New German crime short available – Neuer Kurzkrimi auf Deutsch erhältlich: Familienkutsche

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Cora

It’s once again time for some announcements. First of all, my e-books are now available at the subscription e-book service Scribd as well as at You Heart Books, a new e-book store.

What is more, I have a new e-book available, namely the German translation of my second ever published story, the crime short Family Car.

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Es ist mal wieder Zeit für ein paar Ankündigungen in eigener Sache. Zunächst einmal sind meine e-Books jetzt auch erhältlich bei Scribd, einem e-Book Abo Dienst, und You Heart Books, einem neuen e-Book Händler, welcher zur Zeit allerdings nur englische e-Books vertreibt.

Außerdem habe ich wieder ein neues e-Book anzukündigen. Diesmal handelt es sich wieder mal um einen Kurzkrimi und zwar nicht nur um irgendeinen Kurzkrimi, sondern um die deutsche Fassung der zweiten Kurzgeschichte, die ich je veröffentlicht habe.

Familienkutsche
Familienkutsche by Cora BuhlertAlex durfte zwar den Minivan behalten, aber er verlor die Familie, für die er die Kiste gekauft hatte, seine Frau Helen und seine kleine Tochter Sandy. Aber obwohl Alex Helen schon lange nicht mehr liebt, wenn er sie denn je geliebt hat, wird er niemals seine Tochter aufgeben. Und Mord ist manchmal eben eine billigere Lösung als eine Scheidung…

 

 

 

Für mehr Infos, besuchen Sie bitte die Familienkutsche Seite.

Erhältlich für den günstigen Preis von 0,99 EUR, USD oder GBP bei Amazon Deutschland, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Amazon Frankreich, Amazon Italien, Amazon Spanien, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australien, Amazon Brasilien, Amazon Mexico, Amazon Japan, Amazon Indien, Kobo, Apple iTunes, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Der Club, BOL, Otto-Media, Donauland, buecher.de, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, Bild eBooks, Casa del Libro, e-Sentral und XinXii.

Dieses Buch gibt es auch auf English.

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Mid June Linkdump

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Cora

At Slate, M.R. Carey gets into the neverending literary versus genre fiction debate, belatedly responding to the attacks on genre fiction by Arthur Krystal (see my posts here and here) and Edward Docx (see my post here).

At Bookworm Blues, Jamie Lee Moyer writes about women characters in her own work and how depressing it is that one still needs to point out strong and well realized women in novels, films, etc…, because there are still way too many that treat women only as walk-on characters. Indeed, “there are no women in this” is pretty much an instant dealbreaker for me in anything longer than a short story. It’s also troubling how many works there are, several of them acknowledged classics, that can’t even muster a single female character. And no, it’s set during a war/on a ship/on a space ship is not an excuse.

Juliet McKenna wonders whether it’s time for a women’s speculative fiction prize to raise the profile of female speculative fiction writers, since books by women are still less reviewed and less promoted, particularly in UK bookstores. The inspiration for the post for the all-male shortlist for this year’s David Gemmell Award, which is nominated and decided by popular vote. In case you wonder you won, Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence won in the best novel category and Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan in the best debut category. Pornokitsch also offers their take on all the finalists.

I must confess, I never bother with nominated or voting for the Gemmell Awards, because I don’t read a whole lot of epic fantasy and the books that tend to end up on the shortlist are so not my thing. Maybe I should, if only to provide a counterpoint to the grimdarkness and blokes in cloaks that dominate this award.

At The Daily Dot, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw points out that the protagonists of upcoming videogames all look remarkably similar, namely they’re all angry, unshaven white guys. Which is highly problematic, sincer gamers are somewhat more demographically varied than angry white men. And what’s with the lack of shaving anyway? Are unshaven videogame characters supposed to show off animation detail? Which makes the whole “women are difficult to animate” uproar surrounding the latest Assassin’s Creed game seem even more like a sad excuse.

At The Guardian, Jessica Valenti theorizes whether the relative scarcity of rape scenes might be the reason why The Walking Dead is so successful with women. Now I’m on record as not liking The Walking Dead at all. I don’t care for zombie stories in general and The Walking Dead is not even a particularly good or original example of a zombie tale or at least it wasn’t when I still watched it (up to the end of season 2, though I missed a few episodes in the middle). I also found the show extremely problematic on the race and gender front and I do recall at least one rape/high dubious consent sex scene, but maybe it has gotten better since then.

Also at The Guardian, Nicholas Barber wonders whether the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie heralds a come back for the space opera genre on the big screen. I can only hope so, since I like space opera a lot (hell, I even write it) and the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer look like a lot of fun, especially considering that my initial reaction to the announcement was “They’re filming what?” Even my Mom was impressed when she chanced to see the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer on my laptop recently. That is, she was quite enchanted by Rocket Raccoon.

Nicholas Barber also offers an interesting theory why there was so very little space opera available in the past ten to fifteen years and why what little there was often so violent and depressing. Now I’m not a fan at all of blaming every social or cultural trend of the past 13 years on the “war on terror”, especially since the “war on terror” has never been such a big deal here as it is in the US/UK. But in this case, Barber’s theory makes sense, since space opera is a generally optimistic genre that is as much about exploring and encountering the other as it is about colonising and killing them. And it is notable that post-2000, space-based filmic SF mostly turned into more or less thinly veiled analogies on the “war on terror” such as the new Battlestar Galactica or the crappy later seasons of Enterprise (Deep Space 9 was also a notable offender and largely predates the “war on terror”), while literary space opera was mostly confined to the “rah, rah, space marines” stuff that is the bread and butter of Baen Books. And if like me you don’t happen to overly care for Earth-based marines, let alone space-based ones, there was something of a dearth of good space opera. Luckily, you could still find space opera in the science fiction romance subgenre and indie publishing has also given the space opera subgenre a boon, even though a lot of indie space opera seems to be yet more of the “rah, rah, space marines” type (because apparently there isn’t enough of that stuff around already). However, last year has seen the publication of two high profile space operas that don’t fit the “rah, rah, space marines” stereotype with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Rachel Bach’s Paradox series.

The Cover Café has released the results of their annual romance cover contest and this time around my votes even match the majority opinion in all but one category. This hit rate is unprecedented, since my tastes in cover design very rarely match those of the majority of romance readers.

