Simon Messingham Tomb of Valdemar (2000)
Why do I do this to myself? It was the usual thing - shitty times justifying the written equivalent of comfort food because I'm too psychologically punch drunk to tackle Voltaire or any of the other stuff on the shelf of books purchased but as yet unread. I used to buy a couple of these Who things a month and read them religiously, and because that was more or less all I fucking read at the time, I lacked anything decent by which to make comparison, and so my filter was set pretty low. Some were great - as I've been able to confirm during more recent re-readings - and others were less great, meaning that attempted re-readings undertaken on this side of the millennium can be sometimes akin to tackling a Rupert annual, which is particularly disappointing when you have an apparently false memory of it having been at least up to the standard of Asimov or whoever.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Rupert annuals, by the way, but then I don't remember having read a Rupert annual which thought it was China Miéville.
Tomb of Valdemar has the reputation - at least in my head - of being the one where Simon Messingham got it right. It therefore seemed a safe bet, despite The Indestructible Man - which I read back in 2016 - being pure shite. Assorted Goodreads drones hail Tomb as being proper science-fiction like the stuff by all those guys who wrote those books they haven't actually read, or else miss the point completely by praising Tom Baker who is a television actor and as such had what I would suggest should be considered an entirely peripheral influence on this masterpiece.
Anyway, to get to the point, here we have Baker's Doctor imaginatively transposed to what is more or less Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, but written so as to really, really, really make it feel like something which was on telly whilst also invoking Lovecraft at his most purple. The story is actually decent and not without a sense of invention, but the author insists on addressing both us and his characters in the rhetorical tone of a ponderous seventies Marvel comic, asking Tom Baker if he really thought that was a good idea, asking what he didst imagineth wouldst happen, and all that sort of shit liberally seasoned with ohs and ahs and self-conscious asides referring to whether or not we readers are getting anything out of Messingham's testimony; which I sort of wasn't. Tomb initially reads with the cadence of someone who would rather be telling you the story out loud while pulling spooky faces in a room lit only with black candles, so naturally there's a shitload of those inactive sentences wherein the full stop is used to invoke a portentous Orson Welles voice over; which I guess the author believes is dramatic, but which suggests a basic lack of ability. At least to me. Because it's obvious. And tedious. Just crap.
Also, one of the characters is described wearing a Red Dwarf T-shirt, so tee hee. Hooray for super bingeworthy cult telly shows. Plus there's Huvan, the pimple-spattered comedy adolescent who writes terrible poetry and takes himself far too seriously, which would be funnier if it didn't feel as though we were reading one of his efforts.
To be fair, this still pisses all over The Unreadable Man, which admittedly isn't saying much, and there's enough going on to infer there having been a decent novel in here somewhere, albeit one which has been obscured by its own telling. I really hope the other five million I'm still to revisit aren't quite so shabby as this.
Why do I do this to myself? It was the usual thing - shitty times justifying the written equivalent of comfort food because I'm too psychologically punch drunk to tackle Voltaire or any of the other stuff on the shelf of books purchased but as yet unread. I used to buy a couple of these Who things a month and read them religiously, and because that was more or less all I fucking read at the time, I lacked anything decent by which to make comparison, and so my filter was set pretty low. Some were great - as I've been able to confirm during more recent re-readings - and others were less great, meaning that attempted re-readings undertaken on this side of the millennium can be sometimes akin to tackling a Rupert annual, which is particularly disappointing when you have an apparently false memory of it having been at least up to the standard of Asimov or whoever.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Rupert annuals, by the way, but then I don't remember having read a Rupert annual which thought it was China Miéville.
Tomb of Valdemar has the reputation - at least in my head - of being the one where Simon Messingham got it right. It therefore seemed a safe bet, despite The Indestructible Man - which I read back in 2016 - being pure shite. Assorted Goodreads drones hail Tomb as being proper science-fiction like the stuff by all those guys who wrote those books they haven't actually read, or else miss the point completely by praising Tom Baker who is a television actor and as such had what I would suggest should be considered an entirely peripheral influence on this masterpiece.
Anyway, to get to the point, here we have Baker's Doctor imaginatively transposed to what is more or less Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, but written so as to really, really, really make it feel like something which was on telly whilst also invoking Lovecraft at his most purple. The story is actually decent and not without a sense of invention, but the author insists on addressing both us and his characters in the rhetorical tone of a ponderous seventies Marvel comic, asking Tom Baker if he really thought that was a good idea, asking what he didst imagineth wouldst happen, and all that sort of shit liberally seasoned with ohs and ahs and self-conscious asides referring to whether or not we readers are getting anything out of Messingham's testimony; which I sort of wasn't. Tomb initially reads with the cadence of someone who would rather be telling you the story out loud while pulling spooky faces in a room lit only with black candles, so naturally there's a shitload of those inactive sentences wherein the full stop is used to invoke a portentous Orson Welles voice over; which I guess the author believes is dramatic, but which suggests a basic lack of ability. At least to me. Because it's obvious. And tedious. Just crap.
Also, one of the characters is described wearing a Red Dwarf T-shirt, so tee hee. Hooray for super bingeworthy cult telly shows. Plus there's Huvan, the pimple-spattered comedy adolescent who writes terrible poetry and takes himself far too seriously, which would be funnier if it didn't feel as though we were reading one of his efforts.
To be fair, this still pisses all over The Unreadable Man, which admittedly isn't saying much, and there's enough going on to infer there having been a decent novel in here somewhere, albeit one which has been obscured by its own telling. I really hope the other five million I'm still to revisit aren't quite so shabby as this.
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