Ed Simon and Charles Dickey on Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks

From Ed Simon's 6-10-24 LITHUB article entitled "In Praise of the Paranormal Curiosity of Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks":

[Charles] Fort developed an entirely new category, distinct from the occult. Unlike belief in magic and miracles, Fort’s interest in so-called anomalies depended on the authority of science, that which he was ostensibly often in conflict with. What he posited wasn’t the ability to divinely alter reality through incantation and conjuration, but rather of something scientifically discernible beyond the normal, beyond the natural. In four odd volumes including The Book of the Damned, New Lands in 1925, Lo! In 1931, and Wild Talents in 1932, Fort would invent that mode of thinking that goes beyond the normal and the natural, which is to say that this jocular New York journalist is the father of the paranormal and the supernatural.

To read Simon's entire article, click HERE. 

From Charles Dickey's 7-16-24 CHRONICLE article entitled "The Scholar Who Inspired a Legion of Cranks: The Vexed Legacy of Charles Fort":

Fort’s The Book of the Damned remains a remarkable work. But Fort was a gadfly, not a prophet. Lionizing him — as Thayer and others have tried to do for the last century — is as problematic as marginalizing him. Perhaps the appropriate attitude toward Fort is to treat his writing as he treated the anomalous facts he uncovered: with seriousness and wonder, but also with a savage and relentless skepticism. His ultimate gift was not to get us to think to new worlds, but to scrutinize our own more closely.

To read Dickey's entire article, click HERE. 

DON'T BE A SUCKER

DON'T BE A SUCKER is an antifascist film produced by the United States Army Signal Corps in 1945. Despite the fact that it was made over seventy years ago, its subject matter eerily mirrors the propaganda spewing out of the mainstream of the Republican Party on a daily basis in 2024 (pay particular attention to the segment that begins at the 3:33 mark).

By the way, classic horror fans will want to keep a lookout for German-born actor Martin Kosleck, who makes a surprise appearance at the 7:38 mark. Psychotronic cineastes will remember Kosleck's indelible performances in such films as NAZI AGENT (1942), THE HITLER GANG (1944), THE MUMMY'S CURSE (1944), THE FROZEN GHOST (1945), HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946), SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946), and THE FLESH EATERS (1964). Few actors portrayed Nazis as convincingly as Martin Kosleck...

DON'T BE A SUCKER

CLOSE TO ZERO

I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Vankin’s revelatory nonfiction book, CLOSE TO ZERO: HOW DONALD TRUMP FULFILLED HIS APOCALYPTIC VISION AND PAID HIS DEBT TO PUTIN WITH A DEVASTATING BIOLOGICAL WARFARE ATTACK ON AMERICA. Despite the flamboyant subtitle, this well-researched book is an extremely thoughtful and perceptive analysis of the final year of Trump’s tenure in the White House. I've heard several of Vankin's recent podcast appearances, all of which have been impressive. Vankin’s sober (and alarming) analysis should not be discounted out of hand. At the very least, you should read the first chapter of the book before deciding whether or not Vankin is out of his skull. Spoiler alert: He's not.  

By the way, I think this book is even more illuminating when read in conjunction with my 2021 nonfiction book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP. If read back-to-back, these two books paint a pretty clear picture of what was happening behind the scenes of the MAGA Propaganda Machine during the final months of Trump's presidency. 

 

Conspirinormal 381- Jonathan Vankin (9-1-21)

Binnall of America: The Revival - E21 | Jonathan Vankin (3-13-24)

"Shaking Down the Goon" in THE MAILER REVIEW

A couple of days ago I received my contributor's copy of THE MAILER REVIEW'S 15th anniversary edition. This volume not only contains my autobiographical short story "Shaking Down the Goon" but also a nonfiction piece, "Noir Trailblazer," in which I discuss Ida Lupino's breakthrough contributions to film noir and Philip Sipiora's recent cinema book, IDA LUPINO, FILMMAKER (published by Bloomsbury).

Readers of BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE might be interested to know that my MONOGRAM NINE co-author, Gary D. Rhodes, has a quartet of poems included in this same issue. 

Click HERE to order a copy of THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 15!

CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES REVIEWED IN DEAD RECKONINGS

Géza A. G. Reilly just published an extremely thoughtful and perceptive review of my debut short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, in the latest issue of DEAD RECKONINGS (#35). Entitled "Two Authors, Art, High Weirdness, and Being Down-and-Out on the Streets of California," Reilly's review begins with the following paragraph:

Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers.

