My Actual First Novel arrived today!

Here I'm sitting on the floor, reading bemusedly the first novel by be that's published by someone else than me. (In real life this is my fourth novel!) Jumalten tuho / Twilight of the Gods / Gotterdämmerung came out from Pikku-idis just last week, I received my author's copies today by mail. All eight kilos of them.

I'm not yet sure what to think of this. Of course I'm happy as can be, but at the same time I'm feeling a bit empty and sad. After all, this book has been over 20 years in the making. It started with a short story (shares the same title as the book) that was published in 1988 in a Finnish science fiction fanzine called Tähtivaeltaja and continued with the sequel to the story some five or six years later. I couldn't find a publisher for the sequel - it was too long to be published as a short story in the same magazine and it wouldn't've made sense to publish it as a book, so I just kept revising it every time I got some extra time - and inspiration, too! I remember writing some of the most shocking scenes to the rhythm of Godflesh's metallic industrial beat. I don't when exactly, but at some point I dropped every allusion to the original short story. Then, after I'd moved to Turku, I shopped it around. Jari Tammi of Pikku-idis was interested in it already in 2003 or 2004, but then he stopped doing business for some reason or another, but he got back to publishing and my book in 2010 and we made a deal of putting the book out. By that time, I'd rewritten the manuscript, but still it required lots of revisions. I'm a fast writer, but a slow reviser. There's lots of stuff in the book I'd like to rewrite even now.

And I think I'd need some time to recover from the shock! Yet I'm preparing a university course I'm starting next week and I just started translating Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature" in Finnish, alongside some other stuff! My son said to me: "You publish too many books, dad", when I showed him Twilight of the Gods and he didn't seem impressed at all. I've gotten used to putting out anthologies and non-fiction books and what not, but this seems more personal - even though the book isn't very personal per se, it's more like an enjoyable romp, not something I've invested my life or personality in. In fact, I'm a bit worried about how that superficiality seems to others.

Here's some more stuff about my book, and for my Finnish readers: do check out my other blog where I'm posting bits from the book that were taken out in the last revisions. There's also a small contest coming, I'm giving three books away!

Fires on the Plain open for submissions

Cullen Callagher, the mastermind behind the great Pulp Serenade blog, is officially soon launching his new website, Fires on the Plain. It's a webzine for western short stories, and Cullen writes:

What are we looking for? Westerns with an edge. Hardboiled. Noir. Gritty. Dark. Tough. Stuff that Harry Whittington, Clifton Adams, H.A. DeRosso, or Brian Garfield would have written. Who else do we love here at Fires on the Plain? Elmore Leonard, Ed Gorman, James Reasoner, T.V. Olsen, Frank Castle, Tom Piccirilli, George Gilman, Bill Pronzini, Richard Telfair — the list goes on.

So, git your writin' gear and start shootin' those, umm, letters? The site looks promising and I have a good trust on Cullen to find some good noirish writing!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Plunder Road

This is apparently a pretty rare late film noir, since it's got only five reviews in IMDb. I loaned this on a VHS cassette from a friend of mine, as I'd always wanted to see it, and while it didn't quite live up to my expectations, it's still a very worthwhile little thriller.

Plunder Road is a caper film, done on a minuscule budget, with limited sets and a small number of players, though the caper in the beginning of the film is quite far away from being minuscule. The film doesn't tell much about the guys who do the caper, but we are made known that some of them are career criminals and former inmates. The movie is about trying to take the loot to a safer place with three different trucks. It's a road movie, but the machines these guys drive are machines of imprisonment, not freedom, like they are in Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. Likewise, the whole movie is intentionally mechanic, which increases the sense of irony. The players in the movie are nothing but pawns in the game. They struggle to get out, but because they do what they do, they have no chance.

There are some inconcistencies throughout that lessen the impact of the film, though, but not remarkably so. If you get a chance to see this, don't hesitate. All the actors are unknown (at least I didn't recognize the names of the faces), except Elisha Cook Jr., who's remarkably good in this as well. The writer, Steven Ritch, plays himself one of the crooks.

The director, Hubert Cornfield, is a very interesting figure in his own right: many of his few films were based on paperback originals: Lure of the Swamp is based on a Gil Brewer novel, 3rd Voice is based on a Charles Williams novel and The Night of the Following Day is based on a Lionel White novel. Later on he seems to have moved to France.

More Overlooked Films to be had on Todd Mason's blog. (At least I think there will be something. I won't have the time to do this tomorrow, so I did it already.)

Donald Westlake Friday

I'm a bit late on this, but better late than never, right? Here's a link to the Friday's Forgotten Book postings organized by Patti Abbott, all about Donald E. Westlake, to commemmorate the forth-coming publication of Westlake's lost novel, The Comedy Is Finished.

