Zombies or Angry White Men?
So I managed to finish the zombie anthology 'Living Dead' - and the George R R Martin SF story I finished on was one of the best in the book. And then I saw another anthology and I thought... WTF???
'Zombies The Recent Dead' was published two years after 'Living Dead' and has three of the same stories (the so-so Neil Gaiman story 'Bitter Grounds', the racist, sexist 'Dead Man's Road', and Andy Duncan's 'Zora and the Zombie')
Three.
And ZRD actually mentions the existence of LD so it's not like they didn't know they were publishing three stories that had already appeared in a zombie anthology.
This is how you make sure people don't find anthologies value for money. Given the incredible forgetability of most of the stories in LD if I hadn't only finished it a few days before seeing ZRD I wouldn't have realised until I started reading.
(And if I were going to reprint from another anthology of reprints there were better choices... and wouldn't everyone liable to read a zombie anthology have already read the World War Z story?)
***
I really wanted 'White Cargo' to be a good book. The treatment of indentured servants (or slaves) in the Americas is something I wanted to read about. Sadly it's badly written tabloid history by a pair of angry white men who can't research, can't get any kind of order into the mess, but do manage to be wearyingly angry. The thing about writing a book in ANGRY is how quickly the word choices become boring and how they highlight the one-sidedness of the 'facts' presented...
Popham was a man whose character was written in his face. In one portrait, he appears a physical giant, the scarlet robes of the High Court clutched around his bulk, a heavy, ugly face glaring out, cold eyes cunning and suspicious; the face of a calculating, unstoppable bully. In his voluminous Lives of the Chief Justices of England, Lord Campbell refers to the portrait and adds decorously ; 'I am afraid he would not appear to great advantage in a sketch of his moral qualities, which lest I do him an injustice I will not attempt'.
And yes, I'm not big on angry people divining personality from a portrait. Nor leaving to the end notes that the book being quoted was written in 1876 about a man who died in 1607
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Popham_%28Lord_Chief_Justice%29
I could as easily point out that a Campbell would likely be a Scot and at the date when he was writing his opinion of a man involved in the trial of Mary Queen of Scots might be less than unbiased. Just as the authors of White Cargo repeat a scurrilous rumour about his taking a bribe in a murder case...
but they don't bother giving the name of the alleged murderer -- thankfully there is the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlecote_House
"John Aubrey tells that Littlecote was a bribe to Popham as his judge in a criminal case, which is impossible: Darrell was not charged or tried, and Popham was not yet a judge."
So, the rumour would appear to be garbage debunked before White Cargo was written... (It's part of a ghost story for heaven's sake, those are always 100% accurate.)
Basically -- angry white men writing confused garbage in tabloid (World in Action) style create more questions than answers. It also leads one to look at the notes and realise that they've not bothered to go to anything like original source material. But hey, a bunch of reviewers fell for it (or is that just journalists demonstrating the social corruption of their trade?)
'Zombies The Recent Dead' was published two years after 'Living Dead' and has three of the same stories (the so-so Neil Gaiman story 'Bitter Grounds', the racist, sexist 'Dead Man's Road', and Andy Duncan's 'Zora and the Zombie')
Three.
And ZRD actually mentions the existence of LD so it's not like they didn't know they were publishing three stories that had already appeared in a zombie anthology.
This is how you make sure people don't find anthologies value for money. Given the incredible forgetability of most of the stories in LD if I hadn't only finished it a few days before seeing ZRD I wouldn't have realised until I started reading.
(And if I were going to reprint from another anthology of reprints there were better choices... and wouldn't everyone liable to read a zombie anthology have already read the World War Z story?)
***
I really wanted 'White Cargo' to be a good book. The treatment of indentured servants (or slaves) in the Americas is something I wanted to read about. Sadly it's badly written tabloid history by a pair of angry white men who can't research, can't get any kind of order into the mess, but do manage to be wearyingly angry. The thing about writing a book in ANGRY is how quickly the word choices become boring and how they highlight the one-sidedness of the 'facts' presented...
Popham was a man whose character was written in his face. In one portrait, he appears a physical giant, the scarlet robes of the High Court clutched around his bulk, a heavy, ugly face glaring out, cold eyes cunning and suspicious; the face of a calculating, unstoppable bully. In his voluminous Lives of the Chief Justices of England, Lord Campbell refers to the portrait and adds decorously ; 'I am afraid he would not appear to great advantage in a sketch of his moral qualities, which lest I do him an injustice I will not attempt'.
And yes, I'm not big on angry people divining personality from a portrait. Nor leaving to the end notes that the book being quoted was written in 1876 about a man who died in 1607
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Popham_%28Lord_Chief_Justice%29
I could as easily point out that a Campbell would likely be a Scot and at the date when he was writing his opinion of a man involved in the trial of Mary Queen of Scots might be less than unbiased. Just as the authors of White Cargo repeat a scurrilous rumour about his taking a bribe in a murder case...
but they don't bother giving the name of the alleged murderer -- thankfully there is the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlecote_House
"John Aubrey tells that Littlecote was a bribe to Popham as his judge in a criminal case, which is impossible: Darrell was not charged or tried, and Popham was not yet a judge."
So, the rumour would appear to be garbage debunked before White Cargo was written... (It's part of a ghost story for heaven's sake, those are always 100% accurate.)
Basically -- angry white men writing confused garbage in tabloid (World in Action) style create more questions than answers. It also leads one to look at the notes and realise that they've not bothered to go to anything like original source material. But hey, a bunch of reviewers fell for it (or is that just journalists demonstrating the social corruption of their trade?)