DIES ATER DRACONIS ONLINE

My latest story is now online in the October 2009 edition of Static Movement, it is "Dies Ater Draconis." It's a short-short story in the steampunk manner, but using the Late Roman Empire instead of the Victorian era. I wrote it after seeing a documentary about the rediscovery of a lost work by Aristotle. The story is less about Aristotle than about a world where Hero of Alexandria's steam powered inventions became a force to be reckoned with.

In other news I've been a topic of interest in the British fanzine Ansible. David A. Hardy the space artist is a bit non-plussed to find that I write under the name David A. Hard. From the September Ansible:

Outraged Letters. THE David A. Hardy dissociates himself from a David A Hardy who writes stories for Dark World magazine. 'A fake David A. Hardy? I've had this name for 73 years; who is this pretender? Can any of your readers throw any light upon this travesty?' (Your editor's Cosmic Mind is quite able to imagine a real David A. Hardy II. The net is littered with other David Langfords.)

My reply in the October Ansible:

• David A(llen) Hardy assures us his name is authentic. 'It is true that I've only had it for 42 years (one less than David A. Hardy has been doing freelance art), but I've gotten attached to it in the interval. [...] If it will help prevent confusion, I am prepared to swear that I, the David A. Hardy who writes for Dark Worlds, can't draw anything more complex than stick-figures.'

Good thing my parents didn't name me Harlan Ellison.

-Dave Hardy

THE GHOST PIRATES

By William Hope Hodgson

The third of Hodgson’s trilogy of weird tales (Boats of the Glen Carrig and House on the Borderland were the first two), The Ghost Pirates is also about survival when the very boundaries of reality are under attack.

If you are expecting a stoned, metrosexual freebooter, be warned. Hodgson’s Ghost Pirates is more like H.P. Lovecraft as re-written by Joseph Conrad than Keith Richards meets Blackbeard. The narrator tells of how he shipped aboard the Mortzestus, trying to get back home from ‘Frisco to England. The Mortzestus is a Jonah, an unlucky ship that few man sail in twice. The narrator soon learns why. Shadow-men climb from the sea aboard the ship at night. Sailors report unexplainable and deadly happenings in the rigging. Soon the vessel is under siege.

Hodgson gives way to far more technical sea-jargon (perhaps necessarily) than in previous stories. However that artlessness gives the story a bit more verisimilitude: it is told as a sailor would tell it. The Mortzestus is essentially a haunted house at sea. The “ghosts” are no more explicable than the creatures that beset Hodgson’s other narrators. They come from somewhere else, wreak havoc and vanish.

While the story is slow paced, it does have much of Hodgson’s strange and creepy imagery. Perhaps the best image I retain is the glimpse of shadowy masts and a hull, seen backlit by a sinking sun at sea, slowly turning to stalk the doomed ship. Read this one when the lights are dim and the wind is howling off the sea.

-Dave Hardy

THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND

By William Hope Hodgson

Nowadays critics like to talk about the “New Weird”. Me, I’m still getting a handle on the Old Weird. A good place to grab it seems to be at The House on the Borderland.

The book is the second of William Hope Hodgson’s trilogy of dislocation, survival, and doom. The first was The Boats of the Glen Carrig. Like its predecessor, House on the Borderland also employs a first person narrator. But instead of being castaway in a boat at sea, the narrator is trapped in his own home adrift in time itself.

The nameless narrator tells how he came tot he house to live with sister in a remote part of Ireland. He soon finds that he has terrifying experiences. Whether they are dreams, insane delusions, or real journeys is never quite clear, but the narrator finds himself hurled through space and time to an amphitheater under the last dying sun. Giant forms of animal headed gods watch as the narrator battles hideous pig-beings, the last human fighting for survival in front of his home which has traveled too.

Just as quickly the narrator is whirled back to his own time where the pig-beings have broken through to besiege his home. While his sister is mysteriously absent, the narrator and his faithful dog Pepper battle the pig-beings on our own plane. Then things get really weird.

The narrator explores the cellars of his home and a strange pit on his property, all the while he is subject to attacks of time-slippage where he lives millions of years seemingly in a moment. The end of the Earth becomes a familiar sight.

