My Favourite Monster

At Weird Fiction Review, a full version of the "Favourite Monster" piece:

I have to go with a classic, Frankenstein’s monster, because Shelley’s creature doesn’t just exemplify monstrosity, it interrogates it. What makes it visually monstrous is not a matter of cheap gimmickry. Shelley doesn’t just snatch features from the animal world that naturally freak us out — mandibles, pincers, horns, tentacles, slime, so on — doesn’t just push buttons to disturb us with undercurrents of sex and power a la Stoker. I think it’s an awesome move to have the monster explicitly created from components that are all beautiful and right in and of themselves; they just don’t fit together *proportionally*. It founds monstrosity on almost a pure abstraction of Order Transgressed. Which cuts to the core of it for me...

The Built World

You begin with the barricades set around the lot, the territorial claim staked by delimitation, plywood hoardings in a neat rectangle, right-angled as a blank page in a book, stockading this city-block where reality has been bulldozed, the rubble of actualities cleared away, a hole in the experiential earth gouged for foundations to be laid.

Erasure and enclosure is how you begin, every worldbuilding a worldbulldozing. The blueprint nascent in your imagination is not an exploration but a vision; the crumbling truth of the New Sodom Palladium, that grand ballroom long since turned gig venue long since gone to dereliction, is to be eradicated from the page, an imaginary edifice to replace it utterly. I rather liked that glorious ruin, having dossed there all my life as a bum, but your built world is to be built from scratch.

A great billboard on one corner promises utopia in shiny steel and glass, or perhaps a sandstone facade, golden as Byzantium but in one neat clean-lined block, not some guddle of back-alleys grown through centuries; corridors may seek to replicate the labyrinthine, cornices may seek to style the interior baroque -- the gargoyled grotesque of mock gothic even -- but your architecture and aesthetics are purposed ultimately to consistency. As a busker passing by on the interstitial streets of New Sodom, I see little of my city's intransigent chaos in the design. This is to be no Winchester House where one might open a random door to find a twenty foot drop through fresh air. No sudden exits to the outside here.

Over days, weeks, months, maybe years, schema becomes scaffolding, exoskeleton, steel bones of cartographic ossature your world will be built within, a framework of ersatz geography, history, science... of ersatz systemicity. There will be, for your built world, an a priori essence of How Things Are, and as bricks click into place, blocks lock together into bare walls mortared with desire, it is to reify that structural and structuring semiotics in stone and cement of text. Architects working, as the Victorians, from books of stock templates -- pages upon pages of door or window frame designs -- what rises is all too often built within a How Things Are that some of us have no place in. Consistency from the inside becomes conformity from the outside. Where there are no sudden exits to the outside, it is likely there are no entries for the abject. Worse, if there are entrances for the dogs of Sodom (Old and New,) they will be special entrances, just for us, where we must don our allotted tropic garb as servants or antagonists upon entry. Others entering through the foyer will find your built world awesome. Me, not so much.

Stability, security -- as we walk the inside of the built world, everywhere we see arguments for the authenticity of the ersatz. As visiting shareholders, we readers must be persuaded constantly, it seems, that the structure is sound, not just sturdy but of an inviolable integrity. The more girders are visible, the better. Even the worldbumphing of fake girders is good -- quotes from imaginary tomes as chapter epigraphs, a colonnade of pillars supporting nothing but signifying solidity. Your readers have their demands after all. Many may simply revel in their awe, gazing from the balconies that face inward to the wonders of the atrium, exotic flora potted round a fountain of Lethe water, but there are those who would clomp a foot on every floor, bang a fist on every wall, to test that solidity, the certainty. They stand on those balconies and rattle the balustrade: is this safe? If I lean on it, I won't fall through? If you begin in erasure and enclosure, you end in emphasis and entrenchment, every worldbuilding a worldbolstering: trust me, trust me, this fortress is invulnerable to doubt.

And in the end, completed to specifications, your built world stands as a battlemented bulwark, bastions on each corner from which denizens immersed to absolute conviction defend it loyally against insult. One cannot question the honesty of the ersatz, because it is the theoretical authenticity that matters; the built world is not meant to be relevant, only valid. The absence of windows looking out is featural, the poldering the very point indeed. The bastions are heights from which to scorn the barking of dogs outside: it's all just fun; if you don't like our world, go build your own.

I seldom find your built world somewhere I wish to stay.

Story at Subterranean Press

Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!

1.
I wake curled up at the foot of the bed again, back snugged tight into the crook of my boy’s legs –tight enough to be on top of them really. He groans, slaps the alarm clock off, tries to pull the quilt over his head. Doesn’t work with me weighing it down, clambering up to lick his face.
–Get up, I say. Get up get up get up.
He shoves me away.
–Get down, he says.
I roll off the bed, grab whiffy boxers from the floor.
–I’m hungry.
He groans.
A boy and his werewolf. Truest love there is.
[Click through to read the rest]

A Song for Easter...

... dedicated with all my heart to Cardinal Keith O' Brien, the opening number from the musical I would write were I to write... a sort of sequel, shall we say, to Jesus Christ Superstar. A sequel which would just have to be called, as far as I'm concerned...

