Read a Good Book Lately?

In the far eastern reaches of Siberia lies the region of Kolyma. Sparsely populated, but mineral rich. In the 1930s, the USSR quickly turned it into a series of mining operations within the Gulag system.

Varlam Shalamov was 22 when he was arrested under charges that were never fully explained. From 1929 to 1931, he served at monastery that had been converted into. prison camp. At the height of Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937 he was arrested again, this time under Article 58 — political crimes. His sentence was finished, but immediately extended in 1942 until the end of WW2, then re-extended for 10 years in 1943.

This time is the bulk of the Kolyma Tales as Shalamov goes through a real-life dystopian nightmare. On a work detail picking berries, his work partner wanders beyond the permitted line to get a good clump og berries — but is shot for the infraction. The guard then “touched my shoulder with his rifle barrel, and I turned around. ‘I wanted to get you,’ he said, ‘but you wouldn’t cross the line, you bastard!’”

The harsh conditions affected everyone, but the guards had the power and the ideological drive: “The career of a prison guard – and especially of a camp guard – must be lubricated with the blood of the prisoners.” A worker has a mineral quota, a guard has an enforcement quota. And as far as escapes were concerned: ”The reward for the dead was the same as for the living, so there was no sense in delivering captured prisoners in one piece.” Escapees were, if they had gone far enough, shot on the spot and one of their hands was cut off for fingerprint identification back at the camp. No sense in dragging a whole body back for miles.

”The convicts who tried to escape were almost always newcomers serving their first year, men in whose hearts freedom and vanity had not yet been annihilated.”

When a hillside was cleared of tree stumps to make way for a new section of the logging camp, ”a mass prisoner grave, a stone pit stuffed full with undecaying corpses from 1938 was sliding down the side of the hill, revealing the secret of Kolyma.” The grave was never marked, not even on a map by the executors. It was meant to be forgotten. In the sub-zero cold, the bodies never decomposed.

Camp guards and commanders were not exempt from punishment that usually came due to politically inconvenient mistakes or mismanagement. Even some foreign nationals dedicated to the cause of Communism wound up in Kolyma. Shalamov notes that a young French Comintern member was distrought that he had been sentenced to hard labor. The system consumed and/or transformed anyone it can. Shalamov was one of the latter.

When Shalamov’s time was finally done, the system never truly let him go. He was appointed as a medical assistant at a labor camp, nominally due to his knowledge of the people and their conditions. This meant slightly better conditions, but he was likely here due since his arrest under Article 58, which never truly left him.

Over his time at Kolyma, Shalamov came to two obsidian concisions: ”Every minute of camp life is a poisoned minute” and ”He who asks no questions will be told no lies.”

Upon making his way back home after 17 years, Shalamov’s now grown daughter disowned him, presumably not to be associated with a former politcal convict. He wrote the Kolyma Tales and had them smuggled abroad. Later, he was forced to remounce them under the comparatively lenient Krushchev regime. He did so and continued a minor publishing career.

On a final note, there is a glimmer of positivity here as Shalamov did get his word out and it now contributes to awareness of the repression he and millions of others suffered.

Deceptor a vigilante is warped under his own deceptional methodology followed by a Mysterious Gang member named The White Mafia, who’s delusional and deceptional skills are a lot like the Deceptor. Deceptor must return to reveal the secrets behind The White Mafia and his traits to clear his glorious adventures from stains of the White Mafia.

The 1st Volume was nominated for Goodreads choice award 2020

The 1st Volume was Rank 21 in Steampunk Young Adult 2021

Available in Amazon, Books Wagon, Print on Demand Barnes & Noble, Wallmart and stores near you.

Deceptor a vigilante is warped under his own deception, through a mystery, A mystery that goes on deluding further and further, through a clue, A Business man who revives Ashley Wilson’s strategic plan, further spinning the web of deceptions. Amrita and Neel find out the Mystery behind mysteries, Not knowing a Bigger illusion warps Deceptor.

