Category: Fiction

The mad Arab Abdul Alhazred (a.k.a. H. P. Lovecraft) has had a volume published by the Library of America, a prestigious non-profit publisher devoted to preserving the works of America’s greatest writers.

In the judgment of author Michael Dirda, that means he’s entered the American canon.

GET THE STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who pointed it out!)

Excerpts:

NO FULL UNDERSTANDING OF MODERN literature is possible without taking into account an exceedingly peculiar, self-educated, semi-recluse from Providence named Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

That is a conclusion no one, including Lovecraft himself, would have predicted. As he was dying in 1937 at age forty-six, he may well have felt he had lived in vain. His stories–sixty or seventy works of various lengths and completeness–resided in scattered notebooks and throwaway pulp magazines, uncollected and unlikely to be remembered.

But it now seems beyond dispute that H.P. Lovecraft is the most important American writer of weird fiction in the twentieth century–and one of the century’s most influential writers of any kind of fiction. His admirers range from the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges to such contemporary masters of darkness as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. Each year winners of the "World Fantasy Award" take home a trophy modeled on Lovecraft’s gaunt, lantern-jawed face. Nearly every author of supernatural fiction and dark fantasy sooner or later tries his hand at a Lovecraftian homage or pastiche.

The article contains some good analysis of Lovecraft’s literary work, but it also contains information on Lovecraft’s private side:

Lovecraft–under-sexed, neurasthenic, a Mama’s boy–actually got married in 1924, to a Jewish woman who described him, mirabile dictu, as "an adequately excellent lover." The couple resided in hated New York City for two years, until the marriage broke up and Lovecraft happily moved back home to Providence. In his later years, this once wholly introspective voyager traveled all around eastern America, from Quebec to New Orleans, from Cleveland to Key West.

He actually competed in an ice-cream eating contest and was reportedly offered the editorship of a periodical called the Magazine of Fun. He remained an almost literally starving writer, however, with so little income at one point that he ate his suppers out of cans, being unable to afford a stove. A typical dinner might consist of cold hot dogs, biscuits, and mayonnaise. Lovecraft died from cancer in 1937: forty-six years old and apparently doomed to be forgotten.

I can sympathize with Lovecraft’s poverty, as there was a time in grad school when I was so dirt poor in Arkansas that we were in constant danger of being evicted from our apartment, we couldn’t afford much-needed medicine, dollar packs of hot dogs were a principle means of subsistence, and cheese was something I regarded as "rich man’s food." I well remember picking loose change out of the couch to try to get enough coins that my wife and I could go to the market for a pack of hot dogs and a can of frozen lemonade, which would represent all the food we’d have to eat, ’cause the cupboard was bare.

Another summer (before I was married), I was so poor that all I could afford to eat was 17 cent boxes of low-quality, generic, Always Save Macaroni & Cheese–every single day. While macaroni & cheese had previously been a favorite dish, I couldn’t stand the thought of eating it for several years afterward.

Something that the article doesn’t mention is that Lovecraft’s friend, correspondent, and fellow weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith (whom Lovecraft referred to as Klarkash-Ton) attributed Lovecraft’s death to malnutrition. Apparently Lovecraft was so impoverished that at certain points he was subsisting on food costing only $1.40 a week (a ridiculously small sum even in the 1930s).

Perhaps it was severe malnutrition that weakened his immune system enough to allow his stomach cancer to develop.

Bitterly ironic that a man who ate so little would be killed by a disease that gave him intense stomach pains.

Even more bitter is the fact that Lovecraft would have made more money if he had written more fiction, but criticism of his work demoralized him as a writer, keeping him from writing as much as he otherwise would have.

Now he’s considered one of the giants of 20th century American literature.

I still don’t buy his thesis that the universe is vast and uncaring and doesn’t give a whit about puny men.

God still loves H. P. Lovecraft.

