R'lyeh Review 017

R'LYEH REVIEW

Issue 017

Pet Sematary
Stephen King
Doubleday, 1982, 413 pp. $15.95

(Reviewed by Robert M. Price)

Welcome back, Stephen King. Welcome back to your element, supernatural horror. You've been playing in the fields of science fiction far too long.

Most of King's novels deal with parapsychology, and they are generally well-written, though I have never been able to see why Carrie made King's reputation. But if, like me, you first encountered King's work via 'Salem's Lot, you may have felt vaguely disappointed at most of his subsequent books. The Stand was a welcome relief from all those little kids with psi-powers, and after another wait, now we find ourselves home again. Pet Sematary is not just intriguing like The Dead Zone, or suspenseful like The Shining; it is a chiller.

As Lovecraft saw, the utmost horror would be the unraveling of the reliable if dull network of "natural law" we all take for granted. But in most of King's novels, this never really came into question. Except for die-hard "rationalists" who explain away every piece of evidence for the paranormal like a fundamentalist harmonizing a biblical contradiction, most of us probably reserve things like ESP and telekinesis in a mental drawer labeled "potentially real". So if these phenomena turned out to be authentic, even on the phlegethonic scale of Charlie's powers in Firestarter, we would not be all that staggered by it. But suppose someone were to rise from the grave?

In Pet Sematary, that is what happens, and it is not a pretty sight. Louis Creed loses his creed of agnostic naturalism as events gradually force him to accept increasingly insane outrages against what he has always accepted as "reality".

Creed, a doctor, takes an infirmary job at a college in Maine, moving his family into a nearby rural neighborhood. His house just happens to be butt up against a hill atop which is the pet cemetery of the title. Beyond it, past a swamp and up a flight of megalithic stairs, is an abandoned Micmac Indian burying ground. Legend (actually local memory) has it that anything buried there soon returns (most of the way) to life. A grandfatherly neighbor initiates Louis into these mysteries when the latter's daughter's cat gets run over. After an eerie interment, the cat returns, but not quite the same as before --- a little zombified.

Eventually a child dies, and the hero wrestles with the obvious question: dare he try to resurrect the boy? Despite warnings natural and supernatural, he decides he will try. At this point, readers should note a tour-de-force. How often have we jeered at what Darrell Schweitzer has aptly called "character gullibility in weird fiction"? Wouldn't any fool know not to go into those woods, not to speak that formula, etc.? But they always do! Usually we wink at such implausibilities because we realize that the character doesn't know what we know: that he is in a horror film or story. But Louis Creed, in effect, does know it. He has seen enough nightmares (literally) come to life (again, literally) to expect anything. Yet with his typical narrative skill, King paints a picture of the crushing anxieties and the will-o-the-wisp temptations that so often in real life drive us to desperate and clearly ill-fated courses. If we would be willing to give a cruel lover one more chance, if we would be willing to place that bet, try that crazy gambit, and we usually are, why then, we would probably risk resurrecting our beloved child as a zombie. It is only Louis Creed's concrete option, not the fact of his choice, that is so unusual.

But there are many other things King makes believable as well, standard scenes and themes of horror fiction that you would have written off as hackneyed beyond redemption. A ghost pausing on the back steps, then retreating, downstairs while you are falling asleep. Townspeople catching strange sight of someone whose funeral they'd all attended. The Wendigo.

"He told himself not to be ridiculous, to be like Jud and avoid ideas about what might be seen or heard beyond the Pet Sematary --- they were loons, they were St. Elmo's fire, they were the members of the New York Yankees' bullpen. Let them be anything but the creatures which leap and crawl and slither and shamble in the world between. Let there be smiling Episcopalian ministers in shining white surplices . . . but let there not be these dark and draggling horrors on the night side of the universe."

Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard
L. Sprague deCamp, Catherine Crook deCamp, and Jane Whittington Griffin
Blue Jay Books, Inc., 1983, 377 pp. $16.95
Colletor's Edition $32.00

(Reviewed by Marc A. Cerasini and Charles Hoffman)

November, 1983, heralds the appearance of the first full-length biography of Robert E. Howard: Dark Valley Destiny. This project, the work of five years, was the brainchild of L. Sprague deCamp and was brought to fruition with aid of his collaborators, Catherine Crook deCamp and the late child psychologist. Dr. Jane Whittington Griffin. Like DeCamp's 1975 biography of Lovecraft, Dark Valley Destiny is jam-packed with facts about its subject's life, times, and background, owing to painstaking research and extensive correspondence and interviews with dozens of Howard's contemporaries. This book is compelling reading for any admirer of Robert E. Howard's writings.

Many basic "facts" about Howard are here revealed as fallacies. For example, Howard's birthday has heretofore been reported as January 22, 1906, but we now learn that his birth certificate reveals the correct date to be January 24 of that year. Howard himself believed the year of his mother's birth to be 1876, but in truth she was six years older, a fact concealed from Robert all of his life. The correct spelling of Howard's mother's maiden name as Ervin is confirmed. However, while dispelling some fallacies, DeCamp and company may be propagating others. The authors express the belief that many of the exploits described by Howard in his letters were complete falsehoods, perhaps part of a Texas tall tale tradition. We feel that most were, at worst, exaggerations. The authors further contend that Howard died without ever having sex. While a welcome change from the frequent charges of latent homosexuality or sadomasochism leveled at Howard, we believe this assumption is naive. It is based on the belief that Howard would have avoided prostitutes because of the self-righteous scorn he once expressed towards their presence in his town during an oil boom. DeCamp also contends that "Gods of the North" is a rewrite of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter". But we must concur with Karl Edward Wagner that the reverse is actually the case. Nor do we feel that "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is a "plotless little sketch".

Still, the authors' conjectures are usually presented as such, and one need not agree with all their conclusions, for they provide enough biographical facts, anecdotes, and family and historical background for the reader to draw his own conclusions. DeCamp displays a more understanding attitude toward Howard here than in previous biographical essays, and he is far less judgmental of REH than he was of Lovecraft.

Dark Valley Destiny could be said to be long on facts, but short on insights. However, DeCamp wisely leaves psychoanalysis to a professional. In the early part of the book, Dr. Griffin sheds considerable light on the traumas undergone by the infant REH in the Dark Valley alluded to in the title. Thankfully, DeCamp and company extensively explore Howard's close relationship with his mother without likening it to the grotesque Freudian myth of the "Oedipus complex". An interesting new facet of Howard's personality herein revealed is his equally intense relationship with his father.

Howard's one great love affair is recounted in some detail. (Further elaboration is rumored to be forthcoming in a memoir by Novalyne Price Ellis from Donald M. Grant Publishers.) The DeCamps posit that the ill-fated romance between REH and the former Miss Price succumbed to pressure from Howard's parents.

In addition to numerous interviews, the DeCamps were granted a boon in the form of access to Howard's unpublished autobiographical novel, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs. This 54,000 word self-portrait in imitation of Jack London's Martin Eden was written by Howard in 1928 and provides a cornucopia of his thoughts and feelings. Less fortunate was DeCamp's inability to gain access to the Arkham House file of Lovecraft's correspondence to Howard. On the other hand, readers will applaud the revelation that they have Robert H. Barlow to thank (once again) for preserving the bulk of Howard's poetry for posterity. The original manuscripts were inadvertently destroyed, but not before Barlow had microfilmed them.

Dark Valley Destiny is a gracefully written, dramatic and moving account from beginning to end. The first third of the book contains a masterful segment on Howard's native Texas, and the authors devote a chapter each to Howard's parents, exploring their backgrounds, meeting, and stormy marriage. Following this, the events of Howard's early life are skillfully reconstructed. His adolescence in a boom town is explored and his professional career is examined in detail, with passing reference to many of his major stories. Howard's poetical works are scrupulously assayed for the first time, making for one of the more insightful segments of the book. Finally, the authors study the fatal fixations and character flaws and the mental and emotional turmoil that both gave birth to Howard's fantastic vision and ultimately led him to his Dark Valley Destiny.

