Annihilation: Book One of the Area X: Southern Reach Trilogy (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer: Interesting, cosmically horrifying ideas are relentlessly stripped of all horror and weirdness by the attenuated, flat nature of both characterization and description in this first, shortest novel of Jeff VanderMeer's double-named Area X/Southern Reach trilogy.
VanderMeer seems to be striving for the sort of vague horror of his Weird Fiction touchstone M. John Harrison, specifically in the vein of Harrison stories that include "The New Rays" and "Egnaro." Which is to say, the two Harrison stories included by VanderMeer in his massive and massively flawed anthology The Weird. Harrison's stories take place in places that seem contemporary, but vaguely so, with both time and place being disturbingly off-kilter.
So some time in the near future in the Southern United States, a research team of five women ventures into an area called Area X. They're the 13th such team. Or are they? Is this the near future or is this going on 'now'? Do the characters have names or are they only referred to by their occupations?
Our Biologist narrator lost her husband to Area X. Just getting into Area X somehow wipes one's memory of getting into Area X. The whole place is a sort of mutated dimensional space caused by Something from Outside crashing into a lighthouse some time in the past. Or that's what it appears to be. To the lighthouse, then!
Ciphers squabble with other ciphers. No one figures much out. There's a weird thing in an underground complex. There are signs of bloody battle at the lighthouse. The narrator's husband nicknamed her Ghost Bird, a nickname that doesn't seem to apply much to our characterless main character.
VanderMeer throws around italicized words and phrases like August Derleth editing H.P. Lovecraft stories. Is that intentional? Because the set-up of Area X is pretty much the set-up of Lovecraft's 1928 classic "The Colour Out of Space," in which the titular something mutates and destroys a New England landscape and everything in it.
It takes a special sort of genius to make events and things as weird as are posited in this novel so boring, so enervating to this reader that there is no way I'm reading the second and third books. Your results may vary. It all feels like horror for people too refined for horror. Not recommended.
The Color Over Occam (2012) by Jonathan Thomas: Set in and around the New England town of Occam, The Color Over Occam is narrated by Occam city clerk Jeffrey Slater. Slater and his friend Wil run a public access cable show involving their investigations of the supernatural. As the novel begins, they're paddling around the city reservoir -- once farmland but flooded since the 1920's -- investigating claims of "ghost lights" on the waters at night. And they find them. But they're not ghosts.
You see, Occam was renamed from its original 'Arkham' a couple of decades back. And readers of H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "The Color Out of Space" will quickly recognize that demon-haunted reservoir...
Thomas' first novel is a witty, cynical, often satiric addition to the Cthulhu Mythos. The problems of civic politics (and politicians covering their own asses) make for a welcome new spin on cosmic horror. There are points at which The Color Over Occam is quite funny, and not always bleakly (though Thomas does bleak too!).
I think one can read The Color Over Occam without having read "The Color Out of Space." Or perhaps preferably, read or re-read Lovecraft's story AFTER reading The Color Over Occam. Thomas deftly weaves the original into his novel without imitating Lovecraft's prose or narrative emphases.
While there's drollery and a bit of comic over-emphasis at points in the narrative, the text maintains a sense of verisimilitude throughout. How would a small-town government deal with cosmic horror building in its town? How would an amateur ghost-finder deal with potentially world-shattering events? How will Slater deal with his low alcohol tolerance? Why does office work suck so much?
The Color Over Occam compares favourably with several novels I can think of. Its occasionally hapless protagonist and the cosmic but town-centric events he's trapped within remind me of Ramsey Campbell's Creatures of the Pool and The Last Revelation of Gla'aki. The office- and civic-based comedy repeatedly reminded me of William Browning Spencer's hilarious Resumé with Monsters. And the subject matter recalls Michael Shea's fun, pulpy sequel to Lovecraft's original, The Color Out of Time.
But this novel is also its own self with an unusual mix of wit, satire, cosmic horror, and body horror that pay suitable homage to Lovecraft's great original without attempting to mimic "The Color Out of Space" in form, style, or mood. Highly recommended.
The Invisible Ray: written by Howard Higgin, Douglas Hodges, and John Colton; directed by Lambert Hillyer; starring Boris Karloff (Dr. Janos Rukh) and Bela Lugosi (Dr. Felix Benet) (1936): Borderline crazy scientist Karloff discovers 'Radium X' in Africa, a space-born mineral with both healing and killing powers. Lugosi's character figures out how to heal people with it; Karloff's character goes another way. Fun melodrama with some striking visual effects for its time, and strong performances from both Karloff and a refreshingly non-scenery-chewing Lugosi. Bears some resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft's 1928 story "The Colour Out Of Space." Recommended.
