Oculus Reviews: The past is in your blood

"Have you the blood, John?"

Welcome to the first Oculus Reviews in a year, folks.

If you're like me, you know that hunting down underrated and lesser-known genre books is the literary equivalent of going out into the Wild West - you never know what you'll find along the way. Sometimes you unearth a lost classic like the Terminator novelization; sometimes you find a book that makes you long for the excitement of unloading the washing machine. And sometimes it's Nazi Leprechauns.

Today isn't one of the "lost classic" days, because the book I'm about to review is still in print and relatively easy to find; but it's definitely a quieter gem of the horror paperback boom, one that is little talked about by non-fans of niche horror literature and very much appreciated by fans of it. Which includes me now, because this book bewitched me the way maybe not a single non-King horror read has managed to do.

"Have you the blood, John?" begins Alan Ryan's 1984 novel Cast a Cold Eye, setting the mood with a single sentence for a beautifully written, evocative ghost story, set in the wildest parts of Ireland where the past still rules the present. Jack Quinlan, an American writer of Irish descent, decides to travel to the country to do research for his latest historical novel, which takes place during the Great Famine. At first everything goes well: he meets friendly Irish beauty Grainne, with whom he shares a real spark, and finds himself a nice place for research in the isolated village of Doolin. But Doolin has a few secrets hanging heavy over it, secrets Jack senses immediately: ghostly figures in the road at night, old folk doing something inexplicable in the cemetery, a strange distance in the behavior of the friendly old priest, Father Henning (easily my favorite character in this, besides Grainne). And naturally, the more time Jack spends reaching for the ghosts of the past, the more they reach back for him.

Where do I even begin with this book? Let me say first that the William Peter Blatty quote on the front, unlike a lot of these paperback praise quotes, is entirely accurate: the late Alan Ryan's prose is something to behold. Literate, moody, atmospheric - these are just a few words to describe it. He had a real skill with painting a scene with his words; his descriptions of the gloomy Irish countryside, the lashing cold rain, the muddy sheep grazing on the hillsides were vivid and almost poetic, without ever going into purple prose, the bane of my existence. Listen to these descriptions:

In the village of Doolin, where the breezes carried the salt and scent of the ocean onto the stone-strewn hills, a man named Padraic Mullen was nearing death.

The circle of people stood silent among the graves. Near Jack's feet, a stone, its inscription long ago blurred away by wind and rain, leaned over as if weary of its own weight.

It's books like this that make me want to become a writer myself. The atmosphere, that sense of foreboding and dark secrets, is done perfectly in every single sentence. Even before Jack witnesses the four village elders pouring a vial of blood into an open grave, we already know that Doolin is a haunted place, and I don't mean it in the ghostly sense (oh, that comes later): a place haunted by history and old customs, and by the very real horrors of the Great Famine. Ryan sketches the picture rather subtly, and rarely ratchets up the quiet chill into real terror... but when he does, oh man. The scene where Jack hears a baby crying outside his house on a foggy day and goes to investigate ended with some of the most shocking imagery I have seen in a horror novel; not grotesque like a Barker or in-your-face like a splatterpunk, but something that honestly chilled me to the bone. Too many horror writers never learned how to write a scene like this.

The character portraits, too, are wonderful. Jack, I'll admit, won't be my favorite protagonist ever (if I never see another straight white male writer in a horror story it'll still be too soon), but he does feel like a real person, rather than a blank slate or a thinly veiled self-insert. He's a bit of a tool sometimes: his approach to historical accuracy is basically "if I research too much it'll bog down the book, so I'll just make up a few things" - I can almost feel my writing circle cringe collectively as I write this - and he's not above spying on a funeral if it means inspiration for a new scene. But I'd rather have a flawed protagonist than a bland one, so that's more than fine with me. Jack's chemistry with Grainne is open, easy and sincere, an affectionate but down-to-earth romance that brings a little warmth into the cold seaside air of Doolin. Father Henning, the old men and women and the quiet, hard-faced sons of the village all felt like people I could have met and walked among, the sense of community - one of the central themes of this book - subtly woven into everything they said and did.

The plot of this book is, I think, what will make it or break it for horror fans. Relatively little actually happens: a lot of the story concerns Jack's comings-and-goings, his relationship with Grainne, and his slow discovery that something past his understanding is happening in Doolin. Which, again, is fine with me: the sense of something big slowly approaching, the ghostly secrets teased and hinted at, and the simple, believable character dynamics carried this book forward and absorbed me a lot more than a 100-page trashy romp would have. (Nothing wrong with trashy romps, of course, but they don't attract me nearly as much as thoughtful chillers like this one.) And the finale... "Beautiful" is the only word that comes to mind. But if you like your monsters, entrails and adrenaline, you won't get it in Cast a Cold Eye. What you will get is a haunting, at places almost lyrical slow-burn story of relationships, community, kinship and the power of old traditions. Whether that is your kind of book, I can't tell - but I know it will stay with me for a while.

Writing: Some of the best I've read outside of straight-up literary fiction. 5/5

Availability: While this probably isn't a book you'll find on every bookstore shelf like a King or a Koontz, it never quite fell out of print either, and used copies of it - even the first edition I own with this gorgeous Gothic cover - go for relatively cheap as far as I could tell. And if that's not for you, there's always the ebook. 4/5

Entertainment value: This is one of the most absorbing horror books I've ever read, but I know the slow pace and ominous atmosphere aren't for everyone. 4/5

Do I recommend it?: I'm biased because I love this book, but yes - very much. As a matter of fact, this is a new favorite for me, not just from this year, but from the genre in general. 5/5

Oculus Presents: The eighth passenger is Death

Hi, folks, welcome to Oculus Presents.

I'll be honest with y'all: the Hungarian title for Alien is mad dumb. A nyolcadik utas: a Halál (see the title of this post for the translation) is eye-catching, sure, but it doesn't represent the sheer dread in this movie nearly as much as the enigmatic original title - hell, it sounds more like the title of an Ingmar Bergman vehicle than 70's sci-fi horror. On the other hand, the first Hungarian cover for Alan Dean Foster's novelization might be one of my favorite book covers ever.

This edition is a 1987 release from the prolific speculative fiction publishing house Kozmosz Könyvek, translated by Piroska F. Nagy. I'll confess I haven't read it all the way through - I usually try to read books in their original language if I speak it - but the first few chapters had exactly the sort of moody, dreamlike tone you could expect from a cover like that. The work of artist Pál Varga, this cover evokes more the mood of vintage "cold" sci-fi flicks like Solaris or THX 1138, but at the same time it's actually faithful to the story, which is always welcome on a genre fiction book cover. The novelization has been released twice more in Hungarian with deeply "meh" covers (although hopefully better translations: as much as I liked the atmosphere of this version, it drove me nuts that both Ripley and Lambert were referred to as "girl" rather than "woman" by the narration, ugh), but the first edition of it is a real gem of Hungarian sci-fi publishing.

Oculus Presents: Another find for the Shelf O' Stuff

Welcome to Oculus Presents, folks.

I confess that for a long-ass time, I'd only known Patricia Highsmith as the author of the novel The Price of Salt (nowadays also published as Carol, after the movie adaptation), a groundbreaking piece of 1952 lesbian fiction. And then I found out she was actually a very acclaimed crime and thriller author of such classics as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. I know it usually happens the other way around when people get into her books, but either way, she's been on my to-read list for a while.

And then I found a copy of this book in a used bookshop.

Those Who Walk Away apparently is one of Ms. Highsmith's lesser-known thrillers, but it is still relatively widely read (bestselling crime author here) and has been published many times, in various languages. However, this particular edition with the wonderfully unsettling cover was released by Pan Books in 1970 as part of the very obscure Best of American Crime Fiction series (not to be confused with the other series titled The Best of American Crime Fiction, which came earlier and had a very different cover art style). And it is pretty much impossible to find on the internet. Nothing on Goodreads and Abebooks, nothing on eBay; only a few question marks from Pan paperback collectors, and copies for sale of various other books from this same series. Eventually I managed to dig up a blog entry on the Pan Books collectors' website, TiKiT, which includes at least a photo of this edition of Those Who Walk Away in the TiKiT catalog, proving that this is in fact a thing that people know about. I haven't the foggiest how valuable this edition is, nor do I particularly care, but it's definitely one of the hardest-to-find books I've tried to track down, especially from such a famous author. Whether the contents will hold up to that creepy cover remains for me to see, but I'm very glad to place it on the Shelf.

Update: I forgot to credit the designer behind this magnificently scary cover art - the back cover of the book tells me it's the work of one Tom Simmonds. Hats off, Mr. Simmonds.

Oculus Presents: A really... interesting new purchase

Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Presents.

Welp... I guess I own this now.

For those of you who don't speak German: this is a German-language edition of the infamous Stephen King novel Rage, published in 1977 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (my German copy is dated 1995, and is a reprint of an earlier translation). Rage has achieved some uncomfortable notoriety in horror circles as being, to this date, the only Stephen King novel he personally had pulled from print (don't get me wrong, copies can be found, but it's a novel of his you won't see getting a new edition any time soon). And when Stephen "I wrote a story about self-cannibalism" King feels he's crossing a line, you know you're in for some harrowing stuff.

Let's not beat around the bush: Rage is a novel about a school shooting, and the reason why King let it fall out of print is because it has become associated with real-life tragedies similar to its plot. I've never read it, nor did I particularly feel like it until lately - I like boundary-pushing fiction as much as the next guy, but fictionalized tragedies make me feel uncomfortable as hell. I don't feel like horror has a moral responsibility towards its fans because that would be a real after-school special kind of view of the genre, but there are some topics I simply do not feel like reading about when I'm trying to have fun (well, a given definition of "fun", seeing how horror usually aims to stir some darker emotions). Especially because those topics are usually chosen and handled by hack authors only aiming to shock and disgust, with all the tact and delicacy of a rabid elephant.

But this copy of the book has been beckoning at me from a used bookshop for months now, man. As a sort of horror and genre fiction collector, the idea of owning a copy of this notorious King novel, even in a foreign-language edition, had a sort of odd appeal to me. And I ended up giving in to that. I don't actually speak German despite studying it in middle school, and like I said, this novel wasn't very high on my TBR list anyway; but I do aim to learn the language, if only for the sake of reading Amok someday. Am I gonna enjoy it if I do? Probably not. But now I've gotta, I guess.

Oculus Presents: Vintage Hungarian sci-fi goodness

Welcome back to Oculus Presents, folks.

Pre-90's Hungarian speculative fiction was... Well, it sure was. Oh, there's some truly legendary stuff out there - Péter Zsoldos was one of our pioneers of science-fiction and even had a literary award named after him, the old run of the sci-fi magazine Galaktika is still fondly spoken of for bringing the stories of the genre greats into Hungary (as for the resurrected version of the magazine, let's... just not go into that) and even early literary fiction giants like Mór Jókai, Frigyes Karinthy and Mihály Babits had written some genuinely creative fantastic fiction that stand out as true curiosities in the genre. Translations of stuff like Soviet sci-fi, classics like The Black Corridor as well as unapologetic pulp fiction have brought color to everyone's bookshelves since the second half of the 20th century. But there have been some truly mediocre, forgettable and straight-up unbearable Hungarian sci-fi books out there as well. I suppose that's just Sturgeon's Law for you, but there's one particular, not very fondly remembered Hungarian sci-fi anthology that still lives in my brain rent-free. For reasons.

moly.hu

Morel találmánya is a 1986 speculative fiction anthology released in Bucharest by the publishing house Kriterion, edited by Hugó Ágoston and illustrated by artist Géza Nagy. It collects stories from Voltaire, Guy de Maupassant, several Hungarian authors and others, as well as the somewhat famous novella by Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, which also gives the anthology its title. It's a book which I have seen in literally every single used bookstore and library I've ever set foot into, and my family owns a copy as well, but even though it's everywhere in the literary scene, it's not widely read at all. Oh, boy.

The truth is that this anthology is just... not super great. It does contain a few interesting tidbits of Hungarian and European speculative fiction history (I'd legit had no idea that Voltaire had written sci-fi until I opened this book), but several of the stories chosen are stuffy, bloated and dated, more curiosities than actually enjoyable reads. I'll admit that I've tried and failed to get through this book a few times in the past; but there are reasons I'm featuring it on the blog.

Reason one: two of the stories. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant is by far the highest point of this book, a suffocating 1887 horror tale with only a tinge of the fantastic. More than anything, it's a tale of slowly mounting paranoia and dread turning into near-insanity, as the nameless narrator's life gets twisted and dominated by a mysterious creature haunting his home: a being he simply calls Horla. You can read the story at East of the Web, just be sure not to do it when you're home alone in the dark (or hell, that might just be the perfect way to read it), because I'm not kidding when I say that this is one scary-ass tale - a near-perfect example of pre-Lovecraft eldritch horror.

The other story in this book that's seriously worth reading is Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares's award-winning 1940 novella, The Invention of Morel. I also hesitate to call it a sci-fi story, as it calls to mind more the maddeningly logical, labyrinthine and unsettling works of Jorge Luis Borges (who himself commented on the story when it came out). The narrator is a nameless fugitive, hiding on what he thinks is a deserted island after his life in the outside world gets upended. Except the island isn't quite deserted: every now and then a flock of vacationers appears pretty much from nowhere, and disappears by the next day. And for whatever reason, they all totally ignore the fugitive despite his attempts to approach them. And when you find out who these people are, what they're doing on the island and why they just plain don't notice the narrator... Well, I won't spoil it for ya, but I still remember the chill crawling up my spine when I first read the conclusion to this novella. It's a little-talked about gem of fantastic fiction with a truly unsettling and suspenseful atmosphere, which culminates in an ending that won't leave your head any time soon. An absolute must-read for adventurous specfic readers who like oddities.

Now, reason two why I'm featuring this anthology here has nothing to do with the stories in it, and everything to do with the absolute creative genius of illustrator Géza Nagy. The book is full of crystal-clear and hyper-detailed black-and-white drawings, often done with a lot more style and personality than the stories themselves. The illustration for The Horla holds a truly special place in my heart as the scariest goddamn thing I've ever seen - I recall being maybe eight years old, innocently looking through the pages of the neat-looking book with the cool title, looking for something fun to read after I got through a few children's books from my family's library. And oh, god, I turned a page and got smacked in the face with freaking THIS:

Folks, I was days getting over the shock of this one. To this day I haven't seen such stark, gaunt terror captured in a drawing, except maybe in Munch's The Scream or the art of Junji Ito. An absolute, spine-tingling masterpiece.

This is my other favorite, from an odd and slightly creepy, but otherwise forgettable Hungarian story - just look at the rich details!

In conclusion... well, recommending this book would be a bit of a moot point unless you speak Hungarian, but it's definitely a real curiosity for genre fiction fans. Just not, you know, a great one. Read The Horla and read The Invention of Morel in English if you can find them, because they absolutely are worth a read - but given that both of these stories have been anthologized in other Hungarian editions, even as a Hungarian sci-fi fan it doesn't terribly bother me that this book kind of vanished from most people's eyes.

Except for the drawings. Man, those drawings.

Did somebody say vintage genre fiction shelf?

I've been organizing my library, and realized that I have a few real interesting pre-1990 genre paperbacks (except for The Lure, which is a hardcover, but it's a 70's thriller, so I say it counts) and decided to collect them in one place, just to see what they'd look like together. And they rock. Compared to some genuine literary collections out there this is a pretty meager offering; but for someone who lives in a non-English-speaking country, where I can only get these books from overseas or very occasionally from used bookshops if I get lucky, I'd say it's not too shabby.

Books from left to right:

• Gaywyck by Vincent Virga - the first ever explicitly gay Gothic romance, real eager to read this one
• Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan - a gorgeous Irish ghost story, one of my favorite non-King vintage horror reads out there
• Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier - a very praised psychological horror novel with an erotic edge by a respected genre author, also eager to get to this
• The Red Planet by Robert Heinlein - a delightfully dated sci-fi romp from 1949, and one of my first ever reads in English
• The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett - a gift from a dear friend, and a very fun (if flawed) fantasy read; not gonna review it here, because everyone and their mum knows Mr. Pratchett, but it's a respected part of my collection all the same
• Invaders From Mars by Ray Garton - a novelization of a movie I very much haven't seen, but Ray Garton had written some famously grotesque horror stuff, so I'm interested in seeing what he brings to the table here
• Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley - a reprint of a legendary horror anthology from before the great horror paperback boom, I found it a bit of an uneven read but I can absolutely understand why it was so groundbreaking at the time
• Gabriel by Lisa Tuttle - I love Lisa Tuttle, this is one of her lesser-known novels, but I'm looking forward to it; great luck to snag a reprint in good condition
• The Green Brain by Frank Herbert - featured it in just the previous post, a sci-fi book by one of the genre greats with a gorgeous cover
  
• The Cradle Will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark - also featured this one, I wasn't exactly enamored with it on first read, but the cover art is striking
• The Terrified Heart by Alicia Grace - real obscure 70's Gothic romance I found in a used bookshop (miracles do happen)
• Hawk & Fisher by Simon Green - gritty fantasy about a married couple of peacekeepers in a rough city, and the first in a pretty well-regarded series
• the novelizations for Aliens (Alan Dean Foster), The Abyss (Orson Scott Card), The Terminator (Randall Frakes, Bill Wisher) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Randall Frakes) - I live and breathe all the James Cameron movies that starred Michael Biehn (shut up, he was in T2 if you squint) and this is sort of my collection within a collection; I also own the Tombstone novelization because big fan of Mr. Biehn here, but that one is post-1990, so didn't put it on the shelf
• Vampire Beat by Vincent Courtney - a tacky crime-horror novel about a vampire cop, gotta love the concept alone
• The Lure by Felice Picano - a lurid, raunchy thriller set in the underground gay scene of the 70's, praised by Stephen King himself
  

I'll confess that I haven't read all these books yet (Cast a Cold Eye is my current read, for instance), but they all have a certain something about them - in some cases the cover art, in others the premise or the writers themselves - that makes me very eager to discover what they hold between the covers. I'm also looking to expand my collection with a few more interesting and obscure reads I hunt down in various used bookshops, so you can definitely expect more posts about Le Genre Shelf as it grows.

Oculus Presents: Three rare vintage book covers

Hey, folks, this is Oculus Presents. Again.

I'm not exactly a book collector, my occasional eBay and Thriftbooks browsing aside - as much as I love forgotten and underrated genre fiction, I'm usually content to just long from afar for the truly rare out-of-print editions that go for huge prices on the collectors' market. One of the reasons I admire Valancourt Books so much (I urge y'all specfic fans to check out their catalog and throw a few bucks their way if you can - I'm not, like, affiliated with them or anything, I just think they're really neat) is the fact that they've brought back to life a whole lot of highly sought-after books that were either very rare or flat-out impossible to track down. But it does happen sometimes that I run into a real gem during my library and used bookshop trips - something that while not completely unavailable on the market, is enough of a curiosity to catch my eye. Hell, sometimes I won't even know they're rare until I check for them on the internet. I own three particular books that are really anything but rarities by themselves - but the editions in my library are very little known and very eye-catching, so I thought I'd share.

