Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign by James Chambers A book review by Daisy Lyle For many decades Robert W Chambers’ King in Yellow mythos has languished in undeserved obscurity, often viewed as a simple side-salad to the banquet of weirdness that is HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. This is very unfair, since Chambers is a forerunner to Lovecraft and his writing is generally better. Fortunately, the last twenty years have seen the world regain interest in Chambers’ elegant, arty horrors, with the series True Detective and it’s Carcosa plotline being particularly helpful. That said, Chambers didn’t write much horror – he usually dealt in popular romances and thrillers and produced just two volumes of weird tales, only a handful of which actually deal with the King in Yellow (a cursed play that either makes its audience mad or leaves them dimensionally compromised in very bad ways, depending on how you look at it.) This, of course, leaves the field open for new writers to develop his mythos today. In recent years there have been quite a few anthologies of King in Yellow-themed stories, and now it’s the turn of Hippocampus Press. The first section, “Dawnings”, looks at the origins of the mythos. Chambers didn’t actually invent Carcosa – that honour goes to Ambrose Bierce, who later disappeared in the Mexican desert to the great delight of decades of conspiracy theorists. This is addressed in the opening story, “Robert Chambers Reads The King in Yellow” by Lisa Morton, which builds on the Chambers story “The Repairer of Reputations”. It’s a strange choice to kick off an anthology of this kind, since it’s hardly complimentary to Chambers. He appears in person as a writer of vulgar romantic slop, who is only inspired to write his Serious Weird Fiction following the supernatural intervention of the King in Yellow’s crew. Based on what I’ve read of Chambers’ non-mythos material, this seems kind of mean – there are a lot of modern horror authors who could take a few tips from Chambers when it comes to style and plotting. Anyway, Hippocampus are themselves bringing out a cross-collection “best of” of Chambers’ short fiction (as a companion volume to Under Twin Suns) so we can all make up our own minds about his non-mythos stories. Fortunately the anthology soon recovers from this false start with John Langan’s “Helioforge”. John Langan is the author of my very favourite modern KiY story, “Sweetums”, and this story is a less overtly horrific but still unsettling look at the remains of the American railway dream, featuring a night-time economy running on a strange type of fuel. “The Inn of the Fates” by Sarah Read, was probably my favourite story in this book, with a vibe of misty, gentle Surrealism. It’s visually beautiful, with the imagery of a Leonora Carrington or Remedios Varo painting, and is the only story here that succeeds in channelling some of the intense charm of Chambers’ quieter stories such as “The Demoiselle D’Ys” or his Parisian fantasies. King in Yellow mythos fiction seems to have two main failure modes, and both are represented in this anthology. The first is about style. Although Chambers himself was a good, relatively economical stylist for his day, his impersonators often opt for an overwrought, consciously “Decadent” style which is closer to Lovecraft than Chambers. This kind of writer is always preoccupied with finding new and interesting ways of saying “yellow” - as night follows day, you know that any KiY anthology is going to contain the word “xanthous” and at least one character is going to be called Flavia. And of course, because Chambers is a very Gallic kind of American writer, you get those authors who are just bursting to show off their wrong French. There are some real howlers here, though the John Langan story actually features some right French, which is something so rare it really should be celebrated. The other failure mode is narrowness of setting. There are too many stories set in American cities. Chambers was a very urban writer so the “towniness” isn’t a problem in itself, but all the cities kind of feel the same. There are too many attempts to engage in the kind of neo-hard-boiled style that Laird Barron has wandered off into in recent years, but without Barron’s technical expertise. One way this anthology does stand out from the crowd is its high political content, with the titular King’s absurd tyranny transferred to our world in a number of alternate-history versions of the early twentieth century and beyond. The book’s second section “Directives for Dominion” is pretty much devoted to showing what would happen if we let the King take the reins in our world. The political comment on offer here is definitely not subtle, but I enjoyed “The European Theatre” by Trevor Firetog (a wartime drama which also addresses the pressing question of what happens to translators of the cursed play. Nothing good, needless to say.) “Field Trip” by Patrick Freivald is probably the most effective takedown of fascist procedure and benefits from a likeably horrible female narrator, while “The Order of Wilde” by Marc L. Abbott also provides some fun ideas and much-needed comic relief. The star of the last section, “Veiled Intentions”, is ‘Suanee’ by Steve Van Patten. After the success of Lovecraft Country it’s no surprise to see Chambers’ mythos being given a racial politics spin, and Van Patten hands in the most unremittingly horrifying tale in the collection. Crucially, Van Patten doesn’t just limit himself to providing a pious depiction of the everyday horrors of racism. Out of all the authors in this book (apart maybe Sarah Read) he also has the best grip on the absurd, and the ways in which it acts as both a by-product of fascism and fuel for it. Again, this is hardly subtle stuff, but what with the current political situation in the West, you can’t really blame these authors for screaming their message rather than whispering it. Finally, I liked “Wasp Honey” by Kathleen Scheiner, which reminds us that yellow isn’t just the colour of madness and Decadence, but also one of Mother Nature’s hazard warnings. A few of the stories in this collection tackle the dynastic, inherited nature of evil, but this one’s my favourite, and its modern, everyday domestic setting was a nice change after all those subways, sidewalks, yellow flags and endless Lethal Chambers. Under Twin Suns, as a whole, is more about depth than breadth. Some themes and aspects of Chambers’ work are investigated repeatedly, while others are largely ignored. I don’t think this is an anthology with universal appeal, but fans of the mythos should appreciate the overall standard of writing, which is very decent. Fans of the recently departed Chambers supporter Joseph S. Pulver will also be interested in “…less…light”, an unfinished novella that has been completed by Dominique Lamssies. Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign |
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