One of the books I’m currently reading is titled The King In Yellow. It was first published in 1895, which makes it young in comparison to some of the books I read.

What’s interesting about it (among other things) is that it’s a kind of sci-fi/horror anthology of stories that are all loosely connected by a play they all mention. The title of the play is "The King In Yellow," and it is a most remarkable play. We only get a few snatches of dialogue from it and only the vaguest hints of what it is about, but the characters who read it in the stories have the unfortunate tendency to either go completely insane or suffer a horrible doom of some sort.

The author of The King In Yellow was Robert W. Chambers. It is his best-remembered book and is highly thought of by horror authors, some of whom included references to it and things it mentions in their own works. Unfortunately, they have somewhat less regard for some of Chambers’ later works. Apparently he decided that it was better to be a well-fed best-selling author rather than a starving artist, and he ended up turning his literary output in a more commercial direction.

I don’t know what Chambers’ religion was, but there is a surprising amount of positive material in it about the Catholic Church (so far), and Catholic themes are prominent in several stories (including, obviously, "The Street of Our Lady of the Fields").

It’s interesting reading sci-fi from 1895. The first story in the collection ("The Rapairer of Reputations") is set in 1920, and it’s interesting to see a turn-of-the-century perception of what the futuristic year 1920 would be like. (Among other things, they have euthanasia chambers on public streets in major cities.)

It’s kind of interesting, though, that everybody in 1920 is still riding horses. Chambers didn’t anticipate Henry Ford’s unleashing of the automobile on America. Which brings to mind some

REMARKS MICHAEL CRICHTON MADE.

Chambers also probably didn’t envision (a) that someone in 2005 would be reading his book and (b) that they would be reading it in the way I am: I downloaded the text from the Internet and ran it through my speech-synthesizer to output it as .mp3 files that I can now listen to on my computer or via my iPod or in my . . . pickup. (Sorry; horses don’t typically have .mp3 players installed on them.)

READ THE KING IN YELLOW–IF YOU DARE! (WARNING: There is some material in it that can offend modern sensibilities.)

A reader writes:

I couldn’t resist…

…showing off my homemade Legion clubhouse. Finely crafted from a Quaker
oatmeal canister and, if my old comics are any indication, it’s correctly
proportioned. (I assume they’re all outside because Bouncing Boy is already inside.)

Love your site.

Kewl!

That’s just what the original Legion’s clubhouse looked like! (I.e., a rocket accident.) Good work!

Kudos on the action figure collection, too!

This weekend I went to my local comics shop and picked up the books that had accumulated for me in December and January. As a result, last night I read the December and January issues of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Legion is, for sentimental reasons, my all-time favorite comic. I started reading it as a boy and fell in love with it.

It’s about a group of young superheroes in the 30th (now 31st) century. It’s also the longest-running super -hero team in existence (having first graced the pages of DC comics in 1957).

It hasn’t always been well-written or well-drawn (and so I haven’t always read it uninterrupted), but hey, it’s a boyhood favorite, and everybody’s entitled to at least one of those.

I’m mentioning it here because I’d like to recommend that comic books fans go out and pick up the two most recent issues.

The reason is that the Legion has just been "rebooted," though they aren’t using the term "reboot" in the industry literature (they’re saying it’s been "re-envisioned").

For those who may not be aware, comic books periodically write themselves into creative corners and the creators decide that the best thing to do is to start over and tell the story afresh, honoring the spirit of what went before while jettisoning all the continuity that has boxed the writers in to a corner creatively. This "do over" is known in the industry as a "reboot."

The biggest reboots in history were the transition from the Golden Age of comics to the Silver Age, which occurred in the 1950s, and the 1988 event Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which the entire DC Universe was rebooted, with the most dramatic changes happening for Superman and Wonder Woman (Batman saw his way through the Crisis relatively unscathed).

Unfortunately, Crisis didn’t do all the work that needed to be done in some corners of the DC Universe, and some titles, like the Legion of Super-Heroes have been rebooted several times since.

