WHAT THE REVIEWERS SAID
- Brain Hodge, HELLNOTES
- Roland Green, BOOKLIST
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
- Patrick Schabe, PopMatters
- Garrett Peck
HELLNOTES BOOK REVIEW:
Brian Hodge
It's taken years, but I've finally figured out who it is that John Shirley
reminds me of: Neil Young. Both are veterans of their respective crafts
who've never lost the scruffy vitality that energized their early work, who
can whisper as fluently as they can rage, and who can still keep you
guessing as to where they'll go next.
Drawing upon a quarter-century of work and from first-publication
sources as diverse as last year's Alan Clark anthology IMAGINATION FULLY
DILATED 2 and stoner mag High Times, Shirley's newest gives the fullest
possible demonstration of why you pigeonhole him at your peril. Same as his
1998 collection BLACK BUTTERFLIES, this one too is split down the middle,
with the dividing line this time being temporal: fore for stories taking
place in past or present, and aft for those set in the near-future. As
such, this central boundary mandates a distinction between horror/suspense
and science fiction, but it's a loose one, the membrane permeable, with some
of the same themes cropping up on both sides of the divide.
One of the most prominent is Shirley's incredibly sour view of the
heads of corporate state, from the powerful opener, "My Victim," in which
random murder is one more tool for the training of CEOs, to "The Prince" and
"Where It's Safe," both of which feature variations on the scenario of
revolutionaries taking business demigods hostage in order to hold them
accountable for crimes against a ravaged populace.
It really doesn't matter what the calendar says in a John Shirley
story. As THE prototypical cyberpunk, as well as the antecedent of
splatterpunk when it came to visionary extremism, Shirley nevertheless has
always been a humanity-first kind of writer, whose sympathies lie with the
outcast and downtrodden, and whose hardest-hitting work displays a
passionate concern for the direction of the mindset of society as a whole.
Every time I read "Jody and Annie on TV," the oft-collected tale of two
untalented and not terribly bright kids turned spree killers, I'm struck
more and more by how prescient it was when viewed against a retrospective
newsreel of the decade since it first appeared in 1991. In that light,
then, is the premise of "What It's Like to Kill a Man" so far-fetched? Here
Shirley postulates a time in which punishment, capital and otherwise, has
become mass entertainment -- not merely from a spectator's standpoint, but
from the participants' as well. And how are we digressing from here to
there? "In the Road" offers a few observations, with its tight compression
of key incidents in one girl's life, from early childhood to adolescence,
that perpetuate a distressing cycle of diminished empathy and increased
apathy to the suffering of others. And along the way, the path will be
littered with carnage of the sort wrought by the homegrown violent sectarian
fundamentalists of "A Walk Through Beirut," and the spent dregs of "Six
Kinds of Darkness," with its future reminiscent of SOYLENT GREEN, where
people are processed not into food, but recreational drugs.
The point could be made (and has) that when he gets wound up, John
Shirley can sometimes drive home his points with the force of a piledriver
rather than letting savvy readers extract them from between the lines. I
can't argue against that. But I will say that I'll take it any day over
work that has nothing to say.
And lest you get the impression that Shirley is in permanent broadside
mode, untrue. "Occurrence at Owl Street Ridge" finds him in a poignant
mood, as a woman gets the chance to relive a central portion of her life as
she should have, in hindsight, and he turns philosophical in the genteel
narrative of "Whisperers," as a scholarly antiquarian encounters a divine
being that inspires acts of great evil that serve an even greater good. And
"Abducting Aliens: A SubGenius Pasttime, Examined" is downright hilarious,
with its flip-flopping of the roles of mere mortals and intergalactic anal
probers.
It's time to wrap this up, but as I scan over my notes jotted while
reading, and Poppy Z. Brite's brief but cogent introduction to the book, I'm
reminded that there are a half-dozen or so ways I could've approached this
review. It's the mark of any great writer that he or she gives you more
meat, bone, gristle, and spirit to chew on than you can process all at once
... and plenty of reasons to keep trying.
In 22 stories, Shirley proves that he is a noir master, regardless of whether a particular piece is set in the present or the future. "My Victim" deals with a young hitman; "Occurrence at Owl Creek Ridge" gives a woman a choice of two dire fates; "Learn at Home" allows a character to take a correspondence course in Nazism; "A Walk through Beirut" has terrorism as a theme; and "Where It's Safe" cannibalizes (literally) one of the polluters who brought on the Great Famine. This is variety. A substantial readership is devoted to Shirley and will rejoice at having his scattered stories assembled. Newcomers to his work who can cope with its high levels of sex, mayhem, and dirty words may come to rejoice, too, in a real master of a style of fiction that probably works better in short stories than novels. --Roland Green
Spiritually undernourished souls adrift in denatured worlds of anomie and isolation are the focus of these tales of contemporary horror and near-future speculation. Though uneven in execution, the 17 reprints and four originals in Shirley's third collection in as many years (after Stoker-winning BLACK BUTTERFLIES and REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WEIRD STORIES)* alternate caustic critiques of the morally bankrupt with sympathetic explorations of personal salvation. "My Victim" is a creepy first-person account of an assassin-in-training whose mastery of dispassionate murder qualifies him to assume an ironically appropriate role in corporate life. In "Occurrence at Owl Creek Ridge," a frustrated housewife who sacrificed artistic ambitions for her family is magically allowed to sample the life of celebrity she might have enjoyed. Shirley's ire with irresponsible parents, greedy businessmen and socially detached leaders can be indelicately polemical at times, or, as in "The Prince" about a heartless real estate developer who learns compassion after a nightmarish experience in the squalor he has created emerge as unbelievably wistful idealism. His characters, however, are genuine specimens, developed with sincerity and sympathy whether embarked on killing sprees, discussing the nature of evil in the midst of a satanic rite, or, in the poignant "Nineteen Seconds," enduring the humiliation of an adolescent rite of passage. A conscientious and committed side of Shirley is on display in these tales, and it tempers the punky cynicism by which most readers know him.
[*Note: This is incorrect. BLACK BUTTERFLIES was published in 1998; REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD STORIES in 1999. DARKNESS DIVIDED, published in 2001, is the third collection in four years.)
Twenty-two Different Flavors of Hell
If you look up any reference on author John Shirley, be it his official website or any of the various places you'll find him mentioned on the Internet, it's a sure bet that you'll find reviewers and fans alike having a difficult time placing Shirley in some convenient category. While writers who defy convention and categorization aren't completely uncommon (although not common enough), it's not often that such writers exist within traditional genres. Being original and slippery is usually reserved for those writers who exist on the fringe of fiction, and at best get lumped into labels like "experimental" and "avant-garde."
John Shirley, on the other hand, stands out as a writer of incredible vision in genres as established as the clichés that surround them. Among science fiction fans and authors alike Shirley is recognized as one of the originators of the cyberpunk movement and William Gibson, who is rightly or wrongly saddled with the title "godfather of cyberpunk" and the like, credits Shirley's CITY COME A' WALKIN' as the first true cyberpunk novel and a huge influence on Gibson's own Neuromancer. Shirley's Eclipse trilogy is often considered by critics to be among the best in the field. In the horror genre, Shirley stands out alongside such prominent authors as Clive Barker for his complicated, original, and gritty stories, most notably A VISION OF HELL and WETBONES. And in the category sometimes labeled neo-noir, sometimes just called "dark fiction," John Shirley is at the head of the pack.
Shirley's most recent collection, DARKNESS DIVIDED is an introductory course into the darkness that wraps around the fictional worlds of John Shirley and gives readers who are unfamiliar with Shirley's work a real sense of why his is a literary force to be reckoned with. DARKNESS DIVIDED is so labeled because the book itself is divided on many levels. Most readily apparent is the division of the stories themselves. The first eleven tales are presented under the heading "Til Now," appropriate to the fact that they make up a group of Shirley's stories set in more or less the contemporary moment. The second set of eleven stories, under the heading "And Soon," present some of Shirley's science fiction work in his prototypical dark future.
At first glance, DARKNESS DIVIDED seems to shuttle back and forth between the two poles of horror and science fiction, but closer inspection reveals that at times the horrific elements blend into his science fiction and vice versa. Other stories reveal an entirely genre-less vision of real life, in a world that is painted in the disturbing shades of our own. The thing that ties them all together is the darkness of the title. Alternately disturbing, depressing, bleak, and painful, these stories are bound together by an acute observation of the shadows of the human soul, which makes them so powerful and compelling. Unlike many writers of dark fiction, in whatever their chosen genres may be, the specific evils of these stories are not supernatural in origin (although that type pops up from time to time as well) but are from the depths inside of us and inside of the society that human beings have created.
Be they the simple yet terrible life story of a young girl's cultured coldness to life in "In the Road," or the psychological terrors of the childhood mind in "Nineteen Seconds," or the futuristic corporate oligarchy where money and power rule to the exclusion of life in "The Prince" or "Where It's Safe," the houses of darkness rest inside our own minds and the way we act in the world. For this very reason, Shirley provides something of a catalogue of darkness (one that is even embodied in the stories "Your Servants in Hell" and "Six Kinds of Darkness"), showing that evil is never so simple as being simply evil, and that darkness comes in many shades.
Yet, in the midst of this bleak vision of humanity, there also rests hope. The antithesis of the darkness reviewed in these stories is always an option. Where one story might end on a down note, the next may give some indication of the path away from succumbing to the soul's night. In Shirley's words, "Light, too, can be folded into darkness." And in DARKNESS DIVIDED, we find some indication of that light. At times it comes in the light touch of irony that Shirley treats these maudlin subjects with. In "Tighter" a prostitute contemplates the pros and cons of taking the life of her john, only to have the tables turned and find herself fighting for her life against him. When her life is saved at the cost of the john's death, she finds her redemption without having to have paid the price of becoming a murderer. At other times, especially in the science fiction stories presented here, social messages are bluntly put forth as words of caution to contemporary readers, warning us against the direction in which we could too easily head.
If there's one message that seems to permeate through this collection, it's that human indifference and a lack of empathy are the root of what we perceive as evil in this world. While other forms of evil manifest themselves in various ways throughout these stories, it is the lack of compassion and a general devaluation of human life that are the most frightening results of human darkness. Shirley may alleviate the mood of these stories from time to time with a bit of humor (the story "Abducting Aliens" is almost farcical in comparison to some of these other tales), but what makes Shirley such a great author, and what makes DARKNESS DIVIDED a truly worthwhile collection, is his unswerving critical gaze on the secret and horrible aspects of being human.
You could pick up any of Shirley's novels and collections and discover a writer of depth and vision. In that respect, DARKNESS DIVIDED never fails to deliver. If you're already a fan of Shirley's work, this book may contain some repetitions for you, but the stories span the range of his career and include some previously unpublished work to round out your collection. If you've never picked up and read anything by John Shirley, then rush out and grab DARKNESS DIVIDED. It will leave you searching for more, and no matter how hard it may be to look into Shirley's worlds, once you do, you will realize that it's even more terrible to look away. --Patrick Schabe
John Shirley's previous collection BLACK BUTTERFLIES won both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. DARKNESS DIVIDED proves he didn't shoot his wad on one volume.*
I've long been a proponent of what I call the "Big Tent Theory" of horror. This collection is a perfect example of what I mean by that. As the title promises, these stories are dark. The division is merely one of time frame. Part One, called "Til Now", features stories set in the past and present. Stories set in the future make up Part Two, "And Soon". The range of material found in both sections defies typical genre pigeonholing. Some tales are nominally mystery; many are clearly science fiction. It's the overall dark tone that makes everything fit comfortably under the horror banner.
These stories have a great deal of social bite. When it comes to class warfare, Shirley makes it clear whose side he's on. In "My Victim" a wealthy man trains his son to murder because captains of industry cannot succeed when weighed down by compassion. Several stories in the future section ("The Prince". "What It Takes to Kill a Man", and "Where It's Safe") take place in a world ruined by corporate greed, where multi-national corporations have destroyed the environment and social structure in pursuit of further personal wealth. "Tricentennial"puts the lie to arguments for a flag-burning amendment without ever addressing the issue up front.
I found most of the stories set in Shirley's bleak future to be more horrifying than some of the more traditional horror stories found in the first section -- if anything Shirley writes can be said to be "traditional." In her brief introduction, Poppy Z. Brite notes that every writer in every field would like to be considered sui generis, reinventing his own eponymous genre with everything he writes. "John Shirley seems to achieve this with every story he writes," she asserts. The wide variety of dark fiction between these covers makes her case.
[*Note: BLACK BUTTERFLIES was not Mr Shirley's "previous" collection; REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD STORIES preceded DARKNESS DIVIDED.]
BOOKLIST