Continued from HERE
==========================================
The Man Who Made The Yellow God by Mark Valentine
"Oh well, all part of the oblivion I suppose."
With the years' conflation from 'Oblivion' and via the two Great German Wars (the second of which begins to well into being in the previous story), a Kiplingesque music hall star faces Troot and Immortality. This is real 'magic fiction' in actual fact. Aptly for this review, a real-time recitation-by-narration. A work of pure wit and genius, in my humble opinion. Despite the connections, it hardly touches the sides of this book.
But leads neatly to the next story... (5 Aug 10 - another 2 hours later)
The Green Dog by Steve Rasnic Tem
"And as the man in the brown chair declined, becoming less like a man and more like a piece of badly worn furniture..."
A Kafkaesque Metamorphosis: here by by overlapping rather than strict switching; I simply love this story; it makes me laugh and cry in equal measures, perhaps because it seems to relate to me and the time of my life in a revelatory way. But I'm also sure it is a great story in itself without my personal reactions to it. Another great story, you ask? Well, how can I help but call them as they are? There is is also a spooky feeling for me (as some other previous connections related above in this review are also spooky) regarding the amount of interconnections with the leitmotifs identified so far in this book: the 'shrinking' as in 'A Giant in the House', 'The Toymaker of Bremen', 'You Have Nothing To Fear' and other stories - the mirror images (so utterly twinned with 'Even The Mirror' ), the Venn dreams or dream sickness, the physical lexic oddities (here including a semi-colon that is related to genitalia), even, perhaps, the taxidermic tropes of 'Lucien's Menagerie'... (5 Aug 10 - another 3 hours later)
And how could I miss it - 'Turn Again' including the 'meat suit'. (5 Aug 10 - another 45 mins later)
Cf. the tongue-man in 'Broom People'. (6 Aug 10)
.
Haven't You Ever Wondered? by Bob Lock
"...standing on the last balcony and then stared up through the drizzly rain at the huge fan-blade which rotated majestically above him."
Bob Lock once wrote 'The Cone Zero Ultimatum', a truly mighty fiction that - in an alternate world more convincing than the so-called reality of our own world - has been adapted for the cinema and is playing to packed global audiences.
'Haven't You Ever Wondered?' chimes, like a laptop, with 'Nemonymous' generally in its latter years and more specifically with the faults and glories of this book's cover. It is surely an engaging SF tale, one about an alien creature called The Tullis sent to Earth on a mission to dissuade its Editor from publishing 'Null Immortalis'. The Editor's reward? Immortality.
I'll leave others to decide whether this vision stands alone outside of this book's context. As for me, I need to ask whether it is in fact me writing this Editor's Commentary...? I am no longer sure. Is one of the drawbacks of Immortality a complete loss of identity via the ultimate Nemonymity? Meanwhile, you have nothing to fear. (6 Aug 10 - an hour later)
.
Supermarine by Tim Nickels
"The final letter of the surnames has been patiently filed into invisibility; attempts already made on the penultimate e."
An irresistibly enticing cast of characters, intrigues and scenes. Mind-blowing. Word hypnotic.
Kay Keating -- a stage-named film star visiting a timeless but trootful version of Gibraltar, where Proustian and A.S.-Byattian fol-de-rols sumptuosuly unroll before the reader via the War times and the sea-tree present times in this last and longest story that also is the essence, subtly and/or overtly, of this book-you-are-reading's very real-time soul (assessed by its editor above) and, sweetly, represents this book's closing 'Nemonymous' valedictory -- "observes mankind's ability to shrink."
This challenging 'Supermarine' has so many spooky interconnections with the rest of the book's fiction and physical design (overlapping dream and death), only by reading this story, sticking with it, loving it, shaping it for yourself, entering each word with either a bunny cloth to shine it or a chisel to vandalise it, will reveal what I mean. It is the Collider, it is Null Immortalis - and a Scot called Tullis. However, I shall specify just one interconnection: Gibraltar, its truly memorable 'genius loci' here, like a separate part of the Body Europe that is distant from us but is us (or as this author's own 'Zencore' story-title says: England and Nowhere): e.g. the tongue-man as that in 'Broom People' or the hedgehog in 'Apotheosis' or...?
This story is the Giant in the House.
=============
I hope you enjoyed this book. It gives us Truth but spells it Troot. (6 Aug 10 - three hours later)
Or if you don't enjoy it, use it as a Tearsheet Doll. (6 Aug 10 - another four hours later)
One day, it will be a Retrocausal Epitaph for Secret Synchronicity (6 Aug 10 - another five hours later)
END
3 comments:
One of the Null Immortalis authors has pointed out to me this comment HERE from a reader about this book and the above review:
“I’ve been wanting to put something together to say here about Null Immortalis, but I just can’t find the words. No matter what I was to say about it, it just wouldn’t be enough. I don’t think I have the vocabulary to express the impact these stories have had on me. I’ll say just one thing – this book really MUST win awards. It’s the most amazing anthology I’ve ever read.”
There have been two formal reviews so far:
"I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys an anthology to savour. The subtleties, the synchronicity, the love of language. It cares not for genre, other than the general blanket of weird fiction, and blends imagination with startling humanity. The stories are ordered so that themes sometimes leak from one to the next, but best of all, they credit the reader with intelligence; there is no unecessary explanation of thread or coincidence. Null Immortalis is a respectful equal, not a weary teacher."
"NULL IMMORTALIS: NEMONYMOUS TEN is a triumph of creativity and craft that resonates in the reader’s mind long after the final page has been turned. Bravo!"
A review from Grim Blogger:
HERE.
Including...
"The stories crafted and laid out by Lewis' impeccable editorial selection amounts to nothing less than a feast for all the senses, and a gallery of literary iconography for the intellect that cannot help but prompt deep contemplation. "
"These tales, these books, are nothing less than dreams laboriously rendered into prose. The horrors, the heavens, and the gray voids in between preserved by the editor and his authors are attempts to communicate their visions on a common theme in a dialogue as labyrinthine as any philosophical discourse, and far more entertaining. Null Immortalis' probing into space, psyche, and time is four-dimensional, and few story collections ever chance at achieving this. For this reason, Nemonymous will be missed, and will one day live on in collectors' clutches, occasionally crossing vast distances for large sums of money. Null Immortalis is a distinguished epitaph for the series, but it may also drift into the future as relentlessly as the fan blades on its cover, a subversive ark intent on spawning new literary flora when and where they are least expected."
Post a Comment