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Of Penny Dreadfuls and Moral Panics

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Cora

The Guardian has an article about the so-called penny dreadfuls, cheap serialized novels of the Victorian era, inspired by the success of the eponymous TV series (which I haven’t yet seen, hence no comment).

I usually don’t remember where and how I first came across a particular term, but “penny dreadful” is an exception here, because I know exactly how and where I first heard or rather read the term “penny dreadful”. It was sometime in the late 1980s in the Rotterdam branch of De Slegte, a Dutch-Belgian bookstore chain, which offered a mad mix of used and new books, usually remainders. I hung out at De Slegte a lot, because no one bothered you in the labyrinthine interior (except for boys who occasionally tried to hit on me – utterly without success, because I never understood what they wanted of me). My favourites were the comic book section (my Dutch was good enough for comics, but not for novels), the art/design section (who cares what language it’s in) and the movie/TV/media section, where most of the books were in English. It was in this section or rather on the opposite side of the shelf to where I had retreated to escape a lanky youth who seemed uncommonly interested in the backissues of Starlog magazine that I really wanted to look at. And that’s where I came across a large coffee table type book on penny dreadfuls with lots of full colour reproductions of covers (it was probably this book, since the release date fits). And though I had never heard the term “penny dreadful” before, I immediately knew what it was. For I was only too familiar with the German term “Groschenheft” used for a similar form of popular literature, that was often derided as trash. Calling that sort of thing “penny dreadful” was absolutely perfect. Over the next few days I looked through the book several times (as I said I hung out at De Slegte a lot), admired the penny dreadful covers and the tantalizing thrills promised by the titles. I never bought it though, one of my great regrets along with that Encyclopedia of Superheroes I once found at De Slegte and didn’t buy either.

What I found fascinating about the Guardian article is that penny dreadfuls quickly found themselves at the centre of a moral panic (the Daily Mail was of course involved) just like their German cousins the “Groschenheft”. Even the examples given for how penny dreadfuls supposedly corrupted youth are eerily similar to examples given by anti-“Groschenheft” campaigners in Germany. For all of a sudden, every crime or better yet suicide (since suicide victims cannot refute any stupid theories about why they did it) committed by a young person was believed to have been caused by penny dreadfuls. Evidence: the young criminal or suicide was found to have owned and read penny dreadfuls.

The so-called “Schundkämpfer” (anti-trash crusaders) in Germany used very similar examples of crimes and suicides supposedly inspired by reading “Groschenhefte”. One example that always stuck with me was that of a teenaged cabin boy who vanished from a ship en route from Hamburg to New York in the early years of the 20th century. The boy had apparently gone overboard, but it was never even determined whether it was an accident or suicide or even murder. However, several “Groschenhefte” were found in the boy’s cabin, so the culprit was clear, at least as far as the media was concerned. The “Groschenhefte” has inspired the boy to jump overboard. Of course, there was absolutely no evidence, but then a good moral panic doesn’t need evidence.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any detailed info about the cabin boy case on the net, but here is a similar but later example, that of 17-year-old Manfred who lived near Hannover and committed suicide in 1963 by drinking pesticide. Manfred left a suicide note by talking onto an 8-track tape until he died and for some reason, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit decided to print excerpts of Manfred’s suicide tape. It’s a touching document, in which Manfred speaks freely about his problems with his parents, particularly his father, and the neighbours he regarded as surrogate parents. Honestly, after reading this article I just wanted to reach out through time and give Manfred a hug. However, Manfred also read “Groschenhefte” and liked watching westerns and crime movies at the cinema, so guess where Die Zeit sees the causes for his suicide? Yup, blame the “Groschenhefte” and western movies. Because it can’t possibly be the family’s fault. Never mind that if you do the math and calculate when Manfred was born and when he was conceived, you’ll arrive at a much more convincing theory why Manfred didn’t get along with his parents and why he eventually killed himself. But we can’t possibly talk about that, can we? So let’s blame the media Manfred was consuming.

Stories like this aren’t rare, in fact they’re the standard building blocks of moral panics. What makes Manfred’s story unusual is that Die Zeit actually printed lengthy excerpts from Manfred’s suicide tape, which completely refute the theory that reading too many “Romanhefte” and watching too many bad westerns and crime movies drove Manfred to suicide.

But then actual data only gets in the way of a good moral panic and so conclusions are often made up, as the example of Fredric Wertham and the war on comics in the 1950s shows.

I have compared the explosion of indie publishing in the past few years to the rise of the dime novel or penny dreadful in the 19th and later the rise of pulp fiction in the early 20th century before (see here, here and here). In all cases, technological innovation led to the increased production and publication of fiction led to more readers, often people who didn’t read much before, which in turn leads to a moral panic about what those readers are reading. And indeed indie publishing is even doing the penny dreadful one better, since it isn’t just creating new dime and pulp novels, but it is also bringing the old ones back into print as this project to digitally reprint Victorian penny dreadfuls shows.

So if indie publishing is the new penny dreadful or the new pulp fiction, then where is the moral panic? As it is, we already had an indie e-book related moral panic last fall, when Kobo and W.H. Smith pulled all indie titles from their online stores (W.H. Smith never put them back either), because some moralistic busybodies, including of course the inevitable Daily Mail (Why don’t they just rename themselves “Moral panics R Us” and be done with it?), freaked out at some of the more out there erotica titles on offer (see my blog posts here and here).

What always strikes me about moral panics of any kind is not just how absolutely over-the-top and transparently false the allegations usually are (Honestly, why do people keep falling for this shit?), but also how similar the language used is. The media the campaigner doesn’t like is always referred to as “filth” or “trash” or “depraved”. If you’re German, use the term “Schund”. If you’re German and writing post-1945, make sure to mention something about “fascist aesthetics” or “fascist tendencies”, whereby a character with blonde hair and blue eyes is enough to make a work suspicious of “fascist tendencies” (bonus points if the character in question is actually dark-haired). I’ve heard Germans accusing even Captain America of fascist tendencies, because Steve Rogers happens to be blonde and blue-eyed. Just insert your favourite “Steve Rogers crying” gif right here.