Complete Paul Cain

From Centipede Press. The package looks very nice.

Robert Silverberg's sleaze novels

Old smut paperbacks have been seeing quite of a renaissance in the last couple years: there have been lots of blog posts about them, there are Facebook groups for them and associated stuff (try this) and what's the most important thing, there have been quite a few reprints. One of the most interesting of them has been the collection of Robert Silverberg's two sleaze paperbacks, called Gang Girl/Sex Bum. It's a very good book which I recommend highly, if you're into noirish and nasty little crime stories.

Gang Girl was first published as a Nightstand book in 1959 and it was one of the first of Silverberg's many sleaze novels. It's a juvie book, about a 16-year old (!) girl trying to break into a new gang and making her way up to the top. Some of the sex scenes are downright nasty, especially the gang rape scene that goes on and on. The ending is very noiry and fits the bill. Sex Bum, from four years later, is a better book in my opinion, though Gang Girl is not bad in any sense of the word. Sex Bum, this time a Bedtime book, tells about a young guy living in a hicksville wanting bad to make it into the mob. There are lots of sex scenes, but coupled with the crupulousness of Johnny Price they make a chilling read - this guy feels like he's stepped out from the pages of Jim Thompson of Jason Starr. The ending is very chilling.

These books were written fast to make fast money (and money Silverberg made: he bought a big house in Greenwich Village with the money he got writing these books!), and it shows somewhat. There are some meaningless characters in Sex Bum, and Gang Girl suffers somewhat from being too episodic, but I don't mind, as both books are also immensely readable. As there's also a foreword by Silverberg himself and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, plus a 3-page bibliography of Silverberg's smut books, this books comes very highly recommended. Can't wait for this to arrive.

More stuff about Silverberg's sleaze books here.

Ed Gorman's Cage of Night

I was earlier asking about misanthropy in crime fiction, but now I'm writing about a crime novel that's far from being misanthropic. Actually Ed Gorman's Cage of Night is anything but: it's a humane and warm story about people whose lives are petty and close to miserable, full of search for love that never seems to arrive. Gorman really feels for his characters, they are not just toys in a game. There's also nothing nihilistic about their misery and they don't go on a rampage shooting people or some such. They just try to cope. Sometimes something nice happens, but that's sometimes. Yet the story moves along in a nice pace - I couldn't stop reading, as the cliché goes. It was true this time.

I also admired how Gorman handles the very fine line between psychological suspense and supernatural horror. In the end, nothing is obvious.

This was my first novel-length Gorman, but it won't be the last.

Misanthropy in crime fiction

Question for the group mind: can you think and name any examples of misanthropy in crime fiction, classic, hardboiled or other? I should be writing an essay on the subject, but can't come up with enough examples, though I think Jim Thompson (especially Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me) and Patricia Highsmith (Tom Ripley!) are essentials. What about Charles Willeford? Isn't a book like The Woman Chaser misanthropic?

Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.

Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.

The Pop History Dig » “Rockwell & Race”1963-1968

Long and interesting article upon which I stumbled and thought to share:

The Pop History Dig » “Rockwell & Race”1963-1968

The scale of the universe

This is so breath-takingly beautiful I burst out crying.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The City of Fear

Irving Lerner is not a household name, though he's been revered by some film noir enthusiasts for a long time, such as Martin Scorsese. Until last Monday night, I'd seen only his late and flawed conquistador film, Royal Hunt of the Sun. Now I've seen also his The City of Fear, thanks to the Finnish Film Archive. (Well, I organized the screening myself, but you know what I mean.) Thanks also to Tapani Maskula, a film critic from Turku, with whom I've talked about film noirs and other B-films for almost ten years now. Tapani was there in the screening to talk about Lerner, who seems to have had a very interesting life.

The City of Fear is a very tight little thriller about escaped convict Vince Edwards who thinks he's onto something when he gets his hand on a small metal cylinder. He thinks there's lots of heroin, but instead it contains radioactive material. Pretty soon he gets sick, but still tries to sell the "heroin". The ending is very ironic, even though there's something unintentionally funny about the radioactive bits in the film - what can you do, Lerner shot the film in seven days with a very low budget for Columbia who needed short films for drive-in theaters? Lerner was before everything else an editor, and this shows in many scenes as they are expertly edited, with verve, rhythm and style, with a touch of Russian montage here and there. Vince Edwards is very good in the lead role: he shows no empathy and you don't actually feel for him, but there's something about the empty stare that Lerner emphasizes with his shooting and editing. The facade reveals absolutely nothing, but the way Edwards fondles the cylinder in his pocket... there's something homosexual about the affair of the man and his fantasies.

