On Self-Medication

(Preliminary note: I’m not much of a drinker, but no judgement is implied in this post. It’s simply not a habit that I’ve developed. My own life-coping strategies, which include the consumption of problematic volumes of coffee and books, are not above reproach. This discussion starts and ends with the stories, and the narrative function of the behaviours described in the stories.)

Self-medication describes any behaviour undertaken by an individual to alleviate mental distress (stress, anxiety, boredom, psychological trauma, mental illness, etc.). It is a type of coping strategy. This can describe behaviours as varied as meditation, exercise, recreational drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, eating comfort food, and other forms of consumption.

Not all instances of these behaviours qualify as self-medication. People engage in these behaviours for other reasons as well. The aspect we are examining here is limited to those instances in which the behaviour is used to produce a specific effect. I think that Laird’s fiction provides numerous instances where the self-medication aspect is clearly present. In these instances, the behaviour (typically drinking or smoking) is not engaged in for pleasure, social acceptance, or to ease physical pain. The behaviour is instead used as an effective way of showing that a character is undergoing mental distress.

Consider this passage from “Old Virginia”, from which I’ve removed a few sentences:

Hatcher kept some scotch in the pantry. Doctor Riley poured—I didn't trust my own hands yet. He lighted cigarettes. (…)

I sucked my cigarette to the filter in a single drag, exhaled and gulped scotch. Held out my glass for another three fingers' worth.

Divorced from their context, the narrator’s actions are still easy to interpret. Whatever just happened, it has rattled his composure. He is sucking on the cigarette and gulping the scotch in order to restore some inner equilibrium. From personal experience or observation, we understand his actions, whether or not we have ever heard the words “self-medication” or “self-soothing”. Whatever our own habitual means of dealing with anxiety or stress, it is easy to empathize with the character.

Another illustrative passage, from “The Procession of the Black Sloth”, once again shortened:

Royce swallowed hard and wondered briefly if he was going to be sick. He chewed on his knuckle. (…)
He decided to fix a drink, but the scotch was gone and the last beer too; even the mini bottles of Christian Brothers he kept in the pantry, with the oatmeal, flour, and mouse traps.
Royce walked downstairs without recollection of forming the intent to leave his apartment. Full dark had come and the sodium lamps kicked on, masking the faces of the guests in shades of red and amber. He scooped several glasses of champagne from an unattended platter, retired to one of the small tables, and drank rapidly and with little pleasure.

Barron is obviously not the only writer to present us with characters in need of a drink. Fiction is full of such characters, horror fiction perhaps more so than any other genre. H.P. Lovecraft*, teetotaller though he was, did not refrain from using the technique on occasion:

Following me clumsily to the study, he asked for some whiskey to steady his nerves.
("The Thing on the Doorstep")

Here—have another drink—I need one anyhow!
(“Pickman’s Model”)

Lovecraft is more blunt. He explicitly draws the reader’s attention to the purpose of the action. Barron is more descriptive. The details he adds lends the actions more weight, and he leaves us to draw the inference ourselves.

Wallace waved him off, awkwardly poured a glass of milk with his left hand, sloshed in some rum from an emergency bottle in a counter drawer. He held his glass with trembling fingers, eyeballing the slimy bubbles before they slid into his mouth; poured another. (“Hallucigenia”)

Why is alcohol consumption so prevalent in Barron’s stories, and in fiction more generally? It may a narrative necessity more than a reflection of anything else. Drinking fits neatly in a story in a way that other coping strategies do not. Avoidance, for instance, seems far more common in life than in fiction. When confronted with stressful situations, characters do not seek distraction in television, or social media, or decide to take a nap, or a brisk walk, with nearly the same frequency as the readers do. These would divert the narrative flow; drinking and brooding channels it.

By reaching for a bottle, the character is being proactive, resourceful. The action may be short-sighted, but it keeps the character in the game, so to speak. Like smelling salts on a dazed boxer, it’s a way to keep the character in the fight until the concluding knock-out. The self-destructive aspect of the behaviour fits hand-in-glove with a certain type of doomed Barron protagonist. The impairment of the character’s judgement may also play a role. Self-preservation instincts compromised, the character agrees to go on, to meet with his (nearly always his) fate.

* Note: The references to H.P. Lovecraft’s work, here and elsewhere, are used for three reasons. One, if there is such a thing as a universally known “weird fiction” writer, it must be Lovecraft, for better or worse. I believe he’s a common point of reference for many Laird Barron readers. Two, I’m very familiar with his work. Three, his entire work is available online, and is therefore easy to search and reference.

Notes on "Old Virginia"

"Old Virginia"




Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (February 2003).

It is the first story in the hard cover, paperback, and e-book versions of The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2008).

Page numbers used throughout refer to the paperback version.


BEFORE YOU (RE)READ IT

Watch for these Barronisms:

• Diesel generator
• Whiskey
• Dog similes
• Chuckling
• Caves
• Cracks
• Rank odors
• Nightmares
• Provender
• Migraines
• Physicists
• Shadows behaving strangely
• Smoking as self-medication
• Drinking as self-medication

NOTES ON THE STORY

The title “Old Virginia” refers both to Virginia, the old crone, and the state of Virginia, the setting of the story, and the first (and oldest) British colonial possession in North America.

I fired up a Lucky Strike and congratulated my pessimistic nature. (p.1)

Lucky Strike was the top-selling cigarettes brand in the US during the 1930s, and was still being sold as of 2016. It was one of the brands included in rations provided to US soldiers in WWII.

Barron has used them in other stories to provide historical flavour.

Consider this quote from The Light is the Darkness:

the design was a relic of the Cold War, back when the KGB had teeth and CIA operatives smoked Lucky Strikes

I presume that some specific works (films, novels, short stories) make the connection between Lucky Strikes and CIA operatives, but I am not familiar with them.

The Reds had found our happy little retreat in the woods. (p.1)

During the Cold War, in the United States and elsewhere, "red" was used as a political adjective to refer to the USSR and, more broadly, to communists.

