Goddamn it!

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I missed Towel Day...but, credit where credit is due, thanks to my niece Jody for sending me a Facebook message about it.

- Sid

Have you heard the one about...

"Sorry I'm late, I was doing a Vanity Fair piece."

-Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Iron Man.

Every now and then when someone accuses me of telling jokes all the time, I defend myself by defining a joke as "a structured anecdote with a punch line" - everything else is just conversation. According to that definition, the movie adaptation of Iron Man is a joke: it's a structured anecdote with a pretty good punch line.

I don't mean to suggest that the movie is either an intentional or unintentional comedy, although it does have the usual number of in-jokes (Stan Lee does his usual walk-on, this time as Hugh Hefner, and a shot of a youthful Tony Stark and his first circuit board shows Tony posing with Bill Gates) and a surprising amount of physical humour. Impressively, the humour in no way detracts from the flow of story and never has any feeling of television-Batman-and-Robin parody.

I think that a lot of the credit for the movie's success has to go to Robert Downey Jr. There's been a lot of media discussion about how the choice of Downey was a risk, based on his well-known issues with substance abuse and subsequent imprisonment, but it makes him an oddly apt choice to play a playboy millionaire character whose alcoholism represented a major story arc in the comic book version. In fact, there's even a reference in the movie to Downey's Burger King epiphany. His portrayal of Tony Stark is by turns flippant and earnest, but has an underlying air of determination that comes across perfectly. The script is loaded with tossed-away one liners from Stark that Downey delivers so casually that I suspect an unattentive audience (such as the one I sat in this evening) won't even notice them.

Similarly, Jeff Bridges does a brilliant job as Obadiah Stane, Stark's mentor and business partner, giving the character a chillingly plausible air of corporate evil. I have to say that the shaved head and full beard help considerably, in that he's almost not recognizable in the role.

And the armour itself? Well, really, it IS the main element of the story, and the three versions all perform admirably. (There's an alarming similarity between the armour-assembly process in the movie and the one from the Blizzard Starcraft II trailer, but that's a separate issue.) The "final" model - final in quotes because it's in pieces by the end of the movie, and apparently sequels are planned - is convincingly detailed, articulated and transformable. Full credit to everyone for trying to figure out a plausible system that would allow someone to actually fly in a suit of armour.

All that being said, Glyneth Paltrow doesn't work as Pepper Potts so completely that I tried to ignore her. Terence Howard as James Rhodes felt all wrong too, I would have preferred someone like Gary Dourdan from CSI, someone with some physical presence. There's a clumsy attempt to establish Tony's post-trauma personality as having an element of fanaticism to it, but it only pops up for a single scene and then falls by the wayside.

Regarding the original comic book character, if you'd asked me last week where Iron Man's origin lay, I would have unhesitatingly said, "Korean War, but they updated it to Vietnam sometime in the 70's - probably Iraq in the movie version." Sadly, the weight of online commentary suggests that it was always Vietnam - sadly because it would have been a better comment on American interventionism for them to have updated the story from Korea to Vietnam to, as it turns out, Afghanistan. The joke is that as Obadiah Stane points out during the climax of the movie, the Tony Stark who announces that his company will no longer manufacture weapons then turns around and makes "the greatest weapon of all". Let's face it, when Iron Man fires a missile into a tank and it blows up, nobody inside the tank is walking away from that. I have to wonder if they're going to address that dichotomy in sequels.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the movie version, especially since it takes things back to the basics. I stopped buying comics a few years back, mostly out of boredom, but from what I gather some of the attempts by writers to alleviate the boredom issue have been more creative than intelligent, unfortunately. (Come on, Teen Iron Man?)

Oh, and the punchline? Sorry, I'd hate to spoil the joke for anyone - and it's a pretty good joke.

- Sid

"On the dark side of the moon"

"Dark Side of the Moon is THE signature album of the twentieth century."