House on the Borderland is a very strange story. Often Hodgson’s love of bizarre imagery overwhelms the pace of the narrative. Critics will find a cornucopia of material for Freudian, Jungian or other forms of analysis. But readers do get to some memorably weird places, which is the point after all.

-Dave Hardy

THE BOATS OF THE GLEN CARRIG

By William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson was a sailor who left the sea to run a physical fitness and health food store before he took up writing. His stories are filled with deeds of action, physical courage, and adventures at sea.

Boats of the Glen Carrig tells the adventures of a boat of castaway sailors shipwrecked near the Sargasso Sea in 1757. The narrator is a passenger of the Glen Carrig. He gives a dead-pan recitation of the strange events that befell the unfortunate seafarers. They find a rotting hulk in a creek on a nameless island where strange and unnatural things roam at night. It’s a place to make a ship-wrecked sailor long for the sea.

The castaways escape only to find themselves trapped in a continent of floating seaweed locked tight about another island. They battle monsters that creep about the forests of fungi at night. Around the island are more hulks of vessels entombed in the seaweed. Led by the clever and courageous boatswain, sailors fight tooth and nail to survive the horrors the encounter.

Boats of the Glen Carrig is a unique sort of book. It is crammed with Hodgson’s deep nautical lore and told in an Eighteenth-century style. The result is sometimes awkward and sometimes a bit overloaded with nautical terms. But for all that it may work a bit better, for it avoids the contrived style of a professional writer making up a crazy story and sounds like an old sailor telling a crazy story. At times I felt like I was hearing an echo of a Ray Harryhausen script channeled by an old salt. At other times I thought of the wildly improbably D&D scenarios of teenagers whose imaginations were fired with Coke and Doritos. The story has a naïve love of wonder and action that ranges from Lovecraftian horror to Howardian blood-lust.

Hodgson was a favorite of H.P. Lovecraft, I expect that Robert E. Howard would have liked his work too. Myself I truly enjoyed it. The story has a freshness that overcomes the occasional amateurishness. It is also part of a trilogy of sorts that includes The House on the Borderland and The Ghost Pirates. Boats of the Glen Carrig is a delightful, creepy, action-packed monster-story of a kind that you just don’t see anymore.

-Dave Hardy

KINGS OF THE NIGHT

There's a new webzine dedicated to Sword & Sorcery in town. It's Kings of the Night, a mix of fiction, art, and genre history from the talented G.W. Thomas.

There's this marvelous cover art by M.D. Jackson:



To go along with the Frazetta-worthy art is superb Sword & Sorcery action:

Jack Mackenzie's Mark of Gennesh. Sirtago & the Poet undertake a dangerous mission that must balance the driving urge to save a loved one with a red-lust for revenge!

G.W Thomas' The Fount. Torel the Hunter finds a lost baby in this mythic quest for treasure.

An my own The Huntsman's Pack. Varronia and Morvran Tegd flee the fury of Saxon pirates only to find more deadly dangers lurk in Britain's haunted forests.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

-Dave Hardy

THE HUMANOID TOUCH

By Jack Williamson

After the monumental scope of The Humanoids what more could be said about the star-spanning empire of robotic benevolence? Quite a bit actually. In The Humanoid Touch the focus is less on the Humanoids than their looming threat.

If the original novel was a parable of ‘50s America under the cloud of Nuclear Armageddon, then the sequel takes a hard look at the world of the ‘80s. The protagonist lives in a society founded on equality yet riven by class. They proclaim freedom, yet ruthlessly exploit their less-developed neighboring planet. Williamson tackles the Reagan era, neo-colonialism, and environmental degradation. While Williamson wears his New Deal liberalism on his sleeve, he avoids being overly preachy. Like the original, there is no easy escape from the trap humanity finds itself in. man may aspire to free his society, but freeing himself is much harder.

-Dave Hardy

STRAIGHT TIME

Directed by Ulu Gosbard

Back in the ‘70s, before his apotheosis, Dustin Hoffman was just a damn good actor. In Straight Time he plays the lead role of Max Dembo, an ex-con just out of prison. He tries to obey the rules, but he’s a stiff-necked and proud man. The bureaucratically bland arrogance of his parole officer (M. Emmet Walsh) leads him straight into a violent explosion and the life of crime he thought he could leave behind.