CHRIST: THE COMEBACK

SCENE: A mountain in the desert. JOSHUA* sits on a rock, stage-right. Dressed in red, THE ACCUSER stands behind him, hand on his shoulder. As the guitar riff comes in, quiet but driving, THE ACCUSER leans in to say something. JOSHUA turns, clasps his hand warmly, as a close friend saying farewell, and THE ACCUSER exits. JOSHUA stands and comes forward to face the audience. The guitar riff is insistent now, building. Think "Heaven on Their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar meets "The Spirit of Man" from War of the Worlds. Maybe throw in a little "Brave New World" and "Thunderchild" for good measure. It's all a bit more Carl Anderson / Phil Lynott than Ted Neeley, put it that way.

UPDATE: And as if by Garageband, here's one I made later (an instrumental version, that is):



JOSHUA:
Forty days in the desert with the devil, and I have not slept.
Twenty centuries watching and oh, how the two of us wept
At this rock, stumbling block, that you've built to be kings of the earth.
Now the hour's arrived to revive -- witness my rebirth!

JOSHUA whirls round and, at the sweep of his hand, the backdrop falls away to reveal:

SCENE: The Plaza of St Pilate's Cathedral. A white marble dome fills the sky, capped by a golden cross. Stage-left, a row of pulpits runs from front of stage to the back. PRIESTS and MINISTERS preach piously to the CROWD of faithful who fill the Plaza. Heads turn as JOSHUA rips loose now.

JOSHUA:
Today I am Christ, you scribes and select,
You hypocrites whipped from what's already wrecked.
Your church it was fallen the day it was built,
Your blockhead betrayed me the day I was killed.
You've denied, and denied, and denied what is true,
And all I can say now...
[beat]
Is woe unto you!

Unrest ripples through the CROWD and it turns to face him, clears a space as he strides forward to accuse the PRIESTS and MINISTERS.

JOSHUA:
You deacons and demagogues, you're the disease.
You've stolen the kingdom, you thieves of the keys.
The gates should be wide, free for all to walk in,
But you've locked out all life with your lies about sin.
Even you're on the outside, if you only knew.
So all I can say now...
[beat]
Is woe unto you!

The PRIESTS and MINISTERS react with outrage, whip up the CROWD to angry protests, but there's dissent. As JOSHUA moves into the throng, arguments erupt at its margins. Some split off from their fellows, move away, stage-right. They listen with interest.

JOSHUA:
Empty words, repetitions, petitions and prayers,
Confessions, processions, and none of you care,
For the dogs and the fuckers, the faggots and whores.
I told you to love, not to judge and play pure.
Your faith is adultery; to my word it's untrue.
Your judgement is judged now...
[beat]
Woe unto you!

The CROWD falls back now, clearing a path between JOSHUA and the PRIESTS and MINISTERS. They continue to vent their outrage, but those stage-right begin to fall in behind JOSHUA, forming a CHORUS that builds through the break.

JOSHUA:
You popes and theologists!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You Roman apologists!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You clerics and cardinals!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You evangelist carnivals!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You pastors and priests!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You greatest and least!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
You lawyers and Pharisees!

CHORUS:
Woe unto you!

JOSHUA:
Hear this prophet from Galilee: Woe!
Woe unto you!

The PRIESTS and MINISTERS come down from their pulpits to confront him, the CROWD falling in behind, pressing forward. With a cry of "Blasphemy!"an angry shove sends JOSHUA back and to the ground. He sings on from his knees, the CHORUS moving in to help him to his feet.

JOSHUA:
What do you know of the sacred inspiration?
What kind of soul rots in your revelation?
A cemetery sideshow, your chastity white
Is a crypt for the dead, full of bones and all shite.
It's not how you fuck, it's the filth that you spew.
You think you're so righteous?
[beat]
Woe unto you!

The CHORUS surge forward now, scattering the CROWD. In the confusion, JOSHUA strides through the PRIESTS and MINISTERS, takes one of the pulpits. He holds a Bible up.

JOSHUA:
You swear by your book, but it's truth that you bind.
You circle the world to make converts as blind
As your cruel indifference that blackens my name,
No mercy, no justice, no wisdom, just shame.
Lemme open your eyes, lemme buy you a clue.
Your word is worth nothing.
[beat]
Woe unto you!

He comes back down, moves centre-stage, Bible open in hand now, held up, shoved in faces as damning evidence he's confronting them with.

JOSHUA:
You quote from the scriptures the prophets of old.
You kneel to your statues with haloes of gold.
Your crucifix shone as the wine of your wrath
Was poured in your pogroms, your pious bloodbath.
You've lain all the blame in the hands of the Jews.

He throws the Bible down in fury, rounds on them all.

JOSHUA:
It was you crucified me!

He grabs a sash from one PRIEST, twirls it like a locker-room towel, whirls and whips.

JOSHUA:
Woe unto you!

Front of stage, as he sings, JOSHUA drives the PRIESTS and MINISTERS from the plaza, stage-right. Back of stage, the CHORUS send the CROWD after them, return to the Plaza that they've taken.

JOSHUA:
Woe unto you!
Woe! Woe! Woe!
Woe unto you!
Woe!

He throws the sash down, and at another sweep of his hand, as he turns back to the CHORUS, a banner drops in front of the dome of St Pilate's, a simple two-word message: OCCUPY HEAVEN.

JOSHUA:
Woe unto you!

End scene.

*NB. Jesus, Yeshua, Yehoshua, Joshua. Certain features of this opening number from a non-existent musical may or may not give you a vague notion of the content of the next novel. I can neither confirm nor deny this.