Chris Sumner, a Friday night several months ago.
(Disavowed when sober)

Having just been awakened, as usual, by the somehow concerned meowing of the infamous Nigel, the fleeting memories of a dream begin to fade in the daylight, as dreams tend to do. Sadly, due to workload, many of my recent dreams have dealt with paper stocks and printing issues (no, really), and very often I have no memory of my dreams at all, but in this case, the fragments of my dream were of a science fiction drama on the moon - on the dark side of the moon, to be specific.

I have to give full credit to my subconscious mind for the large portion of my dream involving my relationship with one of the other members of the moon base - a somewhat hawk-faced, kinky haired blonde woman who might have been an Israeli. Thanks, subconscious, now if you can have this woman cross my path in the real world... That aside, the dream was surprisingly retro, with a military contingent on the base in case of difficulty with the opposing Russian mission, concealed data disks and people assembling vacuum-capable weaponry that probably wouldn't work like they did in the dream. There were even references to the Apollo missions. As one of the soldiers was putting together some kind of tripod-mounted light artillery, he mutters something about "getting his golf club ready", in acknowledgement of Alan Shepard's 1971 golf shot during Apollo 14.

However, in the clear light of day, it occurred to me that at no point did I notice the lower gravity. How sad that imagination failed me at that point! Sigh...I blame innumerable TV programs that have come up with workarounds to keeps the budget down, but it's unfortunate that my sleeping mind was unable to make the leap (no pun intended) to quarter-gravity. Perhaps another time...

-Sid

Sequels, Endings and Unendings.

As part of a recent income tax refund spending spree, I made an impulse purchase of the post-series Stargate SG-1 movie The Ark of Truth. I've followed Stargate SG-1 to a greater or lesser extent over the years, and although it's never been one of my favourites, for the most part I've been pleased with the show. 

However, I found The Ark of Truth less than impressive, especially when compared with similar offerings from other science fiction series over the years. 

As far as research reveals, science fiction originates the idea of the post-series movie. It's possible that Star Trek breaks ground on the concept, although my good friend Alan pointed out, the Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies from the 60's may have a better claim as the first TV-series-to-movie films. Regardless of which series gets the ball rolling, the genre has certainly taken to the idea, especially in cases where cancellation has prevented the completion of a major story arc, as in the cases of Farscape and Firefly. 

The Peacekeeper Wars - a marvellous title - is Farscape's entry into the post-cancellation sweepstakes, and as such sets the standard in terms of quality. Massive fleets meet in apocalyptic combat, a major character dies, the two lead characters marry in a hail of mortar shells and gunfire, the existence of the galaxy itself is threatened, and the post-climax dénouement provides a touching and appropriate conclusion to the series. (I have to confess to a certain degree of bias here, I feel that Claudia Black, who plays Aeryn Sun, may be the most beautiful woman on the planet.) 

Coincidentally, Serenity, the Firefly movie, has some of the same elements, including huge fleets of starships in battle and the death of a major character - or two - or three. However, Joss Whedon's unique style makes any sort of comparison irrelevant, and Serenity has the sort of ambiguous morality that he seems to build into all of his work. 

And so to The Ark of Truth - how does it miss the mark compared to Serenity or The Peacekeeper Wars? I think that I was expecting something more dramatic and with less deus ex machina. The parallel story lines of Ori and Replicators are both resolved almost casually - admittedly at the last moment, but there was no real sense of tension and climax to either resolution.  Yes, the characters are all in danger, yes, it comes down to the last moment, but in both cases the "last minute" solution comes and goes with no sense of drama, to the point where I found myself wondering thinking, "That was it? That's all?". 

I'll be fair and say that The Ark of Truth isn't terrible, but it's not great, either, it's basically an average episode of the TV series. The only bright spot was an unexpectedly monologue by Teal'c which for the first time in the series offered some insight into his guilt about his actions as First Prime to Apophis. 

The unfortunate thing is that in the Stargate SG-1 series finale, Unending, the writers came up with a brilliantly simple series send-off that really didn't require a followup, regardless of whether or not the menace of the Ori was ever dealt with. The idea of trapping the major characters in a bubble of time for sixty years sounds boring, but it offers an ideal opportunity for those characters to reveal their true natures when faced with a completely different kind of tension and pressure. 