I'm hoping to see more of Lerner's films: Murder by Contract (one of the all-time favourites of Scorsese), Edge of Fury (based on American surrealist Robert Coates's novel Wisteria Cottage), Studs Lonigan (from the James T. Farrell novel)... there are some others, too, but they seem to be too obscure. There's one here, take a look. The City of Fear and Murder by Contract are available in the Columbia film noir DVD set.

Tapani Maskula, whom I mentioned earlier, gave his speech about Lerner - I'd really like to read Lerner's biography. Anyone out there willing to do one? Tapani mentioned in the end that The City of Fear is the film that convinced him to become a movie critic.

Other Overlooked Movies here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Tarantula

I don't really know whether Jack Arnold's Tarantula merits the Overlooked Film title, since it's one of the classics of the fifties' horror films and is on the better side as well. The film is never unintentionally funny, the special effects are very good for the time (the film was released in 1955) and the script and the direction are well crafted and tight. There are not many empty scenes. Yeah, well, okay, you might say it's funny when there's a giant tarantula spider roaming the deserts of Arizona, but no one sees it, except those whom the thing devours. Well, it's Arizona, I don't think there are that many people.

I've heard some good things about Jack Arnold's film noirs, The Tattered Dress and Outside the Law. Anyone seen them? The same goes for Arnold's western, The Man from Bitter Ridge.

More Overlooked Films here.

New Finnish covers for ERB's Mars books

The small publishing house Into is bringing new editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books in Finnish this Spring. The books have been out-of-print in Finnish for almost thirty years and some of the old editions command quite high prices.

My friend Ossi Hiekkala did great covers for the first two, see the link here. I think they are up there with the best.

Nympho librarians

Here's another great link to a site collecting all sorts of porn books about librarians. No cover photos, though.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Himmelskibet

Himmelskibet is a big-budget Danish science fiction film made in 1918. It has big sets and lots of extras. See for yourself. This is a longish clip from the Marx expedition in the film, with the music by the Norwegian Kolar Goi.

This came up in the movie quiz our team kept. One of the members of our team had made three questions about obscure Nordic horror and science fiction films (Reptilicus, anyone?) and I wanted to make it four. After some Googling, I found this. It's a very nice clip and you simply want to take a look at it, even though it's not the whole film. 

More Overlooked Films here. 

Vast archive of pulps on-line

Here's a link to the site that has lots of different magazines for on-line reading, with lots of pulp magazines included: Argosy, Weird Tales, Western Adventures, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Ranch Romances, Detective Fiction Weekly...

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Collector

I've liked everything I've read from John Fowles, including his first novel (but the novel he first wrote), The Collector. It's been 20 years, since I read it, though, so don't really know what I'd say of it now. But the film I just saw and I liked it quite a bit, even though I believe William Wyler's later films don't have a very good reputation. At least they didn't have the same 20 years ago. I don't really know why: The Collector is a well-paced, suspenseful film that's dated only in the scenes in which Samantha Eggar in the lead role acts like she'd really like to go to bed with her captor, played by the disturbing Terence Stamp. The ending is very chilling.

The film isn't actually a psychological thriller it's sometimes made out to be, it's more like a study in the unequality between social classes. Wyler doesn't much touch on the subject, though, and there's something upper class about Stamp that doesn't fit in with the theme.

More Overlooked Films here.

Very old Finnish science fiction

Two friends and colleagues of mine, Vesa Sisättö and Jari Koponen, compiled one of the most interesting books of 2011. The book was published to almost no publicity and I've seen only one review of the book. The book, called Aivopeili / The Brain Mirror, is a collection of two essays, a bibliography and some fifteen short science fiction stories. The stories are mainly from Finnish authors from the early 19th century to the year of independence, 1917. There are also seven stories from foreign writers like Jack London, H. C. Andersen and Kurd Lasswitz. The translations of those seven stories are taken from the ancient Finnish fictionmags or newspapers. The book shows how science fiction made its way to Finland during the Russian rule in the 19th century.

There are some intriguing stories in the book. The first science fiction story written in Finland was published in 1803 (which strictly speaking was six years before the Russian rule), by a man called Gabriel Israel Hartman. Jari Koponen states in his introduction that this is the first story in the annals of literature to depict a microcosmos! Hartman writes about a fantasy of how the narrator makes his way into a small world through a microscope and notices that microcosmos contains a lot more other miniature worlds. The story predates "The Diamond Lens" by Fitz-James O'Brien by 50 years.

The book also contains some utopies, many of which are about the reversal of the gender roles. I think Fredrika Runeberg's story about the theme is the best in the bunch, but the other stories show how the fear of women's emancipation has taken hold of the public imagination. There's also a hilarious story called "Ratkaisu / The Solution" that's about exploding Finland off the continent in order to stop the war about fresh water. The writer of the story was called "TRT", of whom nothing is known.