The last time the Legion was rebooted, DC went to comic writer wunderkind Mark Waid to do it, and he did a great job. The new Legion was more fun to read than the title had been in some time. Unfortunately, Waid left the book and eventually the writing level declined as subsequent writers boxed themselves in creatively. By the end of that run, I’d basically stopped reading the comics (though I still bought them).

In December, DC brought Waid back to reboot (er . . . "re-envision") the title once again.

After reading the first two issues of the reboot, I’m sold.

Waid has done it once again.

The book is bristling with creativity. There are lots of nods to established Legion tradition, but it’s accessible enough that a new reader can jump in and enjoy it (this being one of the principal goals of a reboot).

The art (by Barry Kitson) is really nice, with a good eye for detail and design that rises well above the pedestrian pencilling that the Legion has suffered from in recent times.

Most important for me, though, are the story and the characters.

As far as the story goes, the Legion is still a super-hero team of about twenty (!) members from different planets and that dwells in the 31st century. What’s different is that it’s now at the center of a youth-movement with more than 75,000 affiliate members. Any kid on any planet who endorses the Legion philosophy can consider himself a legionnaire, even though the core team is still just the twenty-or-so we spend most of our time reading about.

The Legion philosophy is radical for its time. For the last thousand years, humanity has lived in a near-utopian environment with scarcely a breeze to ruffle a bird’s feathers. But it’s a world with a dark side whereby parents have their kids hooked into an invisible Internet that monitors everything they see and hear . . . for their safety, of course.

The opening narration to the Legion explains:

Ours is an age of peace and tranquility. By the dawn of the 31st century, an Earth-based network of worlds has created a rigidly mannered serenity throughout the cosmos–a near-utopia. All we, our parents, and their parents have ever known is security, stability, and order.

We’re so sick of it, we could scream.

The Legion is determined not only to fight bad guys, but to bring back to society a sense of fun, adventure, and excitement.

The first two issues are a good start!

While the story is good (an inter-stellar war is about to start), the characters are also good.

These are important for a long-time fan who has known and loved these character (literally, in my case) for decades.

One of the things that happens each time a title reboots is that the creators adjust the characters in ways they hope will create interesting story potential. Sometimes they are successful; sometimes they are not.

For example, last time the Legion rebooted, one of the most easy-to-look-at legionnaires, the gorgeous Princess Projecta, became a giant snake! (Bad move! My philosophy is: If you want to introduce a legionnaire who is a giant snake, fine, just don’t mess with an established character who is easy to look at.)

In the Legion’s latest incarnation, that hasn’t happened (yet), but other changes, good and not-as-good, have occurred.

I don’t mind the character changes if they serve a conceptual purpose. For example, I was tickled pink by what they did with Colossal Boy.

Originally, Colossal Boy was an Earthling who had invented a serum that allowed him to grow to . . . well . . . colossal proporitions. In the new version, he’s a man from a race of giants who has the ability to shrink himself down to being six feet tall and who wants to be called "Micro Lad" (he doesn’t get his wish).

Ha!

That’s great!

Another creative change centers on Dream Girl, who is from a planet where people have visions of the future, often in their dreams. Dream Girl has always been a hard character for writers to handle, but Waid has broadened the character’s conceptual background immeasurably in the new reboot. In the past she’s been kind of ditzy, but now she spends enough time in the future that she forgets things like . . . we haven’t yet defeated the bad guy in front of us.

Especially nice is the way the second issue plays Dream Girl off the ultra-rational Brainiac 5 (a super-genius from the planet Colu). Brainiac 5 resents here because he spends untold amounts of mental effort deducing the likely outcome of events from gigaquads of seemingly-unrelated data, only to have a precognitive like Dream Girl waltz in and come up with the same conclusion by sheer intuition.

