The New Hero: Volume 1 Read online

  The New Hero

  Volume 1

  Every Age Needs Its Heroes

  Edited by Robin D. Laws

  Published by Stone Skin Press 2012.

  Stone Skin Press is an imprint of Pelgrane Press Ltd. Spectrum House,

  9 Bromell’s Road, Clapham Common, London, SW4 0BN.

  Each author retains the individual copyright to their story.

  The collection and arrangement Copyright ©2012 Stone Skin Press.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN 978-1-908983-77-0

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This book can be ordered direct from the publisher at

  www.stoneskinpress.com

  Contents

  Preface: A Book of Heroes Robin D. Laws

  Julia Bond Ellingboe Ezekiel Saw the Wheel

  Jeff Tidball Better Off Not Knowing

  Maurice Broaddus Warrior of the Sunrise

  Ed Greenwood Midnight Knight

  Richard Dansky The Thirty-Ninth Labor of Reb Palache

  Jonny Nexus On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service

  Kyla Ward Cursebreaker

  Graeme Davis Against the Air Pirates

  Monica Valentinelli Fangs and Formaldehyde

  Kenneth Hite Bad Beat for Aaron Burr

  Chuck Wendig Charcuterie

  Monte Cook Sundown in Sorrow’s Hollow

  Alexandra & Peter Freeman A Man of Vice

  Adam Marek The Captain

  Biographies

  A Book of Heroes

  A Preface

  This is a book of heroes.

  To assemble a book of heroes is to make a statement on what heroism is—as a literary construct, and thus as a reflection of our lived experience.

  To do this today is to reflect a time when the hero’s position in popular culture has never been more paradoxical. In an age of tentpole movie franchises, continuing character novel series, and television season box sets, the character type I’m about to define as the iconic hero has never held greater sway over our collective imaginations. Yet at the same time, the iron rules underpinning these serial characters have been forgotten, ignored, and misapplied.

  From creative writing classes to the pitch rooms of Hollywood, they’ve been eclipsed by assumptions appropriate to a quite different protagonist type; the dramatic hero. These ideas maintain a hammerlock on our way of thinking about characters and the stories that develop around them.

  Dramatic hero conventions arise from the novelistic tradition of psychological realism, which in turn traces its roots back to Aristotelian tragedy. Whether she is felled by hubris, ancient-Greek style, or earns reassuring redemption in the American pop culture mode, the dramatic hero appears for the purposes of a single story. It’s always one of transformation. In screenplay jargon, the hero undergoes an arc. She begins in one emotional condition, and from that state faces a crisis that puts her at odds with the world. This confrontation with the world changes her, completing her arc. At the end, the dramatic hero is a different person.

  The opposing tradition is that of the iconic hero. The iconic hero exists to drive many stories. Whatever their external details, each of these recapitulates the same classic structure. The iconic hero encounters a disorder in the world. As it does the dramatic hero, the world tests the iconic hero, trying to change her. Where the dramatic hero transforms, either for better or worse, the iconic hero prevails by reaffirming her essential identity. By enacting her iconic ethos, she pushes back against the world’s attempts to change her, to introduce into her its disordered state. In rejecting this onslaught, she instead forces change on the world, returning it to a place of order. That return might be incremental, a slight infusion of order into a fundamentally bleak and chaotic status quo or it might be decisive, a return of sunlight and goodness to an environment formerly threatened by fear and predation.

  · Employing rigorous deductive logic, Sherlock Holmes untangles inexplicable mysteries.

  · Her sharp mind hidden behind a deceptively doddering demeanor, Miss Marple solves multiple-suspect murder mysteries.

  · With cold suavity and colder violence, James Bond dispatches Britain’s enemies.

  · Tarzan upholds the noble values of the jungle against the predatory outsiders who would despoil it.

  · Conan uses his barbaric superiority to overturn the false order of corrupt civilization.

  · Batman brings justice to cowardly and superstitious criminals, doing for others what he could not do for his murdered parents.

  · Storm overcomes the enemies of human-and mutant-kind by wielding nature’s untamed power.

