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_Our Lady of Darkness_ by Fritz Leiber (1977)
I found this novella to be a dark treat for the connossieur [sp?]* of such writers as M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and H. P. Lovecraft. I'm rather surprised that I hadn't read it before this, but then, I was disappointed in Leiber's _Conjure Wife_, which is another one of his horror tales that comes highly recommended.
_Our Lady of Darkness_ features a writer of science fiction and horror stories named Franz (the autobiographical touches of the story are more bemusing than intrusive) who lives in 1970s San Francisco and who becomes fascinated by a couple of mysterious books. The first of these is a lost journal of Clark Ashton Smith (another real horror writer and a student/anthologist of Lovecraft), and the second, even more ominous, book is titled _Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities_ by Thibaut de Castries. De Castries was the American equivalent of Aleister Crowley, and gathered around himself many of the literary lions of 1920s San Francisco, including Jack London (author of _Heart of Darkness_)and Gertrude Atherton (author of a number of ghost stories, including the very creepy "The Bell in the Fog," which one can find online). De Castries believed that one could manipulate the future through manipulating the physical space of cities, and Franz's and his friends's own observations and experiences with the dangers of modern cities seem to indicate that much of De Castries's prophecies have come true, including the way cities seem to be a touchstone for alienation and insanity: "The ancient Egyptians only buried people in their pyramids. We are living in ours." The ever-present shadows and shifting transformations of the city which Franz describes--along with Franz's own desolate and murky past-- adds a somewhat noir note to this many-layered story which manages to reference everything from M. R. James's "Casting the Runes" to Machen's "The White People" to Thomas De Quincy's "Levana and Our Three Ladies of Sorrow."
Franz's initial curiosity to solve the riddle of De Castries's book soon becomes an obsession, and then a struggle to survive, as his journey through San Francisco's occult past attracts the attention of the citiy's elementals.
Fans of the psychogeographies of such writers as Peter Ackroyd, Michael moorcock, and Iain Sinclair may also be entertained by this creepy little story. While at times the descriptions of 1970s parapsychology strike one as being a bit dated, an amazing amount of it has cycled back around to become our own "New Age" pseudoscience, for what that's worth. While the use of Freudian imagery can be a bit heavy-handed at times (really, one does wonder where would modern horror be without the male fear of female genitalia?), the story implies that ghosts are invoked as much by our own desolate pasts as by any supernatural curse or spectres.
* It strikes me as ironic that words which I know perfectly well how to spell my screen reader often mangles with its speech impediment, while words which I have trouble spelling it pronounces the same no matter how I add or subtract i's and s's.
I found this novella to be a dark treat for the connossieur [sp?]* of such writers as M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and H. P. Lovecraft. I'm rather surprised that I hadn't read it before this, but then, I was disappointed in Leiber's _Conjure Wife_, which is another one of his horror tales that comes highly recommended.
_Our Lady of Darkness_ features a writer of science fiction and horror stories named Franz (the autobiographical touches of the story are more bemusing than intrusive) who lives in 1970s San Francisco and who becomes fascinated by a couple of mysterious books. The first of these is a lost journal of Clark Ashton Smith (another real horror writer and a student/anthologist of Lovecraft), and the second, even more ominous, book is titled _Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities_ by Thibaut de Castries. De Castries was the American equivalent of Aleister Crowley, and gathered around himself many of the literary lions of 1920s San Francisco, including Jack London (author of _Heart of Darkness_)and Gertrude Atherton (author of a number of ghost stories, including the very creepy "The Bell in the Fog," which one can find online). De Castries believed that one could manipulate the future through manipulating the physical space of cities, and Franz's and his friends's own observations and experiences with the dangers of modern cities seem to indicate that much of De Castries's prophecies have come true, including the way cities seem to be a touchstone for alienation and insanity: "The ancient Egyptians only buried people in their pyramids. We are living in ours." The ever-present shadows and shifting transformations of the city which Franz describes--along with Franz's own desolate and murky past-- adds a somewhat noir note to this many-layered story which manages to reference everything from M. R. James's "Casting the Runes" to Machen's "The White People" to Thomas De Quincy's "Levana and Our Three Ladies of Sorrow."
Franz's initial curiosity to solve the riddle of De Castries's book soon becomes an obsession, and then a struggle to survive, as his journey through San Francisco's occult past attracts the attention of the citiy's elementals.
Fans of the psychogeographies of such writers as Peter Ackroyd, Michael moorcock, and Iain Sinclair may also be entertained by this creepy little story. While at times the descriptions of 1970s parapsychology strike one as being a bit dated, an amazing amount of it has cycled back around to become our own "New Age" pseudoscience, for what that's worth. While the use of Freudian imagery can be a bit heavy-handed at times (really, one does wonder where would modern horror be without the male fear of female genitalia?), the story implies that ghosts are invoked as much by our own desolate pasts as by any supernatural curse or spectres.
* It strikes me as ironic that words which I know perfectly well how to spell my screen reader often mangles with its speech impediment, while words which I have trouble spelling it pronounces the same no matter how I add or subtract i's and s's.
