Books

The eternal existential question ‘Who Am I?’ has various answers depending on what audience we entertain. In our daily lives there’s often a struggle with which facet of our personality to hide or reveal; to our parents, for instance, we show a different side of ourselves than we do to our co-workers, our lovers, our friends. For writers this friction between one’s innermost self and that which we expose to the world at large can provide an unending wellspring of dark inspiration.

Exploding onto the literary horror scene in 2022 with her terrifying examination of a disturbed mother-daughter relationship in the novella This Is Where We Talk Things Out, Canadian author Caitlin Marceau explores those same issues of identity in a way that will satiate anyone ravenous for more of her intense strain of terror fiction in the DarkLit Press release Femina, a captivating collection of fifteen short stories.

'Heroic Fantasy’ is an umbrella term encompassing any number of adventurous subgenres that mix magic, myth and drama to one degree or other. With roots extending back to the Akkadian epic Gilgamesh in the 3rd century BCE, the tree of fantasy has since sprouted many divergent branches, from the seminal works of literary legends like Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Moorcock, to the escapist role-playing games of Dungeons & Dragons and the gritty, sex-and-horror infused variant known as grimdark.

The rush of adrenaline is a heady sensation. That evolutionary fight-or-flight response strikes a primal chord deep within our primitive reptilian brain, and the heart-pounding, blood-pumping energy that protected our ancestors from hungry predators has, in modern humans, become a kind of addiction. The exhilaration of extreme sports can often satisfy such a need, attested to by the popularity of ever-more perilous ‘adventure vacations’—skydiving, wingsuit flying, base-jumping, alpine skiing—it seems the more dangerous the activity, the more we yearn for a chance to partake. Even the simpler, far safer indulgence of watching a scary movie can induce a burst of adrenaline-fueled excitement, a fact that explains the unshakably enduring success of horror films.

Imagine, if you will, this hypothetical scenario: Stephen King, pre-eminant author of the United States, one day decides to storm an army base with a group of friends, intending to spark an insurrection against the government through a broadcast reading of his stories before committing grisly suicide. Sound implausible? Preposterous? Perhaps. But that’s exactly the bizarre situation the Japanese public awoke to on November 25, 1970, when Yukio Mishima, then that nation’s foremost literary icon, led four members of a right-wing militia into a central Tokyo military installation, took its commandant hostage, and tried to inspire the country’s Self-Defense Forces to overthrow the post-war regime he’d so long held in contempt. When the coup d’etat inevitably failed, Mishima and one of his followers both performed seppuku—the ritual suicide of the samurai—to the shock of the entire world.

According to figures from both the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Safety Council, there were more than 106,000 reported drug overdose fatalities in the United States in 2021, a 58% rise from only two years earlier. The overwhelming majority of these deaths (70,601) can be directly attributed to opioids, primarily heroin and its deadlier chemical cousin, fentanyl, and that statistic increases significantly when one factors in the suicides, homicides, and undetermined deaths related to the general drug trade.

Tales of vampires and their carnivorous ilk have spanned centuries and continents. The most commonly known legends in the Western world originate from Eastern Europe—the dreaded nosferatu of Slavic lore: a reanimated corpse, retaining its personality post-mortem, existent among the craven human herd, jealous of life and hungry for the blood pumping through our veins. From those benighted Transylvanian forests an archetype arose that has permeated every facet of popular culture, from books and movies, comics, video games, to the somber cemetery dirges of Gothic clubs and their related leather-and-lace fashions. The steely, hypnotic glare of Dracula and his varied progeny bewitches us as no other mythic monster has.

On the storytelling family tree, suspense and horror are shoots of the same literary branch, attached to a common trunk and rooted in our primitive collective reptilian brain. That sense of disquieting tension one feels when watching Clarice Starling wade through the murky pitch darkness of Buffalo Bill’s death house plucks a chord deep within our psyche, reminding us of a time when our distant, primal ancestors braved untamed wilds on a daily basis.

Let’s begin with some unusual facts about human anatomy:

- Some women can lactate through the skin of their armpit after giving birth.

- A condition called hyperdontia causes people to be born with an excessive amount of teeth.

- Body odor originates from bacteria eating sweat on the skin’s surface.

- Approximately one in one-thousand people are born with extra digits on their hands or feet.

- The average person produces enough saliva during their lifetime to fill two swimming pools.

Ah, the Wild West. The mere mention of the term arouses near-mythic associations profoundly embedded in the American national psyche. That period of Manifest Destiny, of expansive vistas and painted horizons. Cowboys and Indians, desperadoes, cattle rustlers, long nights on the open range, showdowns at high noon. Jesse James and Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Even while it was happening, the era of westward expansion was being romanticized in dime novels and newspaper articles fed to a public fascinated with the lawless frontier, and the advent of Hollywood only cemented that legendary legacy in the cultural consciousness.

In 1968, a minor television commercial director helmed a low-budget black-and-white production in the pastoral American barrens outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and irrevocably altered the course of entertainment history. George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead--with its stark survivalist plot, graphic gore and uncompromising ending--was unlike anything seen on the silver screen and became the forbearer of a wave of socially relevant horror untethered from the old-world monsters of previous generations. The undead gut-munchers assailing that backwoods farmhouse weren’t suave vampiric counts from some far-off land or melancholy noblemen afflicted by a loathsome lycanthrope curse--they were us, humanity reduced to its ravenous primordial impulses, a mindless mass, capable of crushing our fragile civilization with the sheer weight of their ghastly numbers.

