The cover shows a black king, a white pawn, and what appears to be a stringed musical instrument, set against deep velvet folds of black and purple. The significance is left to the viewer. On the back is a portrait of Liril, who makes her formal appearance in later stories, but has a brief biography on the last page. The overall appearance of the collection is gorgeous, and the typeset very easy to read. In these early pieces, we meet the cast of characters who will come to later populate Rebecca's work in more depth and expansion. The plot arc is only hinted in this collection, and I’d like to avoid spoiling it for later readers. I will say that in many ways, this represents an ongoing attempt to answer the unexplained and push back the borders of the unknown. The website has an FAQ, What is Hitherby Dragons?, and I suggest starting there to help understand the regular entries. Many of the entries are stand-alone surrealism that only loosely ties into the main themes and need no introduction, but the ongoing story arc often require some additional help to get up to speed. Everything does tie together, and Rebecca encourages connection finding on her forum, but some stories seem more there for a point or a theme, rather than a plot.
What the reader brings to Rebecca’s writing is very important, because I suspect there are going to be pieces in Primal Chaos that are hard to understand or relate to, and others that make perfect sense and speak to you. At least, this was my experience. I will introduce of the concepts she brings up, some in depth and some in throwaway lines, and talk in detail about my favorite pieces. Some stories are core parts of the plot, connected in labyrinthine ways, and others are simply there to make the day a little weirder. We see the Firewood World and read about snowflake kings falling on windshields of people who don’t know how to drive in the snow. There is a beautiful poem about a woman inside her own glass of wine, facing a godmaking force. Internet spam is turned into meditations on distraction. Aromatherapy aliens amuse us. In “One of those days,” we learn the tale of how the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac crossed a river. This particular version of the Zodiac includes Hopping Vampire, Goat and Alien.
There is a Nobilis crossover involving resurrection, Lord Entropy, and the nature of friendship. Other entries tell us about dancing popes, God Communicators, zombie nixons with Pekingese minions, and peanut butter firewalls. I couldn’t make this stuff up on my own, which is why I love reading Rebecca. She makes my world more surreal every time I read, but she’s also trying to make sense of the world, and a strong feeling of compassion and humor at the absurdity of life radiates through.
“The Problem with Elves” deals with Arwen and the Elrond Mass Mind. With the wonderful title of“ Don’t Forget Your Infinite Mercy, Kwan-Yin!”, we watch a cooking show with the Biblical Leviticus rules, as administered by a foreign goddess: “Donning her mantle of infinite mercy, her majestic aura radiating unconquerable love for all living things, Kwan-Yin jogs into the stage and faces the cameras.” I love the sense of humor here, and it peeks through into everything, including and especially the horrible stuff. Sometimes the humor can be extremely dark, but in these early pieces, I find whimsy in almost every entry. Occasionally it’s not there, as in the voyage of Santa Claus, but overall Primal Chaos is a gentle introduction before reaching the other, soon-to-come collections, where the brassy sheen her earlier writing gets mixed with a darker underside, leading to an exploration of deeper things.
Hitherby Dragons continues to explore strange places on the map, where monsters lurk around shoals and in well-lit corporate offices, where people get locked in cages and don’t want to leave. We’ll find out alternate histories of the world, why the creation of gods and the nature of angels, and get more clues to piece it together if we want to. Rebecca develops an entire mythology, and in "Primal Chaos" she's just getting started with the story of the Monster, the Hero, Martin and Jane, and the other cast of recurring characters. Major underlying themes are why and how we create our own mythologies, how life can fracture us and how we put ourselves back together, and that reaching out to others is a form of compassion. Sometimes we build places we don’t want to leave, sometimes we just want to come home. But then, that’s what I get out of her stories. There’s enough in the ongoing show for people to each get a lesson to take home, a scene to enjoy watching, a character to take to their heart. And if the reader doesn’t want any of that, he or she can always enjoy the way Rebecca folds and spindles language and genre conventions.
But in this collection, we have Enlightenment Shuriken, the zoological classification of Speed Racer, the Dewey Decimal Code for Evil, and the Yama Kings rigging the voting for Heaven. Rebecca teases with “Hard-Nosed Messianic Acts,” but she’s still making a point about kindness and the time we have left. She also asks memorable questions: “Why are you listening to the radio without your cynicism goggles?" says Martin in "Two Great Tastes." The advice is even better: "All you have to do is love your neighbor, believe in Jesus, and make a sincere effort to stop killing and eating people. No matter how tasty and delicious they are." ("Practical Matters Involving Salvation.") Eastern ideas often seem to meet Western ones, giving us such lines as, “My anti-enlightenment stare defeats all Buddhas!” Perhaps it reads better in context. The last tale chronicles the adventures of Mr. Schiff at the Rock Candy Mountains of Madness. H.P. Lovecraft fans will either be amused or appalled.
Go buy Primal Chaos, read the website if you want to find out more, and with any luck, a new Rebecca Borgstrom collection will be out soon.