Here's another choice excerpt: 

Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, “Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,” a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel.

This issue also contains contributions by the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Donald Sidney-Fryer, and Darrell Schweitzer. If you want to buy a copy of DEAD RECKONINGS #35, click HERE.

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS:

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly

DEAD MONKEY RUM: Behind the Scenes with Artist Joseph Dunn

Since thousands of Tiki enthusiasts are now flocking to the annual Tiki Oasis event in San Diego to bask in the Southern California sun, lounge by the pool at the Town & Country Hotel, attend the midnight burlesque show, and imbibe a variety of exotic tropical cocktails conjured up by alchemical mixologists, I thought this would be the ideal time to offer a "behind-the-scenes" look at the process used by artist Joseph Dunn to design the fabulous cover for my 2023 Tiki-centric novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, which was nominated for a Rondo Award earlier this year. 

Joseph managed to nail the exact vibe I had envisioned for the cover when I first began writing the novel one sunny spring afternoon while sitting near the koi pond in the luxuriant Japanese Garden at CSU Long Beach, Sven Kirsten's THE SOUND OF TIKI blasting into my ears through my headphones. Appropriately enough, Martin Denny and Si Zentner's "Tiki" (from their 1962 album EXOTICA SUITE) was the song playing when the idea for the novel first struck me. (In an earlier CryptoPost, I listed many of the exotica albums I was listening to obsessively while writing the book.) I don't believe reading DEAD MONKEY RUM would be quite the same experience without Joseph's artistic contribution. Laid out below is the step-by-step process Joseph used to reach the final image that adorns the cover of DEAD MONKEY RUM. If you like what you see (and I'm sure you will), you should check out Joseph's Etsy shop by clicking right HERE...

PRAISE FOR DEAD MONKEY RUM:

"A remarkable rush of entertainment and thrills."

--Alan Moore (V for Vendetta and Watchmen) 

 

"Robert Guffey's fantastic novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, will at least bring your brain out of a coma, if not get your imagination off the couch. This is a thinly masked tribute/adventure to the late Stanislaw Szukalski and his boundless imagination. This book is a mental gymnasium."

-- Robert Williams (Visual Addiction, Hysteria in Remission, and Through Prehensile Eyes)

 

"A fantastically rich and entertaining piece of work with an original sharp edge."

 -- Jim Woodring (writer/artist of Weathercraft, The Frank Book, and One Beautiful Spring Day)

 

"Stanislaw Szukalski would love DEAD MONKEY RUM. This novel is addictive like a heavy drug. Make space in your calendar to read it all."

-- Irek Dobrowolski (director of the Netflix documentary, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski)

 

 "Yetis, Tiki Gods, Cryptozoology, and rum-filled adventure! Sign me up and tell me when the ship sails! I'm recommending this Robert Guffey novel to all my friends, family, and foes to take their minds completely off whatever they are thinking about. Wonderful."

-- Loren Coleman (Mysterious America, The Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents, The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Curious Encounters, and 40 other books - Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum)

 
"DEAD MONKEY RUM succeeds at being a pursuit thriller, with suspense and tension as the monkey and Stephanie evade their cryptid enemies, and comedy as the two exchange jabs at each other. It is cinematically fast. DEAD MONKEY RUM should be adapted to a [...] Ralph Bakshiesque animated film where both the zaniness of the narrative and the latent satire would really flourish."

-- Exotica Moderne

 

"One of the weirdest romps you'll ever read."

-- Fortean Times

 UNBOXING DEAD MONKEY RUM:

 

August 2, 1997

Exactly 27 years ago today, William S. Burroughs passed away at the age of 83...

"In Mexico, South and Central America guerrilla units are forming an army of liberation to free the United States. In North Africa from Tangier to Timbuctu corresponding units prepare to liberate Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Despite disparate aims and personnel of its constituent members the underground is agreed on basic objectives. We intend to march on the police machine everywhere. We intend to destroy the police machine and all its records. We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems. The family unit and its cancerous expansion into tribes, countries, nations we will eradicate at its vegetable roots. We don't want to hear any more family talk, mother talk, father talk, cop talk, priest talk, country talk or party talk. To put it country simple we have heard enough bullshit."

--William S. Burroughs, THE WILD BOYS, 1971