Michael Shanks delivers what may be his best speech in the entire ten years of the series during a poignant, vulnerable scene between his character Daniel and Vala, played by Claudia Black. Interestingly, the scene was rewritten entirely after the two actors found that the original version "didn't feel like the characters". 

Apparently there's another Stargate SG-1 movie in the pipe, but I have to say that I'm going to be a bit leery about running right out and buying it at full price. After all, once bitten and all that, and unless it's substantially better than The Ark of Truth, it won't be difficult to find it in the 2 for $10 box at HMV.

- Sid

Even two seems like a lot, when you think about it.

"Do you add to the blog on a regular basis, like do you work on a topic for a while and then post it sort of on a schedule, or just as it comes? Inquiring Cloins want to know..."

Colin Campbell

Since Mr. Campbell, whose Campbell Brothers blog was the inspiration for The Infinite Revolution*, has expressed some curiousity about my process via e-mail, I thought it only appropriate to take a moment and do a posting on posting. I suspect that anyone who does blog postings on an area of interest rather than as a diary ends up doing one of these meta-media things, so I might as well get mine out of the way.

I don't have any sort of set schedule for postings. It's just something I do for fun, and as such there's no reason to sit down every two days and force myself to write something. However, I have to say that life is full of inspiration and opportunity for topics. As an example, let's look at the last week or two.

About a week and a half ago, I discovered that my Friday night dinner-and-drinks friend Chris, who is familiar with Terry Pratchett's work, is (or was, he's fickle) a big Harry Potter fan, likes Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and is gradually weaning himself away from World of Warcraft, had never heard of Michael Moorcock's Elric series. Well, rather than bending the poor fellow's ear for half an hour, I'll probably do an Elric of Melniboné posting to get that out of my system.

I received my income tax refund this week, and as a result did a little non-necessity shopping this weekend. Picked up a copy of the straight to DVD movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth and found that it compared unfavourably to the Firefly and Farscape post-series movies, another good topic for a posting. I also bought a copy of The Crow - comic book adaptations have been uneven as well, lots of grist there for the mill.

I'm currently reading a couple of books (they're in different rooms, if you're wondering how that works) that both deal with hostile or possibly hostile technologically superior aliens. Aliens - good topic, that, one of the big SF concepts as well as being one of the major foundations of the genre as established by H. G. Wells. Wells gave us time travel, space exploration, alien invasion, genetic manipulation (The Food of the Gods) and invisibility, just to name a few of the major themes that he introduced. This one is probably two postings, I've been toying with an H. G. Wells piece for some time.

And so it goes... I've also got a few partial drafts in progress, as well as doing ongoing research for the global/racial/feminist postings. It's difficult sometimes, because I worry about having the right titles and opening paragraphs, not to mention picking out all those quotes. Irritatingly, I find that I tend to compose bits of the postings in my head when I'm at the gym, and end up either forgetting them or trying to scribble them down in my workout log book between sets.

Sourcing images is fun too. In this case the graphic at the top of the page is taken from xkcd, a webcomic of "romance, sarcasm, math and language." Taken without permission, frankly - the Internet is like that - but I'll be happy to remove the image if they complain and at least I've credited them and linked to their site. I've done scanning, pulled images from .avi files, and learned the Unix command that provides a workaround for the fact that Apple disables the screen shot keyboard command when DVD's are playing.

All in all, I find it to be a pleasant little hobby. At one point I was considering taking a class in science fiction as literature, but I think that blogging has removed that desire by giving me a forum to speak my mind without having to worry about being graded.

- Sid

*Much as axe murder was the inspiration for brain surgery.

At least he's not desperate.

Personally, I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.

-Terry Pratchett on finding a cure for his Alzheimers.

