gold» is a brilliant book, an example of good fiction, but just fiction, not an alternative historical fiction.

Black Wings

Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Fiction

Ed. by S.T. Joshi

PS Publishing, 2010

Before I start to say anything about this book, I need to make a brief but very important announcement: I have not read any of the original works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Should I be ashamed for this? Maybe. I do not know. But now this is not the case. Much more important now to understand whether you can write something worthwhile about an anthology entitled "Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Fiction" without even a clue what he wrote (excluding the fact that some of his work can be put in two words - "weird fiction"). I think it`s possible. And it may even be useful to take a virgin look to anthology consists today HFL successors.

When you read the "explanation literature” (let's call it so, that does not use the word «fanfic»), you involuntarily have to compare the original and the sequel, thus part of the attention given to how the successor uses one or another motive of firsthand, was a follower able to convey the language of master, finally, whether a pupil put the teacher at the shoulder, or could not even begin to approach. All this makes turbid a look at the literature, strictly speaking. When you armed with knowledge of Lovecraft's prose, you more watch it for the branches: what, how, whence comes in a sequel. If not armed, you judge literature directly. Of course, knowledge of the original gives more pleasure in reading, savoring more detail. But it also may spoil the impression during reading.

When I picked up this tribute compilation, I admit I thought «Black Wings», like its predecessor «Lovecraft: Undound», edited by Ellen Datlow, are perhaps the pioneers in Lovecraft-building, but I was wrong. Lovecraft-ish anthologies are out a lot, almost every year, but not all of them equally well. This one, edited by S.T. Joshi, is excellent, although not all stories included in it equally well, too. Let`s take a look at the best.

The most successful stories there are those, where the beyond, space, frightening are only in contact with daily life, measured way of life, our reality. Those stories, which the space replaces, dominates the natural way of things, have turned out inconclusive.

One of the best (if not the best at all) things in the anthology was the opening story "Pickman's Other Model (1929)" by Caitlín Kiernan. Brilliantly written, the story resembles a sophisticated mix of modernistic novel and noir with a taste of intoxicating mysteries. Add to this a silent movie and a woman, carrying death and you will receive an elegant multi-layered story. This story is unlikely to have written Lovecraft himself, but it`s clear: Kiernan today is one of the most powerful writers of not only horror but fiction in general.

Another gem in the collection is «The Broadsword» by Laird Barron. "Broadsword" is a hotel in which the protagonist of the story, old Pershing, lives. He is lonely and burdens of the past: long ago he lost his friend in the jungle, but Pershing thinks, although he does not recognize this, that could save him. But, as you know, sometimes they come back.

Barron very realistically depicts the life of Pershing. This short story is a Philip Roth-on-Lovecraft-acid. Life of the old man becomes a nightmare when he begins to hear strange sounds, but his life had not been good before. Deceased friend returns in a new guise, to talk, but life of Pershing is already endless dialogue with the deceased. «The Broadsword» is a terrible story about that the nightmare can be replaced only by another, and punishment can even passionately be wanted.

"Usurped" by William Browning Spencer begins with a young couple involved in a road accident because of an unexpected collision with a wasp swarm. From that the catastrophe in their personal life begins as well: Brad, the main character, feels that that something was wrong with him. And he no longer feels invisible connection between him and his girlfriend. This story is another excellent example of how to pack in the right proportions cosmic terror with terror of the earth.

In his «Rotterdam» Nicholas Royle, also known for its detectives, perfectly shows what happens if in action, full of claustrophobia, add Lovecraftian horror. Screenwriter Joe arrives in Holland to look for images and ideas for a new script, but life, instead of images, gives him something more terrible. Trenchant, memorable story.

"The Truth About Pickman" by Brian Stableford is a story seeming take places in a Victorian decor. Professor Thurber seeks DNA of Pickman. Confrontation in words may cost the fate of the world. Chamber story with an unexpected ending. Another good chamber story in the collection is «Tunnels» Philip Haldeman. Told by a little girl, this story is probably the most harmless of the collection.

Veteran of the horror genre Ramsey Campbell distinguished in the genre of epistolary style in his «The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash». The story is a series of letters between Cameron Nash and actually Lovecraft. Nash, initially friendly, becomes increasingly bitter and sarcastic: the stories of Lovecraft is the cause. Campbell wrote elegant pastiche, but breakthrough had failed in this story.
A truly fascinating story is the Norman Partridge one. In «Lesser Demons» sheriff and his deputy have to survive after that people began to turn into demons. The story is not so much scary as alarming. Only after reading it we will know what is more effective against the demons - the knowledge or the power.

At the end of the anthology there is another masterpiece. Michael Marshall Smith perfectly showed what should be strange - and terrible - story in the spirit of Lovecraft. In "Substitutions" mistake in the delivery of food leads to sad consequences. This is a story about the changes, about need of changes and about that changes are still inevitable. But this is the story about faithfulness, stability and impossibility of changes.

«Black Wings» is a very strong anthology, another masterpiece from PS Publishing.