Or possibly, one of my boys was a mole. (p.1)

Agents of one intelligence agency who have infiltrated another intelligence agency are known as moles. Molehunts, as the efforts directed at finding such agents were known, were endemic in the

Central Intelligence Agency while James Jesus Angleton was head of the Counterintelligence Staff (1954-1974).

Davis swore he had heard chuckling and whispering behind the steel door after curfew. (p.1)

Chuckling is discussed more fully in the post "On Chuckling".

He also heard one of the doctors gibbering in a foreign tongue. (p.1)

To gibber is to speak rapidly and unintelligibly.

Nonsense, of course. (p.1)

This is a common trope in horror fiction: the protagonist dismisses evidence that does not fit the frame in which he presumes he is operating until it becomes impossible to do so.

"Garland? You there?" (p.1)

While there is an artist by that name, the author has stated in private correspondence that "Roger Garland" is not a reference to anyone in particular.

Hatcher was my immediate subordinate. (p.1)

If the name is a reference to a particular person, I'm not aware of it.

I passed him a cigarette. We smoked in contemplative silence. (p.1)

Nicotine is widely used as a coping mechanism to deal with stress and anxiety. Self-medication, the idea that people use substances to ease the symptoms of stress and anxiety, is frequently present in Laird's stories. Tobacco and alcohol are the most frequently used substances.

Smoking was far more common in the 1950s. Smoking prevalence in men in 1955 was 56.9%, and only 20.5% in 2013, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Richards. He didn't report any activity." (p.1)

I don’t know the name refers to a particular person.

A chill tightened the muscles in the small of my back, reminded me of how things had gone wrong during '53 in the steamy hills of Cuba. (p.1)

The Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro against the U.S.-backed Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, started in 1953.

I was unable to find information about any overt or covert U.S. military involvement in Cuba in 1953. The operation described in this story is likely fictional, but I welcome any information to the contrary.

It had been six years, and in this business a man didn't necessarily improve with age. (pp.1-2)

The story is set in 1959. See discussion section for more about Roger Garland’s preoccupation with age.

"Strauss may have a leak." (p.2)

Strauss is a common Germanic surname. If this is a reference to a particular person, I am unaware of it.

Even so, intelligence regarding this program would carry a hefty price tag behind the Iron Curtain. (p.2)

The Iron Curtain is the line through Europe after WWII, dividing the two sides of the Cold War: the Soviet Union and its allies opposed by the United States and its allies. It "fell" in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which signalled the end of the Cold War.

Project TALLHAT was a Company job, but black ops. (p.2)

Project TALLHAT is not a real project, to the best of my knowledge. Its name may derive from the tall, pointed hats associated with witchcraft in popular culture. Whether there is a historical association is a matter of some controversy. (See “Hallucigenia” for an example of a similar hat in Laird’s stories.) The project gets a brief mention in The Light is the Darkness.

The Company refers to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Employees reportedly use that term when referring to the organization, as do insiders and those who wish others to think they are insiders.

Black ops, or black operations, are covert operations which are not attributable to the organization carrying them out, funding them, or both.

Doctors Porter and Riley called the shots. (p.2)

I don’t know if the names Porter or Riley refer to anyone in particular.

Upon return to Langley, Strauss would handle the debriefing. (p.2)

Langley, Virginia, is home to the headquarters of the CIA.

Strauss had known me since the first big war. (p.2)

The first big war is an allusion to World War I (1914-1918).

You take Robey and Neil and arc south; I'll go north with Dox and Richards. Davis will guard the cabin. (p.2)

There are 10 people in the isolated cabin in the woods: the five named above, Roger Garland, Hatcher, Doctor Porter, Doctor Riley, and the crone. If the names Dox, Robey, and Davis refer to particular people, I am not aware of it.

... at his legendary farmhouse in Langley. (p.2)

If this refers to an actual location, I am unaware of it.

Before the San Andreas Fault took root in my hands and gave them tremors. (p.3)

The San Andreas Fault forms the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. It runs partly through California. Notable earthquakes include the 1906 earthquake that caused the fire which destroyed 80% of San Francisco.

"Roger, have you ever heard of MK-ULTRA?" (p.3)

MK-ULTRA was an illegal CIA program of human experiments designed to identify means of controlling human behaviour through the use of drugs, interrogation techniques, torture, and other means. It is popularly known as the CIA mind-control program. It began in 1953 and was officially halted in 1973.

Most of the leaves had fallen in carpets of red and brown. (p.3)

According to the Virginia Department of Forestry, most leaves in Virginia have fallen by mid-November.

President Eisenhower's imminent departure. (p.3)

Dwight Eisenhower was president from 1953 to 1961, winning the 1952 and 1956 elections. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during WWII.
 

The trouble had started at the top with good old Ike suffering a stroke. (p.3)

Eisenhower had a mild stroke on November 25, 1957. "Ike", meant as an abbreviation of his last name, was a family nickname. It was immortalized in the 1952 campaign slogan "I like Ike".

Company loyalists closed ranks, covering up evidence of the president's diminished faculties, his strange preoccupation with drawing caricatures of Dick Nixon. (p.3)

Richard Nixon was vice-president from 1953 to 1961, and president from 1969 to 1974. I was unable to find corroboration for the claim that Eisenhower drew caricatures of Nixon, or that the stroke significantly affected his mental faculties.
 

I knew from the topographical maps there was a mountain not far off; a low, shaggy hump called Badger Hill. (p.4)

Badger Hill is a settlement and mine in California, and there is a Badger Hill farm in Virginia, but I could find no mountain of that name in the state. The Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountain chain, bisect the state, running SW-NE. There are abandoned coal mines in the mountainous region of the state, enough of them for the Department of Mines and Energy to provide an interactive map detailing their locations.

College instead of Korea for the lot. (p.4)

The Korean War was fought between 1950 and 1953.

They hadn't seen Soissons in 1915, Normandy in 1945, nor the jungles of Cuba in 1953. (p.4)

Soissons is a French town in the northern department of Picardy. The Battle of Soissons in 1918 was fought between the German and French armies, with American support on the French side. The United States did not join the war until 1917. Roger’s presence there in 1915 implies work for another government, or a covert operation.