Finally, I want to leave you with this infuriating post on digital culture blog run by the public TV station ZDF, wherein the author laments about self-published e-books sold for one Euro and how this trash is taking over the bestseller lists. The headline: “E-Schund: Kampf um den 1-Euro Leser”

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Classic German Cinema Rewatch: Das Schloß in Tirol (The Castle in Tyrol) from 1957

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Cora

For today’s entry in our irregular Classic German Cinema Rewatch series, I use the term “classic” very loosely, because Das Schloß in Tirol (The Castle in Tyrol) from 1957 is not a classic by any measure. Indeed, I never planned to watch it at all. Alas, it showed up on TV instead of the film I was planning to watch to honour star Karlheinz Böhm on the occasion of his recent death. Why on Earth the TV station thought that airing this rather silly movie was the best way to honour Karlheinz Böhm, a man whose film career went from the Sissi movies of the 1950s via the classic thriller Peeping Tom in 1960 to Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies in the 1970s* to charity work in Ethiopia in the 1980s and beyond, will forever remain a mystery. I suspect it was the only movie starring Böhm for which they happened to have the rights.

And make no mistake, The Castle in Tyrol is a very silly film. It’s another entry into the perennially popular Heimatfilm genre, a genre that was not exactly notable for its high quality and thoughtful films. Instead, you mostly got high melodrama or gentle romantic comedies with a big dose of sentimentality and often rock-conservative morals, liberally peppered with stunning nature photography and random folk dance sequences.

The Castle in Tyrol falls on the comedic end of the Heimatfilm spectrum, since it is a typical comedy of mistaken identities. The young engineer Tom Stegmann (Karlheinz Böhm) wants to impress an American investor, so he hires a rundown castle in Tyrol (actually Castle Groppenstein, which is not in Tyrol at all, but in Carynthia) in order to play the master of the castle and fiancé of the lady of the house, since he unwisely told his American investor that he was engaged to an Austrian comtessa. Tom arrives at the castle, just as it is about to go under the hammer to pay for the debts racked up by generations of incompetent counts, and runs into lovely milkmaid Resi (Erika Remberg) who unbeknowst to Tom is the owner of the castle, Comtessa Therese. Since she desperately needs money, the Comtessa is only too happy to rent out the castle to Tom and even provide some personnel to go with it. And since Resi is such a nice young woman, the late Count’s debtors are only too happy to go along with the ruse and play staff at the castle. The local post mistress (Maria Andergast) also gets involved in the whole affair and poses as the Baroness, who is supposed to chaperon Tom and the comtessa.

Things get even more complicated when Tom’s fashion model fiancee Gloria arrives and immediately departs again to take part in a beauty pageant. So Tom is out of a bride, but luckily there is still Resi who’s both willing and able to pose as the comtessa. So basically we have a comtessa posing as a milkmaid who is posing as a comtessa. Given how silly the film is, the plot is surprisingly complicated.

But Tom and Resi both pretending to be people they’re not is not the only case of mistaken identity. For it turns out that the American investor Jackie Hover from Detroit (Gustav Knuth) who was born in Tyrol and emigrated as a child is not rich at all, but lost all of his money during a stock market crash (Was the script left over from the 1930s?). However, Mr Hover is not at all troubled by the fact that he lost all his money – on the contrary, he’s happier living the simple life in Tyrol than he ever was in Detroit. Because if there’s one message that all Heimatfilme have it’s that materialism is bad (also see the denunciation of the capitalist practices of Old Dag in Und ewig singen die Wälder), that big cities are bad (okay, I’d take Tyrol over Detroit, too) and that there’s no place like home, hence Mr Hover’s homesickness for Tyrol. What is more, he is also quite entranced by the baroness, who is really a post mistress posing as a baroness. Yes, I told you that the plot was complicated.

Eventually, the various charades, make believe games and hidden identities all come to light. Tom finds a portrait of Resi in full comtessa get-up that the old Count had painted and is surprisingly upset that Resi is not in fact a milkmaid. “He doesn’t like comtessas”, Resi muses at one point, “Maybe one of them bit him in the leg once.” Meanwhile, Jackie Hover confesses to Tom that he is not in fact rich and that he cannot invest in Tom’s great business scheme. So now both Tom and Resi face bankruptcy and the loss of everything they hold dear.

However, The Castle in Tyrol is a romantic comedy and so everything ends well after all. Tom finds another investor and gets a very good deal with some negotiation help by Jackie Hover and stops Resi just in time from selling off her castle to a slimy real estate developer, while Jackie Hover decides to stay in Austria with the post mistress.

The Castle in Tyrol certainly has the comedy part of romantic comedy down, since some of the dialogues are genuinely funny. For example, the slimy real estate developer informs Resi’s lawyer that he will tear down the castle to build a hotel with ski lift and swimming pool. “There will be no swimming and no pooling around here”, the lawyer replies. Or take the scene, where Jackie Hover finally confesses his love to the post mistress, while in mortal danger. “I want to spent the rest of my life with you. Unfortunately, it won’t be very long.”

If this comedy of mistaken identity was all there was to the movie, it would be just another forgettable romantic comedy. However, there is one ingredient that pushes The Castle in Tyrol from forgettable over into totally bonkers territory and that is helicopter stunts. Yes, this is a romantic comedy movie with helicopter stunts. The helicopter stunts were performed by the Austrian army, who – along with a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the helicopter squad – is even credited in the titles.

For you see, the invention that Tom wants to sell to the American investor is an air taxi, which is supposed to bypass traffic jams. Tom has a model of a big helicopter, which is supposed to work as an air taxi shuttling passengers to and away from major airports. He also has a full size two-seater helicopter in bright red. At the point where Tom reveals his great plan to Resi, I said to the person next to me, “Wait a minute, this is a film about a guy who invented a flying car and wants to sell the patent to an investor. By 1957 standards, this is science fiction.”

Okay, so the flying car is really just a bog-standard helicopter for budget reasons, but Tom is very clear about the fact that he expects that everybody will own their own helicopter in the future. So yes, this is definitely SF. It’s the first SF Heimatfilm.