The film is based on No Beast So Fierce, by Eddie Bunker, an ex-con who took to writing to get out of his life as a criminal and ward of the state. Bunker also co-wrote the screenplay and tutored Hoffman in the life of parolees. It’s a gritty film, with taut and suspenseful robberies that have the feel of something you might see on a security camera, not Hollywood’s lens. Viewers of Reservoir Dogs will remember Bunker as Mr. Blue (he has a part in Straight Time as well). Quentin Tarantino has made no secret of his admiration of Bunker’s work and many little touches in Straight Time are echoed in Reservoir Dogs.

Ultimately viewers will have to decide to what degree they sympathize with Max Dembo. It would be easy to see him as just a victim. But that is to entirely miss the point. Dembo’s character creates his surroundings as much as his surroundings create him. Bunker’s and Hoffman’s genius was to show Dembo from both angles.

-Dave Hardy

THE GREY DIV ONLINE!

My latest story "The Grey Div" is online at Abandoned Towers Magazine. It's a Sword & Sorcery tale that takes its cue from Persian legend. Just go to the menu for "Fantasy" and click on the link!

Also online is my Western "Jayhawker Ague, Bushwhacker Fever" online at Pulp Spirit, an e-zine associated with Planetary Stories. It's about a cattle drive to Sedalia, Missouri in the days of the Border Ruffians.

And finally, you can still see my tale "The Bunyip Sea" at Static Movement. Its a story of exploration and mayhem in the Australian Outback.

Feel free to drop me a comment here about any of the stories and let me know what you think!

DARK WORLDS #4

Dark Worlds #4 is out!

See: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/dark-worlds-magazine-%234/7419486

The feature tale is Derrick Ferguson's "The Tale of Baron's Tribute" -a Fantasy novella - (cover and illos by M. D. Jackson). Also in this ish are " A Little Nest Egg" by Ken Goldman - a creepy horror tale - (illos by Sam deGraff), "Ma Ca Rong" by Jack Mackenzie, an occult investigation by Harlan daVinci set in Viet Nam (illos by G. W. Thomas), "One Last Run, Among the Stars" by Michael Ehart - a space opera with plenty of heart (illos by M. D. Jackson), "Redneck Meatwagon" by Skadi meic Beorh - a futuristic horror tale (illos by Sam deGraff), "Midnight in the Wax Museum" by Orrin Grey is a comedic fantasy (cartoon illos by G. W. Thomas), "Black Sun", a Mythos SF tale by G. W. Thomas (illos by M. D. Jackson) and a Sword & Sorcery novella "Sometimes Death Gods are Merciful" by the master, C. J. Burch.

Also a review of Terror Time by William P. Robertson (Pennsylvania's poet laureate) with an interview.

http://darkworlds21.blogspot.com/2009/07/dark-worlds-4-out-this-weekend.html

THE HUMANOIDS

By Jack Williamson

Clay Forester is a research scientist in a society poised for apocalyptic war with a totalitarian neighbor. Once he learned for the sake of learning, now defense work is his lifeblood, the essence of a society with a single-minded focus on war. Then the Humanoids show up.

In this tale of ‘50s America transported to outer-space Jack Williamson spins one of his most dystopian of utopias. The Humanoids are graceful, indestructible, black-plastic coated robots. Their single imperative is to serve and protect mankind, and especially to protect him from himself. The result is a surrealist tale of war between a galactic empire of robots and a tiny band of refugees waged on a level far beyond the merely physical.

Williamson’s mastery of pace and characterization match his grasp of the philosophical and moral complexities of his cybernetic proposition. The direst consequences proceed from a will to do what is best for mankind. Good and evil are sharply defined only to become confused again in an instant. The Humanoids is one of SF’s most challenging and rewarding novels.

-Dave Hardy

STORY AT PULP SPIRIT #6

I have a new story on Pulp Spirit #6. It is Jayhawker Ague, Bushwhacker Fever. The story is a Western albeit not the usual. In the 1850s, one of the main markets for Texas cattle was Sedalia, Missouri. That was where the railroad to the Northern states ended, thus it was where ranchers could drive cattle to sell to beef-hungry markets.

