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1.0 out of 5 stars
Professes to be far more than it actually is, Feb 7 2003
I think this is the most useless, pointless, and very frequently unintelligible book I have read in a long time. Although I admit I was expecting the stories to be more inclined toward Apocalyptic scenarios, my mind was open; but this book asks the reader to go almost as insane as some of its collaborators. It is comprised of 10 stories, and a wrap-around story written by Clive Barker (if you don't get that, it means the first part of it starts the book, the second ends it). Besides Barker's story, the others take place in successive decades of the Twentieth Century. Overall it is an attempt to create a book of short stories attempting to be short novels that contemplate the nature of humanity and send out a "prophetic warning and a visionary answer for all humankind." Barker's story "The Chiliad" (referring to the passage of 1000 years) is original, if not a little confusing at times, especially because the first half leaves the reader a bit confused, and is overall a worthy read. The second story, called "The Big Blow" takes place in 1900. It involves a prize fight in Galveston, Texas, that is interrupted by one of the worst hurricanes in Unites States History. There's really no story here, no "revelations" except my realization that author (Joe R. Lansdale) likes to use misplaced vulgarity and homosexual scenes to compensate for spans where the lack of talent is apparent. The story following it, called "If I Should Die Before I Wake" is one of the better stories in this book, possibly be the best. David Morrell did a good job here showing the turmoil of the influenza pandemic, and the personal agony it caused. There is a small amount of personal revelation here, and it complements the story in a way I can't fully explain. The 1920's story that follows it written by F. Paul Wilson is also fairly good. Titled "Aryans and Absinthe" it regards the real story behind the "staged" assassination attempt of Hitler in Munich, which caused a riot and started the political uprising that Hitler rode from prison to the writing of Mein Kampf and eventually all the way into the Reichs Chancellery. Although it has some annoying bouts of economic jargon, the "revelation" part led to a very original, as well as interesting interpretation of history. Here's where the book takes a turn for the worse, with the atrocious piece of "work" called "Triads," taking place in 1930's Hong Kong as well as mainland China, during the start of the Chinese-Japanese hostilities. It's the story of two young lovers, put into a Hong Kong dance school as young children, who end up defying the Triads...blah, blah, and more blah. It sucked! Oh, and by the way, the two lovers, they're both men, and the story is written by two women. Perhaps they're trying to make the story seem more sincere or they're trying to make some insinuations into male lives. There is a minute revelation here, lasting for about a paragraph, and having no other connection with the plot. Besides that, it seethed ineptness bordering on incompetence, the story being so disjointed it was not worth the read. Charles Grant's story taking place in the 1940's was pretty good. It was a bit strange, especially because of the ambiguity regarding the strange cowboy living on the edge of a desert town, but was definitely worth the read. The 1950's story written by Whitley Strieber is the worst piece of writing (I could've used other words besides worst to describe it) that I have ever read. It makes no sense at all, and reads like a four-year old with hallucinogens in its formula wrote it. It has something to do with a nuclear scientist, and simply thrown in there as a minimal point, the ever-present Strieber theme: aliens! I don't know how anyone could interpret this as anything other than inane babble. The 1960's story is pretty good, having to do with a camp devoted to ensuring the peace, love, and well-being of individuals during a time of war and unrest. However, it is not as tranquil as it seems, and society is actually being manipulated by a guarded evil...The 1970's story is more crap, written by Richard Matheson, called "Whatever." It is an incoherent mass of news clips and short narratives about a revolutionary band that aspired to change the world. The 1980's story is mediocre, though I agree with another reviewer here, it is missing a degree of something, and the ideas put forth in it are not fully developed. The premise is the Fourth Reich's rise from the dust still new on the ground from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the attempts of some to prevent that rise. The 1990's story is called "the Word" and chronicles the release of a new book (called The Word) which puts the whole world in an uproar. Everyone feels that it is Earth-shattering, when it actually says nothing at all, and only one man knows it, because he knew the author before he wrote this book, and what type of person he is. I still haven't figured out what The Word (the imaginary book in this story) heralds: the coming of the new messiah or the apocalypse, but (the story) sure ends strangely. This book is overall amazingly strange and has very little in the way of revelation in it, and when it does it is mainly clouded by bad writing and vague terminology, which results in a very sub-literary book, which it seems to constantly attempt to be. It ultimately comes off as exactly what it is: nothing much at all, save for perhaps the meager good stories which carry the overpowering dead weight of the many horrible stories in this ineffective anthology.
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