Image of Bruce Taylor We just got back from a great long-weekend in Seattle with William F. Nolan in tow….

Paul Davids, the director of the documentary The Sci-Fi Boys spurred this exploration of the afterlife after an odd encounter in a hotel room. While staying at a hote he printed a piece of paper, he then left the room for a few moments and when he returned he found what he believes was proof that his friend, the departed Forrest J Ackerman of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, had reached out him from beyond the grave. Actually, what he found was an unexplained ink smudge on a piece of paper, but this documentary would have you believe it’s proof of the existence of the conscious mind from beyond.

Personally I do believe in something in the hereafter. What exactly that is I won’t speculate on but I do hope there’s something beyond what we know, I wanna believe there’s more than just rotting in the dirt. When my younger tragically brother passed on at a young age I found myself speaking to him while I was alone in the dark, I was full of regret and mourning his death, there were so many things I wished I’d said, and I would find myself speaking these things to him as if he were there. Do I think he was present at the time, was his spirit with me, does anyone really know?

Paul Davids and a small group of true believers, scientists and friends of the departed Forrest J Ackerman would have you believe yes, there’s something out there. we have entries from respected science fiction authors Richard Matheson, Whitley Strieber, Dannion Brinkley and Michael Shermer, whom all chime in. There are also testimonies and research from scientist including Gary Schwartz, the Director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, here in Tucson, AZ at The University of Arizona, where I work. Schwartz in his lab attempts to communicate with the deceased through a series of yes/no questions and awaits a metered response, which proves absolutely nothing in my opinion. Seriously, until I see an apparition myself it’s gonna be difficult for me to believe, not that I do not want to, I just need a little proof.

Some of these testimonies are compelling stories, witnesses recount weird happenings that they assign to the afterlife, but c’mon now, papers falling off a chair… one time! If it weren’t for the trappings of Forry Ackerman here I don’t think I would have even given this documentary a shot, I hate shows like Ghost Hunters. I do appreciate the fond remembrances of the the world’s ultimate science-fiction nerd but as a science-based exploration of life after death the film is utterly lacking, simply stating that science cannot rule out communication from the afterlife does not prove squat.

There are 40 minutes of bonus features including audio excerpts from a 2009 tribute to Ackerman with touching tributes from Rick Baker and Ray Bradbury. There’s also a second disc featuring The Life After Death Project 2 – Personal Encounters (101 Mins) with further testimony about personal accounts of supposed life after death. I would much rather watch a documentary about Forrest J. Ackerman’s life and what he meant to legions of fans, what happened after his death is of far less interest. 2 Outta 5

Jason V Brock was a guest on Cardinal Sin’s Masters of the Genre YouTube show on August 16th, 2022. You…

Join us at Book Bin East in Salem, OR for a major signing event. Saturday, October 25 at 7:00pm –…

Simulacrum and Other
Possible Realities

Jason V. Brock.

Hippocampus

ISBN13: 97801061498-055-1

2013,
$20.00, Trade paper

It sometimes seems that
stories—often much like their authors—have shapes and textures. Some feel warm
and fuzzy; others are free-form, open, unrestrained; still others are
distanced, controlled and controlling.

After reading the stories and
poems that comprise Jason V Brock’s

Simulacrum
and Other Possible Realities,

I realized that no one else could have
written these pieces, brought the same sharpness of focus, the same intensity,
the same crispness of intellect to bear on such a variety of subjects. I’ve
only met Jason once, at the 2012 Horror Writers Association Conference, when he
served as a mediator-of-sorts between Rocky Wood and me on a Stephen King
panel. Rocky was having serious problems speaking, so as others on the panel
contributed their ideas, he wrote his responses on his computer; when the time
came, Jason read them aloud and commented on them. At the same time, he
re-stated panelists’ comments and audience questions for me, since I could frequently
neither hear nor understand them. I was impressed with his skill in handling
several tasks simultaneously, in remaining true to the individuals’ intentions
and at the same time bringing a unique perspective to them. I left the panel
grateful to have had his help and to have met him.

The stories and poems in Simulacrum fit perfectly with my view of
the author. They try to mediate, to transliterate as it were, from one mode of
thinking to another. The headnote story, “What the Dead’s Eyes Behold” is
rather like a 21^st-century version of Robert Browning’s remarkable
study of abnormal psychology, “Porphyria’s Lover.” In it, the narrator speaks
of looking into his beloved’s eyes and, seeing there an instant of perfect,
undiluted love for him, “found/A thing to do”—he wraps her hair three times
around her throat and strangles her, thus encapsulating forever that single
moment. “And yet,” he notes almost as an afterthought, “God has not said a
word.”

In Brock’s story, the backgrounds
are diametrically opposed to Browning’s. There is no quest for an eternal
moment caught in an instant, for perfect love; instead, the character and his
victim/sacrifice, Calliope, exist in a world without love, without eternals.
And instead of searching for a phantom togetherness in a fraction of time, they
deny that any such togetherness can exist. All that exists is death. And, for
the narrator, the moment when living eyes look upon death. Hers…and his.

Browning’s lover found solace and
comfort; Brock’s cannot.

Near the end of the collection,
Brock has included his stand-alone novella, “Milton’s Children.” In some ways
it is the opposite of “What the Dead’s Eyes Behold.” It is external and
objective, the report of an expedition to a cluster of previously unknown
islands near the Antarctic. Yet, inexorably, what seems like an everyday
mission rapidly shifts to a phantasmagoria of horror ultimately equally
inexplicable and inconclusive. (For a longer review of the story, see

http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2013/01/jason-v-brocks-miltons-children.html

or

http://hellnotes.com/miltons-children-book-review

).

In between, Brock has incorporated
a wide range of stories that challenge the notions of normalcy, rationality,
and acceptability. “The Central Coast” has at its core a haunted bottle of wine
and the unforeseen consequences of a single drink. In “One for the Road,” there
is clearly a serial killer and a victim; the quandary is determining which is
which…and who is who—a leitmotif that
recurs in story after story. “The Hex Factor” takes as a given a world in which
hexes and magic not only work but are proprietor; what would the results be if
someone stole another’s Grimoire? “Valor: A Fable” is, again, a story about
choice and consequence, told in a just-so-slightly archaic diction that
perfectly weds tale to meaning.

And more….

Throughout, Brock deals with
questions of death and mortality (with a few glances at immortality), of
consequence, of choice, of the nature of identity itself. He does not hesitate
to incorporate politics, morality, and social causes into the fabric of the
stories, but in each instance, what might be merely an authorial intrusion
becomes welded to the story itself; to think about vegetarianism in “Milton’s
Children,” for example—as the opening pages insist that readers do—is to
prepare for the climax, for the realities that the characters discover on the
island.

Intercut with the stories are
poems that are as compressed and as trenchant as the tales themselves.
Typically, Brock explores multiple approaches: line-length free verse;
occasional spates of rhyme; typography and the visual effects of composition;
even variations in fonts to suggest shifts in meaning.

Taken as a whole,

Simulacrum and Other Possible Realities

is

echt

-Jason V. Brock. Each story,
each poem carries his unique imprint. Some might take longer than others to resolve,
but I the act of considering each lies a significant portion of their power.

Recommended.

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