From Dark Places

At Bristolcon last weekend I found myself unable to resist the temptation to buy a copy of Emma Newman's early anthology From Dark Places. Although the stories cover quite a range, from the out-and-out fantastical to the purely everyday, they are limited by a common theme of darkness and horror — either the explicit shocker sort or the quieter existential kind.

Many of the stories seem to be tales of the unexpected: as events unfold they seem to be pointing to a particular conclusion, only for a twist in the final line to transform the apparent meaning into something else entirely. Sometimes this means that an apparently innocuous little story turns into something really nasty. At other times it cuts the tension of the original and turns it into a warm joke. And in a couple of cases it adds ambiguity: is the main character suffering a psychotic break or is she really being haunted by something supernatural?

Reading the collection, I was put in mind of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar both of which contain similar sort of dark, twist ending stories. But now, thinking back to Emma's conversation with Gareth Powell at the weekend, it's just as likely that they were inspired by something like the twist ending in the Smashing Pumpkins song Lily as anything else — which, it seems to me, makes them all the more suitable for Halloween...

Halloween at the Quay

Had a perfectly satisfactory time at the Quay's halloween evening. It wasn't quite as much fun as last year — AM told me I was lone wolfing it which sounds better than saying alone — but at least I can be confident that there won't be any unflattering photos of us eating pizza this time round.

Amusingly, Petzl have a guide to using their equipment to survive a zombie apocalypse. Good to know their climbing gear is dual use. And why hasn't anyone else pointed out the importance of a well-fitted helmet and eye protection when dealing with the menace of the brain-eating undead?