The Scotsman Abroad | We Need to Talk

I suppose it's fair to say that the summer's behind us. The summer holidays certainly are.

For most folks—most adults, I mean—that's got to be good news, because instead of treasuring them as we used to do, we tolerate them, if we're honest. The weather is an almost constant disappointment, except for the midges and the mozzies. The entertainment we all enjoy the rest of the year round goes away, and in its place? Big budget, lowest common denominator nonsense that leaves the likes of us with The Great British Bake-Off and little else to distract ourselves from the influx of children suddenly under our feet in the street.

But as a full-time teacher, a regular reviewer of books—books that take me ten times as long to read as they used to do—a columnist for Tor.com and, lest we forget, a boyfriend to my better half of damn near a decade, the summer holidays have, in recent years, come to mean something very real to me: a chance to make some changes. To finally follow through on a few long put off promises. Maybe even realise the dreams I've dreamed for decades.

The thing of it is, the summer holidays also represent an opportunity to rest, and most years, that's about all I end up doing.

This year, though, I figured fuck it, I'll catch my breath when I'm dead, and in the seven weeks of the summer holidays, I made some of those long-delayed changes. I kept a couple promises—to myself and my nearest and dearest. Readers: I even realised a dream!

Not to start the show with the show-stopper, but folks, I finally stopped smoking: a nasty-ass habit I picked up when I was 15 and swore to shake before it was too late.

I started running. First a mile every morning. Then two when I found one wasn't quite cutting it. These days, I don't feel right about my routine until I've finished a 5k.

Last but not least, like many readers, I've always nursed notions of writing stories of my own. Truth be told, I don't know if I have a novel in me, but as it happens, I do have a few short stories. One of those—the first work of fiction I ever submitted, in fact—a 2,000 word tale called 'Let's Play'—is widely available as of today.

We Need to Talk features original work from Daisy Buchanan, Robert Sharp, Kim Curran, Andreina Cordani, Amy McLellan and over a dozen more—all stories inspired by (very) difficult conversations! 

All proceeds are given to the women's cancer charity, The Eve Appeal. September is Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month, and [Jurassic London, in collaboration with Kindred, is] proud to support their efforts. 

The lovely paperbacks are exclusively available through Foyles, who are currently selling the book at a chunky discount (seriously, it is under a fiver). For those of a more digital inclination, the ebooks can be found on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Just to be published would have made my summer. To be published by a publisher I have such immense respect for, alongside an array of properly awesome authors, and in support of such a phenomenally positive cause?

I can hardly begin to express how very much being featured in We Need to Talk means to me, but it'd mean that much more if I could share it with a few of you.

If you like it, let me know!

Bargain Books | Day of The Book of the Dead

A mailshot from the Jurassic London lot last night alerted me to a one-day-only deal that I'd be doing you all a disservice not to talk about. The story goes:

Amelia Edwards—author, suffragette, archeologist and founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund—is receiving a well-deserved Blue Plaque from English Heritage [today]. 

The Book of the Dead, our anthology of all-original mummy fiction, is dedicated to Amelia Edwards. As a novelist and talented writer of the supernatural, an outspoken champion on social issues and a pioneering archeologist, she is an inspiring figure in every way. 

In her honour, we're giving The Book of the Dead away for free for 24 hours—you can download it from any Amazon site. We want to spread the word about Amelia Edwards, great, contemporary mummy-fiction and the hard work of our partners at the Egypt Exploration Society, so please: treat yourself to a copy of this amazing (multiple-award-nominated) anthology, and also tell your friends!

That's what I did, and that's what I'm doing!

Given that the publisher is a not-for-profit, I'd have felt far worse about bagging a digital edition of The Book of the Dead for free if I hadn't already plunked a few pounds down for a copy of the paperback. Say you feel the same or similarly: why not show your support by buying Unearthed, the companion piece to The Book of the Dead, or else Jurassic London's latest anthologies, Jews vs. Aliens and Jews vs. Zombies?

One way or the other, don't miss your window, because The Book of the Dead is—as I wrote in my review—incredible.

Book Review | Irregularity, ed. Jared Shurin

During the Age of Reason, the world’s greatest minds named, measured and catalogued the world around them.

They brought order and discipline to the universe. Except where they didn’t.