On March 13th, Terry Pratchett announced to the Alzheimer's Research Trust annual conference that he would donate one million dollars to Alzheimer's research. During his speech, he reaffirmed his determination to find a cure for his condition, as per the above quote.

- Sid

P.S. Surprisingly, the Internet is thick with pictures of dead moles, I was spoiled for choice when looking for an image.

"Tonight, when they asleep, I gonna escape..."

Donna: "And I tried, I did try. I went to Egypt - I was going to go barefoot and everything. And then it's all bus trips and guide books and don't drink the water and two weeks later you're back home. It's nothing like being with you. I must have been mad turning down that offer."

The Doctor: "What offer?"

Donna: "To come with you."

Doctor Who, Partners in Crime

"I never fully understood the label of "escapist" till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers."

C. S. Lewis, On Science Fiction

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, yesterday I was able to download the premier episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who, featuring the return of Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, the eponymous Runaway Bride from the second Christmas Special. I have to confess to mixed feelings about the new episode, but it does point out an interesting perspective on fans of science fiction and fantasy.

The new Doctor Who episode, Partners in Crime, ostensibly deals with yet another threat to Earth, this time in the form of diet pills that convert first fat and then the rest of the body into alien "children". As plots go, it certainly doesn't measure up to the standards set by previous episodes, but to be honest I don't think it's intended to. The alien Adipose are simply an excuse for the Doctor and Donna to reunite and strike sparks off each other. And there are definitely sparks, there's obviously a strong chemistry between the two actors that gives their scenes an over-the-top energy.

However, I'm a bit worried that this season will suffer because of that very energy. The scene where the two see each other for the first time is certainly funny, but again, it's an over-the-top funny, and I'd hate to see the writers get distracted by that aspect of the relationship.

My concerns may be premature, though. There are some very good (and completely serious) bits describing Donna's dull and meaningless life, and an excellent scene wherein she tries to explain that lack of adventure to the Doctor as being the reason why she's been looking for him in hopes of joining him on the TARDIS. (Which, by the way, the Doctor obviously views as a mixed blessing.)

One of the criticisms levied against science fiction and fantasy over the years has been that they are "escapist" genres, although why that would be a bad thing I have no idea. In this case, it is literally escapist, in that Donna has fixated on the idea of exchanging her boring life for one of adventures in time and space with the Doctor. In the context of the episode, her determination to find "the right man" is considered to be admirable by her grandfather*, and pointless by her mother.

However, in the context of the real world, everyone watching the show has made the same decision that Donna has, although hopefully not to the extent of being unemployed and living with their mother. On a weekly basis, we've decided that we would rather vicariously travel the universe with an alien than, oh, do dishes or watch a hockey game.

"Escape" - it's an interesting description of what we're doing, and as C. S. Lewis points out, strongly suggests imprisonment.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, my family did not have a lot of money when I was growing up, and I have to wonder if that was in any way a factor in my interest in science fiction and fantasy. I wonder if there are any statistics connecting low income with a desire to escape into another world? The stereotype of the socially inept SF geek is firmly established in the cultural matrix now, but which comes first, the chicken or the egg? I think that it's perfectly logical for someone who is being beaten up at lunchtime on a daily basis to want to escape, to seek refuge in a completely different universe: The Lord of the Rings, where the hero is small and weak, Star Wars, with its boyish saviour of the day, and so on. Spiderman's alter ego, Peter Parker, is a science nerd, and Captain America was originally someone so weak and skinny that they couldn't get into the army. Harry Potter? Adopted kid who lives under the stairs.

Part of the reason for my childhood interest in science fiction was because my mother was a fan, although I doubt if she thought of it in exactly those terms - I think that my mother would have found the term "fan" to be an inappropriate designation. I suspect that for her, science fiction was most definitely an escape, a gateway to a more interesting place than the one where she'd ended up. Considering that she had relocated from England to Toronto, and then to Muskoka, I sometimes wonder if my mother had spent her whole life trying to escape.

Coincidentally, she used to say that if a UFO landed in the yard, she would jump on board. Mother, this posting is dedicated to you - hopefully you would have seen a kindred spirit in the Doctor's new companion.

