The View of the Darkness George Shannon, Wishing Bridge by Ann Cecil, Grounded by Michail Velichansky, The Creature Struts Among Us by John A. Frochio, Errors by The President's Column - Kevin Geiselman Lawrence C. Connolly, Reading the Cards by Genevra Littlejohn, The Last K by Timons Esaias, Passing On by Laurie D. T. Mann, Merchandising When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark. Not of Rights by Christina Schulman, What Debt is Due? by Anders Brink, Troll the darkness itself, mind you, but of the things that by Judith A. Friedl, Do I Not Bleed? by Dr. Eric Leif Davin, Chump Change could be hiding in the dark. I was particularly fearful of by Pete Butler, Battlefield by Brendan Hykes, Two for One by L. K. Farrar, the formless, nameless denizens of the space beneath Aldo of Lepton by Dan Bloch, Shellshock by Thomas Rafalski, The the basement stairs, ready to reach between the steps Golden Harp's Lament by Kassandra Siegel, Young Robots in Love by and grasp my skinny legs as I ran up. Wen Spencer, Shadow Chasing by John Branch and The Changelings by As I grew older, I countered this fear with knowl- Rachel Ross edge. I read about ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch $12.00 plus Shipping & Handling Ness Monster, all the pseudoscience and cryptozoology I could find. As I matured, I tempered it with harder sciences and more critical thinking. If there Parallax Second Tales were alien saucers visiting from another world, why would the occupants look edited by Ann Cecil like little greys when they evolved on another world? If Bigfoot really was stalk- A 60-page anthology of speculative fiction by PARSEC members. ing the woods, why hadn't one ever gotten hit by a car crossing the highway? If Contents: The Souvenir You Most Want by Sue Burke, Cyber Collar by people really can predict the future, why do we only ever hear about their predic- Eric Leif Davin, The King's Watch by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Amcave tions after the fact? Shouldn't they be making millions in commodities futures? Memories by William Blake Hall, A Carnival Feeling by LaZealtrice When I was in college and was having a rough time of it, I decided to do Addeana Jackson some reading to combat the nightmares I had been having. Something productive $5.00 plus Shipping & Handling when I was feeling less than successful. Reading "The Lovecraft Omnibus" and returning to my "normal" sleep and dream patterns was pretty much proof of my Six from PARSEC no longer being afraid of the dark. edited by James J. Walton, Jr. But, the world is not so well ordered that I can't be creeped out from time to Fairy tales, folklore and myth set in motion in modern day Pittsburgh. time. Earlier this year I was riding my bicycle from McKeesport to Washington Contents: Cool Beans by Fruma Klass, The Pittsburgh Town Musicians DC. Most of the first hundred miles was done at night because I had learned that by Ann Cecil, The Love-Talker by Judith A. Friedl, Rumpled Bedfellows riding my bicycle at night was cooler, quiet and generally a pleasant way to trav- by Kevin Hayes, Childhood Traditions by Nancy Hagan-Liddle, Extreme el. I had gotten used to the glowing lights of my headlamp reflected in the eyes Geas by Diane Turnshek on various nocturnal creatures. Raccoons and possums quickly disappearing into $6.00 plus Shipping & Handling the underbrush. Domestic cats brazenly staring and holding their ground. But at one point I came across something I had never seen before. A pair of eyes up off the ground. "Person height." It wasn't some animal, it was a someone or Parsec Publications Order Form someTHING! Then, the eyes did an odd dance, moving down close to the ground and bobbing up again. The chill ran around the small of my back before climbing Title Price # Total up my spine and down each on my arms. It was a deer. Triangulation 2004 12.00 But for a moment, I was that frightened little boy who raced up the basement Triangulation 2003 12.00 stairs. That moment reminded me that for all our knowledge, there are still places Parallax Second Tales 5.00 we haven been and things we haven't seen. There are still mysteries lurking in the Six from PARSEC 6.00 dark that we won't understand until we have a chance to shine a light on them. Shipping & handling $3 for first item plus $1 for each item after that: You won't want to miss this month's meeting when a friend of mine Devin Make checks payable to: TOTAL Ross sheds some light on Bigfoot and Bigfoot research in Western Pennsylvania. PARSEC PO Box 3681 Pittsburgh, PA 15230-3681 continued on page 5 Page 2 Page 7 Parsec Publications Reviews Grownup Fairy Tales For the 21st Century: The Village, The Manchurian Candidate Triangulation 2004: reviewed by William Blake Hall A Confluence of Speculative Fiction My experience of The Village was darkened on edited by Barbara Carlson two sides. I was stuck with one of the worst audi- A 147-page anthology of speculative fiction ences I've had to sit with in years, complete with by PARSEC members. a little boy faking loud flatulent noises and two guys guffawing over Adrien Brody's character seeming retarded. The hell with "Save the tender virginal teenage brains" rat- ings; what we really need are ratings that say "Being bored AND stupid aren't Contents: The Space Race by J.F. Benedetto, good