Normandy is a northern region of France. The Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy in June 1944 contributed to their victory on the Western Front. I’m not aware of a specific operation which would have required his presence in the region in 1945.

See previous note for Roger’s involvement in Cuba in 1953.

swallowed a glycerin tablet (p.4)

Nitroglycerin (C3H5N3O9), in addition to its use in the manufacture of explosives, has been used medically as a vasodilator for 130 years. It is used for the treatment of angina and other heart conditions.

Porter was lizard-bald except for a copper circlet that trailed wires into his breast pocket. (p. 4)

In many of Laird’s stories, science and magic seem to exist along a continuum. This is beautifully evoked with the copper circlet, with its echoes of protective talismans and magic circles, and its trailing wires, clear evidence of a technological purpose.

You psych boys are playing with all kinds of neat stuff—LSD, hypnosis, photokinetics. (p.5)

LSD is lysergic acid diethylamide, known colloquially as “acid” is a psychedelic drug. The CIA did study the effects of LSD in the course of their MK ULTRA research program.

Photokinesis is movement in reaction to light. In parapsychology, it is the purported ability to mentally manipulate light.
 

The problem is the KGB has pretty much the same programs. (p.5)

The KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) was the Soviet Union security agency from 1954 to 1991.
 

You and Riley slipped through the cracks after Caltech. (p.6)

The California Institute of Technology is a private university in Pasadena, California.
 

The ones who thought they were testing diet pills. You gave them, what was it? Oh yes—peyote! (p.6)

Peyote is a cactus from which mescaline and other psychoactive alkaloids are derived. It has a long history of ritual and recreational thanks to its psychedelic properties.

Unorthodox Applications of Medicine and Technology (p.6)

I could not find any information about this group, which may be an informal nickname, and is in any case probably fictional.

I had turned on the charm that had earned me the title "Jolly Roger,"

The iconic black flag with skull and crossbones flown by pirate ships about to attack is traditionally known as the Jolly Roger.
 

Shelves, cabinets, a couple boxy machines with needles and tickertape spools. Between these machines an easel with indecipherable scrawls done in ink. I recognized some as calculus symbols. (p.6)

The scientific props, here and elsewhere, serve to naturalize the supernatural elements of the story.

Approaching the figure on the bed, I was overcome with an abrupt sensation of vertigo. My hackles bunched. The light played tricks upon my senses, lending a fishbowl distortion to the old woman's sallow visage. (...) My belly quaked. (p.6-7)

Roger’s visceral reaction is interesting. The threat is perceived instinctively, reflexively, before becoming an object of conscious thought.

Hatcher kept some scotch in the pantry. Doctor Riley poured—I didn't trust my own hands yet. He lighted cigarettes. (p.7)

More self-medication.
 

Subject X behind the metal door (p.7)

In comic books published by Marvel Comics, Weapon X is a secret (Canadian) government project which turns individuals into superpowered weapons. The popular superhero characters Wolvering, Sabertooth, and Deadpool, among others, were the result of this project. It was first mentioned in 1974. (p.7)
 

You're too young to remember the first big war. (p.7)

The First World War began on 28 July 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918.

I was twenty-eight when the Germans marched into France. (p.7)

The German army entered France in August 1914. That would place Roger Garland's date of birth in 1886, which would make him 73 during the events of the story.
 

Graduated Rogers and Williams with full honors (p.7)

I was unable to find a college or university named “Rogers and Williams.” It could be that I’m misreading the sentence, or that the institution is fictional. If anyone can provide a clarification, I would appreciate it.

This happened before Uncle Sam decided to make an 'official' presence. (p.7)

The U.S. entered the war officially on 6 April 1917.

I helped organize the resistance, translated messages French intelligence intercepted. (p.7)

Listening for armor on the muddy road, the tramp of boots. (p.7)

These elements of Garland's story I find problematic. The Germans did not successfully invade France in WWI. The Resistance was a reaction to the German occupation of France following the 1940 armistice signed between the two countries. While tanks ("armor") were used by the Allies and Germans late in world war I, they did not see widespread use until WWII.

Three plausible explanations for these discrepancies suggest themselves:

a) Garland is mistaken. He is misremembering events that occurred during WWII.

b) Garland is not mistaken. He is relating events that occurred differently in his timeline than in ours.

c) Laird mistakenly introduced anachronistic elements into the story.
 

Roby had been a short order cook in college, (p.8)

This appears to be a misspelling of Robey, which is repeated on p.11.
 

I got a doozy of a migraine. (p.8)

A migraine is a severe, disabling headache accompanied by other neurological symptoms, including visual disturbances and photophobia.

"Migraine" is another Barronism. Exposure to “weirdness” (for lack of a better term) often results in migraines for the protagonists of Laird Barron stories. In this collection, no fewer than five protagonists experience them, while no character suffers a mundane "headaches".
 

They reminded me of rumors surrounding the German experiments in Auschwitz. Mengele had been fond of bizarre contraptions. (p.8)

Auschwitz was the site of a German concentration camp during WWII, in what is now Poland. It is estimated that 1.1 million prisoners died in the camp, 90% of them Jewish. The remainder being Poles, Romani, Soviets, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and others. Many were killed in the gas chambers installed there, but others succumbed to starvation, forced labour, execution, infectious diseases, and medical experiments. German doctors performed many barbaric medical experiments on the prisoners. The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, who was particularly interested in identical twins and dwarfs.
 

He was one of the Grand Old Men of the Company. (p.8)

Defined by Merriam-Webster as “a highly respected and admired man who has had a long career in a particular field.”

Why send us to a shack in the middle of Timbuktu? (p.9)

Timbuktu is a city in the West-African country of Mali. Located on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, it became known in Europe through legendary tales of its fabulous wealth, and it subsequently for its remoteness and mystery. It has entered popular usage as a metaphor for a faraway place.
 