And Tom’s fire engine red helicopter gets a lot of workout – well, if they had to hire the helicopter from the Austrian army anyway, they might just as well use it. First of all, Tom invites Resi to a helicopter ride and uses the opportunity to demonstrate that his helicopter can waltz. Yes, this is a film about waltzing helicopters!

The waltzing involves the helicopter flying in waves and circles very low above the ground and circling around poles randomly rammed into a field just in case a waltzing helicopter happens by. During the helicopter waltz scene, we were literally sitting in front of the TV open-mouthed.

[The helicopter begins its waltz routine to the stains of “Wiener Blut” by Johann Strauß.]
Me: “Please don’t tell me Stanley Kubrick got the idea for the waltzing spaceships from 2001 by watching this.”

[The helicopter just waltzes very low across a wheat field.]
Me: “So that’s where crop circles come from.”

[A bit later]
Me: “So how come the Austrian army has a squad of dancing helicopters? What were they supposed to do, waltz the enemy to death?”

[Yet a bit later, when the helicopter goes into a nose dive.]
Me: “Oh my God, that’s the Austrian version of a Stuka dive bomber. Only that it’s a helicopter.”

After the big waltz sequence, the helicopter stunt pilots of the Austrian army get two more chances to show off their piloting skills. The first is when Jackie Hover, the American investor, retreats to the helicopter with the post mistress/baroness in search of some solitude and accidentally manages to start the helicopter (because pressing random buttons is a really great idea, when sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft you cannot fly), whereupon the helicopter launches into a madcap flight across the Austrian landscape. The second is a chase sequence, where Tom in his helicopter goes after Resi, who has taken a train to the nearest city to sell her castle to a slimy real estate developer. It’s the “Oh my God, I’ve just found the love of my life and now I’m going to lose him/her forever” mad dash at the end of every romantic comedy movie, only that this one escalates into a train versus helicopter race. The train thinks it has won, when it enters a tunnel, but of course the helicopter can just fly over the mountain and thus wins anyway. Cue happy ending.

Unfortunately, there are no clips of this movie online at all (which is a pity, because the waltzing helicopters must be seen to be believed), but this German film site has a few pictures.

After Und ewig singen die Wälder and this film, I am beginning to suspect that the Heimatfilm genre was made by directors and film crews under the influence of heavy duty drugs, because only drugs can explain the madness of the waltzing helicopters. I mean, can you imagine what the screenplay development was like for this film? “We have Karlheinz Böhm and a castle in Tyrol [well, really Carynthia] and a love story and waltzing helicopters, because what this film really needs is waltzing helicopters.”

The stunning thing is that Das Schloß in Tirol was not some obscure B-Movie. Karlheinz Böhm, Gustav Knuth, Maria Andergast and Erika Remberg were all A-list talent in 1950s German language filmmaking. And those helicopter stunts sure didn’t come cheap either.

All in all, The Castle in Tyrol is a monument to how downright bizarre German filmmaking could sometimes be in the 1950s and 1960s.

*In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Martha from 1974, Karlheinz Böhm (together with Margit Carstensen) actually became the subject of the very first of cinematographer Michael Ballhaus famous orbiting shots where the camera circles around one or more actors. The scene in question can be seen here. Ballhaus brought the orbiting shot to Hollywood (here Ballhaus uses it to film Michella Pfeiffer, Jeff Bridges and a piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys) and it has been used countless of times since, e.g. during the massive final battle in The Avengers (the orbiting shot starts at 1:20). However, Martha was the very first time this technique was used. Don’t bother with watching the movie BTW (which stars Böhm as an abusive husband and Carstensen as his abused wife) – this scene is all you’ll ever need to see of Martha.

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R.I.P. Jay Lake

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Cora

Speculative fiction writer Jay Lake passed away today after a long battle with cancer. Here are tributes from Ruth Nestvold, Charlie Jane Anders at iO9 and Tor.com. SF Signal has also compiled a round-up of rememberances and tributes.

Unlike most of the others who posted their tributes today, I only knew Jay online and never met him in person. I found his blog years ago, when someone linked to a post he’d written about writing a short story per week. That post, which is actually more of an essay, is still online in PDF form BTW and the advice is still as good as it was back in 2003. That essay made a lot of sense, so I started reading Jay’s blog and later also his fiction. We occasionally communicated in the comment section of his blog. I also know he was a regular reader of this site.

Jay’s frank blogging about his cancer experience has been extremely helpful both to other cancer patients and those who care for them. I certainly know it has been helpful to me.

Like many others said in their rememberances of Jay, it was clear that this day would eventually come, but we all hoped it wouldn’t be quite so soon.

So rest in peace, Jay, and a hearty “Fuck cancer”!

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Classic German Cinema Rewatch: Und ewig singen die Wälder (Duel with Death) from 1959

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Cora

It’s time again for my irregular series of reviews of more or less classic German films from the 1950s and 1960s (maybe I should reorganize the posts as a proper series for easier reference). For more vintage German cinema, complete with links to full movies on YouTube, see this post.

Today’s classic German movie is Und ewig singen die Wälder (Duel with Death) from 1959, though a more literal translation of the title would be “And the woods sing forever”.

Und ewig singen die Wälder is a typical and somewhat above average example of that quintessentially German genre, the Heimatfilm (homeland movie), melodramatic tales of romance and family set against the backdrop of the spectacular scenery of the Alps or sometimes the Black Forest or the Lüneburg Heath. Heimatfilme are a large part of the reason why the West German cinema of the 1950s and 1960s has such a bad reputation, because most of them were sentimental, melodramatic, possessed of a simplicistic black and white morality (the message was usually, “There’s no place like home”) and often flat out silly. However, Heimatfilme also offered stunning nature footage (My Mom once told me that the nature footage was a large part of the reason people watched these films) and sometimes top-notch actors.

Und ewig singen die Wälder definitely boasts top-notch acting talent, since it stars Gert Fröbe (best known to international audiences as Auric Goldfinger from the eponymous Bond film), Hansjörg Felmy in a much too brief role, Joachim Hansen, the wonderful 1950s and 1960s villain Carl Lange in semi-sympathetic role for once and finally Swedish actress Maj-Britt Nilsson who also appeared in Ingmar Bergman films and was so popular in Germany that you’ll find a lot of women in their early 50s named Maj-Britt. As usual, Gert Fröbe steals the film, though Hansjörg Felmy would have come close, if his character hadn’t been killed of in the first twenty minutes.