At the end of the second issue, we get this exchange between the two of them regarding Dream Girl’s seemingly infallible predictions:

BRAINIAC 5: All it would take is for one future casualty–just one–to find the will to break the lockstep of destiny. If that happens, all probabilities shift.

The universe is more unpredictable than we give it credit for.

Your predictions don’t have to be infallible.

DREAM GIRL: . . . (pauses) . . .  (smiles) . . .  You’ll feel different when we’re married.

Hah!

Yes!

(Previous Legion continuity has already established that Brainiac 5 has a thing for blonds, and Dream Girl is a blond).

Not all of the character changes are ones I would have made. For example, Star Boy (who has the power to increase an object’s mass) has inexplicably been changed into a black guy for no apparent purpose relating to the story. There are already people in Legion history who could (and should) be introduced to establish adequate black representation on the team: the second Invisible Kid and both of the Kid Quantums, for example. New characters also can be introduced. Unless they have a special story to tell relating to the new Star Boy’s ethnicity, I don’t see the point of the switch.

That being said, I do like the new Star Boy’s character. He looks really cool, and he gets some of the best comedic lines.

In any event, I’d like to recommend the new Legion title for any comic book fans in the audience.

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!

(Saturn Girl had just better not turn into a giant star-nosed mole!)

Too funny!

HERE’S H.P. LOVECRAFT’S TREATMENT OF THE HISTORY OF "ST." IBID.

(NOTE: The more you know about history, the funnier this is!)

(NOTENOTE: I’m particularly tickled by the idea that an ancient Roman would name his child "Bombastes" and "Deodamnatus.")

It was years ago when I heard my first computerized voice.

My father–a mechanical engineering professor–had always been uncommonly computer-literate and had encouraged the same in his family. (Incidentally, that’s Edgar Allen Poe in the picture; not my father, though they do look a bit the same.)

To that end, he bought primitive home computers for us when the technology was still in its infancy.

One of these had a primitive, robotic, computerized voice that could "read" texts on the screen.

It was awful.

At least by contemporary standards.

As part of my recent audiobooks quest, I realized that the computer voices that are now available were undoubtedly much better than the clunky computer voices I had known in real life or heard on radio and TV shows.

I had no idea.

The voices curently available are not just better, they are a world of difference.

Let me show you:

Currently the top-of-the-line voices are the NaturalVoices from AT&T and available for about $30. You can buy and download them for use with programs like TextAloud. Though they’re still not perfect, they are head and shoulders above what you’re probably familar with.

HERE’S NATURAL VOICE "MIKE" READING EDGAR ALLEN POE’S POEM "THE RAVEN." (.mp3 format)

I made this .mp3 file myself using "Mike," TextAloud, and the public-domain text of "The Raven."

Poetry is a particular challenge for artificial voices due to its atypical cadence, but you’ll be amazed at how well "Mike" does with "The Raven." Take a listen!

As good as computerized voices are now, I can imagine how good they’re goint to be in the future:

• Already the voices that are available are staring to vary by accent. You can buy voices, for example, that have British or Indian accents. Soon you’ll be able to buy voices that have Texas, Boston, New York, or Georgia accents. (This is just a diversification of what is already happening.)
• You’ll be able to input sheet music and have the voices sing to you in realistic fashion. (This is actually already being done, but is not yet commercially available to my knowledge.)
• You’ll be able to read a prepared text and so reverse-engineer your own voice so that you’ll be able to read texts to yourself.
• You’ll be able to plug your TiVo into your home computer and have it reverse-engineer voices from telvision so that, in no time, Captain Katherine Janeway will be reading you Jane Austen novels.

I can’t wait.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

One of the ideas I got for how to get more audiobooks for my Christmas trip to Texas arose like this:

1. There’s a bunch of freely available, public domain texts online, such as those at Project Gutenberg.

2. I bet I could download a text-to-speech program that would read these to me. Years ago, I had speech-to-text software that could also do text-to-speech. I was never very pleased with this software, but I figured that it would be possible to get a simpler version that just does text-to-speech and have my computer read these texts to me.