  · Dr. Gregory House caustically tramples social decencies as he ruthlessly pinpoints the causes of baffling medical conditions.

  · Philip Marlowe goes down mean streets, without himself becoming mean.

  Where the arc of the dramatic hero offers us the catharsis of tragedy or the uplift of redemption, the restoration of order offered by the iconic hero plays to our primal sense of justice. It is this deeply ingrained impulse toward fairness, and the darker urge for the punishment of wrongdoers, that makes us social animals, and fueled our evolution as a species. Whether they acknowledges the darkness or gloss it away, the pleasure these stories convey takes on a ritualistic quality. It grants vicarious power. It allows us to place ourselves in the shoes, not of a figure who must change or die, but one who wins by staying true to a fundamental self.

  Here beats the metaphorical heart of the iconic hero. These stories mirror the everyday struggles of life, as we try to remain true to our best selves in a confusing and pressure-filled world.

  The pattern of the dramatic hero is well-studied. It drives the great plays and novels of the literary canon. Filtering from lit classes into creative writing workshops, it has become part of the lingua franca of criticism and story collaboration. The iconic hero is a creature of pop culture, born of penny dreadfuls, of pulps and radio plays and comic books and B-movies. He gets his due in academia through the lens of cultural studies, with scant attention paid to the alternative story structure that is his essential root. Hence the vogue for disastrous reboots that hobble classic characters with plodding arcs and unnecessary backstories.

  A form that relies so heavily on repetition must be continually renewed and updated to remain vital.

  To this end, The New Hero challenged fourteen talented writers from disparate creative scenes to invent new iconic heroes and put them through their ritualistic paces in the eternal battle against injustice and disorder.

  The wide variety seen in the resulting tales testifies not only to the diversity of their visions, but the capaciousness of the iconic hero formula.

  The structural bedrock of the iconic hero story might provide a gateway to a vividly envisioned imaginary world, as it does in Julia Bond Ellingboe’s Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, set in an American south reeling in the wake of a folkloric apocalypse.

  Its formal verities likewise allow the exploration of a distinctive voice. Richard Dansky infuses The Thirty-Ninth Labor of Reb Palache with an epic rhythm as inexorable as the sea plied by its battling galleons. In a Man of Vice, Peter Freeman channels high Victorian style with a tale of grimly applied justice.

  By tackling its structure head on, writers may engage with the classic modes of the pop cultural past. Graeme Davis pays homage to the two-fisted South Seas adventures of yore, and to the wonders of early aviation, in Against the Air P
irates. Ed Greenwood embraces his full-throated love of storytelling with his gleefully uninhibited The Midnight Knight.

  A straight-up hero tale can deliver visceral thrills even as it critiques the uncomfortable elements of the form’s past. In Warrior of the Sunrise, Maurice Broaddus deploys the tropes and styles of a Robert E. Howard swords and sorcery tale. By casting as his hero an African woman, he upends the racism and sexism that so often mars the tradition he’s drawing from. Jonny Nexus, in On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service, allows us to enjoy the entitled swagger of his hero, an overconfident upper-cruster, while at the same time wryly jabbing at it. Jeff Tidball likewise adds a twisted perspective to the urban military genre, portraying the hero of Better Off Not Knowing as a man with a platoon of voices in his head.

  One can see from the range of characters and settings mentioned so far that the iconic hero structure transcends genre trappings. As such, it’s a perfect vehicle for the mash-up epoch. Monte Cook demonstrates the principle with his western-informed fantasy tale, Sundown in Sorrow’s Hollow. Kenneth Hite finds a fresh spin on the alternate history genre with his reality-crossing fugitive hunter, Ray Cazador, in Bad Beat for Aaron Burr. The vampire story has broken out from its horror roots to become a genre of its own; Monica Valentinelli’s Fangs and Formaldehyde delivers the sharp-fanged thrills while showing there are changes left to ring within its boundaries.

