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The Return review was supposed to post yesterday. Unfortunately there seems to be some incompatibilities between Blogger and the version of AOL that I’m using. So until that gets resolved I’ll be only posting Monday through Friday. I’ll still be writing posts on the weekend. Got that must-write-a-post-every-day commitment to stick to.

Orphan of Creation

Roger MacBride Allen

© 1988

Published by Baen Books

The blurb says –

On the day after tomorrow, on a backwoods farm in Mississippi, a paleontologist unearths the bones of a creature that could never have lived in that time or place. The incredible find brings its discoverers to the deepest forests of western Africa, and face to face with a miracle older than man.

Featured MAH –

Remnant Australopithecus

The book opens with a quote from Mismeasure of Man by Stephen J. Gould –

Suppose … that one or several species of our ancestral genus Australopithecus had survived – a perfectly reasonable scenario in theory … We – that is Homo Sapiens – would have faced all the moral dilemma involved in treating a human species of distinctly inferior mental capacity. What would we have done with them – slavery? extirpation? coexistence? menial labor? reservations? zoos?

Given that Homo Sapiens has indeed done all of the above to other members of its own species it wouldn’t be surprising if we were to do the same or worse to a hominid cousin.

Our protagonist, Dr. Barbara Marchando, discovers the journal of her great-great-grandfather, Zebulon Jones, in the attic of the family home. Jones had been a slave who escaped his bondage in Mississippi, made his fortune in the North and come back to buy his former master’s plantation during the Reconstruction. The journal describes an incident during Jones’ slave days when his master, Colonel Gowrie, brought a new breed of Slave to the plantation. The new Slave was a creature that was humanlike but obviously not human and therefore would have been legal to import. The creatures make poor slaves and soon die. When Gowrie attempts to have the creatures buried in the Slave cemetery, his slaves refuse and the creatures are buried at a crossroads on the property instead.

Marchando thinks that she has discovered record of the importation of gorillas or chimps as slaves and sets out to discover the graves. Her search and excavation is part of what has me love this book. Unlike the scientists in so much fiction who have wild ridiculous theories, who dash around like brain damaged Indian Joneses and who excavate their digs with no regard to scientific procedure or documentation, Dr. Marchando is careful and methodical and makes sure to record every step of her investigation. She wants to be sure that whatever evidence she uncovers is irrefutable. Allen makes the slow uncovering of the graves suspenseful by making the process itself interesting.

So when she discovers Australopithecus bones in Mississippi soil she’s understandably shocked and confused. The discovery leads to an expedition to Africa with the possibility of finding living examples of the creature. If Australopithecus had survived into the Nineteenth century, perhaps it lived still.

Orphan of Creation is a good solid book. If I were to recommend a book I’d certainly recommend this one.

One from the Bigfoot Bookshelf

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Book review here today. Over the years I’ve collected fiction featuring sasquatch, yeti and other MAH. I’m always on the lookout for more. With the proliferation of small press and self-publishers there are more Bigfoot novels out there than ever.

Occasionally I’ll review one of the books in my collection. Eventually I’ll put all the reviews together on their own website. Because the world needs a Bigfoot novel review website. It must. I’ve been looking for one for years and I haven’t found one yet. And like so many others who have built websites dedicated to subject matter of limited interest I’ll build the Bigfoot Bookshelf because no one else has.

The Return

Bentley Little

© 2002

Published by Signet (New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam)

The blurb says –

Springerville is famous for the legend of the Mogollon Monster. Of course nobody really believes it. It’s just a good campfire story, something to attract gullible tourist – until an excavation team unearths the figure of a screaming woman, the jawbone of a deformed animal and a child’s toy. How odd that they were buried together. Odd, too is the foul odor lingering in the air, the strange noises at night, and the man’s face found hanging from a tree. Now the locals are locking their doors. Because after sundown, campfire stories can seem very, very real.