enough; if you can't tell the difference between a Shyamalan movie and Another Man's Meat by Wen Spencer, Well Met by Moonlight by Judith A. Friedl, Anchorman or White Chicks going in, PLEASE STAY OUT." Ahh, but that Infrared/Aware by Susan Urbanek Linville, The Down Elevator by Dorothy Stone, would be sensible, so no. What was worse, however, was Shyamalan shirking A Question of Belief by John H. Branch, Hard Port, Easy Money by Anders Brink, his own duties; I kept seeing microphones peeping into the tops of important Merlin and Vivian-Monologues in the Whitethorn Bower: Then and Now by Lynn scenes, a simple and skippable indie mistake I've not noticed since Ethan Frome Hawker, The Gray War by Larry Ivkovich, Hard Port by Henry Tjernlund, Alpha and was made a few years back with Joan Allen as Zena. Omega by G.N. Shannon, Chasers by Scott W. Baker, Can't Get No Satisfaction Coarseness is lurching back into vogue; my parents felt generally offended by Kevin Hayes, From the Ashes by Margaret McGaffey Fisk. Also includes intro- duction by Barbara Carlson, author biographies and a bio on the editor. Cover art by Johnny Carson, so that leaves me helpless to even begin to describe this Jay by Diana Stein, interior art by Kevin Hayes, Henry Tjernlund and Barbara Carlson. Leno fellow to them. We need a good grownup fairy tale more than ever before $12.00 plus Shipping & Handling - but is The Village really it? Once we could count on M. Night Shyamalan to ISBN: 0-9743231-1-X take us to "the other side", a world overlapping that of Mulder and Scully, but this Excerpt from the Introduction: time around he tries a softer take on The Truman Show, preferring to deal more "... In this issue we have another story from Wen Spencer, a long-time Parsec simply and directly with the power of belief and of playing large mind games. I member. This story gives you a possible futuristic view of what it means to be civ- appreciated it, and yet I could see how even a politely silent viewer could easily ilized. I found it thought-provoking and disturbing. It's in Wen's usual easy-to-read tune out. style that sucks you right into the character's mind. One of my all-time favorite grownup fairy tales is the original Manchurian Speaking of minds, "The Down Elevator" is a disturbing trip into the dark recess- Candidate, now coming out on DVD just in time to coincide with the new es of a mouse-infested mind. This story pushes the envelope just a tad and deals with a couple uncomfortable issues. remake. Those who know Angela Lansbury mainly as Jessica Fletcher or Mrs. We have a footrace on the moon, tiny ships racing to refuel big ships, a big ship Potts need to see what a hateful villain she could be - it's magnificent work. that ran out of fuel, and war maneuvers on an alien planet. We have very hard Once several years ago a movielovers' club asked us to list our top ten villains, liquor, how to win at roulette, a modern-day Cassandra, and a latter-day Walter and I cited Lansbury's Mrs. Iselin. Nowadays villains are sort of fun - we are Mitty. We have an alien invasion, discovery of a new life form and a piece about a obliged to be amused on some level by Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, or possible future on the War on Drugs. And don't forget tasting sand. We have that, Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, or Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in the first Die too. ..." Hard movie. Not so with Mrs. Iselin; I was properly chilled by how twisted and strident she really was, and found myself praying for her death. Triangulation 2003: This time around the Mrs. Iselin role is covered by Meryl Streep - and yet A Confluence of Speculative Fiction I get the feeling that someone originally wanted Glenn Close, then saw a chance edited by Diane Turnshek to trade up. Even since Fatal Attraction Close has been the Queen of Wigging A 144-page anthology of speculative fiction by PARSEC members. Out, as those Dalmatian movies and this recent Stepford Wives movie prove, and Contents: Dad on the Moon by Rebecca Carmi, Dangermoon by Kevin Streep tries to come close to Close only to sound a little too strong for this mate- Hayes, Dead Men Do Tell Tales by Alan Irvine, Trusting Midnight by Page 6 Page 3 rial - and there's the problem. Where the first movie crackled with eloquent inspires us to wonder if his nickname could be Indiana. Merrin has already been wit, this new one lays the ominous music on thick. It's a bad trade. For that through a lot, having survived a Sadistic Supreme Test of Personal Morality at matter, the first one had an ingenious cover-all-bases plot, in which superpatriots the hands of a Nazi (but how and why did Merrin ever get so close to the Nazis find themselves in cahoots with Communist spies worthy of James Bond, led by in the first place?), but now he's got to investigate an anachronistically ancient the same actor who would play Red Chinese baddie Wo Fat on some episodes of church found buried in central Africa. Somehow Izabella Scorupco, James Hawaii Five-O. This new effort, however, seems to strive for relevance without Bond's beautiful Russian ally in Goldeneye, is mixed up in this as well, and really having anything all that new or clever to say about these already movie- before you know it you have a fairly classy conventional thriller: spooky lantern- absurd times of ours. How terrifying is a candidate brainwashed by some cor- lit wanderings, signs heaped upon portents heaped upon omens, sexual tension, a porate cabal named Manchurian Global, when for years we have already lived reunion with the devil figure from the original movie (whose name, Pazuzu, with, not a Manchurian Candidate, but a Halliburton Vice-President? Nowadays remains mercifully unvoiced this time), and even a pre-Watergate use of the word the plot smacks of too much effort to achieve too little, and too ludicrously at that "cover-up" with regard to the Vatican. The script, co-written by novelist Caleb - and that is where the art of the fairy tale is important, because the first movie Carr, is honorably ambitious, for this time around Satan seems obsessed with rode a razor's edge between fairy tale (honestly, how else to explain Leslie stirring up war as an end in itself, an ever-growing disease of violence and hatred. Parrish's convenient choice of costume?) and crackerjack suspense thriller. This makes some sense, because the original movie benefitted from topical- So I find myself honoring The Village and The Manchurian Candidate - ity. For some perverse reason one of my best memories of the original is that of while passing altogether on the new Stepford Wives - as noble if incomplete some kid gratuitously stomping up and down on a car in broad daylight as Father efforts to tell weird tales attempting to encapsulate our weird times. In the Karas Jason Miller meekly walks by. In its time, the original Exorcist captured meantime, though, I will follow Frank Sinatra's unique journey, as compared to the fear that society was flying apart from within. In these post-9-11 days, a Denzel Washington playing yet again another Burned-Out Guy You Still Must warning against jihad and/or Crusade seems perfectly appropriate. Believe In, as he did in Virtuosity and Ricochet. We knew how to do this once, If only Harlin had stayed with that theme. He has enough problems letting and I hope we can again someday. his movie be a nice moody mystery, only to decide towards the end that it is in fact a Someone Else who is truly possessed after all. The wonderful thing about Help, I'm Prepossessed!: Exorcist: The Beginning the original was that you got the feeling that exorcism was WORK, a kind of reviewed by William Blake Hall exhausting drudgery of the soul, but by shoving it all towards the very end Harlin Their bodies of work are perhaps equally silly, and yet somehow they stand gives his exorcist his stature but unfortunately not his exorcism - quick, kiss the as two Scandinavian opposites in my mind. On the one hand there is Max Von sash, ask for forgiveness, shout the formula, and boom, that's pretty much all ya Sydow, who somehow stubbornly retains the dignity of his returned Crusader gotta do. Worse, Harlin feels constrained to recreate the sickliness and nastiness Antonius Block playing chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, of Linda Blair as Regan - and what can I say, it's dreadfully dated and disap- and represented a true casting coup for director William Friedkin when he pointing. At the crucial climax, you will cover your eyes and ears - not in ter- assumed the titular mantle of The Exorcist. On the other hand there is Renny ror, but in embarrassmant. It doesn't help that the production allows for obvious Harlin, who directed the highly irresponsible yet addictively entertaining Long CGI effects for details better handled more realistically in the original. With Kiss Goodnight, who for the most part is a connoisseur of cheesiness. Despite more courage of his convictions, Harlin might have really pulled this off. all the ill-advised dreck that Von Sydow has gotten himself mixed up in over the As it stands, this prequel succeeds in being an earnest tribute to the com- decades, he still looms tall in pop cultural memory as Father Lankester Merrin, ing of Von Sydow as Merrin, and since I am prejudiced - that is to say, prepos- the priest who got to take on Satan himself by way of Linda Blair. That height sessed - to root for that portrayal, I give this movie a passing grade. Another is assured and unmoved, and so it is left to Harlin to scramble upwards strenu- one, using much of the same footage but directed by John Frankenheimer, will ously to overcome his own addiction to cheese. be forthcoming, and if nothing else the two movies may provide a unique lesson Harlin is mostly, and thus commendably, successful. The key challenge in the making of a film - in itself a fitting tribute to a movie which first taught before Exorcist: The Beginning is to answer the question "Does this prequel do us the sort of powerful popular impact that film can have. justice to the character of Merrin?", and it pretty much does. This time Merrin is played by Stellan Skarsgard, the mathematician from Good Will Hunting, and Geiss - continued from page 2 this earlier Merrin continually assures us that he is an archaeologist and no As a former member of the Pennsylvania Association for the Study of the longer a priest, and so he wanders through exotic deserts with a nice hat and Unexplained, Devin will not only give us some of the theories and evidence avail- able, but also give us some of the inside dirt on the organization itself. Page 4 Page 5