Of course Missouri in the 1850s was in the throes of a war between anti-slavery settlers in Kansas and pro-slavery settlers from the South known as "Bleeding Kansas." The rival factions were known as Jayhawkers (anti-slavery) and Border Ruffians or Bushwhackers (pro-slavery). Years ago I read R.H. Wilson's memoir With the Border Ruffians. Wilson was an Englishman who came to America and lived in the mountains of Virginia, tried settling in Kansas, and was a rancher in Texas during the 1850s and '60s. It gave me my first idea that the West was a good deal different from movie-Westerns.

Incidentally, I have long believed that the bitterness of "Bleeding Kansas" lingers on. I vividly recall Attorney General Ashcroft, a Missourian, announcing after 9/11, "We've secured the border with Kansas. I mean Canada."

Well of course. In their day men like James Lane, John Brown, and William Quantrill were regarded much as Osama bin Laden, George Bush and other GWOT luminaries: heroes dedicated to a principal to some, blood-thirsty fanatics to others. Though lacking the scope of our modern GWOT-warriors, they left a trail of death and destruction.

In this story, I have focused less on the politics than the economics of slavery, specifically the monetarization of people.

Pulp Spirit is a companion to Planetary Stories, their homepage is PlanetaryStories.com.

-Dave Hardy

THE BUNYIP SEA @ STATIC MOVEMENT

My short story, "The Bunyip Sea" is online now at Static Movement. It's a sort of Australian Outback-Western about the search for mysteries in the hearts of continents or of men.

An Australian Western may seem like an odd combination, but it seems natural to me. I grew up watching Westerns and reading Western history (from "Roughing It" to "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" to "I'll Die Before I Run" etc). When I encountered the history of other frontier lands of the Victorian era: Australia, South Africa, the Argentine pampas, & more, I realized the patterns I had of the Western: cowboys, Indians, outlaws, lawmen, etc repeated in strange ways across the world. However exception America is, it is the product of the forces of colonialism, the conquest of lands, the destruction of the natives and the construction of new communities from disparate elements.

This particualr piece owes a fair bit the Alan Moorehead's account of the Burke & Wills expedition, Cooper's Creek, though Graeme Clifford's film (starring Jack Thompson) and an ancient Smithsonian article on Burke & Wills shaped my imagination as it relates to those gallant, doomed explorers.

Speaking of cimantic Aussie Westerns, by all means check out The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat & written by Nick Cave. Excellent perfomrances by Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson & Danny Huston to name a few.

-Dave Hardy

NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES

By Cornell Woolrich

When you think of dark, Urban Fantasy, you might think of China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, or Charles de Lint. I would chose Cornell Woolrich as the creator of a unique form that blended elements of crime fiction, horror, noir, and fantasy. H.P. Lovecraft might not have known it, but Woolrich wove tales of cosmic horror.

The premise to Night Has a Thousand Eyes is pure Woolrich: the race to save a doomed man. A policeman hears a young woman’s story. To save this woman, he must save her father from certain doom. Only the doom is not so much physical, as spiritual. A psychic has predicted a wealthy industrialist will die. The psychic’s astonishing record of true predictions seems to confirm his powers of prophecy. But the NYPD doesn’t believe in ESP. As the protagonist’s colleagues race to prove the psychic to be false, the protagonist must battle the malignant forces of the unknown that are driving the marked man into lethal despair. Night is Woolrich at his best, creepy, suspenseful, and utterly unpredictable.

-Dave Hardy

THE GREEN MILLENNIUM

By Fritz Leiber

If there’s any creature that could break down the mental barriers of a repressed, death-oriented, and relentlessly conformist society, I suppose it would be cats. That seems to be Fritz Leiber’s opinion anyway.

The Green Millennium is about Phil Gish and his America. The Bureau of Loyalty keeps the population on the straight and narrow under its dimwitted, bible-spouting president. Fun Incorporated makes sure the citizens have funless fun. America’s real business is the permanent war against its enemies.

So far you may be wondering where exactly the SF comes in since that describes the current world. When Phil meets a friendly green cat called Lucky, all of the sudden his wretched life is full of joy. All his difficulties disappear, that is until the cat scampers away. Phil is not alone in his pursuit of the cat. Lucky is being chased by a shady scientist called Dr. Romadka, a group of wrestlers, Dr. Romadka’s daughter, and the Bureau of Loyalty. There’s also the question of whether Phil’s neighbor is human from the waist down.

