Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror

Foreword by Don Webb

People outside of the book biz are (blissfully) unaware of its truths. So, on the off chance you’ve bought a small press volume (this one) and are not a writer/publisher/artist I am going to lay Truth upon you. First Truth. Nobody reads introductions and forwards first. At best after you have read the contents of the book and picked it up off the bathroom floor you will read the introduction as you sit and — er — meditate. Hey, it doesn’t bother me. I have (by now) cashed my large check for introduction writing and spent it all on gold futures, champagne, and cocaine. But there you sit wanting to read something until you can stand and go buy a copy of my Building Strange Temples because you’re enchanted with my wit and deft prose. Your expectation is that I’ll talk about the stories in this volume and in my remaining time speak about… what’s his name?

Oh yes, John R. Fultz.

We’ll certainly I’ll get around to that, but I want to explain Dan Sauer, the publisher, and his many errors. Firstly, it is well known that book buyers, including you, spend more money on non-fiction than fiction. Then if fiction is purchased (perhaps by misreading the Amazon product description) novels outsell short story collections by a great deal. I mean, it could have been worse. He could’ve published a poetry collection. But that leads to his second error. Short story collections are generally bought by completists. That means something like, “I’ve read John R. Fultz’s fantasy novels. He has a deft hand with fantasy. I will buy a collection of his fantasy stories and be entertained thereby whilst waiting for him to do his job and crank out another fantasy novel for me.” But, as you are aware — having read this volume (and turning in despair to this introduction) — only one or two of the tales herein could be called fantasy. Now as you know the reason Dan Sauer published the volume is because he likes to draw macabre pictures and this book gave him an excuse to do so. Having created the great cover, he now sits back and waits for the money to roll in. Of course, since he committed the unpardonable sin of publishing a collection of hard-to-categorize tales, it will be a long and dismal wait.

He had hopes that by titling the collection Darker Than Weird it will attract the “horror” reader. Some of the tales could be said to fit that description. The brilliant first story with its chilling description of a nightmare city (drawing equally from the horrors of living in a decaying metroplex, the fears of a parent seeing their innocent child destroyed body and soul, and a survey of trends in modern horror) certainly meets the bill. But most of these tales are much harder to classify. Horror, as we know, is the notion that the chaotic forces of imagination will invade the safe bubble of our homes, our livelihoods, our flesh. Although that note is hit in most of these tales, other ideas wander in. Some of the tales, such as “The Man Who Murders Happiness,” are deft Kafkaesque fables that show Fultz as a mature writer that can reveal the nihilistic side of existence, as well as a master of his craft. Others take on a Dante theme but match it perfectly with Kafka, in one of most nightmarish after-life scenes you will encounter.

The big questions for humans now — the questions of identity and purpose — are dealt with in the tales collected in the “Welcome to the Urbille” section. I am sure that the average reader would label these as science fiction, but you (as I have come to know in the short time we’ve been hanging out) are beyond the average reader. These stories deal with three philosophical notions. If we replace our corporal selves with mechanical parts are we us? (The problem of the ship of Theseus invades the safe bubble.) If medical technology is an expensive commodity, is quality of life to be seen entirely as a manifestation of class? Will God/Nature resent our stealing of the divine fire to make (or counterfeit) Life itself? Fultz deals with these questions not with the endless speculation of excited freshmen taking Philosophy 101, but with images both gorily grotesque and ideas clothed in emotional context — in this case the love/hate relationship we have with medical science. Come for the horror story, leave with deep ontological questions.

The last section of the book looks safer for the human trying to shelve it — tales inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The first of these, in the tradition of Zealia Bishop’s “The Mound,” deals with the Lovecraftian Western. The “rules” of that cosmos blend the essential part of American thought, the great frontier, with the great nothingness at the center of the Lovecraftian cosmos. This deceptively pulpy story deals with themes such as colonialism and the imposition of Christianity upon native peoples with the tropes of cosmic dread and cannibalism. Again, we see the Fultzian twofold punch: Come for the horror, leave with deeper questions about history and metaphysics. I have no doubt that this little volume will garner great reviews in the magazines and webpages that review short horror, but the lasting taste here is not that of cheap soda (which most short horror gives us), but the bitter otherness of absinthe.

The paradigmatic tale of the book, the story that Fultz has been teaching us to read, is (perhaps) “The Embrace of Elder Things,” a sort of comic book Rembrandt. The surface read will be appealing to a certain type of fanboy anywhere. It is not only a Lovecraftian homage, but also (Yidhra save us!) a Derlethian homage complete with star stones. Even pulpier, it is set on a lunar colony quite suitable for seventies sci-fi, back before the United States turned its back on the challenge of reaching other worlds. The setting and the background make this a sort of candy treat to humans that spent their teenage years reading Arkham House collections. But in the midst of this green cotton candy two very deep ideas emerge. Our hero’s mother despairs of his fate as his otherness is discovered by the intolerant world. Mom’s fears are connected with the frontier-ism of the other tales: If sonny can only make it to the mines of Mars, he can safely be what he (secretly) is. Fate, however, brings the tale’s two big ideas to the very surface. Idea number one is that growing up, shaped and protected by human love, one learns to love not only specific humans but humanity as a whole. Idea number two — you can’t run from what’s inside of you. If you are Other, you are Other.

“The Embrace of Elder Things” is about accepting how deeply weird, how deeply Other you might be and reconciling it with the reflection of a mother’s love. Here is the deepest of Lovecraft’s fears (as seen most poignantly in “The Outsider”), the fear of not belonging, of being hated, of being one of “Them,” reconciled with the nobility of human love in a cosmos where love and light are decidedly not the norms. This tale is exemplary of Fultz’s magic — it can be read by humans that know how to make the Vulcan salute and thrive in SF nerdy coolness, but it can also be enjoyed by humans who have come to understand their very depth-of-thought sets them aside from humanity. Such stories will lack the vociferous support of the current intelligentsia, who prefer a trendy nihilism, but will in the long run actually be of use to the humans who will build the future. Not bad for a story with a rock from Mnar.

I see our time is done and you are about to shelve this little book. Having given you the critical tool to re-read these stories, I leave the re-reading as an enjoyable homework. But I leave you with my deepest wish that you introduce other readers to this little book (after all, it’s hard to sell short story collections) by talking up its horrific wonders and NOT by talking up its philosophical underpinnings. Face it — a lot of readers aren’t as deep as you.

When I shared this introduction with Fultz he asked if I was serious. I told him I was not Sirius but instead Mu Draconis, my wit being dry but spicy. For the few of you who google that you will discover that, yes, I am indeed nerdier than you.

— Don Webb

Austin, TX

2022