3. I then went to hotfiles.com and found some downloadable programs that do just this.

4. Some of these progams would speak the text directly into .mp3s for you.

5. Therefore, I could use the freely available e-texts in conjunction with the software to produce my own audiobooks in .mp3 and burn them to CD for listening on the way to Texas.

Yee-haw!

Now, turns out that the Project Gutenberg folks have already figured this out, so they have been adding their own homestyle audiobooks to their inventory. (Sven pointed this out in the comments box a couple of days back, but I had to delete it as it was a spoiler for this post.)

Iff’n yew want to make your own, however, you can also use the technique described above.

After looking at different text-to-speech programs, I decided to go with TextAloud, which is inexpensive and has a feature combination that I like. (Among other things, it dosen’t try to integrate itself into every other text app you have; programs that grabby are generally bad news.)

Since my Christmas trip to Texas didn’t happen this year, I haven’t used it to produce audiobooks for my pickup, yet, but I’ve been very pleased with using it to listen to all kinds of downloadable e-texts.

One of the nice things about it is that it supports multiple different voices, and the voices have improved amazingly in the last few years.

But that’s the subject of my next post. (Don’t want to spoil myself.)

Yesterday I blogged about my interest in audiobooks. This is an interest that has grown with time.

The Christmas I was considering a roadtrip to visit my kin in Texas, like the one I took last summer.

I didn’t end up going (good thing, too, as the weather was horrible), but while I was gearing up for the trip, I decided that I wanted to find a better way to listen to audiobooks while I was gone.

In particular: I didn’t like having to change CDs every hour. That’s a big pain if you’re doing ninety, whipping down the curvy, boulder-avoiding road through Texas Canyon in Arizona.

So I thought to myself: .mp3s of spoken word can be much smaller than ordinary CD files, and many new car stereos will play .mp3s, so here’s what I’ll do: I’ll get me one of the newer stereos for my pickup, then download a bunch of books on .mp3 from Audible.Com (which advertises your ability to listen to its books on portable devices), and I’ll be all set.

So I went down to Best Buy, bought a car stereo for like $130 that would play CDs, .mp3s, and Windows Media Player files, and had it installed the next day.

I was all set.

So I went ot Audible.Com to download some books and made a horrible discovery: Audible doesn’t let you download books in .mp3. They have a proprietary format that won’t play on my new player.

So I did a little research about what portable devices will play Audible files. It turns out: iPods can.

So I went out and got an iPod.

I also got a cheap broadcast device to let me play the iPod through my car stereo.

I haven’t actually set up the broadcast device yet, but barring another misfortune, I should be set.

VISIT AUDIBLE.COM.

LEARN MORE ABOUT .mp3s.

LEARN ABOUT iPODS.

READER A writes:

I’m a recent audible.com devotee, too, and await hearing about your experiences, Jimmy! Who’s your favorite author?

It took me awhile to get everything with audible set up (part of the problem was that their servers were overtaxed during Christmas). Thus far most of the audiobooks I’ve heard weren’t on audible.

Don’t know that I have a favorite author. My all-time favorite audio books are Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius The God (which are not for the faint of heart as they show ancient Rome in its glory and its cruelty). Unfortunately, these are only available in cassette at present (though, maddeningly, Audible used to have them, it appears).

Lately, I’ve been listening to Tom Clancy audiobooks. These sometimes have elements that I don’t like in them (e.g., rough language used by people in the midst of international crises), but in the main they’re quite entertaining.

Particularly freaky is the novel Executive Orders, where Jack Ryan has just become president in the wake of a 9/11 style attack (only far worse). The novel is amazingly similar in its general themes to what happened in 2000-2001: A disputed presidency, an airliner terrorist attack, and a biological attack, all in rapid succession. I hadn’t read this book at the time, but I found it totally creepy how well it thematically tracked recent history. People who had already read the novel were absolutely stunned when the events of 2000-2001 unfolded.

