To Wake In A World of Dreams...
And Sleep an Enchanted Sleep

by Fred Burke

There are moments in everyday life when reality cracks, and the numinous world spills through, if only for an instant. Thankfully, the imagination can prolong these journeys, and books can record the sights and sounds of the supernatural.

Magic is a staple of the fantastique, fulfilling our wishes for divinity, allowing us to spread angel's wings and rub the lamps of genii.

Dark Carnival is where I was introduced to magic realism, my favoured brand of supernatural fiction. But there are magical adventures aplenty on Dark Carnival's shelves -- art, story, and true tales of the points where the "Real World" (so-called) bends, and even breaks. Here are just a few of the past year's delights...

NOTE: In our look at Alien Encounters last month, we could, of course, only touch the surface of what is available. One significant omission, however, is Alien Sex, an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow. Check it out -- you won't regret it.

Baby Be-Bop
by Francesca Lia Block (hardcover $13.95)

Each time a new Weetzie Bat novel comes along, I loudly proclaim it "the best yet," and Baby Be-Bop is no exception. This fifth Weetzie novel takes us into the prehistory of the Weetzie characters, focussing on Dirk McDonald, Grandma Fifi, and their family, in a tale that stands alone for new readers while stunningly rewarding Block's current fans. Propelled by Dirk's youthful uncertainty about his gay identity, Baby Be-Bop takes off into the richer arena of family itself, exploring the unique story that holds each family together.

Block effortlessly segues from Dirk's own boyhood fears about his love for his best friend to the traumatic romance of his mother and father -- magical, passionate, Beat-filled, poetic. On a genie-ride reminiscent of Dickens' Christmas Carol, Dirk is granted a vision of Duck Drake and Bam-Bam, the characters who enrich the later Weetzie books, and he returns, at novel's end, with his own story to tell at long last.

I have tried and tried to dissect the special brand of magic Block brings to these books -- and failed. I cannot separate her prose style (a gorgeously rhythmic stream of consciousness that never once falters into self-indulgence) from the ambitious heights of her content (an unflinching vision of the pain and joy that make life's paradoxical journey worthwhile). That she has been allowed to dive deep into such "taboo" topics as anorexia, sexuality, drug use, alcoholism, and AIDS -- in novels marketed to young adults -- is testimony to the power of her words to weave a spell of almost hypnotic acceptance.

As always, Block's own prose best serves to demonstrate: "Stories are like genies, Dirk thought. They can carry us into and through our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do."

I'm thankful that Francesca Lia Block is here to remind us.

Waking the Moon
by Elizabeth Hand (hardcover $19.00)

A Hand-crafted conspiracy of metaphysical proportions is at the heart of this elequent acknowledgment of the war between patriarchy and Goddess. The Benandanti lurk behind the scenes, manipulating the churches and governments of the world, sowing death and disinformation in their Machiavellian mission to keep the Moon Goddess at bay. But now their rule is threatened -- and it is up to one student and her friends to untangle the mystery, to decide which is the force of good on Earth...and which the force of evil.

By rooting this cosmological struggle in the day-to-day goings on at a Washington, D.C. seminary, Hand entices us into her world of sacred mysteries, forcing us to believe that there is more to the structures of our civilization than meets the eye. With simple yet eloquent language and an utterly believable cast of characters, Waking the Moon wraps mystery upon mystery, tying the gift together with a modern love story. Unwrap this dark and beautiful present at your own peril -- once you've cracked the pages of Waking the Moon, you'll be hard-pressed to put it down.

Resurrection Man
by Sean Stewart (trade paperback $11.00/hardcover $20.00)

For Resurrection Man, Sean Stewart takes one of my favourite pages from the Neal Stephenson Writing Handbook, constructing an utterly believable future that differs from ours in only one regard. Instead of bringing nanotechnology or virtual reality to its logical sociological conclusion, Stewart delivers us into a world in which magic is real. Dubbing his practicing psychics "Angels," Stewart infects the world of Resurrection Man with miracles, from Feng Shui architects to otherworldly detectives -- with, of course, a union (The Angels' Guild) presiding over the spells and rituals.

A Cain and Abel duo are at the core of the story, which begins when Dante, our reluctantly angelic hero, discovers his own corpse on the dresser in his room. With the help of his siblings, he performs an autopsy on the thing, trying to discover the source of his own apparent death. But in a world of magic, are there some things no one is meant to know?

Voodoo Dreams
by Jewell Parker Rhodes (trade paperback $13.00)

Rarely has a debut novel drawn the raves of Voodoo Dreams, Jewell Parker Rhodes' Creole concoction of history, folklore, and black magic. But with Marie Laveau, the most potent voodooienne in New Orleans history, at center stage, this family saga has everything going for it. Voodoo Dreams is a book of stunning contrasts: rich and poor, male and female, African- and European-American, Christian and pagan. Rhodes anchors her tale in rich descriptions of Louisiana, from the bayou to the big-city bustle, eloquently proving that magic -- that fiery concoction of faith, ritual, and madness so important to human life -- is inevitably tied to place. The voodoo of New Orleans is as spicy and unique as the city's food, a tempting and fiery combination that Rhodes serves up by the platterful.

Anne Rice and Alex Haley seem to be the literary precursors to Rhodes' work, with its fateful sense of a family destiny impossible to escape. Voodoo Dreams begs to be read aloud, the nuance of voice so strong that one almost wonders if Laveau has actually returned, and Jewell Parker Rhodes is, at truth, the fictitious deception.