The 1st Volume was Nominated for Goodreads choice Award 2020

The 1st Volume was Rank 21 in Steampunk Young Adult Fiction 2021

Available in Amazon, Books Wagon, Print on Demand Barnes & Noble, Wallmart and stores near you

Deceptor a vigilante to fight a huge challenge that is similar to what he can do. Similar to his might and power. A creature as wrathful as Deceptor himself. Pulled off by Ashley Wilson the arch nemesis of Deceptor. Self Experiments on his own Atoms, protons, electrons and Nutrons with Crystal technology. Becomes a who is a non-existent force as the Deceptor. A being who exist but doesn’t exist tackles the Deceptor. The Fantasy Ride of a Vigilante takes the next dimension due to scientific experiment.

The first Volume was Nominated for Goodreads Choice Award 2020

The first Volume was Rank 21 in Steampunk Readers, Young Adult Fiction Readers 2021

Launched also as Comic Book in 2023

Niche Universe Recognition

Available in Amazon, Books Wagon Print on demand at Barnes & Noble, Wallmart & stores near you.

An Indian Superhero Spin off. A Young Man Hailing from a family of Illusionist and Magicians Travels all around thee globe and learns different arts of Deception Delusion and Illusions from all over the world. Imparting great knowledge and fights for Greater Good. Becomes a Superhero He assumes different disguises in different time periods. An Epic Fantasy of a Protagonist with breathtaking Delusional abilities but living a simple life with inner calmness.

Nominated for Goodreads Choice Award 2020

Rank 21 in Steampunk Readers, Young Adult Fiction Readers 2021

Launched also as Comic Book in 2023

Niche Universe Recognition

Available in Amazon, Books Wagon Print on demand at Barnes & Noble, Wallmart & stores near you.

Over the past few years, and especially since the recent movie, The Backrooms have become the go-to for liminal spaces and liminal horror. However, there is a 1964 story that gets at the same fears, while offering some insight where they come from. The parlance and vocabulary are a relic of their time and feel odd at times, but the story remains readily accessible.

An unnamed protagonist (referred to only as “he”) lives a comfortable life in a nice city, but is spending beyond his means. He pays with “charge” (aka credit card) and feels “giddy with self-indulgence” as he buys “fancy groceries,” several books, and then tosses a coin to decide on his last stop in the shopping a gallery: a tailor for a new suit or the top floor cafe for a treat.

It ends up being the treat, so up he goes, enjoys that dessert (baklava) and then starts the what the title suggest: his descent back down. He is so familiar with escalators in this store, referred to as “Underwoods,” that he reads one of his new books as he goes down. When he makes it to each landing, he walks over to the next section of escalator without looking up from the book he is so enthralled in…

It’s only when he’s on page 55 that something feels odd… he’s on another landing… he feels he reads roughly a page per minute, so has he been on the escalator for nearly an hour? And where is everyone? What floor is he on?

This is only page 4 of the edition I read and the remaining 10 pages are the liminal horror. I found it surprisingly well done for a time when the concept was far from what it is today. I haven’t read into the biography and works of author Thomas M. Disch, but he did have much to draw from in his time. Folk tales of impossible paths in the forest, ancient castles, even Lovecraft who described impossible (albeit alien) places. The interesting thing here is that Disch puts all that into into a modern shopping center. Given the time of writing, 1964, a 15-story shopping gallery with full escalator access was a novelty. So much like the famous “backrooms” image that took empty commercial space and made it into a nightmare with a short paragraph, here we have 14 pages of initially lively commercial space that inexplicably empties.

Why? When exactly? In liminal horror fashion, that’s quite never answered, but certainly open to discussion and I’ll start!

Commercial spaces are huge and impersonal, almost purely transactional, so the man fell behind. He lives alone, so has lack of social connection. On page 1 he has a credit card bill for the very store he’s going to, but ignores it for more shopping, so has racked up debt. His narration barely mentions anyone else at the shopping gallery, aka Underwoods, so he’s totally focuses on material goods.

We’re well into the 2020s and those are still very real problems people face and many are overwhelmed by them as they become too hard to manage and fall out of our control.