- Suprynowicz, Vin.
The Miskatonic Manuscript.
Pahrump, NV: Mountain Media, 2015.
ASIN: B0197R4TGW. ISBN 978-0-9670259-5-7.
-
The author is a veteran newspaperman and was arguably the most libertarian
writer in the mainstream media during his long career with the
Las Vegas Review-Journal (a collection of his essays
has been published as
Send In The Waco Killers).
He earlier turned his hand to
fiction in 2005's The Black Arrow (May 2005),
a delightful libertarian superhero fantasy. In
The Testament of James (February 2015)
we met Matthew Hunter, owner of a used book shop in Providence,
Rhode Island, and Chantal Stevens, a woman with military combat
experience who has come to help out in the shop and, over time,
becomes romantically involved with Matthew. Since their last
adventure, Matthew and Chantal, their reputation (or notoriety) as players in
the international rare books game bolstered by the Testament
of James, have gone on to discover a Conan Doyle manuscript
for a missing Sherlock Holmes adventure, which sold at auction for
more than a million dollars.
The present book begins with the sentencing of Windsor Annesley,
scion of a prominent Providence family and president of the Church of
Cthulhu, which regards the use of consciousness-expanding
plant substances as its sacraments, who has been railroaded
in a “War on Drugs” prosecution, to three consecutive
life sentences without possibility of parole. Annesley, unbowed
and defiant, responds,
You are at war with us? Then we are at war with you.
A condition of war has existed, and will continue to exist,
until you surrender without condition, or until every drug
judge, including you, … and every drug prosecutor, and
every drug cop is dead. So have I said it. So shall it be.
Shortly after the sentencing, Windsor Annesley's younger brother,
Worthington (“Worthy”) meets with Matthew and
the bookstore crew (including, of course, the feline contingent)
to discuss a rumoured
H. P. Lovecraft
notebook, “The Miskatonic Manuscript”, which Lovecraft
alluded to in correspondence but which has never been found. At the
time, Lovecraft was visiting Worthy's great-uncle, Henry Annesley, who
was conducting curious experiments aimed at seeing things beyond the
range of human perception. It was right after this period that
Lovecraft wrote his breakthrough story
“From
Beyond”. Worthy suspects that the story was based upon
Henry Annesley's experiments, which may have opened a technological
path to the other worlds described in Lovecraft's fiction and
explored by Church of Cthulhu members through their sacraments.
After discussing the odd career of Lovecraft, Worthy offers a handsome
finder's fee to Matthew for the notebook. Matthew accepts. The game,
on the leisurely time scale of the rare book world, is afoot. And
finally, the manuscript is located.
And now things start to get weird—very
weird—Lovecraft weird. A mysterious gadget arrives
with instructions to plug it into a computer. Impossible crimes.
Glowing orbs. Secret laboratories. Native American shamans.
Vortices. Big hungry things with sharp teeth. Matthew and Chantal
find themselves on an adventure as risky and lurid as those on the
Golden Age pulp science fiction shelves of the bookstore.
Along with the adventure (in which a hero cat, Tabbyhunter, plays a
key part), there are insightful quotes about the millennia
humans have explored alternative realities through the use of
plants placed on the Earth for that purpose by Nature's God, and
the folly of those who would try to criminalise that human right
through a coercive War on Drugs. The book concludes with a teaser
for the next adventure, which I eagerly await. The full text of
H. P. Lovecraft's “From Beyond” is included; if you've
read the story before, you'll look at it an another light after reading
this superb novel. End notes provide citations to items
you might think fictional until you discover the extent
to which we're living in the Crazy Years.
Drug warriors, law 'n order fundamentalists, prudes, and those whose
consciousness has never dared to broach the terrifying “what
if” there's something more than we usually see out there may
find this novel offensive or even dangerous. Libertarians, the
adventurous, and lovers of a great yarn will delight in it. The cover
art is racy, even by the standards of pulp, but completely faithful to
the story.
The link above is to the
Kindle edition, which is available
from Amazon. The hardcover, in a limited edition of 650
copies, numbered and signed by the author, is
available
from the publisher via AbeBooks.
December 2015 