  As in any fictional form, the heart of an iconic hero story remains the human character. The pathos of Mookie, the sad sack leg-breaker of Chuck Wendig’s Charcuterie lends an unforgettable emotional solidity to his world of contemporary supernatural menace. Kyla Ward shows how a few deft touches and a lot of mystery can render a character, in this case the smart aleck summoned spirit in Cursebreaker: The Jikininki and the Japanese Jurist, instantly memorable. (Kyla’s Cursebreaker character makes a repeat appearance here, underlining the iconic hero’s affinity for serial treatment.)

  Authors were asked to tackle the form head on, setting aside parody, ironic riffing, and other forms of premise avoidance. This brings us to our capper, Adam Marek’s The Captain, which in brilliant and disturbing fashion turns the iconic hero story inside out, while also completely fulfilling it, in a covert and surprising manner.

  That’s what this book of heroes is all about. Fourteen sparks struck between timeless, primally satisfying tradition and fresh invention.

  From the breezy to the mordant, from sunny to pitch-black, our new heroes span moods, modes, and genres. Dive in and you’ll find warriors, agents, avengers, and of course the always-obligatory pirate rabbi. On modern city streets, in the space ships of a retro-alternative future, in goblin-haunted fine dining establishments and haunted Japanese hills, they unravel mysteries, rescue the innocent, and dispense bare-knuckled justice.

  Never mind the story arcs.

  It’s time to meet the new heroes.

  – Robin D. Laws, Feb 2011

  Ezekiel Saw the Wheel

  Julia Ellingboe

  I know early in the day that something will call on me. I sit on my porch, dressed to the nines in a fiery red suit and button shoes of alligator hide. Not a curl falls out of place, even in the dead dripping heat of the Charleston summer. The sky is blacker than blue, the clouds hover menacingly low. It’s just too hot to move, too hot to change into something less formal and confining. Besides, I like to greet my favorite time of night in my finest. Duppies, as the Caribbean immigrants call the spirits that haunt the last sliver of daytime, float about the fog. It is eerily beautiful, like moonlit jellyfish drifting on a sleepy ocean current. Duppies are harmless things, for the most part, but like all haints, it doesn’t take much to anger them, and it’s difficult to predict what it will take. Sometimes it’s a crack in the sidewalk trespassed, other times it’s a curious glance and wordless desire tossed carelessly into an alley, or a whistled song imperceptibly out of tune. Tonight it’s nothing but complacent duppies. Perhaps I am wrong, no one will call on me, and I dressed up for my own vanity.

  I am what the old folks call a Reader. ‘Psychic’ is the common term, but in the Southern Territories, we’re still called Readers. Moreover, I am a Gifted or Touched Reader, born able to read people and catch glimpses of their future, rather than having learned it from playing with divining tools like tea leaves or bones. Most Gifted Readers become Rootswomen or Witchdoctors, some become Charlatans, and others work with such people in order to give the appearance of staying out of trouble. In this day and age, with the world split open, Heaven and Hell in chaos, and the dead walking among us, everyone claims to be a Reader, and the real ones are in high demand. Most gifted Readers have a specialty. Some can read babies, some read animals. I read the dead just as I read the breathing.

  In Charleston, everyone’s strongly encouraged to attend church to offset the blemish of gambling’s sin. Due to a long and intimate association with the Devil, I am banned from all church activities in the Territory of Carolina. I am also banned from the gambling halls, since everyone in Charleston knows my association with the Devil began in a gambling hall. So I am denied access to God’s houses and the Devil’s playground. No church and no gambling halls make for a lonely Sunday morning and evening. My porch goes vacant on Sunday while my aunt attends church. I miss cards. I’d play hours of canasta―or any card game―if someone deigned to join me.

  On the upside, I like this time of evening because no one’s actively avoiding me. I savor the hours of sitting out of the eyeshot of scorn. I watch duppies and haints float by in the swirling fog in peace, waiting to read a wayward ghost and direct it to its descendants. That’s the idea, at least. No dead thing has stopped to chat in weeks. Now it’s late and Aunt Sungila still hasn’t come yet. Not one to pass up some juicy and true gossip, I bet she cut out with her friend Opal Teal just after the collection plate passed their laps, and are chatting like brooding hens on Miss Opal’s porch. Aunt Sungila might not be home until I’m long in bed. I expect to have the porch to myself as long as I want it.