Dreams, their content, meaning, interpretation and influence upon our waking lives, have fascinated humankind for thousands of years. Our ancient ancestors in Sumer, Egypt and Babylon believed Divine agents routinely communicated with us during those nightly journeys through slumberland, yet over a century's worth of data collection by Oneirologists (dream studiers) has failed to uncover precisely where dreams originate, if a single or multiple regions of the brain are involved, or what evolutionary purpose dreaming serves for either mind or body.

The British medievalist scholar and author Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) is best remembered for his volumes redefining supernatural fiction. First published at the dawn of the twentieth century, his perfected narrative devices set a gold standard, pulling ghost stories from the cliché of formal Gothic backdrops in favor of realistic contemporary settings and everyday protagonists. Highly regarded even today, the classic Jamesian tale (as his technique was dubbed) often featured quiet, quaint English villages, seaside towns or country estates imperiled by vengeful wraths intruding upon our world from beyond the grave, and echoes of James' craft linger in the works of such subsequent literary icons as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, T.E.D. Klein, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King.

True to the old saying, family is the tie that binds. No matter how much we grow and change as individuals, from womb to tomb we are inescapably a part of that unchosen genetic lineage whether we like it or not. Often that blood bond is a beneficial boon--ideal families love us, raise us, teach us, but sometimes, for an endless variety of reasons, families don't get along, and over time disagreements, arguments and long-lingering animosities cause rifts that can be difficult, if not impossible to bridge. In any other social situation resolution could be achieved through a mutual (or forced) parting of ways, but if a relative becomes toxic to your life, then what? Is it ever possible to completely sever those hereditary links?

In the August, 1928 issue of seminal pulp fiction publication Weird Tales (the same magazine responsible for first popularizing the material of cosmic horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft), a story by legendary Conan creator Robert E. Howard appeared featuring a somber and gloomy 17th century Puritan wanderer whose sole motivation was the destruction of evil in all its unearthly forms. Solomon Kane's inaugurate adventure, 'Red Shadows', set the tone for much of the character's later excursions--deeply religious, Kane sported all-black attire and boldly confronted his infernal enemies with rapier, dirk and a brace of flintlock pistols. Readers of the era lapped it up, and multiple stories in the series were released before Howard's tragic and untimely death.

From Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses to Salinger's Holden Caulfield to the fantastical coming-of-age adventures of a certain Hogwarts wizard, the trials and tribulations of youth are a cornerstone of literary endeavors both fictional and autobiographical. Those awkward, exhilarating, often painful days where one learns who they are and seeks to blaze their own trail through life's uncertain jungle can yield the most compelling of dramas and retains a timeless allure for both authors and audiences alike. And why not? Who among us hasn't experienced the teenage travails of academia, that heady rush of first romance, the pleasure and pitfalls of newfound independence?

According to the A.I. Index, since the year 2000, the annual investment from venture capital firms into U.S. startups utilizing artificial intelligence systems has increased as much as six times, and statistics show that overall global investments in A.I. research and applications is set to reach $500 billion by 2024. A CBC Radio interview with Dr. David Levy even quoted the A.I. expert as predicting, "...in a few generations, we won't just be having sex with robots, we'll be marrying them."

In culinary terms, certain flavors compliment one another, and the more palatable combinations become iconic, even a part of our collective culture: hamburgers and fries, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti and meatballs, pizza and beer, salted caramel. In entertainment, too, the mixing of distinctly separate genres can oftentimes yield potent new hybrid strains of literary or cinematic enjoyment. Vampire fiction, for instance, though undeniably a foundational cornerstone of horror, lends itself easily to the overwrought melodrama of gothic literature and the bodice-ripping eroticism of romance novels. The shadowy essence of hard-boiled pulp detective stories paired with sleek science fiction tropes eventually birthed the cyberpunk movement. Even the banal romantic comedy is a cross-pollination of two seemingly incompatible narrative types that merged to form the silver screen equivalent of apple pie and ice cream.

It may sound like the title of the latest romance manga, but Nat Gertler's Wife Gets Smart, Makes Husband Happy is a time capsule of comic strips that gives insight to an era in the United States where food rationing was enforced and families were encouraged to grow their own food so that more processed food was available for American soldiers.

Settled in the 9th century by seafaring Scandinavian explorers, Iceland sits alone just below the Arctic Circle amid the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, its imposing, glaciated, volcanic shores having evolved from one of the poorest areas in Europe into one of the most technologically advanced, peaceable and ecologically friendly nations on Earth. Yet in spite of its modern reputation as a marvel of renewable energy and beloved tourist destination, Iceland retains a crucial mystique. The average American's knowledge of the island has less to do with its Viking-era sagas and eddas than with its quirky cultural oddities--Björk, the Icelandic Phallological Museum, Keeping Up With The Kattarshians, svið (Google it at the risk of losing your appetite)--but to simply accept Iceland as a place of cute eccentricities is to ignore its shadowy legacy.

"My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring." --Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde