Pirates, Weird and Otherwise

[jeregenest]

So I'm thinking about pirates, in partiular weird pirates. Here's what I have so far on my must read list.

• William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night: This book is a culmination of Burroughs's mythology of freedom through fantasy encompassing the entire earth, all of its peoples, both sexes, and all of human history. A retroactive utopia founded by eighteenth-century pirates is the basis for Burroughs's social criticism. A story about the dystopian cities of the red night focuses on the theme of the biological trap. And the writer's quest is conveyed through a contemporary detective story in which a private investigator uncovers the biological trap and finds he must rewrite history to escape it.


• Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides:A pirate story with a Powers twist. This book is an excellent example of Powers' integration of supernatural elements into a well-described historical setting peopled with real characters from history.


• William Hope Hodgson, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, the Ghost Pirates: William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) spent nine years as a merchant seaman. Not all of his sea stories are supernatural but all atmospherically evoke both the remoteness of a ship at sea and the strangeness of what lies beneath the waves. Some good short stories include "The Voice in the Night" where castaways are overcome by a fungus; and "The Derelict" where an ancient ship mutates into a living organism. The Boats of the Glen Carrig is deadpan nautical horror which slowly turns ever more surreal and disturbing. If this can capture, at times, the atmosphere of dread in these books than it can be considered a success. This book is currently (together with Hodgson’s other books) fueling much of the thought about the Excrucians in the game. In The Ghost Pirates -- probably his most successful example of sustained horror -- a fated ship becomes haunted by an infradimensional craft.


• Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood: Captain Blood begins with Blood's settled domestic life and ending along with his career as a pirate. Along the way we learn how oppression drives men to desperate actions, how fate plays a hand in everyone's life and that love is possibly the greatest power of all. The book, in short, wants for nothing. Its pages abound with adventure, color, romance and even strong social commentary on the evils of slavery and the danger of intolerance. Not weird but definitely a classic pirate book that underpines a lot of the other stuff on this list.


• The Spiral Series by Michael Scott Rohan: This series is comprised by Chase the Morning, Gates of Noon, Cloud Castles, and Maxie’s Demon. Sea adventure, Voodoo, and strange things out of time figure in this series of books. A fun and at times crazy series.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I just finished Maxie's Demon yesterday - thanks to the wonders of amazon.uk, I have only recently discovered that there are a whole lot of Michael Scott Rohan novels published in the UK that never made it to the US. I also agree with the excellence of Hodgson's work, and love Power's On Stranger Tides (IMO, his 2nd best work, Last Call being his finest).

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Rohan does seem to have more book in the UK than here. I think I've read most of them but it is still anoying.

And my favorite Pwoers book is probably Declare, but On Stranegr Tdies is just after Last Call and about equal t Stress f Her Regard on my personal favorites..