Most recently, I read the abridged audio version of his novel Red Rabbit, which is set in 1981 and in which a young Jack Ryan tries to stop the assassination attempt on John Paul II. You know he won’t ultimately stop the attack, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t save the pope’s life. As Ryan (like Clancy, I believe) is a Catholic, this was a really neat read. Non-Catholics may not be as interested in this one (in fact, many such folks didn’t like it since you know at least approximately how it will end), but seeing Jack Ryan woven into real history alongside John Paul II is a treat for me.

On my August trip, I audio-read Robert Ludlum’s Cassandra Compact, which I enjoyed.

Earlier, I audio-read Ken Follett’s retro-Cold War thriller (it’s set in the 1950s),
                        Code To Zero, which I really enjoyed.

On the other hand, I absolutely hated John Le Carre’s Absolute Friends. I seriously thought about asking for my money back. After suffering through the novel hoping against progressively dimmer hope that it’s going to get better, it ends in an absolutely viciously anti-American screed.

READER B writes:

I might point out to you that on your cross-country adventures you
can rent an audiobook at a Cracker Barrel and return it a week later to
any other Cracker Barrel in the country.

Thanks!

Actually, on my August trip I noticed lots of seemingly rental copies of audiobooks at places I stopped. I assumed they were only for rent to locals, but apparently not. Next time, I may pick up one!

READER C writes:

I’ve never tried one of these audio book thingies.

How "abridged" are the abridged versions.  Are they worth your while?

It depends on what the publisher wants. Thus far, I haven’t had a problem with them. Typically the Tom Clancy novel’s I’ve listened to are about 5 CDs (6 hours) long, which is maybe half what the original novel is.

I’ve actually run into people online saying that they like the abridged versions better, because when you’re abridging a novel the first thing you cut out are the non-essential, slower, less-interesting parts.

Apparently, Clancy has a tendency to include informative but non-plot-advancing material in his novels (e.g., how military agencies work, etc.) that some people prefer to have left out so they can focus on the story.

I’ve never read an unabridged Tom Clancy novel, but I’m planning to. I was so pleased with Red Rabbit (noted above) that I plant to download the unabridged version from Audible.Com and have a listen to the whole thing.

The next few days I’m going to be doing a few posts (in addition to other posts) about one of my interests that I haven’t really blogged about before: audiobooks.

For those who may not be aware, an audiobook is simply a book (either unabridged or abridged) that someone has recorded outloud, either to tape, CD, .mp3, or what have you.

I got into audiobooks a few years ago when I discovered that, after so many hours of squinting at print on a screen or on a page, I really enjoyed simply relaxing and letting someone else read to me for a change.

I especially like to listen to audiobooks when I’m travelling. It’s nice to plug in a CD and let the miles roll by.

You can get all kinds of audiobooks, from quite a long while ago (the Bible, the Illiad, the Odessy), to 19th century (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, the works of Edgar Allen Poe), to twentieth century (I, Claudius, Claudius the God), to the latest bestsellers (Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton’s latest).

At first, I would purchase audiobooks, as one can do from Amazon.Com or in a bookstore, but this tends to have a problem associated with it: Such audiobooks are often expensive–more expensive than hardbacks.

Another solution is to get them from a service like Blackstone Audiobooks, where you can rent them rather than buy them.

More recently, I have been enjoying downloading digital audiobooks from Audible.Com, where you can download them (in a proprietary format) quite inexpensively.

The next few days, I’ll tell you more about ways you can get, use, and even make (!) your own audiobooks.

(ANTI-SPOILER REQUEST: For those who are already into audiobooks, I’d ask you not to spoil some of the neat hi-tech things I’m about to introduce. Kindly wait till I mention a method and then mention your neat-o variation on it. E.g., for this post you might talk about your experience with conventional audiobooks and with services like the ones named above. Much obliged!)