![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Our Lady of Darkness
Oct. 5th, 2005 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joysilenceLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness was one of his later books, published in 1978. There’s an element of autobiography to it, since both Leiber and the hero of the book battled alcoholism. I suspect it was a fairly personal book also because it features, as background characters, so many of the writers who influenced him, writers such as Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
In Our Lady of Darkness Franz Weston, a writer of supernatural fiction, discovers an old diary which be believes to be the diary of Clark Ashton Smith, and an old book. The mythical author of this book, called Thibaut de Castries, devised a system called megapolisomancy, which could be described as the occult science of big cities. Megapolisomancy deals with the destructive energies stored by big cities, energies that can give rise to dangerous occult beings called paramentals. These destructive energies are not just things like electricity, but also arise from the geometry of cities. Diagonal streets are especially hazardous. Neopythagorean metageometry can unlock the secrets of these energies. Clark Ashton Smith had apparently known de Castries, and had been cursed by him. Smith had evaded the curse, but can Franz evade it?
Leiber was very good at finding ways of bringing horror into modern urban landscapes, in short stories like Smoke Ghost. The ideas in Our Lady of Darkness are worked out very cleverly. I definitely recommend this one – a very original book.
cross-posted tofantasywithbite
dfordoom)Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness was one of his later books, published in 1978. There’s an element of autobiography to it, since both Leiber and the hero of the book battled alcoholism. I suspect it was a fairly personal book also because it features, as background characters, so many of the writers who influenced him, writers such as Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
In Our Lady of Darkness Franz Weston, a writer of supernatural fiction, discovers an old diary which be believes to be the diary of Clark Ashton Smith, and an old book. The mythical author of this book, called Thibaut de Castries, devised a system called megapolisomancy, which could be described as the occult science of big cities. Megapolisomancy deals with the destructive energies stored by big cities, energies that can give rise to dangerous occult beings called paramentals. These destructive energies are not just things like electricity, but also arise from the geometry of cities. Diagonal streets are especially hazardous. Neopythagorean metageometry can unlock the secrets of these energies. Clark Ashton Smith had apparently known de Castries, and had been cursed by him. Smith had evaded the curse, but can Franz evade it?
Leiber was very good at finding ways of bringing horror into modern urban landscapes, in short stories like Smoke Ghost. The ideas in Our Lady of Darkness are worked out very cleverly. I definitely recommend this one – a very original book.
cross-posted to
fantasywithbite