She's a remote viewer. A clairvoyant. She draws pictures, the researchers extrapolate. (p.9)

Clairvoyance is the purported ability to gain information (often visual) through extrasensory perception. Remote viewing programs were established by the U.S. Army (Stargate Project) and the CIA (program SCANATE) in the 1970s. A 1995 report commissioned by the CIA found that it had not been proven to work, and was not used operationally. This has not discouraged writers from making hay with the possibilities implicit in such a program.
 

Numerous mimeographed letters and library documents comprised the file. (p.9)

A mimeograph machine produced duplicate copies of a document by forcing ink through a stencil onto a sheet of paper. It was widely used before the advent of the photocopier in the 1960s.
 

One such entry from A Colonial History of Carolina and Her Settlements (p.9)

This is a fictional book, as far as I can tell. Carolina refers to what are now North and South Carolina. North Carolina borders Virginia to the south.

The Lost Roanoke Colony vanished from the Raleigh Township on Roanoke Island between 1588 and 1589. The island is not far from the Virginia / North Carolina border.

The story of the Lost Roanoke Colony presented here is mostly accurate. The colony was established in 1587 by 115 men, women, and children. The first child born to the colony was Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of the Governor White mentioned in the citation.
 

molecular biologist, a physicist, a bona fide psychic (p.10)

Laird is again establishing the idea that the supernatural can be understood scientifically. Another interpretation would be that the intelligent supernatural entities are consciously using the bait of scientific knowledge in order to lure chosen human individuals. The theme of supernatural creatures using (scientific) curiosity to ensnare humans is one that Barron returns to with regularity. The roots of the idea are ancient (see: Garden of Eden, Faust) but the presentation is fresh.
 

That night I dreamt of mayhem. (p.10)

Premonitory, symbolic, and/or frightening dreams are a frequent used device in Barron’s stories. They serve a similar function to the physical reactions noted previously. For the protagonist, they are warnings from the subconscious about an upcoming danger. For the reader, they are warnings from the author that the character is in danger. From a practical standpoint, dreams are useful for introducing information which the protagonist and the reader would otherwise be denied.

On the sixth morning my unhappy world raveled. (p.10)

The events unfold at a pace dictated by the antagonist. She is in complete control of the situation from the start.
 

The rank odor oozing from him would have gagged a goat. (p.11)

Rank: having a strong, unpleasant smell. (Merriam-Webster) Horror and disgust are difficult to dissociate. Unpleasant smells are also bound up in the concept of corruption, both physical and metaphysical.
 

Oh God! She rode us all night—oh Christ! (p.13)

This is a suggestive image. See discussion for more details.

Betrayed by that devil Strauss? Sure, he was Machiavelli with a hard-on. (p.13)

The irony in the first statement is that, while this is in many ways the story of a Faustian bargain, Strauss is playing the part of Faust, not the devil.

Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance politician, diplomat, historian, and writer. He is remembered for his book The Prince in which he laid out the principles by which a ruler could retain power, through calculated and occasionally immoral means.

Nor did I dream of walking through the black winter of Dresden surrounded by swirling flakes of ash. (p.15)

Dresden is a city in eastern Germany. In February 1945, it was bombed with high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices by British and American planes. The bombing and the resultant firestorm destroyed the city centre and killing an estimated 22-25 thousand people.
 

A great hole opened in the ground before them. It stank of carrion. (p.15)

Caves and fissures are a recurring motif in mythology and folklore, where they are frequently openings leading to other worlds. Here the hole leads to an otherworldly creature, and its “opening” is suggestive of the opening jaws of a predator, or the opening of a trap or snare.
 

At least a hundred men, women and children. (p.15)

The number tallies well with the missing Roanoke colonists (115). The historical record is silent about their ultimate fate. While death from starvation or assimilation into local tribes are likelier, Laird provides this glimpse at an alternative possibility.
 

Who are you? I asked as several portions of her shadow elongated from the central axis, dipped as questing tendrils. Then, a dim, wet susurration. I thought of pitcher plants grown monstrous and shut my eyes tight. (p.15)

A tendril is the thin spirally coiling stem of a climbing plant that attaches to walls, fences, etc. (Merriam-Webster)

A susurration is a whispering sound, a murmur. (Merriam-Webster)

A pitcher plant is a carnivorous plant with a prey-trapping mechanism filled with digestive fluid.
 

Mother wants to meet you. Such a vital existence you have pursued! Not often does She entertain provender as seasoned as yourself. If you're lucky, the others will have sated Her. She will birth you as a new man. A man in Her image. You'll get old, yes. Being old is a wonderful thing, though. The older you become, the more things you taste. The more you taste, the more pleasure you experience. There is so much pleasure to be had. (p.16)

There is a lot to unpack in this paragraph. Given that many of the other stories in the collection will expand on these ideas, and that I’ll be looking at a few of them in the discussion, I’ll simply flag it and move on.

Provender is an evocative Barronism. It is a dated term which refers to food for livestock or domestic animals, synonymous with “feed”. It is derived from medieval latin prebendia (a stipend allotted to someone) and providere (to provide). Barron gives it a sinister context: we can infer that Mother is a creature for which food is provided on a regular basis. It reduces humans to the humble role of nutrients. It is quite simply a dehumanizing term.

You know who Mother is—a colonist wrote Her name on the palisade, didn't he? A name given by white explorers to certain natives who worshipped Her. (p.16)

We can infer that CROATOAN is Mother’s name. This raises a host of questions about language and culture in non-human sentient beings, but we will have to wait for answers.

I was the first Christian birth in the New World. (p.16)

See previous note on Virginia.

Mother is quite simple, actually. She has basic needs . . . (p.16)

This idea is developed further in subsequent stories. I’ll pause here only to draw attention to the idea, which seems significant.

All (known) organisms share certain physiological needs: metabolic needs (air, water, and food in animals; CO2, sunlight, water in plants), security needs, and reproductive needs being the most important. Organisms with any degree of cognitive ability have evolved a positive feedback mechanism: satisfying these needs (and others) produces a sensation of pleasure and/or relief. Whatever else we can say about Virginia and Mother, we can say that pleasure is a motivating factor.
 

"Do you suppose men invented chess? I promise you, there are contests far livelier. (p.16)

Chess is a two-player game which uses a board and 32 pieces in two colours. Each player has a king, a queen, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, and 8 pawns, which are weaker pieces and therefore considered expendable. The object of the game is to capture the opposing player’s king. The game is believed to have been invented in India sometime between 280-550.

I don’t think Virginia is claiming that the game was taught to humans by Mother and her kin, but rather that games and contests, as a concept, predate humanity. Chess is being used here to stand in for a category.

Chess is a two-player game, and one naturally wonders whether the game Mother is playing similarly has two opposing sides, or more, and whom she is playing against. No answers are forthcoming in this story.
 

The dinosaurs couldn't do it in a hundred million years. Nor the sharks in their oceans given three times that. (p.17)

Dinosaurs were a diverse group of reptiles which were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years (200 to 65 million years ago). Sharks are a group of cartilaginous fish, the earliest of which evolved between 450 and 300 million years ago. The implication seems to me that Mother and/or her kin have been around for at least that long, and that individual animals of those species were also co-opted by her/them for her/their purposes (but proved to be of little “use”).

Contemplating deep time can induce wonder and vertigo, and the “time abyss” has long been a staple of genre fiction. It is used to disorienting effect here by presenting an intelligent creature of an unknown type which has been around for 100 times longer than our species has existed.
 

With subtle guidance they—you—can return this world to the paradise it was when the ice was thick and the sun dim. (p.17)

There have been at least five major ice ages over the earth’s history, outside of which the planet was ice-free at all latitudes. The earliest known was 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago, followed by more recent episodes (720 to 635 million years ago, 450 to 420 million years ago, 360 to 260 million years ago), and ending with the one in which we currently find ourselves (since 2.58 million years ago). Within the major ice ages, ice coverage have varied considerably, with severe glacial periods and milder interglacial periods.

The sun’s luminosity has increased roughly 30% over its 4.54 billion year history, and will increase by another 68% over the next 4.8 billion years. The difference in luminosity does not account for the major ice ages, however, and it’s unclear what period Mother (through Virginia) could be referring to. Large volcanic and impact events can throw up dust and debris into the atmosphere, reducing the amount of sunlight which passes through it, and lowering the surface temperature. These are referred to as volcanic and impact winter, respectively, and the earth has endured these multiple times, but their duration is short (2 to 3 years).

We need men like Adolph,

This is undoubtedly a reference to Adolph Hitler. Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, and a main player in the events of WWII and the Holocaust.
 

Men who would bring the winter darkness so they might caper around bonfires. (p.17)

Nuclear winter, the analogue to volcanic/impact winter, which would likely result from a nuclear war, is what I believe is being alluded to. Unfortunately for Mother, the effects on sun luminosity on the surface would be relatively short-lived.
 

Hiroshima bloomed upon my mind's canvas (p.17)

Hiroshima, a city on Japan’s Honshu island, was hit with a nuclear bomb dropped by United States Air Force on August 6, 1945.

and Verdun, (p.17)

Verdun is a city in northeast France. It was the site of a major battle in WWI. Fought from February to December 1916, it was one of the bloodiest battlefields in history, with casualties estimated at 750 000.

I got as far as CRO before Virginia came and rode me into the woods to meet her mother. (p.17)

A final indignity to further dehumanize Roger and, by extension, humanity.

DISCUSSION

Roger Garland is representative of a certain type of Barron protagonist: male, no longer young, hardboiled, defined by his work, action-oriented, doomed. He remains a man of action to the end. Unfortunately, those actions are largely futile. He’s involved in a game he can’t win, simply because he’s not one of the players. He’s a piece that is no longer useful, and which has been sacrificed.

The story can easily be read as vampire tale, especially if divorced from the context provided by the other stories in this collection. Virginia and Mother have characteristics which are traditionally associated with vampirism: feeding on live humans, circular wounds on the victim, mesmerism, shape-changing, and other supernatural abilities. Mother's aversion to light and ability to corrupt humans, transforming them into agents which serve her agenda, are supportive of this reading.

Virginia herself is clearly an "Old Hag" ("mare" or "nightmare") from Germanic and English folklore, an evil spirit that sat on a sleeper's chest and sent them terrifying dreams. The condition of sleep paralysis, a terrifying state in which a subject is awake but unable to breathe or move, was associated with the Old Hag. A sufferer was said to be "hagridden". Roger’s nightmares begin after his meeting with Virginia. Dr. Riley claims that she rode Dr. Porter and him all night, and we witness her riding Dox and Roger like steeds.

(Image: John Henry Fuselli, The Nightmare)

While drawing on folklore, the story derives its scares from an attempt to demythify those creatures, providing a naturalistic explanation for their existence, and setting them squarely in the modern world. The monsters are established as physical rather than transcendent beings, existing within history, and interacting in specific and consistent ways. Mother’s influence is limited by geography, scientific devices are used to block or limit it. Significantly, scientists are involved in studying it. This story is the first of several which feature this specific type of alien intelligence, and we will have the opportunity to see how their depiction evolves.

There is the distinct possibility that the strange elements of the story, as related by Roger, are the product of an MK ULTRA experiment. Roger and his men, isolated in the Virginia woods, and under the supervision of two CIA doctors, are the subjects of the experiment, and Virginia herself is either a prop or a delusion. The object of the experiment remains unclear. Without the broader context of Laird’s other stories, this is certainly the most realistic reading of the story.

Old Virginia can also be read as a story about aging. Roger fears he may be over the hill, unable to perform both physically and mentally. Early in the story, he expresses concern about being displaced in his agency (CIA) by a new breed men (Richards), whose methods and goals he finds repulsive.

In addition to the physical deterioration, he worries about his mental faculties. The most horrifying element of the story, in any reading, is alluded to near the end. Roger defiantly tells Virginia that he is a patriot, and that he, at least, would not betray himself or humanity. He quickly realizes that this resolve may not be sufficient.

On its heels arrived the notion that perhaps I would change my mind after a conversation with Mother.

In an ironic echo, he faces in the end the loss of his agency (volition) to a new breed of man (Virginia).

He sees it coming but lacks the will to prevent this by taking his own life.