The foreign stories may seem odd in the book, since one might think they'd benefit if they were translated now straight from the original language. But this solution, to keep the old translations intact (aside some small edits), makes the stories come alive in their own time and context and we can see the influences the stories really had on the readers of the time. I think the best of those stories is by German writer Carl Grunert: the story "The Spy" is a fast-paced mystery story about the invasion of the Martians. The titular story is by Kurd Lasswitz, who's pretty well-known, but I think his story was marred by sensational narration and poor dialogue (which of course may be a result of a bad translation).

I strongly recommend the book (for the Finnish-language readers, of course) and would like to see someone tackle translating Gabriel Hartman's story in English!

The cover for my Actual First Novel

Here's the cover for my novel, Jumalten tuho / Twilight of the Gods. It will be out next month from Pikku-idis, a small publishing outfit run by Jari Tammi, novelist in his own right. The cover illo is made from a painting by Juha Korhonen.

And the book? For the Finnish readers, there's a pretty good description at the publisher's website here, but maybe I should say something about it here as well, in English (as there has been some interest in it among British literary agents...). Twilight of the Gods takes place in 1928, in the small town of Forssa. I'm quite familiar with the town, since my father was born there and his mother lived there until she died some years ago, and I've visited the place quite often. I haven't strived for accuracy, though, and I've taken some liberties and left the descriptions a bit vague on purpose, but I say: hell with descriptions and historical accuracy anyway! Entertainment is more important!

Twilight of the Gods is, despite the pompous title, a pulpy rollercoaster ride with some hardboiled Finnish cops who've got shotguns, a strange monster that's been hiding in something called Void for almost 2,000 years, a Finnish private eye who's got his guns straight from Vatican, a gorgeous-looking black angel who's also got a gun, plus some zombies. All this relates to the Finnish Civil War that has ended ten years ago. I'll add that this book has nothing to do with Wagner. (Maybe Karl Edward.) It's a hybrid of several genres: serial killer novel (it turns out to be something else entirely, though), hardboiled crime pulp fiction, religious satire, historical conspiracy novel and straight-forward horror. It's not The Da Vinci Code, let me assure you.

What am I gonna do in 2012?

I didn't post anything about the best books or films of 2011, since I didn't read enough new books or see enough new films (not to mention anything about the best albums). Instead I'm going to do a post about my 2012 and my projects. So, here goes, are you buckled up:

- the book that ties together Finnish politician Paavo Väyrynen and Cthulhu, On Suurten Muinaisten aika/The Time of the Great Old Ones will be published tomorrow, on Monday, ninth of January (see photo)
- the anthology of old Finnish horror stories, called Hallusinatsioneja/Hallucinations I compiled will be out in some time (I don't know when)
- my Actual First Novel Jumalten tuho/The Twilight of the Gods will be out before March ("actual" meaning that it's the first published by someone else than me, since I've already published three novels [they are very short, so someone might say they are not novels per se])
- the architectural guide to Turku (the city where I live) will be published sometime during this Spring (at least I hope so, it's been a hell of a project, almost too daunting, though my part on the job is done)
- I just received a 3,000 euro grant for a book on the history of the animated cinema, so I'll start working on it this Spring
- I'll translate H. P. Lovecraft's essay The Supernatural Horror in Literature in Finnish for the Savukeidas publishers, and it will be the first time this essay will be available in Finnish
- I'm going to write two short novels, one being the third part in my sleaze quartet and one being a short alternate-history novel set in the Hollywood in the early fourties; I'll self-publish both
- I've been going through a sword-and-sorcery novel I've published in five parts in one of my own magazines and self-publish it as a paperback
- I'm editing two small collections of old hate speech for Savukeidas: both from Left and Right, mostly from the early decades of the 20th century, mainly stuff that relates to the Finnish Civil War and the right-wing movement of the 1920's and 1930's (we had plenty of that in Finland)
- I'm editing some other anthologies for Turbator: one being about the famous Finnish soldier, officer, spy, explorer, photographer and finally the President of Finland, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (this is still a bit of a secret, so I won't let you know more about it), and one being about old Christmas stories (there have been talks about other anthologies, but as you can see, I can't easily fit them in)

Okay, is that all? I'm thinking I keep forgetting something. I don't actually know how I'm going to do all that. Now you can see why I ceased the publications of my crime fiction zines? Oh, that was it: I've got still one issue of Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories coming out, and I've got stories and spectacular illustrations for an old-time aviation magazine!

But now I'm gonna start doing something else than making books: I'll start reading one!