2016: The Year in Bedlam
Welcome to the first installment of my “Year in Bedlam” end-of-the-year movie rankings.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (Book)
A novelization–although a more accurate description would be a novel based on themes from THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS.
Oak-Mot
The overhauled OAK-MOT is, in Glover’s own words, “a story of epic proportions involving pride and prejudice.” It’s also confounding, perverse and demented as fuck.
NULL IMMORTALIS
As a summation of all things Nemonymous I’m unsure how this volume rates (not having read the first seven installments), but as an example of the ineffable strangeness that defines these books it’s first rate.
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, which is not to be confused with other better-known accounts bearing that title, is apparently quite revered in its native land, where it’s regularly read to children on Christmas Eve.
MERKABAH RIDER: TALES OF A HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER
This is the first of Edward M. Erdelac’s MERKABAH RIDER series of weird westerns.
MEMORIA
A provocative updating of the mad scientist subgenre of yore (see DONOVAN’S BRAIN, PROFESSOR DOWELL’S HEAD, etc.), the independently published MEMORIA encapsulates both the pros and cons of “underground” horror.
THE MAZE
The most famous work by France’s late Maurice Sandoz, a short novel of vaguely Lovecraftian mystery that still holds up–mostly.
MALPERTUIS (Book)
Although it wasn’t published in English until 1998 (in an edition now sadly out of print), Jean Ray’s MALPERTUIS is one of the great novels of supernatural horror.
THE LOST TRAVELLER
For those of you who like your horror tinged with undiluted surrealism, this hallucinatory account of a lost man is the book for you–or at least, it’s a book for you.