- Sid

* Donna's Grandfather made an appearance in the 2007 Christmas Special as a news stand operator, but when I saw him again in Partners in Crime I thought to myself, "Wait, who is that?" The character of Wilfred Mott is played by Bernard Cribbins, who, in addition to his numerous other film, stage and television appearances, co-starred with Peter Cushing in the 1966 Doctor Who movie, Invasion Earth 2150 AD. I can only hope that they'll write in a reference to that- after all, Sarah Jane Smith made a guest appearance, why not police officer Tom Campbell?

Farewell - and fare well.

"I want to be remembered most as a writer -- one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well."

- Arthur C. Clarke

In many ways, today marks the end of an era. Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

For his 90th birthday on December 16th, 2007, Clarke released a nine minute video* on YouTube, in which he appeared cheerful and energetic, if a trifle laboured in speech. I think that his closing comments from that video make a fitting epitaph for one of the great figures of science fiction.

I find that another English writer -- who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East -- has expressed it very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling:

If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.

- Sid

* By the way, I have to be fair and say that to anyone who is not a hard core SF geek - yes, I mean you, Laurie - you may wish to skip the video.

Muchas cosas.

If I were to write a story where I represented race relations by creating an all black universe and had white people represented as an evil rapacious alien species that smell bad and are totally devoid of rhythm I expect you might not necessarily see that as a sign of the diversity of my thinking process.

- Kwasi, Ramblings of an African Geek

I recently started a blog posting on fantasy and science fiction on the international level, and quickly found myself in much deeper water than expected. I started out quite innocently by wanting to look at the idea of "world music" as it applies to fantasy and SF, but it's impossible to look at alternatives to North American/European/Western popular culture without looking at the reasons for the dominance of that culture - and the reactions of the rest of the world to that dominance.

However, that's just the beginning. It's not necessary to be living outside of the Western cultural matrix to feel oppressed and ignored by it, as countless black, hispanic, asian, or aboriginal inhabitants of North America are fully and bitterly aware. Nor is it necessary to be racially distinct - it may only be necessary to be a woman.

As a Caucasian male, it's difficult to avoid feeling either defensive or apologetic when talking about issues of prejudice, sexism, and culture, and I suspect I'm well out of my depth trying to examine these various issues.* However, I'll take my best shot at it in a series of posts and see where I end up.

I think that approaching this as a topic revolving around fantasy and science fiction is very appropriate, though. After all, logic would suggest that if any genres of literature should be beyond discrimination based on racial, geographic or sexual issues, it should be fantasy and science fiction. Shouldn't it?

- Sid

* Not to mention that I can feel Ursula K. LeGuin hovering down in Oregon south of the border, like a guilty conscience. Ursula K. LeGuin frightens me - I think of her as one of the great minds of our time, and I'm pretty sure that she's literally given this area more thought than I can imagine. The only good news is that she's unlikely to notice this if we can all agree to keep quiet...

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

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 mean that we should voyage far.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

My good friend Laurie and I have a sort of ongoing joke involving the jargons of our respective professions. In her case, as a professional fitness expert she can go on at length regarding anterior cruciate ligaments and so forth, and as a professional in the graphics industry I can counter with comments regarding CYMK versus RGB versus LAB.

However, I also have almost 40 years of background reading science fiction and fantasy, so every now and then I throw in a bit of esoterica from that part of my life. Today, when asked via e-mail if I would be going to the gym tomorrow, I replied as follows:

Yep, gym tomorrow failing some unknown catastrophe – sudden illness, power outages, Great C’thulhu rising from English Bay and reasserting his dominion over the pitiful slave race called humanity, that sort of thing.