We're left with the sobering thought that we, like Roger, may also one day be reduced to a shell of our former selves. Strokes, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and other conditions will rob some of us of our cognitive faculties, and our volition, in the end. The writing is on the wall.

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On a final note, it is interesting to consider to what extent we are horrified by the behaviour of Virginia and Mother, who treat humans instrumentally, reducing them to meat, transportation, labour, and entertainment, since this is fundamentally the way that humans behave towards non-human animals.
 

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These notes are necessarily incomplete, and may contain mistakes of fact or interpretation. If you have information you would like to add, find mistakes you would like me to correct, or disagree with my interpretation, please comment on the post to let me know.

 

 

On Chuckling

WARNING: This post contains nothing but SPOILERS.
Please read ALL Laird Barron stories before reporting back here.

Davis swore he had heard chuckling and whispering behind the steel door after curfew. (“Old Virginia”)

The chuckle is the most menacing form of laughter.

This is because, I believe, a chuckle is a private laugh.

It is a self-congratulatory laugh. It is produced when we recognize the amusing fact that we are the only ones who are in the know. One chuckles to oneself, and often at the expense of others, presumably out of earshot.

It is smug.

An overt chuckle is menacing simply because we are social animals. When we hear it, we naturally infer that we are missing something. If the situation were truly funny, we would be sharing a laugh. Instead, a chuckle implies that we are missing a crucial piece of information which we have either failed to obtain or which has been withheld from us.

It implies that we are the joke.

A person may chuckle in our presence but immediately apologize and let us in on the joke. That is rude but forgivable. It is the person who chuckles openly and unapologetically that causes concern. They are either entirely lacking in self-restraint, or so little threatened by us that concealing their amusement at our expense is unnecessary.

"My men," I said. It was difficult to talk, my throat was rusty and bruised. "With Mother. Except the brute. You killed him. Mother won't take meat unless it's alive. Shame on you, Roger." She chuckled evilly.  

("Old Virginia") 

Poor Roger knows to expect the worse from Old Virginia.

A chuckle becomes much more worrisome when we are not sure just who … or what … is doing the chuckling. There are few things as terrifying as a chuckle which floats out of the darkness in which we thought ourselves alone.

"Hey." The voice floated from the thicker shadows of the alley. It was a husky voice, its sex muted by the acoustics of the asphalt and concrete. "Hey, mister."

 

Wallace dragged on his cigarette and peered into the darkness. The muscles in his neck and shoulders bunched. His hand shook. He opened his mouth to answer that odd, muffled voice and could not speak. His throat was too tight. What did it remind him of? Something bad, something tickling the periphery of his consciousness, a warning. A certain quality of the voice, its inflection and cadence, harkened recollections of hunting for tigers in the high grass in India, of chopping like Pizarro through the Peruvian jungles on the trail of jaguars—of being hunted.  

"Mister." The voice was close now. "I can see you. Please. Prease." The last word emerged in a patently affected accent, a mockery of the Asian dialect. A low, wheezy chuckle accompanied this. "Prease, mistuh. You put a hotel in my rice paddy, mistuh." ("Hallucigenia")

What’s most troubling about the chuckle in Laird Barron’s stories is that it is frequently deployed maliciously by the chuckler. Wallace has it right. He is being hunted, and he is being chuckled at because fear changes how he is going to taste. He is being seasoned.

"Mother wants to meet you. Such a vital existence you have pursued! Not often does She entertain provender as seasoned as yourself...”  

(“Old Virginia”)

Fear sweat is distinctive, any predator knows that. This pungent musk superseded the powerful cologne and stale odor of whiskey leaching from his pores.  

(“Shiva, Open Your Eye”)

Butler chortled from a spider-cocoon in the green limbs, "Now you're seasoned for his palette. Best run, Pinkerton. You've been in the sauce. Chewed up and shat out. And if you live, in twenty years you'll be another walking Mouth." He faded into the woodwork. (“Bulldozer”)

My weakness is the life essence of primates who take a swim in the Great Dark and return, brimming with eldritch vitality. (Xs for Eyes)

(The chortle is a particularly loud chuckle, it should be mentioned.)

The ogres (the shape-shifting, man-eating giants of folklore) in Barron’s stories are apex predators. They hunt humans, and they have very particular tastes. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the pattern start to emerge in the earliest stories. There is something about the brain which has been through an emotionally taxing experience that lends it a flavour which they find delightful. The more such experiences the better.

(They also eat children, yes, but I suspect that they do so primarily because of its impact on the witnesses and survivors. You can season an entire community with one little bite.)

Now, however, you are in on the joke. While the protagonists sweat, you can withstand any amount of chuckling with equanimity. You may even enjoy a chuckle at their expense.

Notes on "Hour of the Cyclops"

“Hour of the Cyclops”

The text is available on-line. It was collected in the limited hardcover edition of The Imago Sequence and Other Stories but was left out of the softcover and e-book editions.

It was first published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye #6, July 2000. This is a semi-annual, on-line speculative fiction magazine edited by writer Andrew S. Fuller. The latest issue (as of January 01, 2015) is #27, published on September 30, 2015.

The title of the journal is explicitly Lovecraftian, taken from the last line of H.P. Lovecraft's short story “The Haunter in the Dark”:

I see it—coming here—hell-wind—titan blur—black wings—Yog-Sothoth save me—the three-lobed burning eye. . . .

We can expect a Lovecraftian (or at least a Cthulhu Mythos) story from such a journal, and that is precisely what Laird Barron delivers in his first published outing.

NOTES ON THE TEXT

ghastly orange symbol

The symbol, which is also “loathsome” and suspiciously akin to a hand gesture, is too vaguely described to be identified conclusively.

Well, next time I'd shoot the Ancient Apothecary first.

If "Ancient Apothecary" is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it. There is a short piece of Lovecraft juvenilia, "The Alchemist", which is about a 600-year old alchemist, but that seems like a stretch.

The Ancient Apothecary petted his sinister imperial.