Expiration Date
by Tim Powers (hardcover)

A thematic sequel to Last Call, Expiration Date does for Los Angeles what Tim Powers' previous novel did for Las Vegas: take a crassly American cultural wasteland and impregnate it with mystical significance. I'm entranced by the way Powers gives the paranormal a set of logical rules and scientific precepts, a solid framework upon which to build his delirum-soaked fantasies. There is cause and effect to be found in these pages, and so the world of ghosts takes on a measure of reality sure to delight the sceptical.

"Quirky" doesn't do justice to the mind-bending excesses of Expiration Date, which plunges us into a world of power -- hungry L.A. ghost addicts, frightening folk who consume the essences of the deceased and newborn, inhaling the shrieking energy shells thrown off by traumatic experiences. Through the twists and turns of his plot, Powers takes us from the canals of Venice to Hollywood graveyards and introduces us to the ghosts of Harry Houdini and Thomas Edison. It's one hell of a ride.

Powers excels at knowing every inch of his backstory, while only giving the reader what is absolutely necessary at any given point. The result is a richness of characterization and action that's hard to beat.

Symbolism
by Michael Gibson (large size hardcover $39.95)

This delicious coffee table art book delivers more luxurious colour illustrations in its 250 pages than one mind can hold in a given day. Beardsley, Munch, Ernst, Duchamp, Dali, Goya, Blake, Rodin, Klimt -- the famous names roll through these pages with abandon. But it's the lesser known Symbolists -- the movement's lost children, rarely seen -- who make this heavyweight Taschen collection a must-have addition to any library.

Gibson's text is concise and evocative, tracing the pivotal points of the Symbolist Movement from its roots in the mid-19th century to its last throes in WWI, when it was overtaken by its modernist offspring -- Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, and the like.

Brimming with lush detail and disturbing mythological imagery, Symbolism shows us in pictures what Jung came to call the collective unconscious. Nothing was too exotic for the Symbolists, who broke new ground in the exploration of sex and death on the canvas.

Thumbing through this collection is like falling into R.E.M. sleep, as emotions take wing and the mind is consumed in a landscape of deep colour. As a pillow book, Symbolism is guaranteed to fill your dreams with luminous visions beyond compare.

The 6 Messiahs
by Mark Frost (hardcover $23.00)

Mark Frost is out to entertain, and he does it with a vengeance. The co-creator of Twin Peaks is no stranger to the weird, and in this sequel to The List of 7, he takes on the brainwashing power of Christian cults, an abnormal psychology buff's dream. Arthur Conan Doyle returns as the hero, but ten years have passed since the events of List of 7, ten years in which Doyle has had no communication from his friend Jack Sparks, the "real life" inspiration for his best-selling Sherlock Holmes. The intervening decade has not been kind to Sparks, and Doyle fears the worst for his friend. Teaming with a cast of dreamers from various religions, Doyle and company set out to solve the mysterious thefts of the world's great spiritual manuscripts, discovering along the way enough swash-buckling adventure and mystical intrigue to keep any reader happy.

The 6 Messiahs, like most sequels, suffers from comparison to its predecessor, but I'll happily await a third and fourth volume. For threats of world domination, cadres of evil henchmen, rip-roaring fights and chases, gratuitious literary allusions, and happily convoluted turns of plot, Mark Frost keeps me sated between Tim Powers books -- and that's saying a lot.

Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman (hardcover $22.95)

Steeped in folkloric magic, Alice Hoffman's latest is a tale of two sisters, Gillian and Sally Owens, different as night and day. Raised by their aunts, the town witches, the girls learn early the potent rituals of love, the insane obsessions of the heart.

Although their lives take dramatically different turns (and Sally adds a third generation to the story, two girls who mirror Gillian and Sally's differences), blood wins out, drawing them back together to face down the ghosts of Gillian's past.

Practical Magic uses a strong family saga as its base, before sprinkling the pages with magic sharp as splintered glass. In the end, it is about the mystical journey of all our lives: self-discovery, the boundaries of society and the individual, and love, both true and false. Captivating.

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder
by Lawrence Weschler (hardcover $21.00)

The Museum of Jurassic Technology exists, I think, in Culver City. Its curator, David Wilson -- if Weschler's book itself is not an elaborate hoax -- has stocked the museum with such an extraordinary variety of impossible artifacts that reality seems to bend; everything becomes implausible, including the book itself.

Illustrated with photos and drawings (many from the museum's own publications), Mr.Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder begins with delectable descriptions of some of the exhibits: the African stink ant which, inhaling the microscopic spore from an odd fungus, loses its mind and becomes host to its bizarre parasite; the theories of forgetting first expounded by American neurophysiologist Geoffry Sonnabend; the bat which somehow transported itself into the middle of a solid lead wall.

Weschler rapidly moves on to meet Wilson himself and attempts to discover -- unsuccessfully? -- the veracity of the museum's countless curiousities. In the process, the entire history of museums in general (and the Jurassic in particular) is explored. One ends with an eerie feeling that, somehow, the Museum of Jurassic Technology has been reincarnated from the quaint though somehow eloquent hodge-podges of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe.

Weschler's prose, his curiousity, and his indefatigable obsession make Mr.Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder a stirring monument to what may -- or may not -- be real.



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