REVIEW: Gruesome Futures - Tales To Make You Vomit Vol. 4!
Grab your barf bags, here's an anthology for the weirdos ready to ralph.
Alright, boils and ghouls.
It’s 1994.
Your mom takes you to Safeway and promises she’ll get you the new Goosebumps book from the rack by the door if you’re good.
Your friend’s older sister just got her babysitter’s certificate, so your mom decides to get drunk somewhere else instead of in the basement.
Your babysitter asks “What shows do you watch before bed?”
Easy question! Are You Afraid of the Dark and Super Dave Osborne, duh.
As you wait for AYAotD to air, you watch some other childhood horror staples: Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Freaky Stories, Goosebumps (not nearly as good as AYAotD, and the first instance where you knew the books were better, too). You pop in the orange Ren & Stimpy VHS which includes a sheet of scratch n’ sniff stickers that smell like barf, farts, etc. (R&S, by the by, is still one of my—er, your—favourite cartoons.)
Your older sister loved her Cabbage Patch Dolls, but you were much more of a Garbage Pail Kids fan, as far as the hand-me-downs go.
You ask for Creepy Crawlers for Christmas, though your mom hesitates because that’s for boys. (She gets it anyway, knowing you’re the type to prefer catching frogs and garter snakes to playing with Barbies. Thanks mom.)
You watch shows like TMNT and Power Rangers for the villains. Rita Repulsa was someone to aspire to.
Fast forward to 1998/9. Your fascination with serial killers, and habit of renting movies you really shouldn’t from the local corner store slash rental place where they don’t care about your age (plus the fact no one gives a shit about what you watch on TV so long as you’re quiet about it and out of the way) has given you an intimate knowledge of all things Michael Myers, Chucky, et al. You do your class speech assignment thing on Jeffrey Dahmer and for some reason your teacher doesn’t recommend therapy, but he does tell you to go sit down right when you mention the severed penis found in a tea kettle in front of your 6th grade class. (That tea kettle fact I found in a book, and I’ve never seen it repeated online anywhere in those exact words. Er, you. Whatever.)
You go to a sleepover at your nice, normal, wholesome friend’s house. You’re both lying there postponing sleep when she asks “Who’s your favourite actor?”
“Anthony Hopkins,” you answer, because Silence of the Lambs is your favourite movie, and you foolishly think she’s asking your opinion based on actual acting abilities.
“Oh.” She has no idea who that is. “Mine’s Freddie Prinze Jr.”
Oh, you realize, with embarrassment, you just revealed yourself to be a weirdo.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. You now have way too much unrestricted access to the sweet, sweet internet. Rotten.com, Faces of Death, beheading videos, accidental porn from Limewire, BME Pain Olympics, goatse, lemonparty, one man one jar—all the best, raunchiest shit you generously share with your friends. They want to find bizarre stuff, they go to you.
Nothing phases you, but you get a kick out of their reaction.
I am a big fan of art. Shocking, for an author say such a thing, but it’s true. Without art we’re nothing but drooling skinsuits. Why breathe if we have no self-expression? As soon as we could use tools, maybe earlier, we created. Handprints on cave walls, instruments of bone. We think, therefor we art—and that means art is not always “beautiful.” We are fascinating creatures, capable of every extreme.
To quote the movie Quills (2000):
Marquis de Sade: I write of the great, eternal truths that bind together all mankind. The whole world over, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die.
Coulmier: But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well?
Now to quote The Iron Giant (1999):
Dean McCoppin: If we don't stand up for the kooks, who will?
Weirdo, or lowbrow art I hold in particularly high esteem. Give me Rat Finks, give me flying eyeballs. Give me garish colours: acid yellow, snot green, villain purple.
Give me Fritz the Cat, Pork Magazine.
Saturn Devouring His Son. The Garden Of Earthly Delights. Titus Andronicus.
Pulp.
I learned to draw devils, skulls, and flames from my dad’s tattoos—being belligerently antisocial is in my blood. This is also where I get my love for the underdogs—what else is the lowbrow art movement but an expression of the misunderstood? The freaks, the low class, the outcasts, the downtrodden? Define art for me—it’s an expression of the human spirit, is it not? Or, if it’s something that evokes emotion, even a negative one, isn’t that art? If that expression is a signature on a urinal, or if that signature on a urinal has the viewer upset—that’s art, man. Even “anti-art” is just a variety of art. I appreciate it all. You don’t have to like a particular piece of art—like has nothing to do with it. (That said, this is a review, remember.)
When I saw a call for ARC readers from
for this anthology, I knew I had to jump on it. Just scroll up and look at that cover! How could I resist?Now for the review
(slight spoilers might be a risk)
The anthology has three stories framed by a Tales From the Crypt-esque situation in which the ghoulish Librarian forces our intrepid lunar landing team to read the grosses books she has, and should they blow chunks she blows up chunks of the Earth.
The framing story is comical, though a bit on-the-nose with the Current Year satire.
IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I SWALLOW by Misha Burnett
This one definitely understood the assignment. It’s the near future, where the prison system we’re familiar with has been abolished and punishments are visceral, nasty, and medical.
If you like body horror, this one is for you. Think a mix of Glutton, Sloth, and Greed from the movie Se7en (1995).
The thought of force-feeding as punishment is a super uncomfortable concept. The writing was fairly decent and throughout the story I was definitely wondering what the hell the guy had done to deserve it.
This one gets 4 distended stomachs out of 5.
THE RAPE AND ANNIHILATION OF BABE BABALONIA by Max Gunssler
100% satire, here. And many, many exclamation marks. Must have a sense of humour (I actually did laugh quite a bit, though sometimes as a cringe-reaction, which I think the author was going for.)
Assuming my readers are innocent flowers who have never seen a bizarre hentai ever, this one might get you all negative, emotionally—so here’s your trigger warning. It’s got it all: tentacle rape, gratuitous vaginal excretion (the poor girls must be so dehydrated), mecha vs hot chicks, lesbian BDSM rape, professional wrestling. There’s almost no story, you’re reading this to share snippets with your friends so they ask WTF you’re reading.
Remember kids, squirt is pee.
3 mutilated Norwegian air hostesses out of 5
THE SECRET ON SUBFLOOR 82 OF SERENITY STATION by Todd Love
This one here has a lot going on. For an anthology that is both science fiction and horror, this one nails the scifi angle. There’s a ton of worldbuilding I feel was probably axed (heh) for the sake of wordcount. Honestly, I felt it could have been a novella, for all the stuff I wish was expanded on.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing.
Far future, characters (and for the length of the story, there are many) as prisoners on a strange space station, mysterious pasts. You can probably guess by the title, there’s a secret aboard this station that can cause a few problems for… everyone.
This one I feel has the most risk of spoilers, so I’ll end here.
5 wormy veins out of 5
LINKS! ALL THE LINKS!
Buy the book here, all your favourite retailers, in ebook and paperback: https://books2read.com/gruesome-futures
Check out the authors!
Misha Burnett: https://mishaburnett.wordpress.com/
Max Gunssler: https://twitter.com/gunssler
Todd Love: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010819183787
And last but not least, our friendly neighbourhood editor,
That’s it for now! Peace!
(Oh, just for fun, I once bought an art zine with a similar idea, all barfy, gross-out lowbrow art. I don't have the zine itself anymore, but I still have the barf bag it came in, and yes the stamp in the corner says Skullfukked By Ghouls:
I am blown away by this amazing review. Thank you so much!
Wow. So that's why you read my stuff. I actually cause the death of a bad man in one coming up.