Nonetheless, Und ewig singen die Wälder is unusual for a Heimatfilm, since it’s not set in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, as normal for the genre, but in Norway. Indeed, the movie is based on the first part of the Björndal trilogy by Norwegian writer Trygve Gulbranssen. The Björndal trilogy was written in the 1930s and was a massive worldwide success well into the 1950s. The German edition, which is a duology for reasons unknown, was published by the Bertelsmann book club and was a staple on German bookshelves in the 1950s and 1960s. Vintage hardcover editions still show up regularly on fleamarkets and in used book stores, though the trilogy itself is largely forgotten, at least in Germany. Continue reading →

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month: May 2014

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Cora

Indie Speculative Fiction of the MonthIt’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some April books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com and one to Smashwords, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

This time around, we have science fiction, space opera, dystopian fiction, YA fantasy, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, fairy tale retellings, mermaids, dragon shifters, angels, demons, faeries, robotic teachers and werewolves. It’s also a truly international round-up, featuring authors from Australia, Ireland, the US, the UK, Malaysia and Singapore.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

If you’re looking for more indie speculative fiction, check out the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a new blog devoted to all things indie speculative fiction.

And now on to the books:

Assassin's Way by K.S. AugustinAssassin’s Way by K.S. Augustin

Alshandiel Dolrahn wants a new life away from the suffocating world of Qolar. But will the Diplomatic Corps be her salvation…or undoing?
The ideal assassin is young, smart and on the run.

Alshandiel feels suffocated by her home planet of Qolar. She finds her fellow Qolari narrow-minded and xenophobic and the caste system that governs her world rigid and stifling. She is looking for a way out.

The notorious Department of Other Matters deals with things the average Qolari doesn’t want to know anything about—most notably, the rest of the galaxy.
It seems only natural that Alshandiel should consider a career within the casteless, outward-looking Department. But DOM holds its own secrets. And once it has you, it never lets go.

Outage by Ellisa BarrOutage by Ellisa Barr

When fifteen-year-old Dee is left at her grandpa’s farm in rural Washington, she thinks life is over. She may be right.

A high-tech electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack destroys the country’s power and communication grids, and sends the U.S. hurtling back to the Dark Ages. Can Dee learn to survive without the basics: electricity, clean water… even her cell phone?

The chaos caused by the EMP isn’t her only problem. A sinister plot by a corrupt official threatens Dee and all she holds dear. She will have to fight if she wants to survive in this hostile new world.

Outage is a Young Adult novel of survival with a hint of romance and a lot of action-adventure.

Irradiated by S. Elliot BrandisIrradiated by S. Elliot Brandis

A man thrust a baby into Jade’s hands. It trembled in her arms. The man had a message: escape from the tunnels, and never return. Her parents were already dead. Jade had a sister; she was irradiated.

Thirteen years later, her sister, Pearl, is coming of age. Rows of sucker-caps line her arms and hands. Her skin is coral pink. Each night, her dreams fill with visions: violence, depression, and fear.

On the surface, people have grown wild and dangerous. They scavenge, fight, and steal. Below, in the tunnels, they’re controlled by a ruthless leader and an army of beings known only as Shadows. When both groups come searching for Pearl, sensing the power her dreams may hold, only Jade can stand in the way.

Forsaken by C. Ryan BymasterForsaken by C. Ryan Bymaster

Choices can be such damnable things.
And when Everam is plucked from the afterlife and offered a chance to walk the mortal Earth again, there is only one choice to make. He is sent forth to protect “debatable” souls on Earth, and with each soul saved, he is one step closer to regaining his own soul. Falling for one of the souls he was sent to protect, Everam will learn that his choices—past and present—will have dire consequences.
Yet there must exist a balance between light and dark, and is another sent to oppose Everam. Tasked with ensuring Everam doesn’t succeed, this other will stop at nothing to win the free soul for himself—even if it means killing those mortal souls that are up for “debate.”
With strict rules to follow and a limit to their time on Earth, Everam and the other are pitted against each other in a struggle as old as time, where the demand for results weighs heavily on their conscious choices. And when consequences for breaking the rules begin to blur the distinctions between good and evil, Everam finds that seeking redemption for past choices may cost him more than he’d bargained for.
Some choices cannot be undone, and when contracting with the powers of Heaven and Hell, one should always read the fine print … And remember which side you chose to fight for.

Dark Claw by Joyce ChngDark Claw by Joyce Chng

Gabriel Sutherland, scion of Lord Kevin Sutherland, returns to Singapore, to deal with the resurgence of the Dark Claws, a splinter group of ultra-conservative drakes. Tragedy strikes and he becomes Lord Sutherland, leader of a clan of drakes. Along the way, he also discovers a long-lost sibling. How is he going to balance all these new responsibilities while his inner demons are still not laid to rest.

 

 

Sworn to Defiance by Terah EdunSworn to Defiance by Terah Edun

Ciardis Weathervane returned to the imperial court of Sandrin to unite her foes. But her efforts hit a stumbling block. The imperial kind. She never thought that before rallying an empire, she’d have to fight the emperor himself.

An imposter sits the throne and the court she turned to for help is in turmoil. Ciardis hasn’t survived assassination attempts, torture and really bad luck to be taken down by her own ruler. So she devises a plan. But first she needs to get Sebastian and Thanar to agree. Each seems to love her in their own way. But neither is listening to her. Pushing them to put aside their differences, in an effort to ward off catastrophe, might be harder than displacing an emperor who would do anything to keep his throne.

Butting heads at court isn’t Ciardis’s only problem. With the princess heir’s threat looming she is forced to travel to the mythical city of Kifar, where it is up to her small group to stop the destruction of the entire city while heading a rebellion that could foment a revolution. It wouldn’t be the first revolution that Algardis has ever known. But with Ciardis Weathervane at its head–it would certainly be the last.

This fifth novel in the Courtlight series continues the story of Ciardis Weathervane from Sworn To Secrecy.