First off is this 1966 Pan Books Ltd. edition of Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie. I know Agatha Christie books are about as far from rarities as you can get - can't throw a stone in a bookshop or a library without hitting one - but this particular edition by London publisher Pan Books has pretty much vanished from consciousness, and I've seen copies of it go for 16 dollars and above. Not too shabby for a bestselling novel. Still, it's a shame, because I really dig the colors and the general layout of this cover - simple, but eye-catching with a real classy vintage flair. The book itself I've read and loved; I really think every single fan of crime fiction owes it to themselves to read at least one Agatha Christie book in their lives.

Mary Higgins Clark was a bestselling thriller and mystery writer, so also not what you'd call a rarity on the speculative fiction market; but this 1981 edition of one of her novels, published by Fontana Press, caught my eye with the absolutely gorgeous cover art at a used bookshop enough that I'd bought it on the spot. It's not a rare printing, per se, but it's definitely one of the harder-to-find ones; for a while I couldn't even track down a good-quality cover photo, which is a bit surprising given the gazillion editions of this book out there. I tried reading the book a while back and found the writing unbearably stuffy and one-dimensional, but I'll definitely be giving it another chance. I mean, I can't just not read a book I own with a cover this pretty.

Last, but not least, the 1973 New English Library version of Frank Herbert's The Green Brain is one of my favorite book covers ever printed. The colors, the composition, the rich detailing - an all-around masterpiece by cover artist Bruce Pennington. I've heard good things and bad things about the book itself, but the first few pages I'd read a bit back piqued my curiosity. I'll definitely feature this book in more detail on the blog, once the sci-fi mood strikes me again. And for extra charm, look at this inscription on the title page of my copy of this book:

I suppose we shall see if this book will also make me understand that insects are friends...

Oculus Presents: The story of my favorite Hungarian horror cover

Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Reviews. It's uh. Been a while, hasn't it.

IRL stuff has kind of eaten up my time and energies in the past year or so, hence me heinously neglecting this blog, but honestly, the more time goes on, the more I miss being able to talk in-depth about genre fiction that I love. I have found some true underrated gems in the year that has passed since my last post on this blog, as well as some true duds - stuff that has embroidered itself into my brain for whatever reason, but also stuff that relatively few people have heard about in the grand scheme of things. I mean, I probably won't surprise anyone by saying that Frank Herbert's Dune books are masterpieces, but how many of you folks have heard about his novel The Green Brain?

Bottom line: we're back with a vengeance, baby. And to kick off things, let me present my favorite Hungarian edition of the one and only Dracula by Bram Stoker:

I still recall the surprised euphoria I'd felt years and years ago (I don't think I was older than 14) when I found this book in my favorite used bookshop, although back then I was too excited to read it to really stop and savor this fantastic cover art. I really dig the sharp, surprising color scheme as well as the ghastly imagery that evokes old tapestries or perhaps woodcut art; the ship episode is by far my favorite and most remembered of the book, so I'm extra into the fact that the cover artist chose that particular bit to illustrate.

At first glance, the book doesn't name the person who drew this - even with some dedicated Google-fu, all I could dig up is that my copy is a 1989 edition by the publishing house/literary society Jókai Irodalmi Egyesület, and is the reprint of a 1925 Hungarian edition translated by Ferencz Tar. (Amazingly enough, the 1925 one was the fourth Hungarian edition of this book - looks like the readers really ate up this one.) Some more research, however, finally netted me the cover artist's name: this same cover art, only in green instead of red, adorned the cover of the 1925 edition, and was drawn by acclaimed Hungarian artist Tibor Gönczi-Gebhardt. Not sure who in particular is interested in this bit of Hungarian literary history, but I find it really neat to have discovered a bit of lore behind one of my favorite covers ever made for a horror novel. As for whether the contents of the book hold up to my fond memories - only a reread will answer me that question, am I right?