Featured MAH –

Ancient Evil Demon Thing

Stephen King equated reading to telepathy. Read a book, read someone’s mind. Read everything someone has written and get someone’s worldview. Most authors revisit the same few subjects and themes throughout their writing life.

I figure that any review I read is a window into someone’s mind. A review is only partly about the book (painting, movie, restaurant, club, you-name-it) and mostly about the reviewer. It’s about the reviewer’s interests and prejudices and the style and flair that he/she/it expresses them. I rarely trust a reviewer’s opinion the first time around. The world is full of people whose interests and obsessions don’t overlap mine. People who happily express their opinions as if they mean something. People who don’t seem to stop and wonder where that opinion came from.

I’m cheerfully self involved. It’s the sort of self obsession that leads me to look at my thoughts and opinions and ask, “Where the hell did that come from?” This book is a great example. Somewhere around page 60 I found myself thinking, “This is silly.”

It’s not the genre. I do most of my reading in the Weird Fiction niche.

This isn’t the first Bentley Little novel I’ve read. That was The Revelation. That featured a Chinese vampire terrorizing a Southwestern town. I thought it was a fun read and I enjoyed Little’s style enough that I’ve been interested in seeing what else he’d written. I certainly don’t remember thinking, “This is silly” during the course of reading it. Little’s style is matter of fact, whether describing a museum visit or a demonic possession. Certainly ancient Anasazi-killing monsters are no sillier than Chinese vampires.

So what was it?

The Nutty Science.

Al Wittinghill, the anthropologist overseeing a dig of Anasazi remains, espouses Nutty Science. He has the theory that the Anasazi disappeared because some sort of creature made them go away. It’s not the theory that’s so ridiculous it’s that Al seems to have arrived at this theory completely without evidence. And I have an expectation that scientists should base their theories on some kind of verifiable fact. Grover Krantz believed in Sasquatch because the evidence told him that it was real. Von Daniken backs up his ancient astronaut theories with evidence. (I think Von Daniken is a crackpot and his evidence is shaky and misinterpreted but that beside the point here.) Never mind that Al turns out to be right and a demon/monster/god did wipe out the Anasazi and is now trying to wipe out the Southwestern United States. His belief comes before any fact. And that’s Nutty Science.

When I run into Nutty Science in a book I stop taking the book seriously. I take science and the scientific method seriously. If Al had been a shaman or a visionary or an amateur crackpot dabbling in archeology I’d have found it easier to tolerate him.

The Return gets sillier.

The plot? Ancient evil is awakened, death, destruction and hilarity ensue. More specifically – a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis signs up to work on an archeological dig and becomes caught up in a supernatural apocalypse. Ancient shards of pottery depict modern, recognizable people and places. Ancient artifacts come to live and kill people. Deformed skulls and hideous mummies exert an evil influence on the people around them driving the people to torture and murder their friends and neighbors. Those few people who seem to be immune to the Evil’s influence must band together to destroy the Evil.

I found The Return on the book racks at the QFC. It had That Feel about it. That Feel that says there’s a Bigfoot in this book. That Feeling is never wrong. The cover and the back cover blurb give it away. Trust me. Read enough of the novels I list here and you’ll start to have That Feeling too. The Bigfoot here is the Mogollon Monster. The creature is equated with Bigfoot despite the Arizona setting. In this story, though, Bigfoot is a red herring. Our monster, our villain, is some sort of immortal demon that has periodically awoken to destroy human civilizations.

Beyond the Nutty Science there are scenes that would be terrifying if they were to actually occur but are absurd to visualize. Anasazi artifacts waltz out of the museum in which they are being kept. (Just picture a bunch of arrow heads and pottery and stone tools banging themselves out of their glass cases and shuffling down the hall.) A man gets killed by a giant, animated mortar and pestle. Our monster has a big poofy orange afro. I’d definitely be scared if I saw inanimate objects come after me with murderous intent and I’d find an evil inhuman mummy creepy regardless of its hair style but these are “you had to be there” sorts of things. Reading about the event s in Little’s dry style had me laughing.