Her next message had the somewhat startled subject line, "Great WHO?" And so, to H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Howard Phillip Lovecraft (1890-1937) is one of the truly groundbreaking authors in the area of horror. The majority of his work appeared in various pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in the 20's and 30's, and at the time of its publication he was almost completely unknown to the general public. However, in the 70 years since his death from intestinal cancer, his work has drawn a constant and loyal readership. Lovecraft creates the horror genre as we know it now: in the early 1900's it must have been considered almost insane to undertake a career as a writer of fantastic horror, but without Lovecraft, it's very likely that Stephen King wouldn't have an audience. In fact, King, along with writers such as Neil Gaiman, Robert Bloch and Clive Barker, cite Lovecraft's work as an influence on their own.

Lovecraft's early work is completely different from the stories that gained him his reputation. His first stories are pastiches of Lord Dunsany's fantasy tales - sadly, although Dunsany's lyrical and poetic style appears to be easily imitated, it is not as easy to match its quality. However, as Lovecraft continued to write, his work took a startling turn toward tales of inexplicable monstrosities and horrors.

Lovecraft is best know for the Cthulhu Mythos stories from this later period, wherein mankind is placed in a horrifying perspective. Mere insects or less when compared to the ancient godlike beings that created us, humanity is at best slaves or toys for the Old Ones , and at worst a source of food, like cattle. Characters in Lovecraft's stories are constantly stumbling into perils and dangers that sharply illustrate just how helpless we are when faced with these ancient terrors - how fatally helpless, in fact.

Lovecraft's archaic writing style can seem clichéd and trite to a modern reader, but it's important to remember that Lovecraft creates this style, which subsequent imitators are unable to master - much as Lovecraft was unable to match Dunsany's distinctive touch. But once you come to grips with his style, Lovecraft's stories come to life (so to speak.). You can feel the dripping liquescent corpse flesh as his characters stumble helplessly through the tunnels that burrow beneath - and into - the rotting coffins buried in ancient New England graveyards.

Cthulhu, the eponymous demon/god figure behind the Mythos, is described as lying either dead or asleep, or some awful combination of the two, in the sunken city of R'lyeh, somewhere beneath the Pacific Ocean. (The phrase "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" translates as "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".) In the story The Call of Cthulhu, an earthquake brings R'lyeh to the surface, where it is discovered by a passing ship, to the detriment of the crew. Cthulhu himself is described earlier in the story as he appears in the form of a statue:

It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence...

However, the monstrous reality of Cthulhu is indescribable - "there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled."

Surprisingly, in spite of Cthulhu's eldritch, squamous, dripping indescribability, he has an odd cultural presence in the modern world - what bizarre sequence of events leads to someone deciding that they should market a plush, stuffed-toy version of an Elder God? (Or run it for President, for that matter.) However, the Plush Cthulhu is symbolic of the position that Lovecraft and the Mythos have in popular culture. Lovecraft references are everywhere, as a quick Google search reveals. Stories, movies, television, art, t-shirts, bumper stickers, comics, toys, games - how odd that the creations of an obscure author of horror fiction, who considered himself "an insignificant amateur", would secure such a foothold.

In conclusion, I feel that I should point out that this posting is a very brief summary of H.P. Lovecraft and his work. Scholarship has run rampant with Lovecraft, and anyone interested in the man, his life and his work could easily assemble a small library in the process of reading all the biographies and literary analyses available, not to mention the stories themselves. (As an interesting example, Lovecraft maintained an ongoing correspondence-based friendship with author Robert E. Howard, whose stories about Conan the Barbarian represent one of the only other bodies of work from the pulps that remains known to the general public.)

In terms of recommendations, The Call of Cthulhu is a good representative sample of Lovecraft's work, and it's available in a variety of collections. For me, though, the best Lovecraft story is Pickman's Model, which deals with a painter whose interest turns to paintings of horrific, ghoulish, nauseating, "nameless blasphemies". The final sentence of the story is a brilliant punch line, and although it's tempting to quote it here, using it would be as complete a spoiler as, "Luke, I am your father" from The Empire Strikes Back. Suffice it to say that if you read only one Lovecraft story, it should be Pickman's Model, in my mind the perfect introduction to the bizarre fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.

-Sid