Irregularity collects fourteen original stories from extraordinary literary voices, each featuring someone—or something—that refused to obey the dictates of reason: Darwin’s other voyage, the secret names of spiders, the assassination of Isaac Newton and an utterly impossible book.

***

Most books are dedicated to people near and dear: to friends or family members of the minds behind the literary leaps such documents detail. Sometimes other authors or artists—figures of miscellaneous inspiration without whom some key element of the texts in question may have foundered or failed—are acknowledged in the aforementioned fashion. It's a rare thing, though, to see a dedication made not to a someone, but a something.

Irregularity is exactly that. It's an anthology dedicated to an idea, to an abstract: "to failure," in fact—though the text itself is a tremendous success. As an enterprise it is "no less than wonderful, and it seemed to me that every man of scholarship, every man of imagination, regardless of his language or place of birth, should find in it something extraordinary." (p.156) Lo, like The Lowest Heaven before it, the latest collaboration between Jurassic London and the National Maritime Museum showcases an audacious assemblage of tales arranged around an inspired idea: that we as a people were in a way robbed by the Age of Reason. 

Richard Dunn and Sophie Waring explain:

For this volume authors were asked for stories by the history of science from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. [...] It was an extraordinary period that saw important institutions created, amazing inventions, the harnessing of new power sources, countless discoveries and a tireless drive to classify almost everything. 

But there is a danger in hindsight. Science does not progress through a simple succession of ideas and inventions. False leads abound, and the theories and inventions that now look to have been the clear winners were not so obvious at the time, when alternative lines of attack showed equal promise. (p.284)

It is these false leads that Irregularity is interested in, in the main; these attempts "by the process-minded men of the Age of Reason to exert dominion over the mysteries of Creation." (p.128) To know is a noble goal, no doubt, but at what cost does understanding come?

Book Review | The Book of the Dead, ed. Jared Shurin

The Book of the Dead addresses the most fascinating of all the undead: the mummy. This anthology includes nineteen original stories of revenge, romance, monsters and mayhem, ranging freely across time periods, genres and styles. Paul Cornell takes an Egyptian monarch on an unusual — and contemporary — journey to redemption in 'Ramesses on the Frontier'; Gail Carriger gives readers a peek into the history of the Parasol Protectorate series and the Tarabotti family in 'The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar'; Maria Dahvana Headley raises discomfiting new questions about the candy industry in 'Bit-U-Men'; and Jesse Bullington features a young man who finds an unlikely role model in 'Escape from the Mummy’s Tomb.'

Illustrated by Garen Ewing, creator of The Adventures of Julius Chancer, and introduced by John J. Johnston, Vice Chair of the Egypt Exploration Society — which The Book of the Dead is published in collaboration with — the anthology also contains new stories from David Thomas Moore, David Bryher, Molly Tanzer, Sarah Newton, Lou Morgan, Maurice Broaddus, Adam Roberts, Michael West, Den Patrick, Roger Luckhurst, Jenni Hill, Glen Mehn, Jonathan Green, Louis Greenberg and Will Hill.

***

Once upon a time, genre fiction made much of the mummy, but in recent years, as its undead brethren have taken centre stage in the popular consciousness — all blood and brains of late — this staple of scary stories through the ages, from Bram Stoker through to R. L. Stine and the like, has as good as gone to ground.

It's hardly hard to imagine why. What the mummy represents is more abstract, after all, and thus markedly harder to capture than the vampire's transgressive sexuality or the insatiable hunger of the modern zombie, so in literature and in cinema, the mummy has frequently been depicted as rather ridiculous, such that the whole concept seems — not to put too fine a point on it — kinda sorta silly.

But then, so did the prospect of Transylvanian vampires and hobbling zombie mobs until certain stories gave them a new lease of life. In The Book of the Dead, the latest anthology project out of Jurassic London — the same not-for-profit small press behind The Lowest Heaven, which impressed me immensely — nineteen authors new and old do their damndest to make the mummy relevant again, and most, indeed, succeed.

Working in collaboration with the Egypt Exploration Society, whose Vice Chair introduces the book, and with occasional illustrations by Garen Ewing, creator of The Adventures of Julius Chancer, editor and Tor.com irregular Jared Shurin has assembled in The Book of the Dead an eclectic assortment of shorts that cumulatively recast the classic narratives we have come to expect from stories out of the mummy mold.