The opposition of an anarchic love of life to oppressive conformism is one of Leiber’s favorite motifs. The Green Millennium has that opposition in its most anarchic form. The revolution isn’t brought about by conspirators or even beatniks, but adorable space-cats. One would be forgiven for finding it all a bit too cute. The hard edges have rubber bumpers. Not that this is all bad. Sometimes a little untrammeled optimism in the face of bad news is called for.

If only we had some green cats…

-Dave Hardy

THE END OF PIRACY

The final installment of a "A Brief History of Piracy" is online at Last Free Voice. -Dave

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

By Jim Thompson

Deputy Lou Ford is the kind of man who exemplifies the best in small town law enforcement. He doesn’t carry a gun. He prefers to reason with people. He prefers to keep the peace. Except that inside Lou Ford is a raging nut case, a time bomb whose first person narration ticks off the seconds to a horrific explosion.

Jim Thompson’s novel is perhaps slow, not unlike Lou, but it builds steam. The idyllic world of small town life is riven by hidden currents, secret hates that fester until they break into the open. Lou is simply the corruption and madness of his surroundings embodied.

-Dave Hardy

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART FOUR

Is now online at Last Free Voice, this time the buccaneers. -Dave

Part Five went up this weekend. -dh

JUDGE DEE: CSI MEDIEVAL CHINA?

THE CHINESE GOLD MURDERS
THE EMPEROR’S PEARL
By Robert van Gulik

Robert van Gulik is the translator of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. He found such a warm reception for a two-hundred year-old Chinese detective novel that he began to write new tales of Judge Dee.

The Chinese Gold Murders is situated in the early days of Dee’s service as a magistrate (c AD 690). The good judge takes up a post in a provincial town. The judge’s predecessor is literally a predecessor. The judge has to get to the bottom of the last judge’s death before he joins him. Along the way there are encounters with highwaymen, smugglers, Korean exiles, ghosts, and mysterious priests.

The Emperor’s Pearl is similarly fast-paced fare. At the height of the Dragon Boat races, a drummer drops dead. Dee is plunged into an investigation of the man’s death. It is somehow linked to a centuries-old theft from the imperial household itself. There is also a marvelous supporting character in the form of a Mongolian lady-wrestler (I am not making this up).

Van Gulik was an expert on Chinese culture. His books are a marvelous exploration of Medieval China without any tedious lecturing. Van Gulik also has an eye for fantasy. While there are no flying swordsman action-heroes in the Judge Dee mysteries, the supernatural is never far away. Van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries are highly entertaining, with superb settings and engaging characters.

-Dave Hardy

REH Audio

In a hunt for something totally unrelated, I ran across these various older REH audio projects.

The first two are apparently from a 1975 radio drama series that was planned, but only these two ever got produced.

These are hosted on mediafire and you may need to register to download, but registration is free.
TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT

THE FROST GIANT'S DAUGHTER

Librivox.org has eight Howard works recorded for free download, including Bear Creek.

LIBRIVOX HOWARD WORKS

Enjoy!
Julie
Winner of the Howard Widow Lifetime Achievement Award

THE BROKEN SWORD

By Poul Anderson

Doom, that is the word to describe Poul Anderson’s 1954 fantasy novel The Broken Sword. The tale marvelously evokes the Dark Ages and the world of Faerie as neither has been before or since. It is a fast paced tale of action and adventure suffused with tragedy, betrayal, cruelty, loss, and inexorable doom.

Like all good Viking tales, The Broken Sword is about family. Orm the Strong is a Viking chief who settles down in England. But his bloody rise to power has earned him an enemy who causes his first-born to be replaced with a changeling from the world of Faerie. The doppelgangers are sent separate ways, one to be a prince among the elves, the other to become an outcast among men until he realizes his destiny lies among the trolls. They come together when their tribes wage an all out war for control of the hidden world of Faerie.

The Broken Sword is almost too dark for mainstream tastes. That is what makes it so perfectly suited for the grim 21st century.

-Dave Hardy