Threats of Sky and Sea by Jennifer EllisionThreats of Sky and Sea by Jennifer Ellision

Sixteen year-old Breena Perdit has spent her life as a barmaid, innocent to her father’s past and happily free from the Elemental gifts that would condemn her to a life in the Egrian King’s army. Until the day that three Elemental soldiers recognize her father as a traitor to the throne and Bree’s father is thrown in jail—along with the secrets from his last mission as the King’s assassin. Secrets that could help the King win a war. Secrets he refuses to share.

Desperate to escape before the King’s capricious whims prove her and her father’s downfall, Bree bargains with him: information for their lives. It’s a good trade. And she has faith she’ll get them both out of the King’s grasp with time.

But that was before the discovery that she’s the weapon the King’s been waiting for in his war.

Now, time is running out. To save her father’s life and understand her own, Bree must unravel the knot of her father’s past before the King takes his life– and uses her to bring a nation to its knees.

Dreaming of the Sea by Heidi GarrettDreaming of the Sea by Heidi Garrett

Gia Chantal will be called to fulfill an ancient contract. She will promise Cole–an exiled mer prince–freedom from his debt to her–in exchange for help in satisfying the contract. Miriam, an orphan who is driven by visionary tendencies, will be tempted by their offer of a life beyond the convent walls that have kept her safe for over a decade.

The repercussions from the intersection of these three lives will reach all the way to heaven… and hell.

Dreaming of the Sea is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. In the original tale, after falling in love with a human prince, the little mermaid yearns to win his love–and gain an immortal soul–thus her bargain with the sea witch…

In this contemporary retelling, after refusing to heed a merman’s warnings, a young woman will make a different kind of bargain with the Sea Witch…

Zero Sum Game by SL HuangZero Sum Game by SL Huang

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good.

The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight. She can take any job for the right price and shoot anyone who gets in her way.

As far as she knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower . . . but then Cas discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Someone who’s already warped Cas’s thoughts once before, with her none the wiser.

Cas should run. Going up against a psychic with a god complex isn’t exactly a rational move, and saving the world from a power-hungry telepath isn’t her responsibility. But she isn’t about to let anyone get away with violating her brain — and besides, she’s got a small arsenal and some deadly mathematics on her side. There’s only one problem . . .

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

Willow Witch by Patty JansenWillow Witch by Patty Jansen

After fleeing from the burning ruins of Saardam, Johanna, Prince Roald, Loesie and Nellie have been captured by a group of bandits and are being taken to a place unknown through a forest rife with magic. Loesie, struck mute by an unknown but powerful sorcerer, is behaving increasingly strange. The friends try to escape, but is Loesie helping them or is she a danger to them?

Every step they take through the ghost-ridden forest brings them closer to the duke who is rumoured to be the source of the evil magic, the necromancer whose anger against Saarland’s royal family has lain the world to waste.

Continued from Innocence Lost.

The Edge of the Woods by Ceinwen LangleyThe Edge of the Woods by Ceinwen Langley

‘You’re not the first young woman to try to bend the rules, my dear, but they failed and so will you.’

For as long as anyone can remember, young women have vanished into the woods. Believing them to be weak willed and lured by demons, the zealous Mayor enforces rules to protect them: rules that render the village women submissive and silent, or face being ostracised.

Emma’s only hope of a decent life is to be married by her eighteenth birthday, but her quick mouth and low social standing make her a poor prospect. Lonely and afraid, she finds herself dreaming of the woods, and of a mysterious boy who promises freedom and acceptance if she’ll only step across the border into the trees.

With her birthday fast approaching, she has a decision to make: run away from her future, or fight for it.

The Deadly Seven by Kyoko M.The Deadly Seven by Kyoko M.

Michael O’Brien. 24. New Yorker. Musician. Archangel in charge of Heaven’s army.

It’s been centuries since Michael stayed on Earth for an extended amount of time. Now he’s here because of Jordan Amador–a Seer who helped him restore his life and memories and thwart the archdemon Belial from taking over the city. With Jordan on Belial’s hit list, Michael decides to stick around and live out life alongside her as her friend and temporary bodyguard. But as the days pass, he finds it harder to resist the seven deadly sins that tempt all men. Especially as he and Jordan grow closer fighting the demons that want her almost as much as he does…

This collection takes place in the two month period in The Black Parade between Chapters 15 and 16.

Faerie Apocalypse by Caoimhe McCabeFaerie Apocalypse: Aoife’s Tale by Caoimhe McCabe

December 21st 2012, the day the world as we knew it ended.

Ireland’s ancient inhabitants, the Tuatha Dé Dannan, are free from the subterranean prison in which the Celts trapped them thousands of years ago. And the Tuath Dé, or Faeries, waste no time in making the world theirs again.

Aoife O’Neill, a former surgeon, lives on the rugged west coast of Ireland. She lies low, using her wits to avoid the cruel faerie courts that roam the country. Mourning the death of her younger brother, killed by the first explosive wave of Faeries to escape confinement, Aoife researches the Celtic lore for a way to bring an end to the Faerie Kingdom.

Dallada, a powerful arrogant faerie obsessed with Aoife, learns the hard way that she is stronger than she appears. He will stop at nothing to exact revenge for her insolence in refusing him.

Andrew Tyler, a seasoned British Army officer, leads a small band of soldiers in the Yorkshire dales in hit and run missions. Andrew can see no end in sight, but he’s determined to keep fighting.

When Aoife stumbles onto Andrew’s battlefield, he has a choice. Join her in a desperate attempt to defeat the powerful Faeries, or keep the Irish surgeon against her will as part of his military staff.

‘Aoife’s Tale’ begins the fight against the devastating power of the Faeries.

Queen of Grass and Trees by B.E. PriestThe Queen of Grass and Tree by B.E. Priest

A NEW QUEST BEGINS…
Southwind is in uprising,
and Asher is lucky to escape alive.
With an orphaned Finn and the exiled Healer,
he journeys north to the Queendom’s capital.
He goes to find his mother.
He’ll find only death.

Book #2 in a series of fantasy novellas following Southwind Knights.

 

The Child by David J. RollinsThe Child by David J. Rollins

The schools in the little town of Wonderville are different. They are taught by mechanical teachers that have been programmed to be perfect examples in every possible way. They speak correctly. They move correctly. They even carefully analyze each student for any sign of drug use, and they do that correctly too. They are however not very good at teaching. In fact, they are really really boring.

