I Read Stories: On The Occasion Of My Retirement
On The Occasion Of My Retirement by Nick Mamatas
The narrator of Mamatas’ tale, a former semiotics professor at Miskatonic university now finding himself out of work, tries to sell a mysterious artefact. It is a statue that appears to absorb all light, though on closer inspection moving parts can be seen. Thanks to a plot with his former lover and a rival professor he is sucked into the world of the artefact, a place where ants compete with and replace men, snipping off limbs as they try to ambush and escape one another.
From there it takes a turn into horror.
Explicitly referencing Kafka and Lovecraft, the story takes a phrase from the latter “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents,” and works through some implications, in both obvious ways, and the warped and terrible ways that might occur to a semiotician.
Structured as a very bizarre and rambling lecture, it’s also a tricky story, with details being placed in plain sight only to reveal themselves in their true, warped form later. And this, of course, is the reason why the story takes Theory so very seriously.
Read This: For horror that works on a number of levels, and challenges us to read more into the story.
Don’t Read This: For a straightforward or pleasant story.
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| A statue in bronze and in vantablack |
The narrator of Mamatas’ tale, a former semiotics professor at Miskatonic university now finding himself out of work, tries to sell a mysterious artefact. It is a statue that appears to absorb all light, though on closer inspection moving parts can be seen. Thanks to a plot with his former lover and a rival professor he is sucked into the world of the artefact, a place where ants compete with and replace men, snipping off limbs as they try to ambush and escape one another.
From there it takes a turn into horror.
Explicitly referencing Kafka and Lovecraft, the story takes a phrase from the latter “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents,” and works through some implications, in both obvious ways, and the warped and terrible ways that might occur to a semiotician.
Structured as a very bizarre and rambling lecture, it’s also a tricky story, with details being placed in plain sight only to reveal themselves in their true, warped form later. And this, of course, is the reason why the story takes Theory so very seriously.
Read This: For horror that works on a number of levels, and challenges us to read more into the story.
Don’t Read This: For a straightforward or pleasant story.
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