So am I recommending The Return?

I’ll cheerfully dodge that question. These reviews aren’t going to be about whether or not I think you should read a book. They’re to tell you about books that you might not know are out there and if they sound interesting you can give them a read yourself.

Much Bigger Than a Bread Box

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How does one hide a sasquatch?

We’ve got a bunch of folks coming over for brunch this morning. None of them know about Skook. I’d rather none of them did. They’re all nice people. It’s just that secrets are more easily kept secret when few people know them.

I could ask him to sleep in the garage today. I doubt that he’d care. Unfortunately we’ve filled up the garage since he moved out of it. There’s not a lot of room for him in there anymore. I’ve seen him slip into some tight places, places it’s hard to imagine a seven foot tall anything fitting in, but even so, the garage is too full.

So I’ll get out the tarp and cover him up. Maybe I can convince Paliki to sleep on top of him and make him look more like furniture. There’s not much to worry over really. None of our guests is likely to go downstairs unless we invite them. He’ll sleep through all the noise we make. If we have leftovers I’ll just give them to him when he wakes up.

That’s one of the best things about having Skook around. I never feel like food goes to waste. He makes the extra disappear in seconds. He should have a good variety today. Nizzibet is making Apple Raisin French Toast and I making a big scrambled egg thing. Most everyone who coming will be bringing something to share and leaving the uneaten bits behind. I’ll just toss it all in a bowl and he’ll snack on it before he heads out tonight.

Summer Ghost Walking

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Color it summer. It isn’t hot but it’s certainly not winter weather.

We had a gorgeous full moon last night. After Farscape Skook, Nizzibet and I went for a walk. We stuck to the alleys that run through all the blocks in this neighborhood. When Nizzibet’s leg finally gave out Skook gave her a shoulder ride. That meant her head was something like ten feet up in the air.

I can imagine some poor soul, sitting on his back porch trading swigs from a beer and puffs from a cigarette, looking over his back fence and seeing a white laughing face floating through the darkness. It’s one thing to call the cops and say you’ve seen sasquatch. It’s another to say you’ve seen a ghost. I wonder which one would have people think you were crazier?

I passed on a ride myself. It would be too much of a reminder of how much bigger than me Skook is. Animals that are significantly bigger than I am make me nervous. I can’t see myself riding horses, much less an elephant. And big strange humans give me an unsettled feeling no matter how friendly they are. I suspect that there is some jealous involved. I’m taller than most humans and back in my reptile brain I don’t appreciate anyone looking down on me.

Scriptwriting got postponed another week. PresiD and Mr. Charisma are still working on contract details. So ScarletBlue came over to take our give aways to Deseret Industries and we ended up going shopping – Costco (cause who can say no to food in bulk) & Value Village. (ScarletBlue acted as Nizzibet’s fashion consultant and I poked through the used books).

Nizzibet and I will be jamming on story ideas once I get this posted. We’ll grab some coffee and sit in the sun and natter at each other. A good way to end a day.

Difference Engines

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It’s always at first I feel inferior. Stupid. OK. That’s the way my brain works.

Hmmm.

I always feel superior first. Like I know what I’m talking about. Or if I don’t know what I’m talking about it doesn’t occur to me that I’m wrong. I’m always right. Correct. My way to live is the way. It’s only when the intellect kicks in that I’m willing to consider another side.

Most of the time intellect kicks in before emotion gets me started acting. It didn’t used to be that way. Emotion often spoke before intellect. My life is a lot easier these days. I’ve got fewer reasons to apologize to other people. I think I listen to and empathize with others better. Since I’m predisposed to think I’m right I’m probably not as much better as I think I am.

That’s the way my brain seems to work.

Creative Agendas

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Creative projects for the next six months –

Number One – This weblog. Ongoing.