This may allude to a dog of the Chinese Imperial breed. The image is suggestive of the James Bond supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, canonically depicted stroking a white Persian cat held on his lap.

array of devices lethal and malign

This is also suggestive of James Bond, the British Secret Service agent created by writer Ian Fleming. The film adaptations and later novels equipped Bond with numerous gadgets.

He hunched, raptor-like, chuckling.

Chuckling (laughing quietly to oneself) is a motif that will reappear frequently in Barron’s stories. I wanted to note its first appearance.

“Mr. Rembrandt?”

If this is a reference to something specific I am not aware of it.

My phony identification shined betwixt his spicate fingernails.

“Spicate” means spike-shaped. The fingernails, the “oily crescent of his mustache”, the Asian origin (“so long as the Ancient Apothecary confined himself to Asia”), and the long life (if “Ancient Apothecary” is anything more than a nickname) are suggestive of pulp villain Fu Manchu, as depicted in film and novels. His lifespan was unnaturally extended by the use of an elixir of life which he perfected.

they siphoned the blood from my body

Blood is another recurring motif in Barron stories. I’m noting its first appearance in this story.

Yellow Ichor No. Five

If this is a reference to something specific I am not aware of it. There is an offhand reference to an "Emerald Ichor of Life" in the novella X’s For Eyes.

The link between the colour yellow and the protagonist’s patron deity can be noted here briefly.

Drs. Chimera and Sprague

If the names are a reference to something specific I am not aware of it. L. Sprague de Camp is a well-known American writer of science fiction and fantasy.

I was the first agent to use it in the field

The terminology used supports the idea that the protagonist is a James Bond-esque secret agent.

When the stars fall into their proper design I shall render the Virgin, and Lord Cyclops will rear above the gelid sheets of His living tomb. We who revere the Lord of Shadow shall caper upon the squirming mound of our enemies; we shall light the great fires to welcome the Father of Decay as he lumbers forth to bellow cataclysm and ravish the earth!

A reader familiar with Lovecraft will at this juncture understand that “Lord Cyclops” is “great Cthulhu”, or a Cthulhu-analogue. The following two quotes from “The Call of Cthulhu” leave few doubts about this identification.

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency.

Additionally, the architecture and features of Cthulhu’s sunken city are described as “cyclopean” seven times in that short story.

If “Lord of Shadow” and “Father of Decay” are references to something specific, I don’t know it.

did the Church send you? Officious catamites!

A rare mention of a mainstream religion. The reference is vague, but their description as “officious catamites” ( “catamites” are young boys kept by men for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity) brings to mind the sexual abuse cases involving members of the Catholic Church. These began to receive significant media attention in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.

like an imperious rajah in a bad old film.

This gives the reader another model for the Ancient Apothecary. I’m not sufficiently familiar with bad old cinema to make a closer identification.

Mr. Spot!

If Mr. Spot is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it. There is another Barron character named "Spot" in the cryptic fragment "Snorre & Spot Approach the Fallen Rock".

get back to Central

It is unclear whether this is a formal or informal name for the protagonist’s handlers (or headquarters).

This body had belonged to an Olympic athlete in the prime of his life — a hammer thrower.

“Olympic” is a recurring motif in Barron’s work. The Olympic Peninsula (and the city of Olympia) in Washington State features heavily in his stories, as we will have future occasion to note. Olympic athletes are mentioned here and in The Light is the Darkness. Both refer obliquely to ancient Olympia, home of the original games and a religious center devoted to the worship of Zeus. Greek mythology, and Zeus’ father, the titan Cronus, will be touched upon in future stories.

It may be reaching to see in “hammer throwing” echoes of Thor, a Norse god associated with thunder and lightning, like Zeus. Elements of Norse and Germanic mythology will also be featured in future stories.

Alaska is a vast frontier

Laird Barron, the biographical information in the journal tells us, was born in Palmer, Alaska. Alaska is a setting that he will return to in multiple stories.

Not Meant For the Eyes of Man

In popular culture, Lovecraft is known for the trope that “there are things that we are not meant to know”, that there is knowledge which is dangerous to our well-being. This is derived from the opening paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu” (emphasis added):

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

an abandoned radar site near White Mountain, a tiny native village eighty miles southeast of Nome.

Both Nome and White Mountain are real places in Alaska. White Mountain is the last of the three mandatory rest stops for teams competing in the Iditarod (an annual long-distance sled dog race), which ends in Nome. Laird Barron competed in the Iditarod in 1991, 1993, and 1994 (finishing in 22nd, 24th, and 25th place respectively). He earned $1,000.00 in prize money in 1991.

There are numerous abandoned radar sites in Alaska. Anvil Mountain 7.5 km from Nome was home to a White Alice installation which was active from 1958-1978. It was demolished in 2011. I was unable to find information about an abandoned site closer to White Mountain.

moving on to Cairo where certain artifacts went missing from the home of an extremely private collector

If this is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it.

Brazil, where he visited several unmapped temples

If this is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it. (The popularity of the trope in video games and fiction has made the search for a specific instance very difficult.)

Lets just say I watched where I stepped and made sure shadows were shadows before I moved into them.

Shadows, and the things that can hide in, or be mistaken for, them, occur with regularity in Laird Barron’s stories. I will simply note the first occurrence of the motif here.

he would need a deep dark cavern and the infinite seep of subterranean water

This is the first use of the “caverns or system of caves” motif, which Laird will use in many other stories.

Ms. Smyth

If this is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it.

Her parents were some kind of genetic scientists; they grew her in a tube

Simply noting the first occurrence of yet another motif, the “genetically engineered child”, which Laird will return to in other stories, including The Light is the Darkness.

double Ph.D. in astrophysics and theology

Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy which uses physics and chemistry to determine the nature of heavenly bodies. Astronomy and physics are two of the more popular disciplines that Laird Barron’s characters study. Significantly, in many stories, those two disciplines serve as the keys to unlock the mysteries of the universe, and allow communication, and communion, with god-like entities. The cultists are frequently scientists. We will return to these ideas in future stories.

The girl decided to take up a sport, full contact karate, no less. She tried out for the Olympic team, went to Melbourne, took the gold.