One particularly bright student, Vayle, often finds his mind wandering in class. He is too smart for his own good. He knows more than most of the students in his class. One day, he starts asking questions, questions his school doesn’t appreciate, questions like ‘What is the Garden of Eden like?’ and ‘How do you tell the difference between the letter O and the number O?’ and others. They are questions to which the school has no answer. Vayle gets in trouble.

To teach Vayle a lesson, the Principal sends him on a tour of the upper classes, and Vayle learns the difference between being enrolled and being admitted. Those that are enrolled make perfect grades and eat warm roast beef for lunch. Those that attend spend their days running from mechanical truant officers armed with shock whips and detention slips. And the only difference between those two types of students is degrees of perfection.

Vayle can’t stop asking questions though. He can’t turn off his brain like that. And he asks the one question every school administration hates. ‘Why?’

And then the real trouble begins.

Werewolf Magic and Mayhem by Stella WilkinsonWerewolf Magic and Mayhem by Stella Wilkinson

New witch Emily Rand and her crow Familiar, Bob, are back for another bout of magical mayhem. Following on from the events of Halloween, Emily is approached by a werewolf called Fletcher who wants her to cure him of his affliction. Despite her lack of experience, Emily decides to try to help Fletcher. Unfortunately her spells aren’t known for going according to plan, and Emily accidentally divides Fletch from his handsome human body and brings forth his inner wolf in a very real sense. Now she has to find a way to put it right by the next full moon or Fletcher will be stuck as a wolf forever. New Paranormal Romance novel from best selling author Stella Wilkinson.

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New German short story available – Neue Kurzgeschichte auf Deutsch erhältlich: Gesetzlose Liebe

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Cora

It’s new release announcement time again. This time around, my new release is another German language title, namely the German translation of Outlaw Love, the lesbian Old West romance that’s one of my most popular stories to date. Coincidentally, this also marks my 50th e-book release.

***

Es ist mal wieder Zeit, ein neues E-Book anzukündigen. Diesmal handelt es sich wieder um eine deutschsprachige Erzählung, nämlich um die Übersetzung von Outlaw Love, einer lesbischen Liebesgeschichte aus dem Wilden Westen, die zu meinen populärsten Geschichten zählt. Übrigens ist Gesetzlose Liebe meine 50. E-Book Veröffentlichung sowie mein 7. deutsches E-Book.

Gesetzlose Liebe
Gesetzlose Liebe von Cora Buhlert Einst war Lola Laverne war einer der größten Stars im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts, Sängerin, Tänzerin, Geliebte von Millionären und Königen.

Aber all dies ist Vergangenheit, und nun sitzt Lola in einer Zelle in Silver Dollar City, einem Goldgräbernest in Wilden Westen, verurteilt zum Tode durch den Strang, weil sie einen Mann erschossen hat, der versucht hat, sie zu vergewaltigen.

Männer waren schon immer Lolas Verderben. Aber ist dies wirklich das Ende für sie? Wird Lola wirklich ihren letzten Tanz am Ende das Galgenstrickes aufführen oder hat das Schicksal etwas anderes für sie im Sinn? Und wird Lola endlich die wahre Natur ihrer Wünsche erkennen?

Für mehr Informationen, besuchen sie die Gesetzlose Liebe Seite.

Erhältlich für den niedrigen Preis von 0,99 EUR, USD oder GBP bei Amazon Deutschland, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Amazon Frankreich, Amazon Italien, Amazon Spanien, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australien, Amazon Mexico, Amazon Brasilien, Amazon Japan, Amazon Indien, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Nook UK, Casa del Libro und XinXii.

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Of She-Hulk, Romance and Soylent Green – The Latest on Gender and Genre

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Cora

While I was away (photos coming soon), the controversies about gender and genre didn’t dry up. I already blogged about the all women Nebula winner slate and how the usual suspects are pissed off about that. If you can stand more incoherent ranting how women sweeping the Nebula is a sign of the end times or something, you can find it at the blog of a certain venereal disease.

But the Nebula (non)-controversy isn’t the only debate on gender and genre issues going on right now. For starters, some guy called David S. Goyer, whose screenwriting credits include the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, Man of Steel, the Blade trilogy, Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance and the Nick Fury TV movie starring David Hasselhoff and who is supposed to write the script for the upcoming Man of Steel sequel and possible Justice League movie, decided to share his thoughts about superheroes and film adaptations of superhero comics in a podcast. Since he’s written rather a lot of superhero movies, you’d think he’d have something insightful to say about them. Or maybe not, cause have you ever seen any of those movies?

Anyway, Goyer managed to insult pretty much the entire core fanbase for his movies by first claiming that the Martian Manhunter was a goofy and unbelievable character and that only people who’d even heard of the character were sad geeks who’d never had sex in their lives. And this is the guy you want to write a Justice League movie? Really?

But it gets worse, because David Goyer decided to call Marvel’s She-Hulk, a character he thankfully hasn’t been asked to write, a “giant green porn star that only the Hulk can fuck”.

Of course, this is a horribly inaccurate view of She-Hulk and so the rebuttals came fast. At the Washington Post site, Alyssa Rosenberg declares that She-Hulk is a feminist superheroine and not a male power fantasy. Also at the Washington Post, She-Hulk creator Stan Lee points out what every comic fan as well as everybody who knows to use Google already knows, namely that Jennifer Walters a.k.a. She-Hulk was never intended as a love interest for Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk*, because they are cousins. At the Daily Dot finally, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw notes that the true problem here is that Stan Lee still manages to have more progressive views on female characters at age 91 than David S. Goyer. Meanwhile, A. Lee Martinez offers his appreciation of She-Hulk.

Now Goyer reducing She-Hulk to a mere sex object offends me much more than “mainstream screenwriter says something stupid about comic characters” normally should, because the She-Hulk will always hold a special place in my heart, though not for anything the actual character did. For back in the late 1980s, a company named Comics Spain manufactured beautiful PVC figures of various superheroes. They didn’t have a lot of women, but one of the very few they had (along with Spider-Woman in her Jessica Drew identity) was She-Hulk. Later they also added Wonder Woman and Starfire. Since I’d been collecting PVC figurines since I was 2 years old, I was of course entranced by the beautiful Comics Spain figurines**. However, my budget was severely limited, so I could only afford a single figure at first. And the one I chose was She-Hulk. Not because I had any idea who the character was (though I could guess at a connection to the Hulk), but because she was a cool, tough looking woman, whose costume was much cooler than Spider-Woman’s.

