The Chaos Clock: Tales of Cosmic Aether
edited by
Danielle Ackley-McPhail
(NeoParadoxa, July 2024, pb, 328 pp.)
“The Birth of Mechanical Things” by Maxwell I. Gold
“The Thirteenth Hour” by Hildy Silverman
“On the Face of It” by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
“Lighthouse at the Edge of Time” by Teel James Glenn
“Accelerando” by James Chambers
“The Last Flight of the One-Eyed Jack” by F. R. Michaels
“The Ring of Hours and Seconds” by Jeffrey Lyman
“Saving Time” by Jody Lynn Nye
“Reimaging the Mechanism: An Exposition on the Nature of Time” by Bernie Mojzes
“Sky Rivers of Gray” by Will McDermott
“The Reclaiming of New York City” by Marc L. Abbott
“Visions of the Manor” by Carol Gyzander
“Tick Tock” by Rachel A. Brune
“The Eye at the Center of Existence Never Blinks” by Maxwell I. Gold
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
The fourteen new works of fiction in this anthology combine steampunk settings with themes of cosmic horror. As the book’s title implies, the stories involve chronometers of one kind or another, generally bizarre things with strange effects on time, space, and other dimensions.
“The Birth of Mechanical Things” by Maxwell I. Gold is a very brief piece that serves as an exordium for the volume. More of a prose poem than a story, it provides dark images of ancient beings and weird devices that set the mood for the rest of the book.
“The Thirteenth Hour” by Hildy Silverman takes the form of a series of letters from an apprentice astronomer to his sweetheart. He works on a project to create the perfect, universal timepiece, using a mysterious substance found in Antarctica. The resulting master clock somehow adds extra time to the normal twenty-four hours in a day, leading to apocalyptic horror.
The narrative style is a believable pastiche of late 19th century epistolary literature. The author creates a growing sense of terror, even if there are no real surprises in the plot.
The narrator of “On the Face of It” by editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail is a psychologist working on the case of a man who committed hideous crimes and mutilated himself. He also assists the police with a series of murders that prove to have an unsuspected pattern. The two apparently unrelated investigations are linked in a way that threatens doom.
Despite its many horrors, the story begins in a leisurely manner, although it eventually reaches a dramatic climax. The way in which the murders are related is less than convincing.
Although it is set in the year 1994, “Lighthouse at the Edge of Time” by Teel James Glenn feels as though it takes place in the same alternate late Victorian background as other stories in the anthology. (I almost wonder if this is an error for 1894.) Be that as it may, the plot involves an occult investigator who witnesses ghost ships near an isolated lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper proves to be the key to the mystery.
It comes as no surprise that the lighthouse keeper is a stereotypical megalomaniac; essentially a Mad Scientist of the kind found in pulp fiction and B movies. The final scene offers a Twilight Zone style twist ending.
In “Accelerando” by James Chambers, a magician works seeming miracles of a frightening nature before his audience. An apparent madman unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate the conjurer. Two technicians become involved, discovering what the would-be assassin and the magician have to do with a ruined city, and what threatens their own community.
The fact that the conjurer is called Nyarlathotep immediately informs the reader that the author borrows themes from H. P. Lovecraft. Even more telling are references to the Necronomicon. The plot is otherwise original, and might have been more effective without these allusions.
In “The Last Flight of the One-Eyed Jack” by F. R. Michaels, a woman has visions of what seems to be the ghost of her brother, who vanished during an airship voyage to the Arctic. Other vessels vanished in the same area, where a strange object fell from the sky. She winds up on an airship carrying a ragtag crew, who reluctantly agree to travel to the place. They discover that the situation is weirder than they thought.
Although not a comedy, the story has a fair amount of wit and many quirky, amusing characters. This is a breath of fresh air in a volume full of deadly serious tales and grim, doomed protagonists. Airships are something of a cliché in steampunk fiction, but the eccentric crew of this particular vessel adds freshness to the theme.
In “The Ring of Hours and Seconds” by Jeffrey Lyman, a professional thief accepts a clandestine assignment in order to wipe out his wife’s gambling debts. The task is to steal a magic ring from one of the inhabitants of a skyscraper occupied by sorcerers. Although the heist seems simple at first, it turns out to be far more complicated and dangerous than expected. He has to perform an even more deadly errand for the sorcerer, leading to an extraordinary discovery about the nature of reality.