The Melbourne Olympics were held in 1956. The Sydney Olympics were held in 2000. Karate has never been an Olympic sport. Judo has been an Olympic event since 1964, and Taekwondo since 2000. Given her age at graduation (17), the sequence of events described (graduation then taking up sport), and her current age as given in the story (31), her participation in the Melbourne Olympics would imply that the story is set in 1970 at the latest, while her participating in the Sydney Olympics implies a story set no later than 2014.

Yes, she dated a handsome Olympic hammer thrower,

This is the donor of the body currently occupied by the brain of the protagonist.

A tall, serious boy, pallid as chalk

Presumably the protagonist in an earlier stage of life.

The tunnel let into a weird grotto; thick stalactites oozed above a broad shelf of polished rock; to the left of the rock was a lagoon. It was impossible to discern the scope of the lagoon as it extended into absolute pitch. Big, was my feeling.

An altar was erected near the water’s edge; obsidian plinths bracketed a raised bench of malachite and serpentine, the whole of it scriven with elaborate glyphs and runes.

The scene is reminiscent of the underground cave, lake, pier, and altar under Suydam’s house in Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”.

unspeakable horned mask he had stolen from Brazil

If this is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it. Horned masks are found in many African cultures, and African slaves were brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonists. Presumably this mask is connected to the temple mentioned earlier.

He chanted a dirge in his vile tongue

It is unclear what language this would be, or what is vile about it. It is unclear whether this is the same language that was earlier described as “offensive to my ears”.

Invisible to the eye, but not my prickling skin, a presence entered the lagoon.

How the body reacts to extraordinary creatures, places, and events is something that Laird frequently brings to our attention. Tracking these motifs through the stories will be interesting.

“George!” She cried.

No hammer-thrower named George participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. George Frenn (US) and Giorgios Georgiadis (Greece) attempted to qualify for the 1972 Munich games. No Georges participated in the Sydney games, or any other Olympic Games since 1956 for that matter.

“Oh my god! What is that?”

It is uncertain what the thing in the Lagoon is supposed to be, although it is implied to be the Cyclops.

I had a nightmare like that once — the kind where you run and run, but your legs won’t move and the monster is right there, right behind you —

While it is played with humorously here, the motif of the “premonitory nightmare” is one that will appear in many future stories. I note here its first appearance.

October in Northern Alaska

The story is set in October. The year is not given, but textual clues inform us that it is post-WWII, post-Melbourne Olympics. That does not narrow it down as much as could be hoped.

It gave me the strength to steer her through a cluster of crumbling Quonset huts and jagged sections of tangled wire.

Quonset huts are distinctive semi-cylindrical structures (like a barrel half-buried on its side) made of prefabricated corrugated metal. They reappear in a few other stories.

I flushed with pleasure to witness feral Aldebaran shimmer in the lower firmament.

Rather it was the time of my master, He Who is Not to Be Named, to flow down from the crevices between the stars in icy space and lay claim to this wretched ball of dirt. 

This is a long one to untangle. Aldebaran is mentioned by Lovecraft in “Polaris”, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and “The Festival”. Its association with “He Who is Not to Be Named” can be ultimately traced back to the Robert W. Chambers story “The Repairer of Reputations” (from the collection The King in Yellow) where it is mentioned twice in the same breath as Hastur:

When from Carcosa, the Hyades, Hastur, and Aldebaran,

He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected Hastur, Aldebaran and the mystery of the Hyades.

Note that Hastur is implied to be a star or a place, and that the name “Hastur” was borrowed from the Ambrose Bierce story "Haita The Shepherd", in which it is the name of the god of shepherds. The next link in the chain is provided by Lovecraft in “The Whisperer in Darkness”, where the following list of terms is thrown at the reader with no context:

Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum

Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, and Bethmoora are places, implying that Hastur is also a place. Magnum Innominandum is latin for “great not-to-be-named”.

August Derleth provides the next link, with stories featuring Hastur the Unspeakable, a monstrous entity with which he tries to harmonize the mythos of Lovecraft with that of Chambers. The Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game has codified the association between the entity Hastur, He Who Is Not To Be Named, Aldebaran, the King in Yellow, and the Yellow Sign, from whence it has drifted into popular culture.

Slitherer of the Stars

If Slitherer of the Stars is a reference to something specific, I am not aware of it.

Ms. Smyth shot me I don’t know how many times.

A reversal of fortunes for our protagonist. He is not the last doomed protagonist that we will be introduced to.

DISCUSSION

The text is narrated in the first-person by a protagonist about whom we know very little.

The action pulls you along from start to finish, with little time to reflect on what is happening. The protagonist's progression through the lair of the antagonist mirrors our deepening understanding of the situation, and of the protagonist's motives.

The first part of the story presents us with a variety of motifs (secret agent hero; eccentric villain; gadgets; magic symbols, gestures, and phrases; woman captured by villain; villain has a lair and minions; hero infiltrates villain’s lair; hero is captured; villain lectures hero) taken from spy, superhero, and pulp genres. They are presented straight, but light-heartedly..

The genre shifts to horror as progressively stranger and darker elements are introduced, but retains a light touch throughout. There isn’t much emotional investment in either the protagonist, the villain, or the damsel in distress. The stakes, though we are told that they encompass the fate of the world, feel low.

If this story didn't hinge on the reveal that the protagonist is no better than the antagonist -- arguably worse, given the indelicate, and almost certainly consent-less, use of the hammer-thrower's body – Laird might have made Ms. Smyth the protagonist. She is certainly described in much the same terms as the Navarro siblings from The Light is the Darkness.

The “super science” (experimental blood transfusion, autohypnotic suggestion, poison gas capsules, brain transplants, hi-tech gadgets, genetic engineering), magic (symbols, hand gestures, words), and mythological elements, both point to a setting that differs significantly from the everyday world. We will return to this setting, or similar heightened ones, when we explore the novellas The Light is the Darkness and X’s for Eyes.

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The notes are incomplete, and mistakes of all kinds may have slipped in. If you have information that could help improve these notes, ideas you would like to share, or motifs you would like to add, please comment below.