Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Nowhere to Look

Last night I read "Gorgon", the new Caitlin R. Kiernan story in the Sirenia Digest. It's a good story that combines several elements that tend to recur in Caitlin's work; there's dialogue with a possibly dead woman in a dream state, there's a reference to "The Lobster Quadrille", and palaeontology. That last one is not so common in Caitlin's work as you might expect given that she happens to be a palaeontologist but it always adds an appreciable extra layer of credibility whenever she does include it.

Like a lot of great horror fiction, it succeeds a lot by layers of suggestion rather than direct descriptions. I especially liked one character talking about a dream she had of a strange sea beast. It's a good story.

Speaking of dreams, last night I dreamt Maynard James Keenan had died. Some friends and I were trying to get to his funeral but we got stuck in an endless labyrinth of mall service corridors. Googling Keenan to-day, the headless I see are "Maynard James Keenan has been training in the popular mixed-martial art, known for its grappling technique", and "For the past 20 years, Maynard James Keenan has worked tirelessly to bring Arizona's burgeoning wine industry to international attention." Yes, the guy who wrote "Sober" is now in the wine business. I wonder how many people have made jokes about that.

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