Number Two – Wild Nights in Oz Chapter Three. I’ve had three pages to finish for almost SIX years now. That’s appalling. At that rate Lovesettlement and I won’t be done with that story until the 22nd century. So those last three pages get done this month.

Number Three – Whatever the hell script our little writing enclave works on every Saturday. If ScarletBlue and PresiD decide that the partnership doesn’t work, Nizzibet and I have made a pact to work on scripts between the two of us on Saturdays anyway. The scripts will be done when they get done.

Number Four – The 2004 Calendar. More on that as work progress. This month I’m designing a font for it. I’d like to have the whole project complete by mid-summer.

Number Five – Mandate of Heaven role playing game. The Thinker is writing it. Grumpyman and I are illustrating it. Jaydogg is doing the book design. Whether or not the game is any good, our source manual is going to look kickass. The Thinker is going to playtest the game with Nizzibet and I to see how well it works for role playing novices and then he’ll do it again for some folks he knows who have played the rule system he’s basing the game in. We want the manual to be in the stores at the same time the second Matrix sequel is in the theatres. That means having it at the printers by the end of July.

That should keep me busy. I’ll no doubt think I’ve got time to take on other projects even when I’m chin deep in these. I seem to be happiest when I’m doing a little too much.

Hollywood Thoughts

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The latest we hear from ScarletBlue and PresiD is that Mr. Charisma wants to be the next Vin Diesel but he doesn’t really like Vin Diesel. They gave us a list of some of his favorite films so we could have an idea of what we will be writing toward. Predator. Aliens. The Exorcist. Poltergeist. Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns. Terminator. Mr. Charisma owns a successful computer game developing company and wants to develop films that match the target audience of his games. He wants stories about tough lone heroes facing down vicious dangers. Big testosterone fests.

This is going to be interesting then. Neither Nizzibet nor I are PC gamers. ScarletBlue and PresiD certainly aren’t. I don’t know if they are science fiction/fantasy/horror fans. So far our conversations about scripts and films has stuck to more mainstream efforts – romantic comedies, suspense dramas. Mr. Charisma’s list of films fits my tastes more than it seems like it would fit theirs.

The Fast and the Furious was far more entertaining than I expected. The script had more twists and turns than XXX, was more natural in the development of characters and the characters changed over the course of the film. I’m not a car fan. The premise is (cop goes undercover in the illegal racing circuit to find out who is hijacking semis) silly. But the film is tightly knit from script to final editing so that while I was watching it I was enjoying it.

Vin Diesel is … Vin Diesel. I don’t remember any of the characters names. He’s not the protagonist. He’s the honorable rogue antagonist. There’s no actual villain in The Fast and the Furious, the question of the film is how far the protagonist, Paul Walker’s character, will go to catch Vin Diesel’s character. There are some murderous types lurking around the edges of the story in order to provide violent death and inspire more car chases but they don’t drive the story.

Gaah. Too much film reviewing here. The internet is full of film reviewers. It doesn’t need me going off on this stuff. We watched the movies to get an idea of what Mr. Charisma was looking for and to have some common ground with ScarletBlue and PresiD when we sat down to work come Saturday. Once we’ve got some ideas we can all get behind we’ll have to pick on that can get done for two million or less. With high definition digital video it’s possible to do more elaborate films less expensively than it ever has been.

Looking for a Friend

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And because one never knows who might be reading – I’m looking for Bernice Jinkerson (or perhaps Jinkersen). We both attended the same high school in Sebastopol. Last I heard she was working for Bill Graham Productions but that was over 15 years ago. I’m not sure that there still is a Bill Graham Productions any more. SJ and I have been wondering whatever became of her. Anyone who might have a clue what’s become of her, please contact me at chaosunit@aol.com. I get a tedious amount of spam so be sure to mention Bernice in the subject line.

Update 7/16/2008 – And sometimes one doesn’t get the news one wants.