  If I had the appetite, I would finish off that pecan pie she baked this afternoon, but my boredom cares little for food. Instead I shuffle a deck of cards and lay out a spread of Solitaire. After a few rounds, I take off my hat, blow the beads of humidity off the ostrich plume, and lay it next to me. As I lean over to unlace my shoes, a hairpin falls out of my hair and rolls across the porch. I leave it there for now. Hatless, shoeless, I undo the top buttons of my blouse, and hike up my skirt. Comfortable at last and a little vulnerable to scandal and other haints. I’m inviting trouble, I suppose, because nothing else invites me. I close my eyes and listen. There’s a lot out there, but nothing wants to talk, wants to be heard, or needs direction except me.

  From down the road, a horse trots at a leisurely pace. The fog converts to rain, which bears down on the roof. Something vexes the dog next door. The air smells of the ocean, musty wet porches, and what’s that? Chicory and salted pork. A last meal. I open my eyes as a handsome young man’s corpse in an old army uniform dismounts a red saddled horse. First Civil War, Confederate. An old one.

  ‘You Ivy Greene?’ He says plainly in an old Charleston drawl.

  ‘I am. And you are?’

  ‘Lieutenant Jeremiah Weed.’

  A Horseman of Revelation, maybe War given his uniform and red bridled horse. The Horsemen like their whiskey and bourbon so much they take the name of it. He approaches the porch, and looks at the blue steps. Hesitating at first, he taps the step with caution and lets out a laugh like a rattling gourd. ‘You fooled me, Miss Ivy. I thought you had built a little moat around your house. Trying to keep us out?’

  ‘How can I help you?’ I ask. Even the Horsemen like to be read, so I’ve heard. Lieutenant Weed takes off his kepi and walks up cautiously, as if he still expects a flood from the blue steps. He stands in front of me. Now he looks imposing. I can smell death on him. The dead and things from Hell don’t usually scare me, but he is of grave concern as he towers over me on my porch, and I am s
hoeless, hatless, and alone.

  ‘I have a message from an old friend,’ he chuckles, ‘your former paramour.’

  It’s one thing to have an association with the Devil. Everyone boasts an association with the Devil these days. Even the most sincere churchgoers claim to have met and chatted with him at least once. It’s an entirely different matter to have seduced him and proudly walked about the crumbling world on his arm. No good could ever have come from the courtship. Accepting a message from the Devil, delivered by a Horseman of Revelation is a small but not insignificant example. One doesn’t quit the Devil easily, with a clean conscience, and no consequences.

  I try to keep my eyes on him, but there’s something else out there that has yet to reveal itself. Lieutenant Weed runs an invasive dead finger across my jawline. He smells of chicory, salt pork, bourbon, freshly turned grave, and Hell.

  ‘Tell me your message, then go before―’ I look back to where Lieutenant Weed once stood, and where three more cavalrymen now sit atop three handsome red-eyed horses. One has a black bridle and the rider is all bones. He holds out a constant, hungry, begging hand. I read ‘Famine’ from him. Flies swarm around the head of the second man, and putrid, stinking flesh drips from his body. He sits atop a white bridled horse. Pestilence. The third man slumps over a pale horse with no bridle. A continuous stream of blood drips from his limp arm, and a sword sticks straight up from his back. Death.

  Lieutenant Weed smiles a rotted tooth grin, and follows my gaze off the porch. He turns back to me and laughs breathlessly. A gold tooth pops out of his mouth and into my lap. He doesn’t seem to notice, thankfully, and I brush it into my pocket with the subtlety of a thief. ‘That’s my cavalry, in case you plan to finish your threat, Madame. Soldiers, meet Miss Ivy Greene. Miss Greene, meet Lieutenants Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and Elijah Cross.’

  I stifle a laugh at their names. They all politely nod, except Lieutenant Cross. Lieutenant Beam keeps his hand out. I run my finger across the grooves of Weed’s tooth in my pocket. I give no expression to my face or voice. ‘Hello, gentleman. Please tell me your message and leave. I have a long day tomorrow.’