Unforgivable Stories
Kim Newman
Pocket Books, pbk, 340 pgs, £6.99
Review by Gerald Houghton (2000)
Yet another collection of Newman’s unstoppable outpourings, billed loosely as a re-opening of famous ‘closed cases of fantasy and horror fiction’, but on the whole conforming to the usual grab-bag of superior magazine and anthology jottings. ‘Further Developments in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ does what it says on the tin, revisiting that celebrated fiction in order to take a largely priapic, non-supernatural and frankly, jaw-dropping, take on the hoary old tale of ‘the Good Doctor and the Mad Mister.’ It is the most successful piece on offer here.
Which is not to denigrate all of the remainder. For every ‘Amerikanski Dead At The Moscow Morgue’ - a re-imagining of the film zombie that reads like an idea in search of a point - or ‘Great Western’ - a toe-curlingly tedious attempt at a Somerset western - there is a ‘Residuals’ or ‘Quetzalcón’. That former, co-penned with Paul J McAuley, cleverly asks what happens after your fifteen minutes have faded. Or, more specifically, what happens to two blokes who saved the world from alien invasion but are best remembered now for their fictional selves in a cheesy TV rerun. Mulder and Scully, your future is calling.
‘Quetzalcón’ is an eerily precise fan programme facsimile for ‘The Kingston Dunstan Convention’ at the Leech Pyramid Plaza, Docklands, in 1997. The Pratchett-esque hack famous for his overblown Aztec fantasy novels, Dunstan is lauded on the page by Jack Yeovil and Newman himself in this increasingly silly-sinister pamphlet. The parody of fan-speak could hardly be funnier if it were ripped bodily from the pages of Interclone itself.
Coming hot on the heels of the recent Seven Stars collection (and the novels Dracula Cha Cha Cha and Life’s Lottery; Christ, breathing space, please), it’s worth noting the strength of Eugene Byrne’s biographical introduction. We'll take the school smartarse in an opera cape given to quoting Poe from memory: ‘But lordy, was he a weird kid’ - over Stephen Jones’ embarrassing introductory hagiography for Seven Stars.
Interestingly, the volume rounds out with ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ (co-written with Byrne), a smart alternate history that finds the 'Nam populated by UK sitcom heroes; South-East Asia out of Clement and La Frenais. Interesting, because it’s taken directly from the pair’s superb Back in the USSA volume - wherein the US underwent the revolution that somehow by-passed imperialist/capitalist Russia - that appeared three years ago in the States and still languishes without a British publisher. Pocket Books, take note.