THE DEEP ONES: "Red Jacks Wild" by Kim Newman

"Red Jacks Wild" by Kim Newman

Discussion begins on March 25, 2020.

First published in Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories (2015).



ONLINE VERSIONS

No online versions found to date.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2150958

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories

MISCELLANY

https://johnnyalucard.com/2015/07/18/red-jacks-wild/
https://johnnyalucard.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Newman
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kimnewman
https://gingernutsofhorror.com/interviews/kim-newman-dracula-and-one-thousand-mo...
http://tinyurl.com/qob3zqz

I'd originally hoped to visit my local and borrow a copy, when voting for the selection. I might see about electronic borrowing, as I understand that remains an option for patrons, but elsewise I'll have to sit this one out. Too bad, as this series had come with various positive reviews over the years and I thought to make this DEEP ONES read my gateway drug.

Well, I don't have access to this story, but it has put me in mind of reading Anno Dracula. I read a number of issues of the comic book adaptation and liked it well enough, but the cover of this one intriuges me more.

I ought to point out that the title of this book as more than a little misleading. It's actually a collection of non-Anno Dracula universe stories from across pretty much the whole of Newman's writing career. The oldest one dates back to 1988. The title story, the only Anno Dracula content, is actually a sneak preview of the start of Anno Dracula 1899: One Thousand Monsters.

By now the series is like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Penny Dreadful: all the characters of Gothic, horror, popular fiction can potentially rub shoulders with one another and with real-life public figures of the time. The first novel actually starts off a bit more restrained, extrapolating from a change in the course of events in Stoker's novel and slowly introducing elements not in Stoker's world - other literary vampires to begin with, then widening the net.

In most of the stories in the collection, he's playing with the familiar characters and tropes that I imagine we're all carrying around in the "Monster Kid" part of our minds (that cast list on the cover of the book doesn't lie), but in standalone tales. The historical and cultural references go a lot wider than a narrow genre focus though, which is all to the good.

Obviously I don't want say too much about the story we actually chose, for fear of spoilers. I'm not sure if I should say anything really. Newman is a humorous writer and places his plot twists like the punchlines to so many gags. Giving anything away would be to spoil the joke, so to speak.

>4 housefulofpaper:

A very useful clarification/explanation. Thanks!

>3 semdetenebre: Oh I would recommend Anno Dracula over this. This one, much as I love Newman's oeuvre, is really just a collection of unrelated stories. Only one is related at all to Anno Dracula; most are 'experimental' things like scripts. Some are better than others (I'm being kind). So don't be fooled by the cover! The original Anno Dracula is the one you want :) The A.D. story in this collection is actually a sequel to that one, squeezed in chronologically after the events of the comic book 5 Days of Mayhem. But really, it's quite a hard leap into 1899 without the background of Anno Dracula, and even actually its sequels which are set after 1899 but written before the snippet in this collection (so there's a lot of foreshadowing of events we already know about in books 2-4). The story here in 1899 is actually just a preview of One Thousand Monsters (the fifth book in the series).

>6 eveningbirdsong:

Good clarification - thanks! Since I have Anno Dracula readily at hand in my TBR pile, it now seems like the only logical place to begin. Kim Newman has announced that his next novel, Something More Than Night will feature Raymond Chandler and Boris Karloff as characters. No vampires are included, as far as I can tell.