Artstuff – Acute Care

My last Dark Conspiracy illustration project was the scenario Acute Care. It featured an investigation of a busy hospital that is a front for all manner of nefarious experiments and weird events. As with the other DC projects published as PDFs by 3Hombres this one is no longer available.

This supplement was reviewed by Marcus Bone here.

Story Seed #40 
The Night Land: Tales of the AbHumans

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson is an early example of the Dying Earth subgenre of scifi/fantasy. It’s a work of great imagination, particularly when you consider that Hodgson didn’t have many previous examples of the genre to inspire him. Part of the imagination gets spent on the book’s faux-archaic prose style and that makes the book a bit of slog for most readers. Including me. I read it back in the days when I had much more time and patience. James Stoddard, a fan of the novel, did an edit/rewrite of the story using contemporary language. It’s a much easier read.

The plot is simple – Heroic Dude ventures into hostile territory to rescue his True Love. He succeeds.

Yes, I’m being a little snarky. The Heroic Dude and his True Love are some of the last remaining true humans on Earth. And therefore Good. The hostile territory is populated by mutants, monsters and beings from other spaces – all with a hatred (or at least an appetite) for true humans. And therefore Evil.

I enjoy looking at stories to see what’s missing, what stories aren’t being told. Sometimes it’s the ecology that weird – what do all the these predators eat when they’re not trying to eat the hero? Sometimes I wonder what the story would look like if told by the antagonists. There are humans of a sort in The Night Land. The abhumans live and breed among monsters and giants and worse things. In the novel they are depicted as savage brutes but perhaps the narrator’s view of them is skewed, prejudiced. They’ve adapted to a hostile environment. They may have language and culture and art that the citizens of the Last Redoubt have not seen or, perhaps, refuse to see. Europeans have been very good at ignoring and demonizing the cultures of those they conquered. The Redoubtables might do the same. And the Abhumans may have good reason to hate and fight against the Redoubtables. That seven mile tall pyramid must suck up a lot of resources.

What do the Abhumans do when they’re not trying to kill Redoubtables? How do they greet each other? Do they farm? Do they hunt? Do they have religions? Politics? Art? Crime? How do they co-exist with the other inhabitants of The Night Land? There are seven million stories in the Last Redoubt. There are many more outside it.

Other Newsletters : Dangerous Characters

Dangerous Characters from Sady Doyle is a review newsletter focusing on horror movies. Ms. Doyle likes horror movies and writes from a feminist perspective. I like horror movies and, while I consider myself a feminist, I’m still a guy. Reading the opinions of someone of someone with a lived female experience broadens my worldview.

Lifestuff

My big sister is smart, driven and creative. During this coronapocalypse she’s put some of her enormous energy toward looking after her little brother. For the last few weeks she’s been preparing meals. popping them in coolers and ferrying them across town. She tells us when she’s coming, we put out last week’s cooler and SHAZAM! she switches in a new cooler packed with gourment goodness.

This week it was handmade pork potstickers, beef broccoli stir friy with sauce, Adouille garbonzo chilli with avocado and cilantro garnish, and lamb filo pie with a cucumber feta salad. Some of it is precooked. Some of it needs heat applied. She provides instructions. Both the nephew and I have worked in restaurants so we don’t need a lot of details. There’s enough in each dish that we’re able to share some with our housemate and we’ve often got leftovers. My taste buds will be a little sad when Sis has an open social schedule again. The rest of me will be happy to give her hugs and to be in the same room with her again.

Assuming it will be safe to ever hug anyone again. (Which it will. It just won’t be safe to hug everyone again. And it never was. Some people don’t like hugs.)

Saturday night the nephew tried teaching Sarah and me how to play Magic the Gathering. He’s been playing the game since he was seven and can talk about it for hours. Sarah got the basics of the game pretty well. Me … not so much. I mean, I got the basics – the cards do explain themselves somewhat – but there’s a lot of complexity to the game that I haven’t grokked yet. We played with decks that the nephew had set up with different winning strategies. He explained those strategies pretty well. I can see the appeal of the game. The cards are pretty.

I also need a new prescription for my glasses. To play the game well it’s necessary to be able to read the other players’ cards and I can’t do that well rightn now. I’ve known I needed a new prescription for a while but this drove that point home. One more thing to do once the lockdown lifts.

I hope this letter finds you well. Things won’t go back to normal and they should not. The old normal was a lot less great than the marketing implied. Ignore the marketing. Maintain social interaction while practicing physical distancing. We’re all in the this together.