| White of the Moon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| edited by Stephen Jones | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pumpkin Books, 339 pages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A review by Georges T. Dodds
Besides the excellent stories, White of the Moon's editor, Stephen
Jones, had also included excellent little blurbs with each story. In addition to the usual listing of the author's latest works
and literary achievements, Jones has allowed each writer to outline the origin and/or genesis of their story. The book
also includes a nice creepy frontispiece (and an end-piece) by Randy Broecker.
Late 19th century scientific studies in psychiatry, neurobiochemistry, endocrinology and related fields signalled the
death knell of the traditional English ghost story. Ghosts can now be attributed to any number of neuroses or biochemical
imbalances. This is manifested by Ramsey Campbell's "Agatha's Ghost" where an old woman believes she is being haunted by her
nephew, when she is merely sinking into paranoia about his attempts to help her. However, at the opposite
extreme, "Getting a Life" by Terry Lamsley couches a tale of possession from beyond the grave in the thinnest of psychological context.
Even before Freud and Jung, writers were exploring the progression of madness and its treatment. As early as 1862, Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould was describing lycanthropy in terms of a psychological disorder in his The Book of Werewolves. In
his In a Glass Darkly (1886), Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, includes a story where haunting was treated as a psychological
disorder. During the same era, French authors like Henri Rivière ("La seconde vie du Dr Roger"), Guy de Maupassant
("Le Horla") and Jules Lermina ("Les fous"), dealt with schizophrenia, paranoia, and even an insane obsession centred on
drilling holes through lunatics' skulls to somehow "see" their insanity... all stories that would fit perfectly into
White of the Moon.
The now ever-popular psychotic human predator, glorified in such works as Jim Thompson's
The Killer Inside Me (1952) or Robert Bloch's Psycho (1959), have been around since the literary spinoffs
of Jack the Ripper. Sexual psychopaths in particular were the subject of study as early as R. von Krafft-Ebing's 1886
Psychopathia Sexualis (a very funny book by today's standards). A number of the stories in
White of the Moon deal with such individuals. The narrator of David J.
Schow's "Unhasped" recreates the timeline of his crimes through a collection of mementoes; Christopher Fowler's
killer in "Home Again" is triggered by the changes progress has wrought on his idealized childhood working-class
neighbourhood; Graham Masterton's character in "Friend in Need" shifts his guilt to his friend's imaginary-friend he
himself has imagined; Joel Lane's character in "Another Frame" temporarily escapes his conscience in Amsterdam's red
light district; the mother in "Little Contrasts" by Kathryn Ptacek is baking up the family that took her for granted;
and in Kim Newman's "You Don't Have to be Mad..." the Pleasant Green Centre doesn't cure you, it moulds you into the
best killing machine you can be. However, through all of these the accent is on the aberrant psychology, not on the
graphic violence of the crimes.
Another group of stories delve into particular phobias, manias or delusions. In Caitlín R. Kiernan's "Rats Live on
no Evil Star," a young man with a Fortean view of the world protects the woman down the hall from what she cannot see;
"Heat," by Steve Rasnic Tem, deals with a pyrophilic woman obsessed with the fiery death of her family; in "I Spy," by
Paul J. McAuley, the first person narrator explains his evolution from an abused/neglected child to a voyeuristic
homicidal megalomaniac (to name only a few of his qualities).
Some stories are of alternate or not-so-alternate realities.
In one of the most striking of the stories, "Collecting Dust" by Gregory Frost, a crumbling family is doing just that;
in "The Roundabout" by Nicholas Royle and "The Strange Case of X" by Jeff VanderMeer, authors are trapped in literary
worlds of their own or others' creation; and, in "Welcome" by Michael Marshall Smith, a misdated computer file presages
the person's passage to another level of existence.
White of the Moon also includes stories about taking the concept of feng shui in redecorating to
extremes ("Feng Shui" by Roberta Lannes); an ex-child star who helps rather than hinders a stalker ("Whatever Happened
to Baby June" by Jay Russell); an internet site that predicts the same death date for everyone on Earth ("The Clock
that Counts the Dead" by Edward Bryant); a modern-day witch who, in a nice quasi-noir tale, learns that revenge has
its price ("Rose, Crowned with Thorns" by Brian Stableford); and a widely prescribed psychiatric drug that induces
suicide ("A New Force of Nature" by Lisa Morton). The title story is in fact a poem by Jo Fletcher of a mother's fear
of what effect the moon will have on her child.
If you're looking for your typical teenage-slashing, hockey mask-wearing psychos or guys with pincushion heads,
White of the Moon isn't for you. However, if you are looking for a solid set of intelligent stories set in and
around decaying minds, well then, when THEY aren't watching, listen to that little voice in your head (No, not that one!)
and pick up a copy of White of the Moon; it might just be therapeutic.
Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. |
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