This biography will be released in a standard hardcover edition and a special slipcase collectors edition limited to 1,500 copies. Both editions will contain over fifteen pages of photographs. The packaging leaves something to be desired in that Howard's name is overshadowed on his own biography by (surprise!) an enormous blurb shouting that the book is about THE CREATOR OF CONAN. The cover design is adequate and artist Kevin Johnson did a capable job of painting a portrait of Howard from a well-known photograph. These are quibbling concerns, however, for this first authoritative, full-length biography of Robert E. Howard is a major achievement, and the authors are to be congratulated.

Weird Tales #4
Lin Carter (ed.)
Zebra Books, 1983, 288 pp. $2.95

(Reviewed by Robert M. Price)

Under Lin Carter's editorial tenure Weird Tales was exactly the kind of thing it should have been: not simply one more anthology of current horror fiction, but an adventure in pulp nostalgia. In Weird Tales #4 we have a nice balance of new writers like Steve Rasnic Tem with new works by the old masters: "Homecoming" by Frank Belknap Long, "The City of Dread" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (mistakenly labeled a reprint on the contents page), and poetry by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Ray Bradbury. And what's an issue of Weird Tales without a trip into the Cthulhu Mythos? Editor Carter provides a nice campy one in "The Vengeance of Yig". (He preserves the 30's atmosphere nicely by having a denizen of K'n-yan wielding a "radium pistol".) Robert Aickman, not a Weird Tales saint but a horror hero nevertheless, is represented by his last tale "The Next Glade". Anthony M. Rudd's "Ooze" from the very first issue of Weird Tales needn't have been resurrected, though. Who hasn't seen it plenty of times before? Why not a rare item like Bloch's "The Brood of Bubastis"?

So Weird Tales #4 shares the virtues of its predecessors, combining new voices with Weird Tales veterans and Mythos pastiches. Though the Zebra-Carter series is now done, more reincarnations are ahead. Odyssey Publications' twelfth and last facsimile pulp reprint will be a Weird Tales collection, and a series of Weird Tales anthologies of new fiction will be edited by Sheldon Jaffery and Roy Torgeson. Let us hope they will maintain the nostalgia/continuity that alone can keep Weird Tales "Unique" over against the indistinguishable ranks of anthologies like Shadows, Fears, Terrors, Nightmares, etc.

The Arkham Evil
John Diaper
T.O.M.E. Enterprises, $8.00

(Reviewed by Scott D. Briggs)

Commissioned by Chaosium Inc., this is the second Call of Cthulhu module in chronological order. Although its physical appearance is less attractive than Shadows of Yog Sothoth, the module itself is bigger and better than Shadows. This is, I assume, because T. O. M. E. is a new gaming outfit, and can spend more time on design and play testing than a giant like Chaosium. They also want to make an impression on Call players. The last objective has certainly been accomplished!

While Shadows was fun because of its globe-spanning nature, Evil is more fun because it tests the players' abilities in role-playing to the limit, not just letting them blow away various Cthulhoid beasties. It even lets the players become Miskatonic U. students and teachers! What could be more Lovecraftian than that?

A brief summary of Evil: The players, in a series of three adventures, unravel a fiendish plot for Nyarlathotep's ravaging of Earth. First, they journey to rural Pennsylvania. There they must try to find out what is scaring the superstitious miners so. Then they go to Arizona to await the fall of an asteroid, which is apparently composed of strange materials. The whole thing leads back to the science department of Miskatonic U. . . . well, I won't reveal any more, as this module requires that the players find most everything out by themselves, with minimal sympathies from the gamemaster.

In each of the three chapters of Evil, a time-line/calendar is included. These are used to keep track of the days spent during the adventure. Also, certain events happen on certain days, unbeknownst to the players, and the Keeper must keep track of this. One of the things I was impressed with is the attention to town life in the first section specifically, and interaction among players and nonplayer characters in the adventure as a whole. There was much less of this in Shadows.