The background is highly original and richly detailed, avoiding the usual settings of steampunk fiction. The plot goes in unexpected directions. What the protagonist finds out about the world in which he lives is truly awe-inspiring, adding a genuine sense of wonder.
The narrator of “Saving Time” by Jody Lynn Nye receives a magic watch from his grandfather. It can reverse time, but using it to correct the past carries a terrible price. For every minute of time reversal, the user will have to spend a year after death trapped in the watch. The narrator faces a crisis when universal disaster threatens the Earth.
As I said about a previous tale in the anthology, the premise is something one might find in an episode of Twilight Zone. Most of the plot is on a small scale, and is largely a family drama and a love story. The addition of a cosmic menace near the end seems out of place, and throws what is otherwise a delicate fantasy out of balance.
As its title suggests, “Reimagining the Mechanism: An Exposition on the Nature of Time” by Bernie Mojzes takes the form of a lecture delivered by a scholar. The narrator describes an expedition to the South Pole with his wife in search of a strange object to be found there. As the lecture progresses, the reader learns of the expedition’s horrors, the narrator’s insanity, and the unexpected nature of the audience.
The unusual narrative structure is cleverly done, beginning as a dry philosophical discussion and winding up as a vision of monsters, murder, and madness. Even for a fantasy story with an unreliable narrator, the notion that these 19th century characters could survive on foot in Antarctica during the long winter strains credibility.
The narrator of “Sky Rivers of Gray” by Will McDermott visits an acquaintance and discovers that the friend’s use of ancient technology has unleashed a horror on the world. Together they wage a desperate battle against the menace.
As this synopsis may suggest, this is an old-fashioned tale, reminiscent of something from the yellowing pages of Weird Tales. The fact that much of the text consists of the narrator listening to the acquaintance relate prior events, a common technique in older pulp fiction, adds to this feeling of nostalgia. The story’s most striking and original concept is the one found in the title, in which the weird device drains color from the world.
In “The Reclaiming of New York City” by Marc L. Abbott, an inventor creates a device that allows him to obtain food for the population of the metropolis, as well as raw materials for construction projects, from other worlds. His grandiose, if altruistic, plan is to allow all working-class citizens to become as prosperous as the upper class. Opposed by the wealthy, he is nearly killed and has to undergo a weird transformation before he can complete his scheme.
The plot requires the mayor of this alternate New York City to be so determined to preserve the class system that he uses Pinkerton agents as assassins. One must also assume that these detectives are willing to kill at a word from the mayor. This makes the antagonists stereotypical villains, in sharp contrast to the complex character of the inventor. On the positive side, the story offers a striking image of the fate of the city.
In “Visions of the Manor” by Carol Gyzander, a woman and her twin brother investigate a mysterious building that can only be detected through special lenses. The weird place has something to do with unseen monsters that devastate the local population once every five years. The building changes size and shape, finally revealing the nature of the menace.
Despite being a grim horror story, the work has a narrative style that reads like a tale for young adults. The two siblings act like teenagers on an adventure, and their willingness to enter the bizarre structure, and to bring along their pet cat, seems downright foolish. (I will admit that the presence of the cat adds a touch of dark irony to the climax.)
“Tick Tock” by Rachel A. Brune takes place in a world where soot and grime choke the atmosphere, accompanied by a sound like the ticking of a gigantic clock. The situation drives the populace to madness and violence, which the elite escape in airships that never land. A scientist uses a beggar to test his weird machine, at the cost of the man’s life. The device allows the scientist to reach the source of the disaster.
Once again, we have a typical Mad Scientist, intent on his experiments without concern for human life. The story’s conclusion shifts the point of view to a cosmic one, adding a touch of novelty.
The anthology ends as it began, with another tiny, plotless prose poem from the same writer. “The Eye at the Center of Existence Never Blinks” by Maxwell I. Gold serves as an eerie envoi, but is even more opaque than the author’s opening work.
Inevitably, some of the stories in this themed anthology are going to be repetitious. A simple synopsis that would fit many of the works in the book would be “a clock-like device releases horrors from another dimension.” The authors do a decent job of adding originality to the limited theme, some more than others.
The steampunk aspects of several of the stories are minimal, often just a brief mention of imaginary steam-powered or clockwork technology in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting. The theme of cosmic horror, particularly of the Lovecraftian variety, is more relevant to most of the works. Fans of gaslight fantasy in general will best appreciate this volume, although they are unlikely to enjoy them all equally.
Victoria Silverwolf brought part of a tree, which had been blown down by a strong wind, into the house today so the cats could play with it.