The fact that I had no idea who the character was didn’t stop me from making up my own stories about the Green Lady as I called her. So I came up with an origin for her as well as a story about an essentially normal woman who suddenly finds herself with superpowers and ends up working with other superheroes (who initially mistake her for an evil alien), even though she finds the whole trappings of superherodom rather silly and also has the habit of getting people’s codenames wrong. Eventually she also has a romance of her own (with the Phantom, whose PVC figure I specifically bought to be her boyfriend). I loved this character and wrote approximately two notebooks worth of stories about her and her adventures. I recently looked at them again and for all their obvious weaknesses, there are bits that still make me laugh more than twenty years later.

Because I was curious, I eventually got some of the comics starring the actual She-Hulk (as well as Jade of Infinity Inc., because I initially got them mixed up and basically bought any comic with a green woman in it). I think the only reason I own some Fantastic Four and Avengers comics is because She-Hulk was a member (or if it was an X-Men crossover). I also have a nearly complete run of her solo series by John Byrne. But while I like Jennifer Walters a.k.a. the She-Hulk a whole lot (ditto for Jade), my first association when I see a green-skinned superheroine will always be the character I created so many years ago. I still have the figurine, too.

However, the biggest question raised by David Goyer’s outburst is how on Earth did a guy who obviously doesn’t know much about comics and has zero respect for either the medium or its fans get to write the screenplays to so many superhero movies? Until a few years ago, it used to be a common problem that superhero movies were often made by writers, directors and actors who had zero respect or understanding for the source material and mostly saw the films as an easy paycheck. But it seemed to me that this has changed, because of late we have been getting more and more superhero movies made by people who actually seem to enjoy what they’re doing whether they are longtime fans or not. So why does someone like David Goyer keep getting jobs writing the screenplays for superhero movies? Yes, the Dark Knight trilogy was a big success (though I don’t like it at all), but it’s not the be-all and end-all of superhero movies.

In other news, at The New Republic a literary critic named William Giraldi decided to take on the romance genre in general and Fifty Shades of Grey in particular. Never mind that Giraldi is approx. two years too late to the party, because the majority of posts about the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon on this blog date from April and May 2012, the article is also condescending and just plain terrible. Here is a taste:

Dreck of this stupendous caliber has a particular advantage over literature in that one doesn’t have to read all of it to surmise, accurately and eternally, that it is all uniformly awful and awfully uniform—romance novels, like racists, tend to be the same wherever you turn. It’s pointless to spend much time impugning these books as writing because they really aren’t meant to be considered as actual writing, the same way a Twinkie wasn’t meant to be considered as actual food.

Yes, because reading and enjoying romance novels is just like racism. Honestly, there aren’t enough eye-rolls in the world.

It goes on like this, as Giraldi blatantly offends everybody who ever cracked open a romance novel, while he tries to cram every exotic term he knows into the article in an ill-fated attempt to show how clever and educated he is. Now I have made no secret of the fact that I don’t care for Fifty Shades of Grey and in fact feel that the trilogy’s enormous success was a step back for the romance genre. But blanket-insulting a whole genre, a female dominated genre at that, as well as its readers and writers just makes him come across like a misogynist jerk.

Naturally, an article as clueless and offensive as William Giraldi’s also drew plenty of responses. At The Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg takes on the sheer misogyny of Giraldi’s article and points out that canonical literary classics (which Giraldi believes women should read instead of romance novels) are often pretty damn unfriendly for women whose role in such books mostly is to suffer and die. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has a lengthy rebuttal complete with videos and animated gifs. They also point out that the biased and clueless coverage of the romance genre in many mainstream publications makes specialist bloggers more relevant. At The Radish, Natalie Luhrs not just quotes the wonderful Joanna Russ (because you can never quote How to Suppress Women’s Writing enough), but also points out how absolutely beyond the pale Giraldi’s refusal to use E.L. James’ pen name (apparently, he is offended she chose the surname “James”, because it is “sacral” to him) and instead referring to her by her legal name is.

Finally, the New York Times reports that Soylent Green tastes pretty appalling. Yes, this is not a joke. Some enterprising engineers really invented a protein drink that is supposed to offer all the nutrients the human body needs and decided to call it “Soylent”, because apparently they wanted people to either gag or make “It’s people” jokes, whenever they spotted the product on a shelf.

*That said, Bruce Banner as portrayed in the Avengersverse movies absolutely needs a love interest. Either Betty Ross from the comics or someone else, e.g. Maria Hill or Sif or a new character. Though I suspect that Black Widow and/or Pepper Potts are working on fixing him up with someone as we speak.

**Googling Comics Spain figurines makes me so angry about those I don’t have such as the whole cast of the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (I only had two characters). Apparently, they also made a Doctor Strange and Candy Candy from the eponymous anime, which I loved as a teen. I never saw those figurines at all.

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Photos: Charles Rennie Mackintosh Architecture

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Cora

I promised you photos, so here you have photos. Alas, these photos aren’t new, but were drawn from my personal archives due to current events.

You may have heard that the Glasgow School of Art, a stunning Art Noveau building designed by the great Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, burned down last Friday. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the building itself is a huge loss en par with the fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar in 2004. For Art Noveau architecture, a style which already is quite rare due to being deemed too radical in its day and not radical enough by latter generations, this is the worst loss since Victor Horta‘s L’Innovation department store in Brussels burned down in 1967, killing 323 people in one of the great unsolved (and sadly forgotten) cases of the 20th century. The link itself is not graphic, but be warned that if you google for images of the building, you will find graphic images.

I’m a big fan of Art Noveau design and architecture, so I have been aware of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his work for a long time now. And seeing footage of the fire reminded me that I actually have some photos of the Glasgow School of Art and other Charles Rennie Mackintosh buildings in my archives, taken during a trip in 2010. So enjoy the architecture and interior design of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, some of which is now lost: Continue reading →

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